March 19,20,21 MTW

 Sooooo,
I GOT MY RESIDENCY PERMIT TODAY!!! FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAANNND I GOT TO RIDE IN AN ELECTRIC SMART CAR!!!!!!!!!!

one right after the other too!!! So it was very "gluecklich" this morning, I'd say.
(glueckich--> like "gloop" but with a k, + "leek" = happy/lucky)

This is my Australian friend Jenny's German welcoming buddy. He went with both of us to the foreigner's office today. Afterwards he and I were both headed back to campus, while Jenny needed to go to the phone store. He said he much prefers driving to taking the trains and asked if I wanted to drive back with him. Car sharing is majorly popular and awesome in Stuttgart. Basically people who live here sign up online with the car sharing program, and then whenever they need to take a car somewhere, they just swipe their card which unlocks the doors, and they can drive it wherever they need to go. Then the car records the mileage an stuff on their cards, and they pay per minute or mileage of use. Stuttgart is one of the few cities that uses a lot of electric cars. It was sooo neat!!!

 

This is the first time I've gotten to see how to drive from downtown to the vaihingen campus. I honestly had no idea what the roads or terrain looked like because the S-bahn is all underground.

It turns out that "downtown" is literally down town. As in, to get back to the campus, we have to drive up a little mountain (driving through tunnels to go upward seems counter intuitive, but I guess it works ok)

 

 

Charging the car when we got back to campus! (Apparently everytime a car sharing user gets to charge a car- only when the battery is lower than 40%- they get 15 minutes free driving, so basically our trip back to campus was free :)  )

 

Anyway,
here are some pictures to sum up the last few days here. :

 

A guglhupf cake!!! Apparenlty they are very common around here!

A year or so ago, Leanne found one of our Grandma Marilyn's recipe for something called a Guglhupf, which we thought sounded ridiculous, and I never got around to making. Therefore I was so excited to find this at the Kaufland grocery store!

 

This is one of 4 garden plots that I saw at the mall! Each was something like 4'x 8' and super duper pretty!!! I don't know why they are there, but I was impressed, and they are quite charming

 

This is a very tasty salad I made for dinner that resulted from a complete cooking disaster, which went as follows:

American tries to cook like an America, which means deep fried pickles.

Impatient, and puts beer battered pickle slices into pot before the oil is hot enough.

Everything turns into a soppy mess. Solution is to add frozen creamed spinach chunks and try to make savory funnel cakes with remaining batter.

Batter globs together terribly into weird fried doughball chunks.

 

In the meantime, I was enjoying fresh mozzarella cheese! And strawberries! And balsamic something or other dressing! With cucumbers!

And so, I simply broke up the fired beer batter spinach dough chunks and used them as croutons!

And TA DA! delicious salad.

I'm going to stick to cold foods from now on.

 

 
 

My first EXCITING mail!!! Aka, not from the Insurance company or the bank!!!

Yesterday I got this little package containing wonderful card from my beloved FRF and Tyler, which they all made for me while I was flying here. It was incredibly sweet and frfy and I love it.

Today's Lunch. A chocolate filled croissant- which I didn't realize was chocolate filled when I bought it. Also I accidentally burned parts of the chocolate when I tried to warm it up in the microwave. >.<

Plus, kiwi slices!!! Can't go wrong with fruit!

 

 
 Today I walked part of the way to class with a few classmates (it takes about the same amt of time as the bus ride, I found out). It was a very simple walk, and along the way, I noticed that this tunnel, which I usually find boring from inside the bus, is really really cool looking!!!
 

Stairs going down to the street. We walk about a block down, take a right, walk another block and then we are at the German course building. This is on the west side of Stuttgart. It's ok, nothing spectacular, but the view is really cool and there are a lot of old looking buildings.

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnd Once again, I failed at cooking hot food.

All I had to do was heat a pre-breaded fish fillet in the skillet, and STILL it turned out badly.

Even with oil coating the skillet, the breading stuck to the bottom and completely fell off. then when I took the fish out of the skillet, it started falling apart. >.<

Oh well, at least my salad was once again delicious! mozz chees, strawberries, cucumber and balsamic something or other dressing.

