(Not So) New German Girl: Nine Months Down, Three to Go

March 20th marked the nine month “anniversary” of my arrival to Munich. And on this date, last year, March 28, 2010 I started this blog – Diary of An American Au Pair slash New German Girl. It’s been one year since that first post and nine months since I first arrived and guess what? I’m not so new anymore!

How can I explain to you just how much my life has changed over the last nine months? You’ve been reading this blog (I hope) so you have an idea of how far I’ve come and the things that I’ve seen but how could I really explain it to you in words? I’m not even so sure that I can do that for myself. What I do know, is that the girl that I was when I left California is not the same girl that will return in June. I have changed, my life has changed, and my eyes are wide open. I may not have seen very much of the world but what I have here – I absolutely love and to be quite honest, I wouldn’t ask for a do-over even if you paid me.

The months leading up to my German adventure were busy, busy, busy. Of course I had Germany on my mind but I was so preoccupied. I was trying to finish my Capstone and was looking forward to my college graduation. I was organizing all of my material possessions, moving out of my apartment, walking away from my numerous jobs and co-workers, saying good bye to friends and loved ones, and preparing myself for the unknown. When I first arrived, after nearly 13 hours of travel with swollen feet and a weary smile, it didn’t feel that different. I couldn’t understand how to get through the airport, not because of the language – everything was written in both English and Deutsch – but because Franz Joseph Strauss airport is a ridiculous mess of signs and signals and moving sidewalks. Eventually, I found a taxi in some shady back corner and I gave my address to the driver and although he barely understood me – I was hopeless back then – he managed to finally understand and we were driving away. My adventure was right in front of me. It was about to begin.

‘Twas a Beautiful Spring Day in Munich

It was a gorgeous day in Munich today so Brenna and I took advantage of it and wandered around taking pictures of everything in sight. Blue skies made us feel really touristy and/or artsy. Now please, enjoy the fruit of our inspiring day! I also sat in the English Gardens for an hour reading and writing letters. And then I played outside with Die Kinder. It was glorious. I love spring!

Spring equals flowers! Sehr schön!

Spring Has Come to the City, Beer Fests and Dirndl Season (Again!), and Vacation Plans

It’s been over a week since I last posted to this blog. My apologies – I haven’t been very inspired by my life to blog about it. That sounds much worse than reality, trust me. Life in Munich is wonderful, as always, I just haven’t been doing a lot of ‘blog worthy’ things. There has been a lot of weekend partying but who wants to hear about that? My friends and I realize that we have less than three months together and we’re making the most of it – judgments be damned! We do, however, have a moral conscience and we recognize the moments that our behavior gets out of hand. We make mistakes – we try not to make them again and sometimes we fail. But, ah, c’est la vie! As happy as I am to be here and enjoy these final weeks in Munich, I am looking forward to being home and taking a serious detox from my crazy party life. It’ll be nice to slow down and grow up a little bit. Until then, I fully intend to be young and carry on living my wonderful life.

The best thing going on in Munich right now – SPRING! It’s official – winter is OVER. We’ve had sunny, blue skies all week and temperatures have hit mid to high 50’s. The trees are sprouting green buds and the birds keep singing at all hours of the day and night. The beer gardens are back to their triumphant state – tables spread out and beer drinkers enjoying the sunshine and good company. My girl friends and I spent almost the entire afternoon last Sunday at the English Gardens, basking in the deliciously warm sunshine. It was a beautiful, beautiful day!

There is a beer festival going on in Munich yet and although we have yet to enjoy it – we still brought out the dirndl’s this past weekend to celebrate. We always have fun in our dirndl’s, especially when no one else is wearing them and we get all of the attention. We walked around Munich forever trying to find a  location for the starkbierfest but we failed. So we ended up at one of our favorite hostel bars where craziness ensued and Fio, Brenna, and I had one of the best nights in Munich thus far. We’re still talking about it – almost a week later. Fio’s 16-year-old cousin was in town for the weekend, too, visiting from Ireland and that girl definitely got a good taste of our crazy life. She was absolutely wonderful – we all loved her and hope to see her again before we all leave.

