Minneapolis.

So, I've accepted Minnesota's offer of admission. They've got a great German Medieval Studies department, and they offered me enough money that I will merely be a poor grad student rather than a possibly dead grad student. I went there a weekend or two ago to visit (April 2-5), and here is the story (and, more importantly, the pictures).

So, I left the house in the wee hours. I wound up waiting on my porch for nearly an hour for the taxi, but that was okay, because it was relatively warm and I had a good book (even though my neighborhood is a little sketchy at 3:30am). The airport was practically empty - it was me and perhaps a dozen other people waiting for the plane to Philadelphia, where we were all connecting to go to various fascinating places. The only way out of Williamsport is through Philly, you know.


My sleepy compatriates.

So, I got to Philly, had an overpriced sandwich, dealt with various rude people, and hopped on the longer flight to Minneapolis. This flight was mostly rather uninteresting, except for towards the very end, when I noticed that Minnesota is apparently coated with small, fluffy, oddly uniform clouds.


See?


And from the ground.

The people in the Minneapolis airport were much nicer than the ones in Philly (or I was more awake and less irritable, but I'm pretty sure they were nicer), and it was very easy to find my way around. I had to take the light rail to get to my hotel, and it was actually really weird, because the trains or trams or whatever they call them look just like the Strassenbahn in Dresden. I felt bizarrely homesick while riding them. Two interesting things: all the trains and buses have bike racks on them (because Minnesotans are wacky hippies) and the light rail stops all appear to have heaters in them that you can turn on if you're cold (because Minnesota is freaking cold).


Minneapolis, from the light rail station where I got off.

The hotel was fun (the Aloft, look it up if you're bored), and the school paid for it (along with the flight, the meals, etc.), so I enjoyed it. It was kind of pretensiously hip, which was amusing. The elevators had squooshy blue goo under mats on the floor, so you can squoosh it around while waiting, and it kind of quacks at every floor instead of dinging. The room was small but nice, and the only picture that came out was this one:


Why do all "modern" hotels have glass showers?

After checking in, I put away my things neatly (read: dumped them on the floor) and went to check out an apartment. It was about a half-hour walk, which was nice - let me see some of the city, and assured me that the apartment isn't in a creepy neighborhood.

Apartment is here:


It's the farthest building with a green thingamajob.

The apartment was fine (small, but had a shiny new kitchen area), and the landlord was nice, and there's a park across the street, and I can get a PUPPY. Or I could, if I weren't living on a grad student budget with a grad student amount of free time.

Anyway, the more interesting event happened just before I met up with the landlord. I was about half an hour early and absolutely starving, so I was looking around for a place where I could get something to eat, and I happened to find this place:


It says they make subs and Mexican food.

It looked promising. So I went in. The right half of the room was barren, except for a freezer case and a pile of lumber. The left half of the room was filled with rows of shelving and dusty canned goods, in front of which was a dingy deli case. In the deli case was half of a frozen lasagna. That is all. I do not lie. So, I'm taking all this in, and the Greekish guy behind the counter is looking at me with a perplexed expression on his face.

"Um...do you make subs?" I ask.
"No. No make sub," he replies in a remarkably thick accent, looking dejected.
"Aha."
I'm wondering what to say next, when all of a sudden his face absolutely transforms, and with a big smile he goes:
"I make gyro!"
"Okay. I guess I'll have a gyro then."

So I had a gyro. It was good. I ate it in the little park across from my prospective apartment building and got white sauce all over my sleeve. Fortunately, he gave me a handful of paper towels with the gyro.

That's all for now. The next two days of the trip will be coming in the next few days.


Part of the store (I couldn't very well take a picture of the guy making my gyro, could I? Would've been rude.).

A brief update on my life.

So, when we last left off...I was about to move into a terrifying new abode and had no idea what time I would next be able to post. Well, that time happens to be now, approximately a year later.

Um. Yeah. Sorry.