Om nom nom nom

 

 

   

Weekend: Museums and St. Pat's

Guten Abend Liebe Damen und Herren,

So This weekend started off with going right after class to a place called Sophie's Brauhaus that I had been once before, with a small group of people from my German class.
When in Germany drink beer and eat pretzels, right?

So we ordered a couple pitchers of beer, and me being the American touristy person that I am, took a picture of THE BEER ON THE TABLE, as in NO PEOPLE aside from the arms of people sitting at our table, in the background. Well, as our waitress walked by, the camera happened to flash, and she immediately walked up to the end of the table and told me that she needed to see my camera because I wasn't allowed to take pictures.
 Well of course I started to panic for a second because I thought she meant I couldn't take ANY pictures inside ANY building in Germany without written permission, and I've already taken quite a few since I've been here.
So I asked her to repeat what she said, (which of course seemed to make her only unhappier) and she said that I didn't have her written permission to take her picture and in Germany you much have written permission of someone to take their picture.
  Well of course I was super confused and thought maybe I didn't understand what she had said because I was just thinking to myself "It's a picture of BEER"
But she INSISTED I show her my camera, which of course I had no problem doing, and as soon as she saw the picture, she just let it go and walked away.
.... WAT?
 Soo.... here are the pictures I took from the restaurant:

                                      

BIER (=beer)

BRETZEL (=pretzel)

 

[p.s. I know those translations are necessary for everyone]

 

           On Saturday night there was this AMAZING program throughout the city that only happens once a year (maybe twice at the most) called "Lange Nacht der Museen" = "Long night of the museums." On this night, all the museums in Stuttgart, as well as tons of art Galleries open specially from 7pm to 1 or 2am. And you only have to buy one ticket for Euro 16 that will get you into all/any of the sites as well as free public transportation (bus and train)!

Along with the program were specially designed tours of the city, basically bus loops that went to related destinations. For example, there was the wine tour that went to the wine museum and then to a wine cellar tour and then to a winery gallery thing, and so on.

[ Emz: This is the most Non-FRF FRFY thing I have ever seen!!! Sam would have loved it! It was a giant piece of plastic like an overhead slide, with red and black scribbled jellyfish and octopus shapes on it, suspened from the ceiling by one string in the middle so it could rotate, with a projector shining light through it an onto the opposite wall of the cargo container. ...?! ]

On Friday in class, our teacher told us that she was singing at a certain bar for the Museum Nacht, and so the group of us that ended up going out together on Saturday made it mandatory to go visit her, and because they happened to hear me talking about the tours that I thought sounded fun, here was our/my plan for the night:

 7pm-7:30pm Hafen tour (take a boat tour of the city "Hafen" like the port or something)
 8pm-9pm- Weinmuseum  (wine museum  on the wine tour)
 9-9:30pm - tour the wine celler - at a further stop on the wine tour
10pm- 10:20 see our teacher's show and stay after and talk with her for a while
12am- be at the Marktplatz downtown to see the old Bunker Hotel beneath a city square by the Rathaus called the Marktplatz - it was a converted bomb shelter that is now no longer in use.
2am- go back to dorm and go to sleep


BUT, this is what actually happened

7:30pm- 8pm: Hafen tour - had to wait about 15 minutes after arriving 15 minutes later than expected. It also turned out to be waaaayyy more industrial based than I thought it would be.
   

a crane thing moving above the river

 

there were all these displays of trucks and machines on the river banks with bright spotlights

green spotlight building and crane

the boat we were on

8:30- 9:15 wine museum

drinking some wine and relaxing at the cute little wine museum. All the old fashioned equipment was really neat.

barrels!

 

Press!

 

casks! And super decorated and awesome looking too!!!

 

There was a statue outside, I don't know who of, but he was SO happy looking!

And then everyone else had to join around and poke the statue.

Outside the bus stop. Our group for most of the night.

 9:15 - realize that we needed to skip the wine cellar tour in order to make it across the city in time to see our teacher's set.
9:15- 10:15: catch a bus, catch another bus, catch a U-bahn train, make a mad dash for the Bildbar artist bar place where our teacher was singing, and catch the last 2 minutes of her last song. Also crowd in around the door way because the place was so cute and tiny and there were a lot of people, and have her notice us standing there and jokingly scold us in German for being typical non-Germans and always being late.