Anything can happen when you wear your dirndl!

At the moment, I’ve got my window wide open – clean clothes drying all over my room, and a blessedly beautiful day ahead of me. I’m babysitting the girls tonight – again. I’ve been doing this a lot lately. My host mom is on a bunch of museum committees and there are a bunch of museum openings lately so I’ve worked three to four nights out of seven for the last two weeks. It’s been okay though – I don’t have much money because of my trip to Cologne – and the nights that I did have off, I made the most of them. The week ahead should be good. We’re actually attending Starkbierfest this weekend (I don’t think I’ll like the beer much, honestly) and next week I have less babysitting responsibilities.

And hopefully I can start planning a trip to Italy over Easter vacation. I mean, I’ve made the plans – I just have to finalize them. I’m hoping for Cinque Terra and Venice but we’ll see! It depends on how much money I have and can manage to save. Ideally I’d love to fly to Pisa, take a train to Cinque Terra, hike one of the trails, get back to the train station, take a train to Venice, spend a weekend in Venice with the girls, and then get back to Munich. We’ll see!

Until I figure all of that – I’m going to continue enjoying spring in Munich! I love it!

I always stick my tongue out when I’m trying to concentrate.

Happy spring!

“Spring Break” in Cologne: Part II

Saturday in Cologne started around 12:30, seeing as we didn’t get up and out of bed until then. We had a late “brunch” and then headed into the city, intent on enjoying a bike ride adventure. It was a nice day – blue skies and a gentle breeze and warm weather! Everything Munich wasn’t. It took us a while to get through the city and find the bike rental station but eventually we managed. We only paid 5 EUR for a three hour rental – it was perfect. We got our bikes and headed out. Fio had done the bike ride before so she knew what she was doing. We had an hour down the right ride of the river and then we’d find a little boat that would take us to the other side. From there, we could ride down the opposite bank and get back to the city. The bike ride, each way was about 10 kilometers or 6 miles! So we rode about 12 miles on Saturday. But it was awesome and so, so, so beautiful. It was probably the best thing that came out of the weekend. I had such a good time and enjoyed the weather and scenery of Cologne from the seat of that horrible, malfunctioning bike. Sigh. Haha.

“Spring Break” in Cologne: Part I

On Friday, March 11th I traveled to Cologne for a weekend trip with my friend, Fionnuala, which was my first official inter-German travel adventure. I've been to various places within Bavaria (thank you Bayern ticket!) but this was my first trip away from Munich to another major German city. Fio's childhood and university friend, Katherine, (who'd I met for Fio's birthday in October) lives and works in Cologne so we made the trip to visit her and see the city through the eyes of a worthy "resident."

Fio and I boarded our plane in Munich around 11:30 and endured an oh-so grueling flight (50 minutes!) to northwest Germany. We landed in Cologne around 12:30 and then found our way from the airport to the city via S-Bahn. Our first stop, Cologne Hauptbahnhof and the famous Dom cathedral to meet Katherine.

Alternative Uses for My Bachelor’s Degree: Review of 8Tracks.com

There are one million other things I should be doing right now… like blogging for a giveaway that’s been on queue for two months now or calling my student loan companies to check up on the status of my deferments. But, instead, I am here, blogging about the thing that has stolen away all of my time and attention lately.

http://8tracks.com

8Tracks.com has stolen my music-loving heart as of late and I am here to rave all about it because… well, because I can. I stumbled across this site by way of my fellow blogger friend, Julie, and ever since I have been in love. I don’t know how I didn’t find it sooner – this kind of thing is what I live for – but no matter, it came at the perfect time. In the middle of a week long “spring break” of sorts I spent pretty much every day with my headphones on, listening to user-made “mix tapes” and making my own to share with the 8tracks community and, yep… my Facebook News Feed.

