August 17, 2011: Language Camps and Public Transportation

If I told you how crazy my life has been in the past couple weeks, you absolutely would not believe a single word I said. But, since I am obligated to blog and tell you all what is happening in Germany, I sure am going to tell you anyways.

Monday, August 8th was the first day of language camp. This was also the first day I got to take public transportation in the land of Germany. Now, it seems so simple, and I feel extremely stupid, but when I first boarded my train, I realized, ''Wow.... I'm in Germany, and I barely know where to get off of this train.'' Let us start, though, from the beginning. I woke up at six o'clock am on this fine morning, it was pretty out. Not sunny, but not raining either. I made the mistake of dressing up for the first day. Whoops! I wore a niceish but still casual dress, and  a pair of high heels. Worst thing I could've done. I did not leave my host family's house until seven twenty seven am though, which meant I had way too much time to get ready, and to worry about my first day. My host sister, Julia went with me on the bus from our town of Kamp-Lintfort to the city of Duisburg. There we got off at the next to last stop and went to the third track. At eight thirty six my train arrived. I take the RE2 train number 30006 every morning. This train goes from Münster to Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhoff. Luckily, the end of the line is Düsseldorf, where I have to get off. Every morning, the same recorded voice announces in the train first ''Nächste station, Düsseldorf Flughafen, next stop, Düsseldorf Airport,'' then after we leave there, he announces, ''Nächste station, Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhoff. Der zug ended dort. Aufwiedersehen,'' and then goes off. For those of you who don't speak German, what he said is, the train ends here, so don't forget to get off, or you will end up in Münster when you wake up. Not that exactly, but you get my drift. So, I get off at Düsseldorf and look at my paper that my host father, Bodo, gave to me. It told me to take the U-bahn (which is like a Subway system) to Leugplatz. So of course, I go walking around the entire train station looking at the U-bahn arrivals and saying to myself, which of these is going to Leugplatz. After probably ten or fifteen minutes, I went to information and they told me I had to take the U76 which went to Öberkassel, and it passed right through Leugplatz. After that, I made it to Leugplatz without failure, but then was once again completely disoriented. I was supposed to find a certain street called Kaiser-Willhelm-Ringe, it would have led me right to the camp which is being held in the Jugendherberge of Düsseldorf. I saw a sign down the completely wrong street which said Kaiser, so I thought to myself, hey! There it is!! So I started following the street. Twenty minutes, three conversations in horrible tourist German, and several small blisters later, I bumped into somebody that I knew from Washington, DC who was also going to the language camp. She was travelling in the opposite direction. It turns out, she had gotten off of the U-bahn way too late and was now crossing paths with me going the wrong direction. So, we walked back up the same way I came, and at Leugplatz, we went down a street perpendicular to the one we had previously been travelling on. Seven minutes later, we were at the right place. Thank you so much, Kirsten. We Oregonians need to stick together. :) The language camp was not overly exciting that day, mostly just name games, and such. Getting home proved to be an issue though. At this time, I did not yet have a German cell phone, this meant I could not contact my host parents in the case of an emergency or if I was going to be late. Camp ended at three thirty pm, or fifteen thirty if you use German time. I walked to Leugplaty with some people from the camp and there we all went back to Düsseldorf Hbf together. There were some other students who took the train to Duisburg so I went with them. That was my first mistake of the afternoon. You see, their train left at four twenty pm, my bus left Duisburg at four twenty seven pm. Once at Duisburg, we went our separate ways. Many of them had called their host parents and asked if they could go to Rheinberg for something called Schutzenfest, so they had another train to catch. Me, I headed for the bus stop. I could not board a bus at the same place though because it was going the opposite direction. Once again, I start following the street in the wrong direction to try and find a bus stop that was going West instead of East. I asked one person, and her English was so bad she sent me into a weird park like area with a lot of mice that smelled strongly of urine. Not so good. Eventually, after walking around for quite a while, I went back to the bus stop and a nice older gentlemen could probably tell I was American and needed help. He started talking to me in English and gave me directions to the Westbound bus stop just down the road. Not even a block away. I felt very sheepish, and thanked him profusely as I walked away. I had no clue how to read the bus schedule though, so I just took the first bus with the name SB30 on it. That was another mistake of the day. It turns out, every hour there are two busses called SB30 that pass the Duisburg Hbf. One goes to the Hochschule in Kamp-Lintfort, the other goes to my stop, Kamperbrück Mitte. Guess which one I got on. If you said the wrong one, you would be correct. When the bus pulled up at the last stop, the driver turned to me and said something in German that I could not understand. I was so confused and asked if this was the SB30. He said ja, and I wondered if maybe I had somehow missed my stop? The driver could not speak English though, so we had a difficult time communicating. He and I eventually found out that I needed to be somewhere else, obviously. All I could say was Saunapark, which is a place right next to my bus stop. Once we figured out how to kind of understand each other, the bus driver very kindly brought me to a place called Prinzenplatz, where the right bus would pass by in approximately fifteen minutes. He drove off and I waited. Another SB30 pulled up soon after and I asked the driver if it went to the right place this time. It did. I was home in a matter of minutes. My hostfamily was very worried though. They thought I had gone to the Schutzenfest with the rest of the people. The next day at camp, everybody was asking what happened to me, and I felt very sheepish. I explained everything to my host parents and there were no hard feelings. They just wanted to make sure I took the right bus the next day.