10:30-10:35 Tell our super sweet teacher why we were running late and apologize and ask if she will sing for us, and then be delighted when she and her pianist did just one more song just for us!

10:35- 11:15- hang out talking to our teacher and hearing her awesome stories- half in English and half in German, about how she was a pretty well known artist around here back in the day but then moved to Barcelona where she discovered she was a no body and ended up having to teach German to make money when she could barely speak Spanish.... I love this lady.

11:30-12am- at our teacher's request: go to an awesome hostel/b&b type place where every 6 months an artist is allowed to design one of the rooms in anyway that he or she wants!!! So long as it can still be rented out (that's how the artist makes money) Except discover that I didn't care at all for the style of the room. It was cardboard +orange and white ducttape, plus weird minimalist "modern art". Not my thing.  But a cool idea all the same

12:30 arrive at the Bunker, but discover that they had to stop giving tours because earlier in the night the place had an electrical failure and all the lights went out!!! :(

1am- get dragged to a bar with the group, have one drink, head home.

1:30 - make it to the train station with another person from the group and realize we have to wait a half hour for our train instead of 10 minutes because between 1am and 5am the schedule is different.

2am- make it home, go right to bed.

Soooo, all in all, it was a good night, and now I have things I have to go back and see someday that I'm here- in particular, tour the winery and wine cellar!


Sunday morning I was very unhappy when my alarm went off at 8:15 after only less than 6 hours of sleep. But I was determined to go to a Russian church in town and see what it was like.
The building is so beautiful on the outside, and as I discovered, even prettier inside. There are icons Everywhere! And a huge iconostasis, and all of the walls are painted with icon scenes or saints. The singing was also beautiful, but unfortunately, EVERYTHING was in Russian! Additionally, it was a very old style orthodox church in the sense that there was only standing room and everyone basically crowded on it, so that it was very uncomfortable. I also am fairly certain that the bishop was there today. I wasn't really sure, but he had a large crown hat thing (also very pretty and decorated) and had candle holder with 3 candles in one hand, and a candle holder with 2 candles in the other hand, and there was someone else who looked more like a normal priest. But anyway, the service was very nice, but a little too Russian for me, so I will keep looking. I am however glad that I took the opportunity to go and it was indeed a lovely visit.

The afternoon was somewhat contradictory to my morning in the sense that I was determined to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, and so at 4pm I met some other international students at the only Irish pub in Stuttgart that I know of - I think there is one other, but it is less popular.

The special today was the "Paddy's Package" - Euro 7 for a pint of Guinness and double of whiskey.

The "this is my ___ friend" pose, with Irish balloon friend

These are people from my German class! And those are hats they got when they paid a Euro 10 cover, but that I somehow avoided paying by arriving early. That also meant however that I did not get a hat.

I stayed at the pub until shortly after 7pm, and then went back to my dorm. At that point I realized I should eat something for dinner, and since it's Be Irish Day and all, potatoes were the way to go. Therefore, I made a delicious pot of garlic-cheese mashed potatoes with peas. If I had thought of it earlier in the week, I could've baked soda bread, but alas I will have to save that for my next free weekend. 
And so now, with a happy tummy and tired eyes, I am heading to bed.


Goodnight and Slainte/Prost
With love,
    Val

Thursday: Light on words, liking pictures.

I am once again feeling lazy in writing, and I know everyone prefers pictures anyway, so here is my Thursday post dedicated to pictures:

Tuesday dinner: Half of it was good; tomatoes stuffed with cheese, sprinkled with pepper and garlic salz, that were then wrapped in tin foil and put in the over for about 10 minutes. I also attempted to make couscous fried with peas and tomato innards. It was a lot mushier than I hoped though.

Just a tiny square of window outside an amazing sweets shop near the language course building. I was in awe when I walked in. If I get one piece of cake every time I go in there, I may be able to try all of the kinds of cakes/tortes that they sell. :)

standing outside the backery/café/ unreal sweet shop window

today's treat: Some kind of delicious strawberry cake/torte. My only regret is that I didn't save any for later, and now I'm just looking at the picture with my mouth watering.

  The sky looked so pretty through the trees tonight as I walked to my dorm from the train station after class.