8Tracks is kind of like Internet radio, on the same plane as LastFM and Pandora. 8Tracks, however, is unique in that it lets you create your own mixes via uploads from your iTunes library and then allows you to compile and arrange them into mixes of your own making. Each playlist is customizable from the title to the description and right down to the playlist image – which is one of my favorite parts. Your “Liked Mixes” collage starts to look pretty badass after a while. Here’s mine:

Every mix has it’s own picture, a unique title, and a pretty cool array of songs and you get to pick which ones you like the best. You can listen to them as many times as you want. After you’ve listened to the entire mix once, for the second (and subsequent) time around, the songs will be shuffled. Which is okay by me because I shuffle my iPod playlists every time, anyway. I don’t like order when it comes to my music. Surprise me, baby! Much like on Pandora, you can only “skip” a song a few times an hour, which is part of their licensing agreement. However, a great feature that comes along with your music-listening experience is the ability to “pause” or (accidentally) close down the mix and to come back and start it right from where you left off. Basically, it remembers where you were and keeps your song there for you until you come back. You can browse through mixes on the home page which lists the most recently uploaded and the most popular, or you can search by genre or artist. You can also leave comments on mixes that you like and you can follow users who’s mixes you adore most. Their mixes come together in a “Mix Feed” which works just like Facebook’s News Feed – all of your favorite mixes show up in a feed list.

My favorite part of being in love with my iTunes library is sharing it with other people so I was absolutely floored to find that I could do that with this site. I immediately started uploading my own playlist.

Basically, you have an upload button in the top left corner (not shown, unfortunately) and it opens a File Browser where you can navigate to the necessary music folders for the tracks that you want to put in your mix. There’s just a few of the tracks I’ve downloaded shown there but so far, I have at least 60 to 70 tracks uploaded on my 8tracks account. There appears to be no limit on the amount of songs that you can upload – however, your mixes (per the site’s licensing agreement) can not include more than two tracks from any one artist or album and it must have a title, artist name, and album title included (which you can add in once it’s uploaded). I’m fairly certain that all of my mixes (and I have about six now) each feature an Angus & Julia track. So, essentially, I could download every A&J track that I have but I could only include up to two on each mix that I make. Oh, AND you get to pick which mix plays after yours – from mixes that you like or have recently listened to. It’s a pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Basically, 8Tracks kicks a lot of ass. I feel like a super cool DJ or something. It’s “interactive” radio at its best. And since I love, love, love sharing my music and since I take a lot of pride in my music tastes, I’m seriously enjoying sharing my music via this website. And, equally, I love listening to music so I get the best of both worlds. So, here’s a link to my 8Tracks profile and my best mix thus far (which you can listen to right here on this blog!):

Karneval! Karneval!

In 2006, I was lucky enough to visit New Orleans for the start of the new year but, unfortunately, I missed Mardi Gras by about a month and a half. It would have been really cool to have been in New Orleans for its famous, crazy holiday but someday, I hope to get a second chance at that. But for now I’m happy to be able to enjoy the equivalent here in Munich.

Carnival season is upon us. Or Karneval, as it is called in most parts of Germany. It’s also referred to as Fasching. It’s a Roman Catholic and Christian Orthodox celebration that officially begins on November 11th on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour. But, for the most part, things stay pretty quiet until February or March. The end of Karneval falls at midnight on Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday), just before Ash Wednesday. So, the week leading up to that is when the festivities really get going and people all over Germany (it’s the most enthusiastic Karneval location in Europe!) start dressing up and causing trouble. It is, after all, described as a time to “break the rules.” Officially, it’s just a way to have a massive celebration before the fasting of Lent.

I snagged this off of the Interwebs:

In Germany, particularly in the Rhineland area, the tradition can be traced to medieval times where many countries existed under harsh rules. Kings, princes and even smaller potentates maintained their own courts. In doing so, they flaunted before each other their own pomp and splendor at the expense of their population.