On the next day, I made it to camp and home almost perfectly fine. The train I took however arrived just after the bus departed, so I waited an hour for the next one. When I arrived home, my host dad told me to just take the wrong one and then call him to pick me up from Hochschule if I missed the right one right away. That way I would not have to wait so long.

Wednesday was uneventful. I found a train that made it to Duisburg at four twenty one pm, so I just had to run for the bus.

Thursday was the same.

Friday, came a bit of a surprise. In the morning, I got on the bus, and was even a little bit early for my train. I sat there waiting and waiting and waiting... and waiting... and waiting.... My train was not coming. The sign for it had changed to a different train, and it was nearly nine o'clock am. I was starting to freak out a little. My train had been cancelled that day, apparently. A nice man told me there was a Stadt-bahn going to Düsseldorf at nine fifteen am. I boarded that, but since it was a stadt-bahn and not an Express train, it stopped at every stop, so instead of taking fifteen minutes to arrive at Düsseldorf it took forty-five. I was late for camp that day.

Sunday was my mom's birthday. I got to Skype with her. :) It was great to see her face again. It was then that I realized that I'm missing home more than I ever thought I would.

Monday came again, and I woke up at normal time, was at the bus stop at normal time. I waited on the side of the road, and my bus drove right past me. Did not even slow down. After that, I waited for an hour for the next bus, and was an hour late for camp. Unfortunately, we were going to the Düsseldorf library that day, and I missed the trip. :'( Sad day. I waited from ten thirty am until just after noon when they arrived back.

Tuesday, camp was uneventful, as was the train and bus. When I arrived home though, Bodo came to me and told me we were going to a party. It was an anniversary party for some friends. They had a tradition I have never heard of before. Apparently, the day before the wedding anniversary day, there is a party for the friends that are not super close to the bride and groom, there everybody throws plates and bowls at the sidewalk. Why? I have absolutely no clue. But it sure looked fun to clean up..... Not. While I was there, I met some of Bodo's coworkers. They found it cool that I could drive a car at sixteen in America. It seems to blow everybody's minds when they find out. At the party, I also tried some kind of alcohol. I think it was Schnapps, but what flavor I have no clue. It was light pink, and they all seemed intent on me drinking it. I tried a little, but I cannot stand the taste of alcohol. The way it burns your throat and lingers on your tongue disgusts me, so I only took a teensy sip, and left the rest. It was very sweet, and reminded me of cotton candy at the fair. Just less sticky and not hot at all.

Today, we had a stadt rallye, which is like a scavenger hunt in the town of Düsseldorf. It was fun, but rather immaterial because we knew the answers already. They turned out to spell 'Düsseldorf on the Rhine,' which we figured out after about three questions. It was nice to see the old part of the town though. It was very pretty, and has beautiful architechture. I forgot to take pictures. Whoops!

Until Next Time!

Love from,

Anna