Bonn and IKEA (once again)

So it has been a few days since I posted last, and I promise the wait was worth it! 

So on Thursday, Hannah and I were invited by the DAAD to go to Bonn for two days. I had to miss one class and Hannah luckily didn't have to miss any. 

I woke up really early on Thursday at 4:30am so that I could quick get ready and finish up last minute packing. I met Hannah at the bank by her house and then we set off together at 5:30 to catch our 6:11 train to Bonn. We got to the station, found our train, and found our seats. We had to wait a while before the train set off, but soon we found ourselves going opposite the driving direction for our four hour train ride to Bonn. We soon fell asleep and continued to nod off for the next two hours. It was a little sickening for me to be riding backwards, but I guess we switched somehow while I was sleeping, because when I woke up I was facing the same direction that we were driving. We slept on and off the whole way there and would occasionally wake up and glance out the window to see the Rhein alongside the train's path. We had our tickets checked several times, and stopped through many beautiful cities. Before long, at 10:20 or so, we found ourselves at the Bonn Hauptbahnhof. We got off our train, and were then faced with the task of finding the building where the conference was being held, which was somewhere in the city. We exited the train station and immediately found the U-Bahn, so we headed underground. As we were walking to the U-Bahn station, we were yelled at by a homeless guy, so we walked a little faster. We had to buy tickets for the U-Bahn, so we found a machine (after avoiding the first two, because of some shady looking beggar dudes) and bought our one way ticket to the stop that the directions we had told us to get off at. As we were waiting for our train, I noticed two things that I needed to take a picture of.

1) I saw this and thought of Matt, because it's got some DBZ on it!

2) This man was making me really nervous, because he was just hanging over looking down over the tracks! Ahh! Careful!

Our train then came and we hopped on. The people and smells of Bonn were much to be desired. Our first impression of Bonn, was unfortunately, very smelly and creepy. When we sat down on the train, there was an old guy staring at us quite openly (we weren't speaking, so it couldn't have been for our English) and there was a guy standing next to where Hannah was sitting who was quite creepy. This guy standing next to Hannah was also staring at us, but he had his hand over his mouth, with his thumb up his nose, and he just kept on giggling. Somebody was a little high on life...or something else. Great first impressions of Bonn.

We very thankfully got off at our stop and headed off in one direction, before figuring out that the directions were very unclear and maybe meant the other direction. As we were walking back to go the other direction, we saw a girl with a backpack who looked like a student. We were introduced and found out that she was also heading for the DAAD building. We then found out that she was actually from Tuebingen as well and was on the same train as we were. Her name was Yanalte and we talked with her while we all looked for this building. We actually were able to find the building after that right away. We checked in with both the hotel and the DAAD to say that we were there. Hannah was assigned to room with Yanalte and I was assigned to room with the girl in front of me in line. We headed up to our rooms after checking in, unpacked, talked a while, and then went back downstairs. We then were able to talk with some of the people who had organized everything, and we also were reimbursed for our train tickets (good thing too, because 178 Euros is a little too much to be spending for just two days in a city which I first perceived as smelly). We were given passes for lunch and a drink so we set off from the lobby to eat lunch. The lunch looked very good, but it was chicken cordon bleu. I tried to eat it, but when I cut it, butter and cheese oozed out of every crease and did not feel that it was a good idea to digest so much dairy. After lunch we had a little down time before heading to our info session and our three hour workshop about Wahlues (I will explain later). The info session was just what you would expect it to be, informative. After that, we had a quick coffee break before heading to our workshop. This workshop was to be about values, but the instructor in the workshop was actually a Tuebingen University professor and he could not say the word values correctly, but instead just kept saying wahlues. It was kind of funny. The workshop was a little long, filled with prompts like:

What are the wahlues you have from being a US/Canadian citizen?

What are the wahlues you have from you parents?

