Seit Langem Nicht Gesehen! (Long Time No See)

Guten tag. It's been quite a while since I've written on my blog and I've been getting a steady amount of requests so I guess it's time. Things in Germany have been moving right along these past two months. I had a nice visit over Christmas break from my brother Jared. We spent the first few days just messing around here in Münster and doing a bit of this and that. After celebrating my roommate Hendrik's Birthday, we hopped a train and headed for Bavaria. There we spent about 5 nights at a youth hostel in Munich and checked out Salzburg for a day. After Munich, we spent about 3 days in Nuremburg. All in all, the excursion was a lot of fun and we certainly saw a lot.

We came back to Münster just in time to take part in a HUGE New Year's Party. The theme was "Dress as your drink" and we saw lots of interesting costumes. Here in Germany, it's tradition to shoot off fireworks on New Year's and there sure was a lot of that going on. After New Year's, Jared and I spent a few days recovering and then he took off for Italy! Check his blog to see interesting pictures and read about his adventures.

January = Traveling and guests. I had about 5 days to recover from my Bavarian adventures and holiday madness before I was back on the road. I headed to Cologne with Patrick to meet up with my friend David and check out the town. I've actually been there several times before, but David wanted to check it out and it's only and hour from me. Very cool city and it was definitely a great weekend.

I was home for a total of 12 hours before I headed to Coesfeld to get on a bus and head for... Berlin! I finally made it there. It's an amazing city. The whole place is smeared with a bizarre mix of old buildings, recent history, restoration, a vibrant alternative scene, politics and everything that composes modern German life. I went to participate in a seminar with some of the twelfth graders. It was a two-day role-play game for a model United Nations. I really enjoyed that and ironically enough my role in the game was "Representative of Arabian Governments".

After I returned from Berlin, it was time for Jared to swing back through Germany and pick up his stuff. We had a nice good-bye dinner with the roomies and I think that everyone was a little sad to see him go. Shortly after Jared was gone, my friend Tim came out for about 4 days on his way to Spain. Tim and I actually studied in Spain together when I was there in 2005. We messed around in Münster all weekend and definitely had a nice relaxed time.

February has mostly consisted of working and trying to get back to something resembling a routine. It's been nice to be a bit stationary for a while and I've just been hanging out with friends and experiencing Münsteraner life more in depth. Soon I'll be hitting the road again though. A trip has been planned with Patrick to check out Prague and Dresden (Columbus' sister city) over spring break. This weekend I'm catching a train up to Hamburg to visit Lisa. Lisa was an exchange student at my high school and we've stayed in good contact ever since. More on all that later.

Aside from all that hustle and bustle, life has been quite enjoyable as of late. Just trying to make new friends and hang out with the ones I already have. I feel more at home here everyday and things seem less and less foreign all the time. It’s a strange but exciting feeling. My German capabilities have come along well, if I do say so myself. It’s kind of thrilling to speak in a foreign language without too much effort.


It’s been a LONG time since I’ve added a list.

The German Language – A Short Fact List

1. German is spoken by over 100 million people in Europe alone and has more native speakers than any other western European language.

2. German is an official language in seven countries. Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Belgium, Luxemburg and Namibia. It’s also recognized as a regional language in France and Italy.

3. German is closely related to a number of other European languages, such as Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Afrikaans, Dutch and English.

4. Germans are one of the few peoples who deliberately change their accents to emulate a standardized form of their language. This accent is called Hochdeutsch (High German) and it originates from the region around Hanover.

5. Germans love to use foreign words, especially from English! For example “Ich gehe nach dem Meeting auf eine After Work Party. “ (After the meeting, I’m going to an after work party.)

6. German was nearly an official language of the United States. It lost to English when the constitution was drafted by only one vote.

7. German has an amazing amount of dialects for such a centralized language. Some dialects, such as Bavarian, Swabian and the Swiss variations are so radically different that some consider them to be separate languages.

8. Nearly all German nouns have a gender assigned to them. This means that they are either feminine, masculine or neutral. The difference in genders plays an important role in how the words are used grammatically.

9. German is the sixth most widely used language in the Internet.

10. Germans perpetuate a strong tradition of learning other languages. English is obligatory and at least one other foreign language is usually learned as well.

Jared and I on New Year's.


My roommate Hendrik and Patrick.

Jared learning about old things.

Karaoke on New Year's.

Brandenburg Gate at night.


That's it for now. I'll try to do better at keeping up in the future. Tschüß!