the rest of the week!

I realized that I forgot to blog about the remainder of last weekend, and this past week, so, here goes! After the lovely misadventures on Thursday, I decided that I wanted to go up to Hamburg to visit some fulbrighters there, and also attend the Christmas tree lighting party at the US consulate. On the ICE, it takes abt 90 mins to get from Göttingen to Hamburg, but on the FREE regional train, it takes abt 4.5 hours. Being that I’m cheap, the slowtrain it was.. Ended up getting into Hamburg later than expected, and starving, so I met up with Caitlin, stopped by an asian grocery store, and bought ingredients to make some thai curry. We went back to her apt, and I started cooking, while she invited the other FBers to join in. (I still have not figured out how to cook for less than 4 people, btw…) Made dinner, which turned out fantastically, and sat eating and drinking for abt 4 hours, before deciding to go out into the city. We went to stern schanze and St. Pauli, which are two really fun districts in the city, and went barhopping until about 5am. Hamburg is a very alternative city, and so I got to see a lot of things that I’d never experienced. We’ll leave it at that, for the PG rating, and because my mom reads this. The next morning (afternoon,) we got up, and went to the Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas market) and got food and glühwein, and wandered around looking all the different crafts and stuff you can buy. I headed back to Göttingen at around 4pm, and got in exhausted, and pretty much passed out immediately, instead of going to the Niklausparty that was being thrown at the Uni here in Göttingen (which was a ton of fun, Karen reports.) On Sunday, I went with Julian, Philipp, Rac, and Karen to Goslar, which is a medieval town near Braunschweig, and also happens to be where Julian is from. The Weihnachtsmarkt there is well-known throughout Europe as being one of the best, and most entertaining. Every year they put up huge pine trees, clear off the first 7 feet of branches, and attach bar tables to the trunks. You go into this fake forest, which is covered in Christmas lights, buy glühwein, and pretend you’re in a real forest, in the middle of the city. Its really quite lovely. We also tried “feuerzangenbowle,” which is a hot concoction of god knows what, tastes lovely, and almost immediately numbs your body from the cold. We wandered around the town, hot drinks in hand, and took fun pics (which are posted, btw). After a few hours of spatziering and drinking, we went for dinner underneath the Rathaus, and hung out there for a while to warm up. After that, we ran to the train station, barely caught our train, and headed back up to Göttingen. Karen, Philipp, Rac, and I then decided to go to the Irish pub for a nightcap. I dragged Karen back to my apt (see pics,) because her bed hadn’t arrived yet, and she passed out on my couch. Woke up a few short hours later, and went to school, which was uneventful, except many of the teachers asked me how rough my weekend was. This past week has gone by relatively quickly… the only remarkable thing was that the kitty who lives in my building got into my apt, and I took pictures of her as I was trying to shoo her out. Those pics are also posted.
I’ve realized that I use my weeks to rest up for the weekends, which, although not normal, works well.
Today, the fam is arriving in München (minus my dad, who’s arriving on the 22nd) and so I’m waiting to hear from them, and know that they got in safely. I will be posting soon, and will also upload more pics in the near future! Good luck with finals, those of you that have them!