i'm home home home

Ok, so now i have to type on a German keyboard, which is driving me absolutely BATTY. If zou see lots of z's where there should be y's, it's because those kezs are turned around on the German kezboard. See what I mean? ;P I keep having to redo everything. And the apostrophe is in a different place, too. I HATE IT. But my wireless isn't working right now, so I have no choice.

So on Sunday I drove out to Bad Elster with Daniela M and her family. I love her parents. They've always been like a second family to me so I feel really comfortable around them. So this town is another one of those places where all the sick German people go to drink stale/salty/chloriney/sulfuric/etc.-tasting water in hopes of a speedy recovery. The drive there was pretty awesome because I got to see a lot of familiar towns and Gerd made sure to announce every couple minutes when we got to the top of the hill that there was a beautiful view of the Vogtland (that's the name of the region where we lived in Sachsen) coming up. (People from the Vogtland are very proud of their home.) We drove through forests and saw people on the search for mushrooms. I miss mushroom picking. I mean, our family never had any idea what exactly we were looking for. Us clueless Canadians couldn't tell the difference between an edible, tasty mushroom (yes Bria, I said TASTY mushroom. yum yum.) and a poisonous, relatively life-threatening fungus. But we would go along for the fun of it.

We rented a paddle boat and a rowboat at the big pond, walked through parks, tasted the spring waters. Really not all that disgusting. And we're all much healthier for it, I'm sure. Please note my typically North American skepticism. But we washed down the taste with some good ole soft ice cream. AND THEN CAME SUPPER. I FINALLY GOT A REAL TURKISH DÖNER. We call them donairs, I guess, in Canada and I have yet to find one that doesn't taste like it came out of a stinky sock drawer. Ok, I'm obviously totally exaggerating. But trust me, they DO NOT taste like these. They taste all canadian-ized in Canada. (I'm brilliant. Don't you love how my English is already deteriorating?) Maybe I just haven't been going to the right places, but I've had my fair share of donairs back home and nothing even comes close. I wolfed that sucker down like you wouldn't believe! Put that also on your future Germany to-do list.

And let's see, ok, wait. I can't stand this keyboard anymore...I'm going to go figure out how to switch to the English one.

ONLY FIVE MINUTES LATER! I AM A GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Frick yes.

Ok, where was I? O ya, so what did we do yesterday? Well, Sebastian (Nancy's son) wants to become a police officer but he has really poor vision so yesterday we drove to Halle (at 7am...aka. far too freaking early) for his eye laser surgery. Basically we dropped him off and then went to visit Connie Kerber, another family friend, who lives in Halle. We ate breakfast (I still love the fact that Germans eat meat for breakfast....the same blood must run through my veins...). Then we decided to go out and see the city a little bit. We walked through little alleys and streets to the church (Hallenkirche) that now houses Martin Luther's Totenmaske (death mask). It was pretty eery. Basically a mold of his face (and hands, strangely enough) that was made the day after he died, just sitting there in a glass case. Sketchy. But very cool. I find Luther to be one of the most fascinating historical Christian figures...pretty much ever. :) And I just realized that was a very German sentence, as in the structure of it. Oh dear. I'm constantly mixing up my languages. I actually use German words in my Enlgish sentences sometimes. Grrr.

Then the old dude who let us into the room to see the masks and stuff spent the next half hour/45 minutes telling us all about the church. The smaller organ in the pics on Facebook that I will post at the bottom is actually the organ that Haendel learned to play on. (I thought that would interest you guys, mom and dad.) I really enjoy his music, as well, and thought it was pretty cool. The church itself was incredible. It has two different sets of towers on both sides because it actually used to be two different churches. But then they tore down basically everything except the two sets of towers and just built a big church connecting them. It looks like a cathedral, but it was actually always evangelical, never catholic. You can kind of see the ceiling in some of the pictures, but it's nothing like seeing it in real life. How did they come up with this kind of stuff? So gorgeous and it all used to take freaking forever to build because everything was so old-school. They didn't exactly have modern technology. And the crazy thing is that the ceiling used to be all painted. The old dude showed us a pic and it was phenomenal. But apparently the basement heating system exploded (literally) at some point a few centuries back and the steam destroyed all the paint. They redid all the walls as you can see in the pics (blue and gold) but the ceiling was too expensive. Very cool, tho.

Then it was time for Nancy and me to pick up Sebastian so I left with Connie's various phone numbers and email addresses with invitations to come and visit sometime this year. I have more invitations than I know what to do with. Crazy.

Oh, but, actually the coolest part of the day was on the Autobahn in the morning on the way to Halle. We legally passed a police car at 160 km/h. How many people can say that? (unless they've been to germany...duh!)

Here are the pics!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=68163&l=6818c&id=573967603
and here are a few pics from the Zwickauer city festival...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=68183&l=69cb6&id=573967603

Oh and on the way home we stopped in Eilenburg to check out my future apartment. It is just perfect. Cute and cozy and homey. :) Michael (the owner) took a picture of me. It was so funny. I couldn't even open the door til he had a pic of me putting the key in the lock. lol. but anyways, he sent me this one of me and nancy in front of my future residence. :)


Oh, and I watched Pride and Prejudice in German with Nancy and Josphine yestereday. It was actually the best translation job I've ever heard. (I basically know the English version off by heart, so I could tell that it wasn't a piece of crap.) Plus I didn't have to hear Keira Knightley's intensely annoying way of speaking. BUT DID YOU KNOW THAT THE GERMAN VERSION DOESN'T HAVE THE ENDING? IT JUST ENDS WITH MR. BENNET GIVING HIS CONSENT TO MR. DARCY AND ELIZABETH. NO CUTE SCENE ON THE TERRACE WITH MR DARCY SAYING "MRS. DARCY" OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. THAT SCENE PRACTICALLY MAKES THE MOVIE. So I went into the special features and it was under "Alternate US ending". I mean, what the heck? It's not an alternate ending...it's just THE FREAKING ENDING. geez. Nancy was quite distressed that they had never seen that ending, cuz she had always thought something seemed to be missing at the end. Basically moral of the story: I saved the day.