Reading Week in Deutschland

Here's Pamuk, sitting on the sidewalk in the park. What a pookie.
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November 2-12, 2006

Since I can hardly remember the order of everything I did in Germany, even though I have a few pictures to help me, I suppose it will be better to sum up and highlight my experience in one main blog entry.

It was a ton of very silly fun, as Stefan’s friend Marcel and I were the only ones really into dancing and everyone else sorta stood around and watched our terrible dance moves.

The first few days, I just wanted to spend time hanging around with my aunts and visiting with Zeliha, one of the local girls who spends a ton of time at my aunt’s apartment. We became pretty good friends last time I was in Germany and really needed to do some catching up. Anyway, we just had a good time going to bakeries and grocery shopping, doing normal things and chatting away for a few days.

I really like this little frog fountain in the park. When I showed Ozzie- Zeliha's cousin- this picture, he let me know that this was a fountain. And he did so quite defiantly.
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One of Zeliha’s cousins actually owns a little dog named Pamuk—Turkish for cotton-ball, basically—and when the family had an emergency which forced them to leave town while I was there, I was assigned to take care of her for the week. We had tons of fun walking in the leaves at the park and sleeping with Zeliha at night. She’s very sweet and very quirky, making her a good little pal while sitting around all day studying, which is what I did for most of the week.

On the weekend, I went over to visit my Aunt Connie and her two kids, Markus and Stefan. We sat around talking for a few hours and then Stefan took me and a few of his friends to a disco called Kinky—just a normal dance hall, despite its odd name. The club had a ton of rooms with different kinds of music, and we eventually stationed ourselves in the House Music room and hung around until 3 or so in the morning. It was a ton of very silly fun, as Stefan’s friend Marcel and I were the only ones really into dancing and everyone else sorta stood around and watched our terrible dance moves.

This is the entrance to the house where my aunts live. They have an apartment on the third floor. I really like this entry-way, with all the plants and statutes and the cast-iron railings.
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I wish that I had the space to write about the countless things I did in Germany, but I am afraid my memory is really too good to allow for that sort of thing, so I had better cut this short. I really enjoyed getting to see my family again and now cannot wait to be back there for Christmas, as I only got to see a few of my relatives once or twice during my reading week and would like to spend a little more time with them.

I guess the most memorable thing I did while I was there was to climb the vineyards above my Aunt Connie’s farm and look over her little town of Vaihingen, with a castle on the horizon and Pamuk running all around. The open air and the farms were absolutely picturesque and like nothing I can ever see at home. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the same area covered in snow, if I am lucky, and experiencing the German winter markets everyone has told me so much about. To make it all the more exciting, Heather and Isaac will be there to experience it with me (though I wish my family at home could be there too). I cannot wait.

Zeliha and I decided to play for a bit in this little playground outside of a little bar/billiard hall. My uncle, my aunts and Zeliha played pool and drank hot chocolates there.
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Love, Jessica