Beginning of April

Ok so I've been lazy lately.
Also not much has really happened this week, except for me getting so frustrated about my classes not working out to the point of wanting to screw everything and come home.
But I'm sticking it out, and when I hand out with other students here, I realize how fortunate I am to have met such wonderful people from so many different countries, and that we have all become friends here.
 On Saturday the 13th, a few people in the Erasmus study abroad program (students from other European nations, and Asia) organized to have an International Dinner at their dorm. They invited about 20 of their friends, which branched into about 40 people being invited, which turned into about 60 international students showing up. Everyone was asked to bring a food from their home countries.

My goodness it was so wonderful! It was such an exciting atmosphere, with great people and delicious dishes! Many of which were vegetarian, and thus I lucked out!

Greek salad with home made tztiki sauce, rice and seaweed balls, noodle entrees galore, Peruvian potatoes, French cheeses, banana biscuits, cookies, crepes, eclairs, lasagna, canned Haggus, some Turkish eggplant looking thing, a ground beef-veggies-egg-and-cheese scramble, egg strata, authentic quiche, fried meat of some kind, potato pancakes, apple crisp, tiramisu (the best one!), baklava, curries, mushroom something or other, and because I am American and I hadn't gone grocery shopping and only found out about the party an hour before going: Peanut butter and Jelly finger sandwhiches!

Then of course, since we are all college students, there were French wines, sangria, beers, and a Turkish liquor that was anise flavored!

Unfortunately I was dumb and didn't take any pictures of the food :(
But here I am with a couple of friends - an another American. A very unfortunately stereotypical American.

I wish there were an international dinner party once a month. It was so much fun, and filling!


 Annnnd now to back track just a bit,
On Saturday during the day, I needed to go to the stadtmitte campus library to use the printer, and so I decided to walk around a little bit. I accidentally took a turn to quickly on the way back to the train station, and ended up at the Friedrich's bau U-bahn station.

Apparently there is a lovely fountain that is turned on in the spring and summer. This was the first time I had seen it on, and it was very cool looking.

 

 
This is a silly little statue right outside the Friedrichsbau

 

 

Alrightly, so the Friedrichsbau is the name of the building and train station that host (underground) a large theater with different live shows throughout the year called the Friedrichsbau Variete.

It's quite loved in Stuttgart, I think.

 

 

Sonntag (Sunday) the 14th was the first extraordinarily beautiful day outside. It was sunny all day and between 65 and 70 from morning to sun down. Therefore, I was determined to spend the day outside. Around 4:30pm I headed to the stadtmitte, where there is a large park/garden called the Schlossplatz, to meet a group of people and relax outside.

 

On the way from the train station exit to the schlossplatz, I walked past a street musician who was playing blues music. There was a decent sized crowd gathered around already, and I hadn't planned on stopping to listen, but I heard a John Lee Hooker song and decided I had to stop.

I was soon very happy I had stopped to listen, because next he played a Screamin J Hawkins song, followed by his own rendition of House of the Rising Sun. He was totally American, by the way. With a stellar cowboy hat.

 

Shortly thereafter, I met the small group of people already at the schlossplatz, and we sat on one of the lawns just relaxing in the sunshine for a couple hours.

As we were getting ready to head back to the Hauptbahnhof to go home for the evening, we saw this:

We surmised that in Germany, if people get to warm in the summer time, they dress up as rabbits and go bathing in one of the schlossplatz fountains.

At least that's what we learned from these guys.

 Germany, what will you think of next?


And now I'm backtracking again:

On Wednesday the 10th, I watched my first every Fussballspiel!
I ran into my friend Edu on the way back from class in the stadtmitte on Wednesday morning, and he invited me to go to a sports bar with the gang later in the evening to watch the Barcelona- Paris championship (or something or other) match. You guys know that I'm not big into sports, but I figured; what the heck, its better than sitting in my dorm all evening being anti social!

And so I went. And because it was a good group of us who went, I had a good time. The Spanish guys were teaching us the chants they have for the teams, and had to explain most of the rules to me. And it was a crazy game too! It was tied for a majority of the 2nd half, and apparently due to the ways Barce played in the other games they didn't have to technically win this one, they just had to tie. And so the whole last 10 minutes, we were just hoping that Paris didn't score. And they didn't. So our team won. And even though only 2 of the guys in our group were from Spain, when the game was over, we all stood up and cheered and hugged. 
It was a lot less angry than watching an American football game. (with a Quinn anyway)