Grüße aus Deutschland!

Köln Hauptbahnhof

It's been about a week since I got here, and I can hardly believe it. So much has happened already! I've lost 24 hours due to flight time/time difference, been to Frankfurt and Cologne, spent 4 days at a conference, settled into one room, resettled into another room immediately after, and I've visited the school where I'm working. 

I'll try not to go into too much detail while still getting the big juicy bits. 

First, packing. It's way too easy to make your baggage weigh about a ton, but it's way too hard to get it to weigh only 50 pounds. Somehow my sister did some magic and got my checked bags to within about 3 pounds of that. After throwing in a few last-minute things that didn't fit in my carryon, we left for the airport at 4am Friday morning. yuck. Almost paid an extra $60 for an overweight bag that already cost me $60 just to have, but I sacrificed a few things and stuffed a few more into my pillowcase. Word of advice-don't bring your own pillow. It sounds really great, especially with the big chunky pillows they always seem to use here, but it was borderline not worth it because it ended up being an extra carryon that mostly was just a nuisance, especially with stuff crammed into it. The flight from Seattle to Dallas/Ft. Worth went fine, although we only had a few minutes there before our flight to Frankfurt. Problem: I couldn't find a space in the overhead bins for my small suitcase, so everybody was sitting and I was still standing in the aisle with a 60-lb suitcase full of books and stuff with nowhere to put it. I got rescued by a surly flight attendant who stuffed it into some coat closet or something.

Arrival in Frankfurt: actually not bad. We got in at about 7:20am Saturday. After waiting at passport control for maybe 45 minutes, it was pretty easy to pick up our stuff at the baggage claim and navigate our way to the trains. We got a day ticket for the public transportation, stuffed ourselves and a combined 5 suitcases/big backpacks into a subway to get to the hostel. Our hostel, called "Frankfurt Hostel," was pretty sweet. It was right across the street from the Hauptbahnhof (translation: central/main train station) above some shops. Free internet and breakfast, and fantastic location to get anywhere in the city.

It was seriously almost 90 degrees and really humid, so clearly I was dying. But it was still only 9:30 in the morning local time so we had all day to do stuff! We decided to go get set up with some cellphone action...

Contract-free phones are pretty common here, so it wasn't too hard to find one, especially at a place like Saturn, which is basically a gigantic Best Buy but with even more stuff on two whole floors of the mall. Not just one storefront and up a floor, no the mall actually has two floors dedicated to just this one store, and the longest elevator in the world that skips the first 4 floors and goes all the way up. My phone cost me about 20 Euro + 10 Euro for a SIM card and minutes. Not bad, huh? We also got ourselves our tickets from Frankfurt to Cologne, and a BahnCard 50, which gives us 50% off regular-price tickets to anywhere in Germany, and I think 25% off tickets anywhere on the network outside of Germany. Plus, we got the student price on the card itself so we got half off again! Still being a student even though I'm kinda not = winning.

After that, we still had all day so we went for a walk. We had lunch right on the Main River...

Yes, the beer is in fact cheaper than water, and tastes better too. 

...and then kept strolling. We checked in around 2:30 or so, and then went back out again! We met up with our friend Nicole from Enumclaw who is here doing a science internship, and had dinner with her. Called it a night around 10:00.

Sunday: got up around 8 or something for breakfast, then went back out for a stroll. This time we crossed the river and got a good look at the skyline.

Frankfurt is actually the only city that has very many skyscrapers. It has the most modern skyline due to this fact, but it still has lots of old-timey things too, which I learned about last January on my trip with Whitworth.

The bridges that cross the Main are really cool. We found this on the bottom of one:

Extra health!

Took the noon train to Cologne, lugging all the stupid baggage along with us. We were lucky to take the ICE, which only took about half the time as the other train would have, so we arrived around 2pm. Problem: our hostel wasn't very close to the Hauptbahnhof. We had to take the subway. Another problem: all the escalators we needed were broken. Another problem: our bags are friggin' heavy! We ended up carrying/dragging our stuff up and down a few flights of stairs to get to the right U-Bahn. The line we needed seemed to be pretty popular; tons of people wanted to get on with us, which made it sort of crazy to figure out how to fit on with our bags and giant backpacks. But we did it, and got to the hostel in one piece. We were able to check in right when we got there, seeing as it was afternoon already, so that part went reasonably smoothly. It turned out that there were already 3 or 4 other Fulbrighters there, but we didn't really see any of them until Monday morning at breakfast.