During karneval time, the common people took a chance at 'living it up" and "talking back to their rulers". They would make a mock government of eleven people, as well as other officials. A price and princess were selected to rule the country during the Fasching season. Political authorities, high placed persons and sovereigns were the target of ridicule, and featured in humorous and satirical speeches. To avoid persecution and punishment, these antics were played out from behind masks and costumes. Parades, dancing in the streets, masquerade balls and comical skits filled the days and nights.

Cologne, Germany has one of the most popular Karneval celebrations. I’d really hoped to visit Cologne for the weekend of Karneval but I mixed up my vacation weekends and so my friend Fionnuala and I are traveling the weekend after Karneval. Oops.

But here in Munich – the festivies carry on! Less crowds, more friends, and blessed familiarity should we get drunk and need to find our way home. Donuts are the official food of Karnevale/Fasching or krapfen auf Deutsch!

Munich’s Carnival Timeline

Thursday, March 3rd: Women’s Carnival Day
In Cologne, it’s the date of the opening parade at 11:11 am and women, even in Munich, have the benefit of kissing whomever they like after cutting off his tie. ONLY, his tie. ;)

Friday-Sunday, March 4th-6th: Faschings Weekend
Parties all throughout Germany in celebration of Fasching. Here in Munich it is no exception! We will be out in fun and silly costumes! Pictures will be taken, don’t worry.

Monday, March 7th: Rose Monday
This is the day of the official Fasching’s parade – marching bands, dancers, and floats and people dressed in all kinds of costumes flock through the city. In Cologne there is a massive parade. In Munich, a parade marches through Viktualienmarkt.

Tuesday, March 8th: Fasching / Shrove Tuesday
Costume balls! Or just general costumed merry-making all over Germany!

Wednesday, March 9th: Ash Wednesday
A quiet day to take a break and Lent begins.

Nine Months Gone By (I Could Have Cooked a Baby By Now!), My Impending Adulthood, and All the Things and People That Make My Life

I can’t believe that it’s already the 1st of March, that’s it already spring. Where the hell has this year gone? I started this blog almost a year ago. It’s been almost nine months since I started this adventure in Munich. Time goes by so fast. This time last year I was working diligently on my graduation capstone and was taking care of Baby D five days a week. It feels so far away. So much has happened since then and my life has changed in every way possible. I have been so blessed to have this experience and I wish that there were more than just three months left to enjoy it. Unfortunately, that is all that I have left – 110 days, just a little over three months. There is still so much that I can do in that time – I’m going to be traveling this spring (budget-willing!), visiting Barcelona, Spain and, hopefully Verona and Venice, Italy. I’m going to Cologne on the 11th of this month. And in May, I’m going to Berlin to visit friends who live there. There’s another beer festival coming up in March – the Starkbierfest – which means that the dirndl is coming out again and my girlfriends and I can feel like real Bavarians. I’ve fallen short on my Munich bucket list but I’ll pick up on it again – I have a lot of stuff to catch up on that I haven’t even posted yet. Bear with me. I’ll get through it eventually.

Life has been good. Things in Munich are wonderful, I have no complaints. My social life here far outweighs my au pair responsibilities. Last weekend we completely exhausted ourselves partying. One going away party after another and two 6 am returns in a row. Club nights, bars, beer, tequila. We take it all in stride and we look out for each other whenever and wherever we can. I spent all day Sunday in bed watching How I Met Your Mother. It was glorious. Then my lovely friend, Ana, fed me a delicious pasta dinner and we talked for hours about everything going on in our lives. I love weekends here – I live for them. I will miss this when I go home to live in my mom’s basement and start my grown-up life. I will miss this last chance that I’ve been given to really just be young and carefree. It doesn’t have to stop after this but it will. I’m making that choice. I’m choosing to grow up and take on a more responsible adult role. Which is fine with me. But, for now and in spite of my near and not so distant future, I choose to enjoy the time that I have left here and to just live my life as it comes.

My favorite picture of the week:

My best girlfriend, Fionnuala. I LOVE HER.

