May-Day

Another eventful week here in Deutschland! Not only has there been a lot going on in the studio, but there have been many new people to meet and places to see. Audry and I have now been in Germany for one month and we have settled in nicely. It has begun to feel like we really belong here.
We have been continuing to hang out with Hannes, one of the ceramic students from the Burg. He is a lot of fun to be with, and unknowingly has a way to make Audry and I crack up hysterically. Hannes invited us to a BBQ last week with several of his friends in a little park that overlooks the river. Everyone brought tons of food and cooked over a bonfire. It was neat to see all of the different types of foods and things they brought compared to what we would normally bring to a BBQ in the the U.S. One girl made this sweet bread dough that you wrapped around a stick and baked over the fire. It looked really cool, but I didn’t get to try it, I was too busy watching Audry learn to open beer bottles with a lighter.
It was a very good time though and we met some new people and even made plans to hang out with Yetta (one of the girls we met) this weekend. She spoke English very well, and had a lot to say about the things she liked and disliked about the U.S. It was interesting to hear her perspective about our mainstream culture and politics. It was funny to hear that she watched MTV more than I do (or did before I came here).
The next night was Friday, so we decided to go back to Objekt 5, the bar that has live bands several days a week. There was an English-speaking band playing, and I don’t know what country they were from, but they were pretty cool. We ran into a nice French boy we had hung out with the week before. We had a really good time dancing the night away. Somehow he asked Audry and I to have lunch with him at his friend’s restaurant the next day. It was a little hard to communicate with them, due to the fact that they only spoke one or two words of English, but it was still fun. We met up for lunch and decided to take a paddleboat ride on the river. Audry and I didn’t even have to paddle; they did all of the work! Haha, it seems that the guys here are a bit more chivalrous than many I know back home. The paddleboat ride was really great because we got to see a different perspective of Halle. Although we didn’t go too far, we still got to see some really interesting things.


This past weekend was a holiday weekend in Germany, like the equivalent of Labor Day in the U.S. Most people take Monday and Tuesday off of school and work for the holiday. Audry and I decided to take advantage of the days off and we went to Leipzig for the day/night. We found a cheap hostel online and booked a room for a night. We left on Monday morning and spent the day exploring the city of Leipzig and trying to find all of the interesting landmarks on our “walking tour map”. There were many really cool things to see. We went to the top of the skyscraper and saw a view of the whole city, a monument where Napoleon was defeated, many churches and some very cool museums.



We ended up finding a karaoke bar later that night and stopped in to see how it was. It was quite interesting to see the people singing to American music. We started talking to a few guys who told us about a big party at one of the discothèques down the street. They offered to take us there and we graciously agreed. The discothèque was enormous! There were something like five floors! A few too many drinks later, Audry and I went back to our hostel for a few hours of sleep before catching a train back to Halle in the morning. Tuesday consisted of a marathon of The Office on the Internet, and a nap. We were in full recovery mode. All in all it was a pretty entertaining week in Deutschland.