Cologne is very different than Frankfurt. I'll write more about that later, because I still have to get through the rest of this week.

The Fulbright conference for all the Americans in Germany started with a gigantic mess in the Cologne Hauptbahnhof. We were supposed to meet at the information booth, so roughly 140 people with at least a bag each sort of milled around for about an hour, making it rather difficult for people who actually had to get somewhere. But we got sorted out and hopped on several busses out to Altenberg, and 40 minutes by bus outside of the city. Our conference center was attached to this awesome old cathedral, and the grounds of the place were really nice. 

Altenberg cathedral from the back

The conference was pretty fun. I met people from all over the country, although it seems like a good majority come from the East Coast. There were several Pacific Northwesterners there, though, but most were from Oregon. Oh well. The conference dealt with some logistical things right off, like how to register as a resident, get a bank account started, what's expected of us at the schools, and so on. Tuesday began with sessions broken up specifically for ETAs in each state, so all of us in Nordrhein-Westfalen met with a couple of English teachers from our state to kind of get an idea of the school system here. Each state is responsible for its own system, so there are like 20 different types of schools around the country, and each state's system runs a bit differently. It's quite interesting, and very confusing. 

Then we were split into smaller work groups to start planning our practice lesson that we would do on Wednesday. In groups of four, we were to plan out a 45-minute English lesson. My group did a lesson for 6th or 7th graders. Most students don't really start learning English here until around the 5th grade, so our lesson would've looked a little bit like a 1st grade lesson. We played Simon Says, and then did some practice describing ourselves and others: "I have long blonde hair," or "I have blue eyes," and so on. Overall, it wasn't too bad, just a little bit intimidating beforehand.  It was nice to have had a bit of experience and a general idea of how to structure a lesson from this summer at Whitworth. The fun part was the rest of class acting like 6th graders! The "tutors," or actual English teachers from schools all over the country, rotated between each practice lesson, and the one who came to ours assigned roles for our "students." We had the bored/antsy students, the goody-goodies, and the general students. I think even better was that was the impressions of German accents that came out. One of the second-year Fulbrighters who was at the conference helping out had a spot-on German accent.

Now that's over. Got back to Cologne yesterday morning, and I'm on my own. Isabel had to stay a little longer at the conference for a diversity program she's part of, so we parted ways early in the morning. I managed to buy a week-long pass at the train station that will give me unlimited travel starting monday, and a Kurzstrecke, or a short-term pass good for 4 rides, for the weekend. I had to drag all my stuff all over the city again, but I am now settled in at another hostel for a week! Thank goodness. Hopefully I'll have some luck this weekend with finding an apartment so I have somewhere to go once my stay ends here.

Today I went to my school for the first time. Wow, am I excited and overwhelmed. I was met by the vice-principal, who has been in contact with me over the summer, and she is so nice! I got a personal tour of the campus, was introduced to several members of the English and music department, and given keys to the buildings and rooms! Crazy sauce. I start in earnest on Monday with the school--3 or 4 classes each day through Wednesday, and after next week I'll get a schedule officially decided. Next week I'm just visiting a ton of classrooms to get a feel for the age groups and the school in general, but after that I'm off and running! Today was mostly conducted in English, but on Monday I'm jumping into the deep end and it's German, German, German! We'll see how I do, I guess!

There are two other Fulbright ETA's, or Fremdsprachenassistenten (Foreign Language Assistants) in or around Cologne, so we are meeting up sometime this weekend for some touristy stuff, which will be nice. I may also be meeting with someone about an apartment, which would be nice!

At the moment I'm using the free wifi at Starbucks, which is almost shameful to admit, but it's free, and lots of Germans are here doing the same thing, so I don't feel too bad. But I think I've been here for three hours, so it's time for a walk and to find some dinner!