European Adventures: Altstadt und Meersburg

So I finally finished up grading and finals on Wednesday evening/Thursday afternoon (a few latecomers...), and decided to celebrate by doing some exploring!

Thursday I went to the Altstadt, the "old city" area of Konstanz. Unfortunately, although it was gorgeous weather the entire time I was stuck inside doing work, it rained a lot yesterday. So I wandered around the old section of the city. It's full of windy streets and tiny shops, a lot of clothing boutiques but a little of everything. The buildings date back to the 13th and 14th century. Since Konstanz is on the Swiss border, it preserved much more than many German cities during WW2, since the Allies didn't bomb it for fear of bombing Switzerland. I visited a German bookstore (and an English one as well!) and got myself the first Harry Potter in German to motivate me to learn faster. I was looking for some books to help me with German grammar, which I'm finding impossible without instruction, but no luck yet.

I also got to see the Münster, or church. It has a hugely tall tower, which I of course climbed. All by myself--like, no one else was even on the stairs. Possibly one of the creepier things I've done so far. But the view from the top was nice--apparently on a clear day you can see to Austria, so I'll have to go back.

In the evening, I met up with Alessia, a friend of one of my friends at Rutgers, Kelly. She is from Italy, and we went to a pizzeria and had a very nice evening talking and eating,despite the pouring rain. The downside was trying to come home: buses run on very limited schedules after about 8:30 pm in Konstanz, so it took forever, we were waiting for ages for a bus. But on the way home we met a friend of hers, Thorin, who lives in my dorm complex! So it was nice to meet someone who lives here, since I didn't know anyone before.

Today I decided I was going across the lake to Meersburg. It's a 15-minute ferry ride (and I'm pretty sure I succeeded in getting sunburned during that 15 minutes-need to buy sunscreen), and Meersburg features an adorable town area and the oldest castle in Germany. There are two castles there, the Altschloss and the Neuschloss. I wandered around and ate fish and chips at one of the only cheap places in town, recommended by my guidebook (I'm sorry, I don't really like German food! I don't do red meat), and then went up the hill to the castles. Meersburg is known for wine so the hills are covered in vineyards. The Altschloss was cool, I made friends with a guy dressed as a knight. It was very old, and the woman gave me a guide in French (I guess they ran out of English), and I kept awkwardly running in on tours in German. The Neuschloss is bright pink and under renovation. So I wandered the adorable little German streets for awhile and came across a brass band that played "When I'm 64", by the Beatles. They then almost got run over by a truck that was trying to back up in the narrow and windy streets. So since they stopped playing, I decided to get some apfelstrudel! I'd seen signs for it all day and it sounded delicious. So I sat outside and ate apfelstrudel with vanilla ice cream, and it was very, very yummy. Overall, I really liked Meersburg--it was quite charming.

After that, I headed back to the Altstadt in Konstanz to take some more pictures, since it was so nice out! I got to see the Imperia statue, the most scandalous part of Konstanz...it is a statue in the harbor, of a prostitute. She has a naked man in each hand, the emperor in one and the pope in the other. It's a metaphor from a Balzac short story about church reform, apparently. Then I came home to relax! It's been a long two weeks since I arrived, but hopefully on Tuesday I'll get to start my research. I know I'm settling in and getting used to hearing German because I can finally pronounce the German word for "excuse me"-entschuldigung. I had a lot of trouble with it when I first got here. But today I tried to only ask for things in German and mostly succeeded--when I need something explained I need to ask for English, since I understand very little, but I was able to order food and ask for tickets without using English!

My latest language-learning strategy has been to find American TV shows dubbed in German on Youtube. I found the pilot episode of Friends, and some episodes of the Nanny, so I'll have to look for more.