Quite a lot has changed. The last few months in Germany were fun, and I actually got more exploring done due to my lack of internet (O Great Absorber of Free Time...) - I'll post the pictures when I have a bit more time. Upon getting home, I lived with Mom and Dad for a month or two and then moved when I got an exciting new job!

I'm currently teaching German (not real German, just baby German) at Lycoming College, same place I graduated from. The guy who was teaching introductory German there retired, and, since they had no better option, they hired me. I'm kind of a temporary fix for them, because I only have a Bachelor's degree instead of a graduate degree, but still - the kiddies learn German and I get a fun job. I'll post fun stories later - they are here in abundance. Of course, most of them have to do with semi-adult men being unable to contain themselves at the word "duschen,"* but still, stories are stories, yes?

So, like I said, this job is just temporary. Next plan? Move to Minnesota!

No, seriously, I'm really moving to Minnesota. From Pennsylvania to Michigan to Germany to Pennsylvania to Minnesota...this has been an interesting past few years. Yes, yes, you say, but WHY precisely are you moving to Minnesota? Grad school. I've just enrolled in their PhD program (#11 in the country for German, I might add) for Medieval German Studies. I'll probably never get a job with that degree, but it's what I want to study, and they're essentially paying me to do it, so it should be fun. I'm going to visit Minneapolis (on their dime, no less - full airfare and hotel and meals paid for) in about a week, so hopefully I will have fun stories and lots of pictures.

So, that's the short version of the last year in the life of Leah. I'll attempt to post more regularly now...but no promises.

*It means "to take a shower." Perverts.

About that apartment...

So, I signed the contract thingy and got my keys and stuff to my new apartment today, and it's not nearly as icky as I remember it being. The kitchen is awful, yes, but the bathroom is reasonable nice, if small. The shower has actual water pressure, which is fantastic. The shower at my current apartment has about the same water pressure as the kitchen sink, only diffused over a larger area. I'd get a better shower from a plant mister. So, a shower with decent water pressure will be a welcome change. The living room is also bigger than I recall, although it's still teensy. If any of you want to visit me, you'll have to sleep standing up in the shower or outside. Yes, outside! I have a terrace! ...unfortunately, my apartment is underground, so it's really a cement-walled cell attached to the apartment. There's ivy growing down the sides, though, and if I look up I can see sky, so that's nice. The walls are neatly beveled, ostensibly so that any wayward kitties can climb out to safety instead of dying a horrible death trapped on my terrace. Pictures are here.

I am the absolute height of awesomeness.

So, I've seen three apartments in the past two and a half days, and conducted business entirely in German, and I have an apartment! Woo!

The apartment search was interesting, to say the least. On Sunday I went out to the outskirts of the city to see an apartment in Cotta. The area was really cool - it's one of the oldest parts of Dresden, and there are cottages and stuff, and it's very interesting. The apartment itself was nice. Really nice. Nice enough that I wondered how the hell it was in my price range. It had four large rooms, heated floors, a big kitchen, two bathrooms (with a giant bathtub and a bidet!), and was fully furnished, including a big-screen TV and American-sized fridge. I had a very nice chat with the landlord, had some tea and cookies and discussed politics, and then figured out that the place that was in my price range was the apartment under this one, which was unfortunately not available until March. So, damn. That's one off the list. Ah well, it was a nice trip to a new part of town, anyway, not to mention some good language practice.

(on the subject of language practice: This has been great for my vocabulary. C'mon, say it with me: Mietschuldenfreiheitsbestätigung! This means something like "Confirmation of freedom from previous rent obligations." Any reasonable language would, of course, make a sentence, or at least a decent clause, out of that, but the Germans are wild! They're all like, "Hey man, you only live once! Let's make it one word! Yeah, I said it: ONE WORD!")

Yesterday I saw two apartments. The first is in quite a nice part of town - close to where Clemens lives, actually, and surrounded by little parks, pretty buildings, and all the niceties of German life (a Konditorei on every corner!), plus it was no more than fifteen minutes from pretty much anything in the city, and just around the corner from the Garten and zoo. The apartment itself, tragically, completely sucked. It was literally about a 3 meter by 3 meter underground cell, with a teeny kitchenette and bathroom, and no bed included in the furnishings.

