die hochzeit.

from what i gather,  german weddings are a little different than american ones.  a girl i work with is getting married on saturday.  but it is only the courthouse ceremony (which to my understanding, you are required to have in germany).  she said her church wedding will be august 29th.  i think the people i work with were fairly entertained by the questions i was asking.  

1.  i wanted to know if she wore a dress both times, or only to one?  she wears a dress for the church wedding, but not the courthouse.

2.  when do you take a honeymoon?  after both ceremonies are completed...or do you get to take two? she is apparently taking 2 weeks off of work and she and her husband are working on renovating a house they just bought.  then in september they will take a honeymoon/vacation.  

i'm all for renovating a house.  i absolutely don't plan for it to be what i do the first two weeks i'm married.  also (caroline collum sit down when you read this), engagement rings are non-existent in germany.  wedding rings pretty typically go on the right hand here.  man, i didn't ask about bridesmaids/groomsmen.  i don't know if they exist.  i've seen the bachelor/bachelorette parties, and they look different too.  

my internet has been out since friday.  apparently i went over my monthly limit.  who knew?  how dumb.  when the internet is my telephone, television, email, news source, german translator, etc that is bound to happen.  i'm currently sitting downstairs in a common room that i just discovered yesterday and using the internet here.

today a man asked me...warum kannst du deutsch?  (why can you speak german?)  i thought that was funny.  instead of asking if i could speak german, this guy wanted to know why i could.

over the weekend i went to the rhein valley with rachel (current aupair).  after i get some photos ready, i'll update you on that as well.

wein.

i just bought a bottle of wine at the grocery store.  the guy behind me, who i thought was probably older than me, just got carded for purchasing cigarettes. hahaha.  the only thing the lady told me was, have a nice weekend.

comments.

oh yeah.  and i just discovered that people have commented on this blog.  i thought the parents were the only people actually reading :).

sock and sandal season.

time to catch this thing up.  

last weekend i went to heidelberg on saturday morning and stayed until sunday evening.  it was a weekend full of street festivals.  saturday afternoon rachel and i walked around in town and then got ice cream with ricardo and julie.  in the evening we went to handschuhsheim, which is a district of heidelberg, for a kerwe.  kind of like a fair.  there were rides and food and bier (of course).  handschuhsheim has a little castle called tiefburg, and they had beer and music inside.  rachel and i had a pretty good time watching all the drunk old people trying to dance.  they thought they were amazing.  i didn't take my camera, but when i get more photos (and video. oh oh) from rachel, i'll post them.

the americans: brad, rachel, me

rachel, me, rugby player juan from paraguay, and julie.

on sunday, the whole ziegelhausenlandstraße and neuenheimerlandstraße were closed off to autos and there were bikes everywhere!  all four of the herzbergs and rachel and i investigated everything.  the boys played in a hay maze, we ate bratwurst, and just walked around.  a lot of the stuff at the street festival pertained to the environment and living green(er).

on tuesday, i went to freiburg to listen in on a meeting about project access that i'm helping with.  yesterday i was gone for 12 hours to a little grocery store in a tiny town (dorf) of 1400 people.  it is called a dorf laden.  most of the time was spent riding in a charter bus.  it was an interesting store to see though.  this little town was having trouble because all of their services were leaving, so they came together to create a little store with groceries, a bank, a travel agency, you can get your driver's license, and there are also a dentist and doctor nearby.

and man, what is the deal with socks and sandals?  unattractive.  and what is the point?  it isn't like your feet can get a breeze.

the job.

i'm getting more settled into the internship.  it is pretty relaxed.  most days, i show up around 9ish, and then go when i feel tired of being there.  on monday, i got a key to the building!  woo, i'm official.  i also got an official work space in christoph's office.  he is the guy that picked me up at the train station the first day.  carine, one of the girls i work with, was really sweet and decorated my workspace and got office supplies all lined up and what not.  

i'm also working on her project now.  it is called project ACCESS, which is about finding ways to provide better accessibility to services like groceries and doctors in rural areas.  several countries in the EU are participating; therefore, much of the work is done in english.  a few days this week, i was reading things in german and then filling out questionnaires in english.  pretty good system - my english grammar is better than my german.  later in the summer, i may also get to help with an ongoing project concerning some american army bases.  

starting next week, i'm going to attend a few classes.  one is about the sociological side of planning and the other is about transportation planning.  we will see how much i understand.  the planning school here is much bigger than vcu, and they have planning broken down into city planning and then regional development and spatial planning.  i'm interning with regional development and spatial planning but am quickly learning that a lot of the things i'm interested in - such as public spaces, housing, and slums -seem to fall in city planning.  

hiwis are student workers that also help with some of the same sort of stuff that i'm doing.  one of them tried to help me fix my wireless the other day.  he started talking to me in german.  after three or four sentences, he kind of paused and smiled, and asked in german if i spoke german.  haha.  i think he is now the 4th person or so to ask.   i also attended the studio about rural planning in idaho again this week.  those students are the least friendly people i've met at this university.  but who knows, maybe they think the same thing about me.  the have pulled a bunch of information from the census, so my job was explaining the educational system of the US, and what all the different possible degrees were.  eek.

i went running one afternoon and found an awesome playground in the forest.  it had two little forts built of stones, a really tall (but not very fast) slide, some stuff to climb on, and some that was kind of like a merry-go-round, but it was elevated (and fabulous).  i may have played a little bit.  

yesterday, i went with christoph for some meetings concerning his doctorate work.  i won't even try to tell you about it  because any of you who are still reading will stop.  point of the story, we went to a town called cochem that was really great and typical german.  of course, i didn't have my camera because i thought we were going to be in meetings.  http://cochem.de/tourismus/starten.htm (third link from the photo says 'bilder', that means photos.)

i'm going to heidelberg for the weekend to play with max and tom!