Well, I left Bonn yesterday morning. It was a bit sad to leave everyone (that is, the people who were staying another month… a lot of my friends left between Thursday and Saturday) but we will keep in touch through Skype and stuff and maybe see each other again. I think I would like to go back to that area in the spring when all the snow melts and the fortresses on the Rhine are open (most of them are closed from November-March) because it’s really pretty. And if I come back before June, Marcel and Moritz will still be there so I could stay with one of them. After taking the train across the entire country, I am pretty sure that where I was in January is one of the most beautiful regions of Germany. That being said, I’ve never been to the north… but still. The train ride between Bonn and Mainz was gorgeous – we were next to the river for most of it, along with the cute little houses and towns and snow-covered hills/mountains on either side, and castles all over the place.
Dresden is really cool, though, too. My cab driver from the bahnhof to my hotel was really awesome and pointed out what all the buildings were as we drove past the Altstadt (they are SO PRETTY, and I haven’t even seen them in the daylight yet), and told me where good student hangouts are and where you can go see cheap movies. The Goethe Institut here is on the other side of the Elbe, in the Neustadt, and it’s a fantastic neighborhood. After I moved in and registered and everything this morning, I wandered around for a little bit. As it turns out, I’m really close to the places that my cab driver told me about! Every street I walked down must have had 5 or 10 cafes and bars, and there are also a lot of places to go grocery shopping. I ate lunch at a restaurant called Hot Spoon, and it was DELICIOUS. They have all different sorts of soup – I had some sort of Russian thing with meat, potatoes, peppers, and sour cream, in a thick tomato-based broth, which was exactly what I needed after having walked around outside in the cold for the past hour. It’s really cheap (you can get a bowl of soup big enough for a meal, a drink, and a muffin or piece of cake for about 6 Euros) and amazing, and they have different kinds of soup every day. I’ll definitely be going back there.
Dresden is a lot less pedestrian-friendly than Bonn and Bad Godesberg, in that it is inefficient to walk places because there are a lot of things and it’s all spread out, but they have a really good Straßenbahn system. It’s a lot like Freiburg’s. I was debating whether to buy a monthly train ticket, but when I found out that my Wohnheim is 2 tram stops from Goethe, I figured I’d use it a lot (because it’s like a 20 minute walk otherwise). The trams are so convenient because they go right down the main streets where everything is… almost like they planned that out or something!
The Goethe Institut here is really nice, and a lot bigger than the one in Bad Godesberg. The people who work there seem really nice too, although sadly I don’t think the Zivis are as cute (but I could be wrong – I don’t think I’ve met all of them yet). My room is clean and functional and my roommate’s cool and everything (she’s from Iowa), but it’s a bit depressing because in my building there’s no communal area, not even a kitchen. Instead, I have dishes, a refrigerator and sink, and 2 stove burners in my room. So I don’t know if we will have big huge dinners where we take turns cooking for 10-15 people here the way we did in Bonn. I’m hoping there is some secret part of the building that I don’t know about yet, because I would really like to have an oven and a toaster while I’m here. There is a meeting at 5 tomorrow for everyone living in the dorms to teach us about how internet and laundry, etc. work here, so I guess I’ll learn about all that stuff then. If there isn’t anything else, I might have to go out and buy a water boiler, because I’ve been sufficiently Germanized that I really need one now.
I think class here will be better than in Bad Godesberg. Or more challenging, at least. The guy I had my interview with said that there is no B2.1 class this term (I didn’t catch why…), and that’s what I should be in, so he said I should go to B2.2. So that’ll be interesting. I did B1.1 last month… hopefully there’s not too much that I’ve missed in such a big jump. I told him I’d heard that there was a big difference between B1 and B2 (since that’s what the teachers and my B2 friends in Bonn said), and he said yes, sort of, but it depends on the student. Sooo I should be able to handle it.
The cultural events here look like they will be fun. Tomorrow there is a trip to the Altstadt to look around so that will be a lot of fun. Throughout the month there will be ice skating, movies, etc., but there is also a “learn how to cook German food” thing that I really really want to do, and weekend trips to Leipzig, Meißen, and the Sächsische Schweiz (nearby mountains). I think the weekend of the trip to Meißen I will probably go to Prague instead, because I really really want to go there while I’m so close! Class gets out at 1 every day so I could leave Dresden at like 2:30 or something on a Friday, be there by 4:30, and then come back here on Sunday evening. I’m going to start looking into that ASAP so that it doesn’t get stupidly expensive like Amsterdam did.
I can't even describe how incredibly jealous I am of you.
ReplyDelete