First Impressions

If you really want to know the small tiny unimportant details, you can read this long email I sent to my parents... :)

Liebe Mutti und Leiber Vati-

(I know this is long but I figured I’d give you a full description thus far as everything is new to you, and me for that matter, and to give you a feel for what being here is like.)
I’m writing this email a little after 10pm on Sunday night but I’m going to send it whenever I get a chance on Monday because the Schenkel’s don’t have internet access. Everything has been fine (or better) so far. I was the only person I saw at the airport to be stopped at random by the immigration officials (?) to be questioned. I was trying to read my map and find the FUBiS people when this guy starts speaking German to me at a mile a minute. The only word besides bitte I caught was Ausweis (passport) so I just handed that to him. Once he saw it was a US passport he started speaking in English and everything was fine. It was kind of a jarring moment at first.
Jutta and Jürgen are very nice. Jürgen has a ponytail. Their English is not perfect but it is much, much better than my German. My best guess is that Jutta and Jürgen are a couple years older than you guys are. I don’t know what Jürgen does, it didn’t seem polite to ask, but Jutta said she works with handicapped people (I think mentally handicapped, not physically). Mom, I think you would like Jutta. She’s really nice and has a lot of ‘spunk’. Like I said, Jürgen picked me up from the airport on Saturday, which was a surprise and made transportation very easy. On Saturday after I got to their haus…bitte, house (I keep wanting to write things in German already), I unpacked while Jürgen went to the grocery store to buy stuff for dinner. Jutta wasn’t there when I got there because she was out shopping for clothes with their daughter. I think she is in her late 20s and works for the Bundeskriminalamt, which Jürgen said was similar to our FBI. After I unpacked I left to go explore a bit. The area they live in is very pretty. It’s part of the green zone so there are many parks, trees, and a couple lakes. Jürgen said it was a good area for jogging and that they are active runners. Their house is one of several in a row. You can’t actually drive up to their house because the ‘road’ they live on is actually more of a walk-way, but it’s just off the street. They have a very nice house. It’s bigger than I expected. The room they gave me is much bigger than I expected. It has a closet type thing for my clothes, a desk, a small bed that is more comfortable than it looks, a radio (with which I’ve been listening to Radio Eins, similar to NPR, I think), and a TV which I haven’t figured out how to work yet.
Anyways, like I was saying, after I unpacked I went exploring a bit. I tried to find the soccer and field hockey fields and gym that we passed on the way to their house but couldn’t and didn’t want to get lost. So I walked towards the U-Bahn station to buy my transportation pass, which was a dilemma unto itself but for another time, and walked through the small street festival that was going on. I’m not really sure the reason for it but there were lots of families with kids and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once I was finally able to purchase my transportation pass, I took the U-Bahn towards the city center and got off next to the KaDeWe, the Kaufhaus des Westens, which is the largest department store in Europe. I walked around in their for awhile. Most, if not all, of the stores seemed to be higher end from shoes to clothes to perfume. On the top floor was a large food store with several places to eat. Obviously, this was the floor that appealed to me the most. After that I ate some currywurst with fries for lunch and walked towards the Wilhem Memorial Church. It’s an old church that was bombed during WWII and whose remnants remain as a reminder. I’ve read about in every German class. After that I took the U-Bahn ‘home’ and read for awhile.
That night for dinner the Schenkel’s had a friend and his sister over for dinner. He was a very nice guy, who had studied economics at FUB and had been a guest professor at Berkley. He had even been to Boulder at one point. His English was perfect. It was good to speak with him because it made it easy to use my German. His sister was also there. She was krank (sick), to use their word, or mentally disabled to use ours. That made dinner a bit interesting. Halfway through dinner, I found out that it was Jürgen’s birthday. That completely took me by surprise. Before dinner the Schenkels and I had a ten minute conversation trying to figure out what spargul was. I eventually figured out it was asparagus. Turns out that right now is asparagus season and after next week the Germans have to wait until next year to eat it again. The asparagus here is white and has a much milder, less irony flavor than it does at home. I like it more. So, for dinner we had the white asparagus with something similar to a hollandaise sauce on it, white wine, small potatoes, shrimp with seasonings, a salad, a prosciutto(sp?) type meat, and scrambled eggs. A slightly odd assortment, but very good none the less. For dessert we had strawberries with whipped cream, which I think was homemade. They said they usually don’t make meals that big during the week, only on the weekends, and it was also Herr Schenkels Geburtstag. Afterwards I went to bed.
Today (Sunday), I woke up at eight to run but it was raining so I went back to bed and got up at ten. I read for class for an hour and a half before going down stairs slightly after the Schenkels did. For our late breakfast we had mostly bread with some meat and cheese and some really good espresso Jürgen made with in an Italian coffee-maker. I had never seen it done that way before. We read the newspaper and ate and then Jürgen drove me to the Uni for my first day. I got there really early so I walked around a bit and read for awhile by the check-in area. All of a sudden a huge crowd of kids showed up from the dorms to check-in. What I realized was that living with a host family has its positives and negatives. The plus side is the cultural immersion, but the downside is that everyone living in the dorms, which is the majority of students, has already started to form groups. They had a mixer type thing last night at the dorms, so they had all started to get to know each other. All of us home-stay kids are going to have to work a bit harder to meet other people. Today, I mostly hung out with other kids from CU that I mostly didn’t know before and a guy we met from Shanghai. Orientation was fine. I won’t bore you with the details of it. Afterwards, a group of us was going to go drink some beers but I think there was some miscommunication as to which U-Bahn station we were meeting at (there are two close to the university), so the group I was with ended up being smaller. No one has phones yet so we couldn’t call the others. (I tried to go to the Vodafone store on Saturday but it closed fifteen minutes before I got there and is closed on Sundays. Bummer.) We found a place to get some beers, which were very delicious, and then split up to head to our respective residences. Everyone’s host family is very different. One has two young kids; another is old and meticulous and doesn’t speak much English but has a girl who doesn’t speak any German; another is a single mom whose kids live away from home and is a vegetarian (poor guy). I got home a little before eight and right before dinner. They wouldn’t let me help. Tonight we had the extra food that wasn’t cooked from last night, minus the eggs and salad. During dinner we watched a German crime show. I understood enough to follow the story until the very end when there was a twist which I didn’t quite get. It was interesting to watch though. After that I went upstairs to write this email.
Tomorrow I have a short placement interview for my German course, a campus tour, and the beginning of class. I think that’s probably a long enough email, if you are even still reading. I might try to Skype you in the afternoon (around four my time) if I get a chance, but I’ll have to see. If I can’t, I’ll try to send you an email. Glad you made it back safely to Denver. I’ll talk to you soon.

Love, Blake