Just such pretty colors outside, and the path was so nicely lit. I wish my camera could have captured it better.

 

I was determined to cook the remaining couscous in an interesting way. The thought came to me that being American, I should try to deep fry something. ... I now know why deep fried couscous is not a popular food item. Even mixing in some beer and cheese doesn't do anything. Instead I just had interesting tasting mush. But I was hungry so I still ate it.

This, my friends is what a Euro 0,39  half liter can of beer looks like. It tastes like.... a beer. A subpar to decent beer. But still! That's like 53 cents in the US! And in Germany, the taxes are already added in to the price!

Last Saturday I was hanging out with Helly in the morning, and she took this picture on her phone. I met her on Wednesday night for sushi, and afterwards she remembered to send me this picture. :)

 

 

As I just mentioned, I went for Sushi with Helly yesterday. Actually I should say I tagged along with her an her friends, but I think they really liked me! They are all so sweet, and it was such a nice time! By the way, this sushi place is in a really weirdly hidden area, down some alley next to a train stop. BUT, it was soooo tasty, filling, and the price was good too! For under Euro 10, I got 8 pieces of regular size sushi roll, 12 pieces of tiny sushi roll, and 2 nagiri.

13th March

 On Wednesday morning, I woke up and decided that to get out of the Tuesday slump, I was going to take a walk around the Stadtmitte and attempt to get a little bit lost so that I would better learn my way around the city. (I had a map, don't worry).
   It sort of worked. By that, I mean I never got lost. I did however somehow wind up at the wrong exit from the S-bahn (the stations are underground, and there is a whole pedestrian zone underground that follows the rails, and in someplaces is multi-level with little shops filling the empty spaces). In that instance, I just followed my instinct which was "Koenigstrasse should be straight ahead." And indeed it was.
 * Handy tip to know if you ever find yourself in the Stuttgart Stadtmitte: The top of the Hauptbahnhof (main train/bus station) has a giant Mercedes Logo on the highest tower. So if you can see the logo, walk towards it until you find the station. It's hard to miss.
 
I was on a mission that morning to find postcards as well as spiral notebooks and a couple of folders for my German class work. It was a cold and lightly snowing morning, but it was a very nice walk nonetheless.
 I walked a couple streets off of koenigstrasse and finally got to see areas of the town where the architecture looks old-fashioney and what I would have expected of an older European town. I found a tea shop- they sell tea cup and pots as well as actual tea for drinking in the store! There was also a little dirndl shop that I will definitely return to! It had a creepy mannequin outside wearing lederhosen, and I was actually afraid to approach the shop at first because I thought it was a real person and that he was going to try to get me to buy stuff- or glare at me angrily as I browsed through the window.

 

 

[the "Hans im Glueck" fountain. It's based off a Grimm's tale. the gold plates on the cage surrounding the center are pictures from the story, so if you walk around it, you king of get the gist of the story. In the middle of the fountain is Hans standing over a pig.]

 

  I also kept my eye out for some good looking restaurants, and indeed I saw a few. There were butcher shops and bakeries on just about every corner! I found the Stuttgart Rathskeller! A REAL Rathskeller!
 * Basic info about Ratskellers:  The parliament/government building of a particular city or place is called the Rathaus. (Rat = advice, counsel or council. Haus  house) The word for basement in German = Keller. Therefore, as Ratskeller in traditional German culture is a bar/restaurant in the basement of the Rathaus.
 
  The Rathaus of Stuttgart sits in front of a large square called the Markt platz, which is lines with shops, and which hosts a large flee-market type thing on Saturday mornings- something I need to check out this week.
 I found a delightful paper/scrapbooking/little gift things type of store, but of course they didn't have school supplies type paper.
So onward I went to what looked on the outside to be a normal sized bookstore in the heart of Koenigstrasse.
 But my Goodness was I mistaken! It has to be the 2nd largest bookstore I've ever been in (after Powells in Portland, which ranks in size as one of the top, I do believe). Seriously, this place had multilevels, and it was somewhat of a split level too, which made it fun to explore, and nearly get lost it! 

(Emily: These are all little yellow Reclam books- like the ones you got me from your bookstore!)

