This weekend we went to Tabea's town, Regensberg. We are in Nurnberg with her parents because she has a sort of continuing education (she calls it Seminary) these two weeks. But we had to go to Regensberg for the weekend.
She has an amazing apartment. The view out the windows in her living room/dining room is great, verdant mountains with a few rocks and some little red-roofed houses. The apartment is very clean (that's a German thing I've come to realize) and has a bedroom on the main floor and a kitchen -- pretty small, but I've seen worse-- and a bath and the living room/dining room. Up a spiral staircase is the second bedroom. It's in a little village. On Friday night when we arrived, we went across the street to the biergarten to have a beer or some food or whatever we could find. There, luckily, we found a really great cover band playing the funniest American music mix you can imagine. It was great to hear a bit of old (and new) American music live and to just sit there and watch people.
On Friday, I had helped Tabea to make a real American cheesecake. I had forced her to go back to the store and get cream cheese that was different than what she had originally purchased, but it worked and we made a really great cheesecake. Well, it had one crack in the middle, which Tabea says Betty Crocker says means the cheesecake was too dry. Oh well. Then we made a raspberry sauce. She had a friend coming through on Saturday, so we shared our cheesecake with him.
After he left, we went into the city center of Regensberg. There we happened upon a concert in the park with lots of people milling around and eating and drinking at picnic tables. Very German. And we had a coke (which I ordered in German) and then decided to walk past the Dom, (cathedral) and see some of the other things. We eventually went into an Irish pub, which was great fun because inside we found a ton of Germans and another American cover band. And all the Germans were singing the English songs with various states of accents. Truth be told, on some songs, I actually figured out some ofthe words I'd never known before because the guy singing was annunciating so well. And it was the strangest mix, from Johnny Cash to Don Maclean to Green Day to John Denver. And a lot more modern bands that I can't remember at the moment. The good things is that it was just all such mainstream popular American music that I knew all the words. And no one here was going to judge me for knowing all the words to such a strange variety of music. So that was nice. We sang along with the crowd.
Afterwards we came home and slept, rather unsuccessfully. There is a Catholic church next to Tabea's apartment and they were having some sort of anniversary festival ---she said it wasn't the 1000 year festival because they are older than that. She didn't really know what year it was. And anyway, they were celebrating quite thoroughly. There were some men still singing and making noise until 3 or later. And additionally, the stupid church bell rings right into that room every quarter hour, and then on the hour more, and then at 6am, noon and 6PM and then some other random, inexplicable times, it rings for half an hour. It isn't particularly surprising, then, that I had terrible nightmares that night because my brain was trying to process the German shouting under my window and the church bells, etc. Tabea also didn't sleep well, so we took naps on Sunday.
We went back then to Beringersdorf where Tabea's family is. Nico and Johannes had gone to the lake we'd been to earlier in the week with the kayak and fishing equipment -- in Germany you have to take courses and pass a huge exam to get a fishing license-- Johannes did it a couple of years ago. When we got back, Johann called and asked if we'd bring sandwiches. So we did and sat with them. They were not successful in their fishing endeavor, but we had fun on the kayak too so it wasn't a waste. And it was a nice evening, a little cold for Tabea, but I didn't think it was so bad.
And now it is Monday. I am going to do homework and I think Tabea has planned all the evenings this week. She's also starting to plan the France part. I won't (probably) be able to blog much in France because we are camping and won't have internet access. We are going to go down from Konstanz, where her other brother lives, through Switzerland, and to Cluny to see the cathedral there. And then down to the sea and through Provence where the lavendar should be blooming. From there we'll go along the sea, stop for a moment in St. Tropez because I said I would like to see it, and then go over into San Remo Italy for a few minutes just so I've been to Italy. It should be a beautiful trip. Tabea is very excited about it and keeps looking at maps of France. I guess she hasn't been in years to France. (She keeps using her vacations to come to the US).
That's all the news for now. My German gets steadily better. We had lunch yesterday with the Catholics at their big celebration (you can buy food like bratwurst and chicken on spits and pork chops etc,) and she wanted chicken and I wanted bratwurst, so we had to go in separate lines. I was able to order what I wanted without mustard pretty well and have a light but polite conversation. Some of it was a little in English, but they don't really know English in the villages, so it was mostly German.
Now I am back to working on my papers. Uggh.
Wendy
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