Ok, so blog entry number 6 . . . Haribo, German project, discount stores, getting lost in the city, WWII tour, scavenger hunt, getting talked to by random German people while I pretend to know what there saying, Ping Pong, eighteenth century castle, and somewhere between all that I slept and ate. Alright, see you next week.
You’re still here? Oh, well I suppose you want more details, right? Geez, so demanding. . .
(Ha, “geez” is a word recognized by spell check. Did you know that? I didn’t know that.)
Haribo macht Kinder froh!
As you may or may not know, Bonn is the home town of one of the greatest contributors to mankind. No not Beethoven, Hans Riegel, father of the gummy bear. The Haribo (Hans Riegel Bonn) factory is located right here in Bonn and I can go visit their store any time I want. On Monday, our entire group went to visit the store, and let me tell you, it was like candy heaven. Not only did I have access to every kind of candy Haribo makes, but a lot of it was really cheap. I went ahead and got a mixed bag of gummy’s that I picked out myself and a mystery 4kg box. The bag had all my favorite gummy’s in it: Frogs, apple rings, and sour strips. That was in case the mystery box had nothing but those awful candy coated marshmallow things and frosted licorice. It was only 1 Euro for quite a bit of candy. It probably would have been about 3 to 4 dollars in the US. The mystery box, however, is where it’s at. 4kg of candy in a windowless box for a discount price, because they’re extras from the factory or something like that. The problem was that I had no idea what was inside. I ended up getting a really good box (in my opinion) minus the miniature rat marshmallows that are only okay.
My German German Presentation in Germany
Yes, I had to do a presentation in front of everybody in German. It was not all that much fun, but at least I found my subject interesting. The trouble was that not everybody could understand what I was saying, because we all come from different backgrounds as far as knowing the language goes. As a result, I had to incorporate English translations into my Powerpoint, something I’ve really never done, and I found it difficult to switch back and forth between German and English. It was not my best presentation ever, but it’s over now, so at least I got it out of the way.
My subject was actually pretty fun. I was talking about the Dassler brothers, Adolf and Rudolf, and their rival companies Adidas and PUMA. They originally had their own shoe company that made the first cleats before the war, and Adolf (Adi) provided these cleats to Jesse Owens during the 1936 Olympics to help him win all those Gold medals. Then, after the war, they had a fallout and started their own companies. The family feud was so big, that even their hometown was split between Adidas and PUMA. They had separate bakeries and clothing shops, separate soccer teams, and even mixed marriages were frowned upon. They were pretty much like rival gangs.
Anyway, I’ll stop ranting about that now and start talking about
Getting lost in the city
I would highly suggest if you’re in any city, in Bonn or elsewhere, just walking around for a while. Go get lost with some friends. It’s tons of fun, you get to know the city a little bit better, and you will most likely happen upon something really entertaining. This week I went walking around in Köln again after our bakery testing (those are always a pleasure). It was semi-raining the whole day but still lots of fun. We visited a lovely park with dangerous and muddy playground equipment. I ended up going down a super awesome slide and getting my pants soaked, as well as a jungle gym, a crazy tilted rotating thing, and a zip line. And then we played Frisbee. I’m kinda curious as to what my host mom thinks about what happened to my pants.
Oh yeah, and in case I didn’t mention this before, our group goes every week to Köln together, because Hartwig absolutely love the city and gives awesome tours. At the end of the tour we get a bakery testing where he gets samples from the bakery for us to try all of their products. It’s fantastic.
Schlacht im Hürtgenwald
Wednesday our Group went with a group of German kids from a different program to a site in the Eifel region where the battle of the Hurtgen forest took place. There were a lot of casualties from both side and there is a memorial site for them there. It was overall pretty depressing and I don’t think the tour guide did a very good job, probably because he had to give the tour in English.
Anyway the German kids were fun to talk to. They were from all over the country and came here to study English for 4 days. We went to where they were staying outside of Bonn and ate dinner with them there. I got to practice a little bit of German, but not much, because they obviously wanted to speak English with us. There was another guy named Tim there. It was awesome.
Brühl
Yesterday I went to Brühl with some friends for the afternoon. There was a cool castle there. Not a medieval one, but it was like a big mansion from the 19th century, I think. Mostly Clemens August, the archbishop of Köln lived in it, but there were other important figures who stayed there, Queen Victoria for instance. It was pretty much this ridiculously huge, ridiculously ornate house. Every little thing was decorated to the utmost detail, it was incredible. Afterwards we went walking around the town, but most everything was closing by then, so we soon went back to Bonn.
Ende
Just some other things to sum up before I sign off.
There’s some kind of anime convention going on here in Bonn, so I have been seeing plenty of random anime characters walking around. These people really go all out when it comes to their costume wearing. The funny thing is that I’m such a nerd I can recognize quite a few of them. I saw some people from One Piece, Naruto, Inuyasha, and others, they all kind of run together as generic anime people after a while. My personal favorite was some guy dressed up as a Gundam. Oh, and there was an Ash Ketchem walking around too. He was by himself which was kind of weird. I saw my brother’s pastor, who did the wedding, in his wife in the train station two separate times too, which was a funny coincidence. They weren’t dressed up as anime characters though.
You know what’s really annoying? Random Germans that go up to you and talk to you about something that you can’t understand because they are talking too fast and slangily and are probably drunk. I just keep on saying “nein” or “nee” to them and they eventually go away. Random Germans who play frisbee with you, however, are awesome.
We watched “Das Wunder von Bern” again by the way for all you people that were in my German V class. Except this time I got to watch it all the way through without stopping to do a worksheet in between, which was nice. There was no German subtitles, however, which made it a little harder. Good movie.
That’s it. I’m probably forgetting something, but that’s okay, because you probably don’t even want to hear about it.
Skez
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