Other things I’ve done in the last week or so:

• I watched 127 Hours about the guy who cuts off his arm. Incredible.
• Called my mom, twice, over the course of five days and talked to her for over an hour both times. I miss her. A lot.

I can’t wait to hang out with my mom and Ruby Tuesday.

• Earned 80 EUR on the side. It’s a secret! :) And then spent it all. Another lesson learned. Sigh.
• Played at the spielplatz with the cutest twins in all of Munich.

Das ist alles. Danke. Tschüs!

52 Things: #12, #16, and #28… (and Some Other Unrelated Stuff, Too)

I knocked three things off of the list this weekend. Unintentionally, too. Thursday night, during one of our Skype video chats, Brenna and I decided that, since we were both off for most of the day on Friday, that we would go to the Dachau concentration camp memorial site. I’d already been but Brenna had yet to go and I was happy to go again because one, it’s free, and two, it’s really interesting and always worth a visit. We met at the fish fountain (Standard!) at noon and then argued about whether or not we should be honorable and get an S Bahn ticket. I convinced her that we did, in fact, need to get a ticket (we’re honorable residents!) and assured her that I’d read all of the ticket options and that I knew exactly which one was the one that we needed.

Turns out I was wrong. Which brings me to #12 on my list of things to do in Munich:

Be stymied by Munich’s public transport pricing system.

This happens all the time. I don’t know WHY it’s so confusing it just is. There are rings and zones and inner districts and outer districts, partner tickets and single tickets, day trips, single trips, stripe cards. Yada, yada. It’s ridiculous. Most of Munich lies within rings 1-4 and on the map, ther area is coded in white and green. Weird shades of green, mind you! Dachau is on the edge of the fourth ring in the green… I think. Oh shit, I don’t know! I thought we needed the outer district ticket (Außenraum: green, yellow and red zone) because Dachau was in the green zone. So we bought the outer ticket, only to discover later, as our ticket is being checked (Brenna, you’re WELCOME!) that the Außenraum ticket covers rings 5-16. What? Who even goes out that far? Haha. Seriously. So not only did we have the wrong ticket but I was missing rings 3-4… the only rings that I needed to get from point A to point B. And we were definitely inside of ring 3 when he checked us. But the guy didn’t get me for it. It probably happens a lot. Haha. But I did have my MONTHLY TRAIN PASS (which is #16 – “Buy a monthly public transport ticket”) so I had rings 1-2 and rings 5-16. I was officially stymied.

Halfway through the journey, we met some fellow Americans who had taken the seats near us and we quickly befriended them. How could we not with Brenna and I being the only two people in the entire train car that were speaking? They heard us and sat down next to us, comforted by our shared home language. The four of us were all headed to the same place and since I’d been to Dachau once already, I kind of became the unofficial tour guide. And Brenna became the unofficial comic relief. Although at times it felt a tad bit inappropriate, the girl kept us laughing throughout the two or so hours that we spent walking around the historical site. I’ve been there before so I won’t get into it but the place is just depressing. As it has every right to be. Horrible things happened there. But either way, it was nice to have Brenna there to keep things jovial. Haha.

We spent the rest of the weekend showing our new friends around Munich (Schloss Nymphenburg and the inside of not one but two McDonald’s, haha). Also, #28 (tell someone off for standing on the wrong side on the escalator) comes in to play because I got to yell at one of the girls to move to the right side of the escalator. Haha. Sorry, Tyler!

On Friday night, Brenna and I joined some friends at Mike’s house for dinner and wine and then we all went out and stayed in the city, bar hopping until 4 am. We went from Sausalitos to Ned Kelly’s to Kilian’s, to a cheap kebap shop where the owner tried to take advantage of us. We picked up some interesting characters throughout the night the best being an Italian cocaine dealer who thought we were the cops after Brenna told him to ‘Leave us the f%$k alone and go away!’ Haha. On Saturday night I was home with the girls so it was macaroni and cheese and a few streaming episodes of Desperate Housewives for me.