 
 However, to my surprise and dismay, the only writing notebooks they carried were super nice leather bound ones starting at 10 Euro.  Nope, not for me.
 

Therefore, I continued my journey, following great looking window displays until I found myself in front of giant industrial doors leading inside the Markthalle- an enormous food market! I only walked down one aisle before I decided I should probably not explore the place until I was in need of fresh groceries, but just from where I passed, I saw candy and chocolate stands, bread places, lots of meat, fish, ...  It requites further assessment for sure.
 
[---> I thought my grandma was the only person who even hung easter eggs on her tree. Turns out it must just be a German-y thing!]

 
 
I continued walking back towards the Hauptbahnhof, passing the Schillerplatz ----> 
on the way, as well as stopping at a tourist information center. I was surprised at how nice the place is; with brochures lining the walls, and a whole portion dedicated to merchandise that you can only get in Stuttgart: wines, whiskey, gin, honey, and a bunch of stuff that says "Stuttgart" on it- include a Spaetzle cutting board and special knife!
 



Found this outside a tabacco shop under/in a passage that goes through some king of Parliament/ court building (its in the far corner in the schillerplatz picture)
 



 - I learned today that there is a winery in the black forest where you can stay overnight in old wine casks! They're renovated like tiny houses, and placed outside with magnificent views of the vineyards.
(I WANT TO GO!)
 


       Before heading to class, I wanted to check out a place on my city map that said "Russian Kirche" (kirche= church) with a U-bahn station close by called simply "Russian Kirche." It was about a 5 minute ride away and 4 stops, and indeed there is a very pretty Orthodox church. It appears to be in an older part of the city, in the sense that there's not much near by except apartment buildings, but a sign said there are two Sunday liturgies: 7am and 10am, and that the church is open for public visits on weekdays from 4-7pm. I'm pretty sure that the name is St. Nikolaus. How....normal of a Russian church.
I'm not sure if the liturgy is in Russian or German, but I'll try it out on Sunday anyway!

 
 
And that for the most part is how my stadtmitte exploration went.
And this is how I lamely sign off on a blog.

Tschuss.
 
 

Tuesdays

I wonder how dreary my blog for yesterday sounded. I haven't reread it, but I have since realized one thing: I really don't like Tuesdays.
Maybe it's because Tuesday has been the worst day of my week so far. Or maybe it's because Tuesdays really just suck in general.
I mean every other day of the week has a generally agreed upon duty:

 Monday: known for being unlikeable, but all the same there are Mondays that are thouroughly welcomed. Take for example a week off work or school. You tend to think "Heck yes, it's only Monday, I've got so much vacation left!" Or how about MLK Jr Day or President's Day or Labor Day...? So many Monday holidays.

Wednesday: hump day. The middle of the week. Optomists like it, Pessimists don't.

Thursday: Party night, because tomorrow is Friday!

Friday: Friday Friday, gotta get down on Friday, ... well you know the rest [and now I will stab  myself for referencing that song]

Saturday: Do we need a reason to like Saturday?

Sunday: Go to church and then watch Football and read the newspaper Day, and then if your family is really cool you will go out to dinner or your dad will make the Ed Quinn Breakfast for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

But WHAT THE HECK IS A TUESDAY?
  It's even worse than a Monday, because in the aforementioned beloved 3-day weekend holiday Mondays, Tuesday becomes the New Monday, and therefore we despise it more than a normal Monday!  
Tuesdays also mean "Power hours" at Purdue, meaning (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the system) all lectures that are normally 50 minutes long become 1 hr and 15 minutes long. And you don't even have the optimistic thought of "I just gotta get through this class and then I can go party tonight" that you have on Thursdays.
It's just a dreary day to be.

Tuesdays. Poor Tuesdays.
I would even bet that if I had my appointment with the Foreigner's Office on Tuesday next week instead of Wednesday, that the lady at the desk would find some reason not to grant me my residency permit.
...
Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday.

Grammar + Dorm Tour - boring days!

I took a couple of days hiatus from blog-writing.
Tuesday was, I think, a fairly boring day and yesterday I didn't feel like typing for an hour and instead spent the evening making dinner, skyping and reviewing grammar.

