After class, I headed to the Bahnhof (train station) to start my 6.5 hour journey to Lahr, Germany, the hometown of my host family, the Wickert's. For those of you who don't know, I traveled to Europe for the first time in June 2004 with my high school German class. After a few weeks of travel: Paris, Cannes, and Grindelwald (Switzerland), we headed to Lahr where we stayed for 2.5 weeks with a host family. That fall, Carola (my exchange partner) came and stayed with my family for 3 weeks. I've been lucky enough to maintain contact with the Wickert family over the years and I was very excited to see them again.
I got to Offenburg (about 20 minutes from Lahr) around 7:30 on Friday night, and Karin and Charly met me at the train station. We headed off to dinner, and got to talking. Karin told me that she had prepped herself to speak English over the weekend, but that it was hardly necessary. I guess my German has improved over the last four years!
Unfortunately Carola is currently in New Zealand working as an au pair, so I didn't actually get to see her, but I did get to talk to her via Skype and a web cam. I also talked to one of the boys she takes care of, Jack (he is 8, and he's been to the US 'loads of times'). That was pretty much the extent of my English speaking for the weekend.
11.8
After Frühstück (breakfast) we walked into town to enjoy the festivities of Chrysenthema Lahr 2008 -- a large, well-known flower show featuring chrysanthemums. I guess they average 300,000 visitors each year, which is saying a lot as Lahr has a population of roughly 40,000. Karin's mother and sister also joined us. We rode the Riesenrad (ferris wheel -- I can't remember the last time I did that) and got a nice view of the city, even picking their house out of the sea of monochromatic rooftops!
The main event for the day was a fireworks display. I was expecting your average run-of-the-mill show, but that's not what I got! They had the show in the Marktplatz (market place/town square) and it was perfectly orchestrated to a series of music, including an instrumental from "Pirates of the Caribbean".
When we got back to their home, I spoke with Daniel (Carola's older brother) via Skype. He's currently studying at the university in Achen, which is about 5 km from the Germany-Holland boarder. We also watched a bit of TV, which I haven't really done all semester, as I don't have a TV! There was a famous Saturday night show on called "Wetten Dass..." that's on about once every two months. It's comprised of a series of bets as to whether or not people will be capable of doing certain 'outlandish' acts. For instance there was the guy from Texas who can kick himself in the head 45 times in under a minute. Another guy could scale the outside of an 18 story building faster than someone else could run up the stares. They also featured a few American celebrities -- Kid Rock, P!NK, and Uma Thurman. It was interesting because of the way they dubbed things. First the question would be asked by the host in German, and then it was translated into English via a small ear-chip. Then they would respond in audible English, but their voices were dubbed over with a louder German voice.
All in all, it was a great weekend! It was awesome to speak auf Deutsch...I think I spoke maybe 10 words of English the whole weekend, 2 of which were "ferris wheel" (They wanted to know the English word). Hopefully I'll be lucky enough to meet up with them again someday!
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