Me and Brenna. I ADORE this picture mostly because I adore this girl!

On Sunday morning, I met Laura, Andrzej, Mike, and Ana at Hauptbahnhof where we bought a Bayern ticket and caught a train to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. We spent an incredible day in the little city, braving the cold and ski crowds. It was the last day of the Alpine Ski World Championships but the crowds weren’t too bad. We did a pretty easy hike to the partnachklamm and it was so worth it. The ice was INCREDIBLE through there - I’d never seen anything like it before.

After our hike, we hung out at Kathe’s house for a few hours and were fed chips, hummus, and animal crackers that belonged to some other kid. We’re still not sure what she was talking about on that one. Haha. Dustin was there for one more day so we spent some time with him, too, and after Kathe entertained us and warmed us up, we all walked to the Bahnhof and had drinks in Sausalitos. Then we went home… where Laura, Andrzej, and I had drinks at Jaeger’s happy hour.

Then I came home and now it’s 1 am and I’m posting this blog. Life is good, isn’t it? I have absolutely NO complaints.

52 Things Challenge: #26 Host Visitors During Oktoberfest

I did this! Three times!

Oktoberfest is in September and October and it lasts for two weeks – 16 days, I believe. It’s pure madness, I can’t even describe it in words. Just beer and millions and millions of people. Revelry, beer, and people. Drunk people. I experienced it a few times in a drunken stupor (and a few more times I was clear, don’t worry!) because when you go to Oktoberfest… you go to Oktoberfest. You start drinking at 11 am because you have to secure your table at 10. And then you’re often home in your bed by 8:30 at night and you’re completely smashed, thinking it’s got to be at least 3 am. It’s ridiculous. But it was fun! And I was really, really lucky to have some wonderful people visiting me to share in the Oktoberfest shenanigans.

My lovely lady friend, Susie Q, came to visit me first, on opening weekend. Susie Q is a family friend and if you’ve ever heard me talk about my Oma Kathe on this blog, then it is worth it to know that Susie Q is Kathe’s oldest daughter. Susie’s sister and Kathe’s daughter, the crazy, candle lady Christina, is our connecting point. I used to work for her in Monterey, selling candles and running around after her grand-daughter, and we built an incredibly close employer-employee friendship that has, thus far, been incredibly beneficial to my heart and soul. Christina and her hubbie, Bunny Buttons (okay, that’s not REALLY his name), have been like a second set of parents to me and so their family is very important to me. So, THAT is how I know Susie Q and since their entire family is German and once lived in Munich, it was only natural that one of them had to come visit me. Susie Q was the one! She spent an entire day with me and my friends, watching the Oktoberfest parade, eating grilled hendl, and drinking beer from at least five different tents. Tourists in the tents would constantly ask if she was my mom and we just went with it. Who wouldn’t want to party with their mom at Oktoberfest? Haha.

On the very same day one of my best girl friends from college, Miss Kate, passed through Munich for the night with her friend, Kari. I somehow managed to find her at her hotel and then spent an hour, maybe 45 minutes, drinking with her and Kari in one of the tents before I became so drunkenly confused (I thought she went outside so I was waiting for her out there for 20 minutes but she was inside the whole time, right where I left her) and then I was just so lost that I ended up going home. But, even so, it was so nice to see her, if even for an hour, and I’m sure I was equally as entertaining. Haha.

The following weekend two of my friends from England flew down to Munich and joined me in the city. I met both Alison and Helena while we were working together at a summer camp in Pennsylvania, the summer of 2007 (and 2008!), and have kept in touch with them since. Being in Germany meant that I was incredibly close to both of them so getting them to come down to Munich for a weekend was really easy! They came in on a Friday and stayed until early Monday morning. We did Oktoberfest twice (both times were wild) and even went to Salzburg, Austria for a day. We had so much fun, it was so good having them here and I wish we could do it again!

Alison, Helena, and me at Hacker Pschorr