On Tuesday, we reviewed the Konjunktiv II case in German. (I think it's called the subjunctive in English, if it even exist)
 For the most part, you use it be polite in German. That is, you can conjugate the verbs for "can" and "will" into "could" and "would". I also remembered that you can conjugate the word "haben" which is the verb "to have" into the form "haetten" and use the word "gern" which is "like" and you can form sentences such as:
  Ich HAETTE GERN mehr Geld.   = I would (really) like to have more money.

But those are just 2 functions of the Konjunctive II cases.
I learned on Tuesday that in total, there are 9!

3) Bedauern (regrets)
         - Wenn ich doch mehr Geld verdient haette!  = If only I had made more money.
4) Hypothese (hypothesis)
        - Wenn ich ein  Job haette, wuerde ich Geld verdienen. = If I had a job, I would earn money.
     or: Wenn ich ein besseres Job gehabt haette, hatte ich mehr Geld verdient.
                        = If I had had a better job, I would have made more money.
5) Vorwurf (Reproach)
         - Ich haette mein Geld sparen sollen. = I should have saved my money.
6) Rat, Empfehlung (advice)
            - Ich sollte mehr Geld sparen. = I should save more money.
      or:  - An deiner Stelle, wuerde ich ein Job finden. = In your position, I would find a job.
      or:  - Wenn ich Arbeitslos waere, wuerde ich nichts kaufen.
                          = If I were jobless, I would buy nothing.
7) Vorschlag (suggestion)
          - ich koennte ein neues Job suchen.  = I could search for a new Job.
8)Irrealischer Vergleich ( non realistic comparison (?) )
              - Du siehst als ob du kein Geld verdient haette.  = You look as though you earned no money.
         or: - Er tut so, als wuerde er kein Job haben. = He acts as though he does not have a job.
9) Wahrscheinlichkeit (probablility)
             - Ich musste mein Geld nach Hause vergessen haben.
             - Ich duerfte mein Geld nach Hause vergessen haben.
             - Ich koennte mein Geld nach Hause vergessen haben.
           = I must/may/could have forgotten my money at home.

END TUESDAY'S LESSON


Wednesday consisted of reviewing uses of Prepositions >.<
   It's so complicated getting them all straight. I mean I know what they mean and what cases to use with each one (Akkusativ, Dativ or Genetiv), and I know which pairs of verbs and prepositions go together in certain cases;
   Angst haben + vor   = to be afraid of
  sorgen + fuer            = to care for
   freuen + auf              = to look forward to
...
 But then we get into the situation of wanting to say "on" or "in" and sometimes "of" In German, there is a preposition "in" which does mean the same as in English, except when you want to say something like "in the photo..." because then you have to say "auf" which can also be used to say "auf Deutsch" as in "in German" but can also be used how we would use "on" Then there's a preposition called "von" which most people may recognize as meaning "from" or "of" BUT if you want to say "I come from the USA" then you have to say "Ich komme AUS der USA" . anyway, these are rules that I knew already, but in practice they sometimes get jumbled up.
By the way, if you are curious, these are all the prepositons I am familiar with:
Akkusativ case:
   durch, fuer, gegen, ohne, um

Dativ:
    aus, ausser, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu

Changing (between akk and dat)
    an, auf, in, hinter, neben, ueber, unter, vor, zwischen

Genetiv:
    wegen, innerhald, waehrend, trotz, ausserhalb
There are also some super formel sounding ones for Gen case: aufgrung, infolge, angesichts, anlaessichs.

Anyway, here are some really boring pictures of my dorm to give you an idea of how depressing this building is:

 looking out my bedroom door into the cement hallway/stairwell

 looking down the half flight of stairs- sorry it's so blurry. At the bottom landing straight ahead is a wall height window, that looks out at another concrete building.

if you turn right at the landing, you see this: Red door to the kitchen, and again to the right is the 2nd half flight of stairs to go down to the next floor.

This is what you see when you walk straight through the kitchen door. to the right is the actual kitchen part, but past the kitchen is the small lounge area

to the right as you walk through the door

 

lounge area. I don't know why this one is blurry, but basically there's a couch, some chairs and 2 tables, as well as a really nice outdoor terrace thing, but it was night time outside.

looking back toward the kitchen from the lounge. Here's the fridge, freezer, and tv