The second apartment was quite nice - nicely furnished, reasonably large, pleasant and bright, and had a bathtub (what? bathtubs are important to me, dammit!). Unfortunately, the area was depressing as all heck. It was what everyone would think of upon hearing the word "soviet," I think. Picture a half-hour train ride through a scenic mix of bombed-out buildings, abandoned storefronts, and grimy factories, ending at a charming block of old-school GDR apartment buildings, one of which was still proudly emblazoned with "Volks Solidaritaet - Miteinander, Fuereinander." (translation: Peoples' Solidarity - With each other, for each other) The area was basically one big splotch of gray concrete, with a few spots of grungy yellow to break it up. Frankly, the train ride left me depressed for the rest of the day.

So, I picked the crappy apartment in the nice part of town. I'm going to do it up all Middle Eastern style, with some cool lamps and big pillows and stuff. I think it could be quite pleasant, and the area is really nice to walk around in. I move in tomorrow, and I may not have internet for a couple days, so if you don't hear from me, that's why. I'm really glad this apartment change happened right now - I'm in the middle of a two-week break from school, so I have lots of time to get all settled.

The adventure begins!

So, today my apartment building manager informed me that there's a time limit on the stay in this building and so I'm going to have to move out. In five days. So, I have to find a new apartment and be moved in in five days. That's bloody hard to manage in America, let alone in a foreign language with customs that I don't completely understand yet. Ah well, learn by doing, yes?

So, I'm mostly pretty lazy, but when I'm forced into action, by golly, I'm spectacular. I've been typing my fingers to the bone, finding classifieds and apartment sites and firing off emails like a SUPERHERO, dammit. I think I'm going to manage this.

Either that or you can all come visit me and I'll show you around Schloss Kardbordbochs.

This! Is! The painkiller!

You know you're in Germany when...it's easier to treat pain with vodka than aspirin. My wisdom teeth are growing in, and it hurts like hell, so I went to the store today to get some aspirin or something, and I discovered that it's both cheaper and easier to just buy alcohol. So, I'm self-medicating with about a shot every hour and a half (except schooltime). Effective without leaving me tipsy or drunk.

Anyway, at school today we did a lesson on the current primaries. It was basically a large practical joke for my own amusement. I explained the basic system, including the electoral college (holy heck, that was hard), then handed out cards instructing six people to be candidates (I picked Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Edwards, Clinton, and Obama). Everyone else was divided into Democrats and Republicans, and they had to choose a candidate to run in the "general election." I played the Third Party. "My role," I said, "is to stand in the corner and complain about the system."

It actually worked very nicely. They were fairly above-board, although there was a cowardly mudslinging attack on Edwards' hat. Can't trust a Southerner in a hat. The general election was great - it was Giuliani versus Obama. Giuliani won, due to her impassioned attack on illegal immigrants.

No communists, kthxbye.

So, I got myself into a wee spot of trouble today in the brewer class. We were doing the passive, and I got really bored with sentences such as "The milk is left on the porch by the milkman," so I started making fun sentences. "The cat has been eaten by the dog" and "The cheese has been stolen" were all well and good, and they went over very well. Alas, I carried it too far with "Canada will have been invaded by communists." Enrico made me erase it, because apparently you can get into major trouble for talking about communists in school in Eastern Germany. The brewers thought it was excellent, though...

I also taught the 12L class by myself today, which was fun. I had a good lesson prepared, but the printer wouldn't work, so we played Kangaroo instead. Basically, you kick one person out of the room, then choose a word, and everyone has to replace that word with "kangaroo," and the person has to ask questions and figure out which word it is. It's kind of like a sillier version of 20 Questions, actually. But it went well, and it was lots of fun, and it was good English practice (or so I can say to justify it to the powers that be).