Hanne

20 April 2009

Day one of the Summer Semester at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and I was up bright and early like the most diligent of students. But unlike those most diligent students I was not up early to study or attend class. No, I was thinking of the holidays already and hurried into uni to sign up for the International trip to Prague, which takes place in the Pentacost holidays. Mission one of the day accomplished, it was then time to do some shopping.

I moved into my room yesterday and had every intention of going shopping for food and washing powder and other necessities on Sunday afternoon. In fact I declined an invitation to a football match to allow myself enough time. Unfortunately Germany is slightly different to NZ with regard to its opening hours. Many shops are open from 9.30am until 7pm, with supermarkets closing at 10 or 11pm during the week. But NOTHING is open on Sundays, and I mean NOTHING! SO I would have gone hungry if it weren’t for the fact that we had a WG dinner that evening. (WG = Wohngemeinschaft, pretty much a flat). It was so exciting, we made toasted sandwiches and they have a triangle shaped toasted sandwich maker! I used to go and visit Stephen just to make triangle sandwiches, back in the day. So that is an interesting fact about my kitchen here. It is also interesting that we are 6 girls here. With two bathrooms. Hmmm.

Back to the shopping, it took me rather a long time to get through Penny Markt because I was so intrigued by the way they set things out. There are sooooo many different types of cheeses, but all pre sliced or grated, no blocks like we have. And there are also youghurt desserts with little corners of fruit flavour or smarties that you mix with the yoghrt, like we had as kids. Yummy! For some reason they are also selling pineapples although I am sure they are not in season at the moment. Aspargus, however, is. Very much so. This is an asparagus region and they even have an asparagus week.

We were not served asparagus in the MENSA today, though. The MENSA is very cool, the student cafeteria. There are 4 dishes a day and also a bistro where you can have a buffet and pay by the weight of your plate (that is odd…). The plates are enormous and actually the food is really good. Especially seeing as the main dishes are only 3 Euro and come laden with veges, sauce, meat, potatoes. Always potatoes. Far better than the series of overpriced chain stores selling food around Auckland campus. Perhaps because the cafeteria is run by the uni? It’s great, in any case.

There are also plenty of parties in the MENSA bar. My goodness, Germany seems to be party central, every day there are people handing out fliers about ‘Singles Night: Flirting Without Borders’, ‘Beach Party’ or ‘Student Night’. Every night is student night somewhere in the city but the most famous student night is at the neighbouring student village, StuSie. Every Wednesday is shots night. And apparently in the first week of uni it is obligatory to attend. We also have a very cool bar/ party room in the basement. Seeing as this building is only 1 1/2 years old it is all fitted out with the mod cons, a sound system, disco ball, neon bar, dance floor. The first event is ‘Tanz in der Mai’ on 30th April. Should be good…

I also saw a very funny sight today, the sort that is I had had a camera I would have taken a snapshot of and put on a post card. I was waiting to cross the road and this bike pulled up. Rider had a bushy moustache, German helmet (first I’ve seen over here!), leather vest and heavily tattooed arms. Looked like a typical Harley rider. But no. He was riding a 125cc ‘Phantom’ scooter. It was so strange to see, sort of a visual oxymoron.

Two more strange things and then I’m off. The first is that here the students rap their knuckles on their desk after every lecture to show appreciation for the lecturer. *Clop clop clop* and then they leave. The second is actually not so strange except other people I seem to think it is strange. As of today I am a member of the Long Distance Running Team at uni. This evening we ran up a mountain. It was kind of tiring…

Stay safe in NZ!

Tschüß,

Hanne