Hanne

24 July 2009

It’s Thursday night/ Friday morning, there is another tequila party raging upstairs on the seventh floor and it is time for another blog entry. My goodness, the events of today alone could just about fill up an entire attention spans worth of space! Onions, cake and peroxide all played their parts. And apparently I should really start learning Chinese….

This Thursday was not a black Thursday at all. In fact it was a most festive day, despite the thunderstorms and early morning wake up call. Why? Well, it was my last day of German uni! Being the good model student that I am I did go along to class today, even though I have already picked up my Schein and marked essay. As usual, I managed to miss the tram so arrived slightly late. It was a rather strange to walk into the room to see a bunch of people throwing onions at each other. Or rather, one onion. A red onion, to be precise. The lecturer had lost her tennis ball and wanted to have a quick fire debate, so the onion was the stand in for the role of ‘talking stick’. Unfortunately it was so unnerving to have the bulb flying through the air toward your face that most people a) ducked rather than caught and b) were so unnerved that they clean forgot what they actually wanted to say. By the time I arrived the onion was rather soggy and bruised. I think we arrived at the consensus that innocent people should not be sentenced to death, but I wouldn’t quote me on that. The onion effect was rather detrimental to the academic atmosphere and it was not so easy to concentrate whist always being on guard for the next vegetable offensive…

After class I wandered home through the thunderstorm and bought some mini Mirabella plums from a man who had set up a stall in the rain. That is one thing to tick off my list of ‘Things to Do in Freiburg’: try the plum man’s fruit. Then in order to celebrate the end of classes my flat mate bleached my hair. The streaking kit actually resembled a medieval torture device, with a little cap with holes in it and a spiky knitting needle object for hooking the hairs through. The hooking part actually took longer than the dying bit, but the dying bit was more exciting because you could see the colour taking hold. Way better than chemistry class! Then half way through the hair dressing session my other flat mate arrived home and we decided to bake a Schwarzwaldkirschtorte. I seperated one egg but then had to rinse out the dye. But being the considerate person I am I made sure I was back in time to lick the bowl!

We actually spent four hours baking the cake in the end, including the trip to the supermarket for cream and cherries and Kirschwasser. Mmm. Alcoholic cake…. In between we ate some pizza and had a very philosophical discussion about V4 motorbikes (alright, I admit I was the one doing most of the talking… but at least I was doing it in German!). Then we built our masterpiece, cleaned up all the mouldy dishes that mysteriously keep piling up despite the ‘please wash up after yourself sign’ (eeeew gross) and sat down to enjoy our creation. It was goooood. I will definitely be taking the recipe home as a souvenir of my time in the Black Forest.

So we were finished with the cake adventure around 10pm and I was actually supposed to be at a farewell party on the other side of town at 8pm…. Luckily I managed to NOT miss the tram and made it over there to say goodbye to a lad from France who is heading home. I also met a lovely girl from Shanghai who likes to sleep on the balcony back home and watch the stars. We had a long chat about milk and the snakes in the Australian Outback. Actually she thought I was from Germany at first, as did one of the German boys there. Yay for New Zealand accents, apparently they are far easier to camoflague than those from Britain or USA. Then she taught me some Chinese and may have convinced me to take some classes back home. Chinese would be quite a useful language to know….

This blog seems to be filled with ellipses, but perhaps that is just a result of the late hour. Sometimes it gets so late that night is turning into day and you are not sure if you should be sad about the end of the last day or excited about the new beginning. I am quite sad about leaving all my new friends here in Germany and about saying goodbye, but I guess that looking forward it will be good to visit them in the future. And finishing uni means seeing my friends in NZ is getting ever closer too. Yin and Yang. ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’. Ok, random philosophical rant over! Time to move on to something more filling.

My new ‘Deutsche Küche’ cook book is full of traditional German recipes. I have also been collecting a few others. Last Tuesday two of my flat mates and I made Flammkuchen, which are traditional to the area. They are pretty much pizzas with really thin dough and usually they have crème fraiche, onion and bacon on them. My half had capsicum instead of bacon, and it was delicious. Talking of delicious, last night we had a Prague trip reunion dinner at a small family restaurant in the Glottertal and I tried German Käsespätzle. Best thing ever. Similar to macaroni cheese but the Spätzle are something different to noodles. Another recipe to hang onto and bring home. Along with a few creamed rice and instant pudding packets. And maybe some Semmelknödeln. They are like boiled dumplings made with old bread and I bought a packet in Penny Markt the other day. Ok, I am starting to sound like my Grandad now with all these elaborate explantions, but the food here is really quite exciting. It deserves a good paragraph to itself once in a while.

Tuesday probably deserves a mention here as well. We had the most glorious day, 30 degrees, blue skies, so everyone hopped off to the park to sunbathe. I actually spent five hours in the park, first trying to learn Danish and then when that was not too successful Holly joined me and we enjoyed a bottle of Hungarian wine. Oh, and I went for a swim. Or rather, half a swim. Up to the hips. In a lake. Will have to go back for the other half some time later this weekend to tick off another item on my list. I will not, however, be ticking it off with my ‘Jesus wants to give you more than this stupid pen’ pen from orientation week. Why? Well because that pen conveniently ran out of ink right as I was going into one of my tests. Unfortunately it failed to convert me, especially after such ironic out-of-ink timing. Jesus just didn’t want me to get the grade, apparently.

These last days in Freiburg are flying by so quickly, I can hardly believe that in six more sleeps I will be on a plane to Spain and eventually home, detouring via a few adventures into the Unknown. It was lovely to get a postcard from my sister on Wednesday morning and now it will not be long until I see her and everyone else in NZ again. Friday is just starting and I am ready to milk it like a Breisgau dairy cow and make the most of these last 120 hours!

Keep safe and try to avoid the swine!
Schöne Grüße,
Hanne