What are the wahlues you have from your self?...etc

We had to answer these questions by writing them on a piece of paper. We then split into groups based on what we said we wahlued most. My wahlues were not named, so I ended up joining just some random group. We had to talk about this wahlue and then come up with a slogan and logo for it. It was a little tedious, and we ended up doing a bit of a cop-out in the end, because our topic was a little too similar to another groups'. After the group work, we were then prompted once again to write in our journals. At this point, I was just exhausted so I wrote answers that did not reflect my true potential, but rather entertained my humor in an effort to keep me awake.

For example:

Prompt- How will acting on my values in life affect me, I said:

Utilizing my values will make me a better person to the point of when I sing, little forest creatures will come and sing with me in unison.

Prompt- How do I show my values in life:

I show values through my actions and can help make the world a better place, like Captain Planet.

After the workshop was done, it was time for dinner. And after dinner, it was off to bed, as we had to be down to breakfast by 7:15 and checkout by 8:15. I woke up at 6:30, which is just a little too early, especially because it was a busy day the day before and I did not quite get enough sleep. After breakfast, we headed out to the Haus der Geschichte, which is a museum specializing in Germany's history after World War II and the Cold War. It was the most interesting museum I have ever been to, and I feel like I had learned so much about Germany's history, but beyond just statistics and facts. Our tour guide was so fascinating and very knowledgeable, which made the tour even better. He was a slightly older man, and was able to often give his own personal account on things as we were being given the tour, which I feel was very helpful as we were trying to understand Germany's history of struggle after the wars. He would also crack jokes about slightly inappropriate things or make comment to how he used to tell the ladies how beautiful the moon was when he was younger, or other things like that. Pretty funny, interesting, and productive day in general.

After the tour, Hannah and I left the DAAD party and had a little time to kill before our train left to go back to Tuebingen. We headed down the main shopping street, and found that they had a lot of interesting and familiar shops. I got excited when I saw a TJ Maxx, but then noticed that it was a TK Maxx instead. It is probably just that way because the way the Germans say J is way more inconvenient than saying K.

There was also a very magical Apotheke (pharmacy). Why was it so magical, you may ask. It was a unicorn Apotheke.

You now all know the German word for unicorn!

We caught our train back to Tuebingen, and after angrily having to stand while people passed us in the little aisles as we were trying to get to our seats, we sat down and started once again our four hour journey, a little more awake this time around. I fell asleep for a little bit, and Hannah, who was on the same side as the river, took lots of pictures for me on my camera, as hers was dead.

She didn't mean to get this picture, but the train was moving kind of fast!

You can really start to tell it's fall here! So pretty!

We passed by so many little towns along the Rhein! I even saw a person kayaking, and had a little twinge of homesickness as my kayak is at home, in my garage.

There were a lot of really old castles up above the small villages along the river, as I suspect it was a prime place to live when the river was a main source of transportation for people and goods.

It was a beautiful day!

We got back to Tuebingen, caught a bus back to the Altstadt, and made our way back to my place for the night, as we were exhausted. 

That is really all I have to write about Bonn, but do not be sad, because today was quite an adventure on its own!

Hannah and I decided that we wanted to go to IKEA today, as we wanted a few things for our rooms. I had looked up the train schedules and how to get there the night before, so we met up at 10:30am, did a little browsing in the shops around here, and then headed to the train station to catch our train at 12:17. We got on the train, made our way to Herrenberg, and then got off to transfer to the S-Bahn to take us to Boeblingen, near where the IKEA is. The only problem was we  had to buy tickets for the S-Bahn, so our five minute in-between time while changing trains, ended up being more like twenty minutes as we did not get on the first one and had to catch another one. We apparently were not the only ones riding the train that day, as the train quickly filled up with people sporting Stuttgart colors for the soccer match in Stuttgart that day. The train was so full that people were crammed up next to each other. When our stop finally came, we had to push our way off a bit, through quite a few smelly people, and a few good lookin' ones too. We went off in search of the bus that the Naldo bus website had told us to take. We found that because we missed our second train and had to wait for a little while, we missed our bus by just a few minutes and had to wait twenty or so minutes for the next one to come. When it finally did come, we got on, waited for our stop, got off, and found ourselves no where near the IKEA. Actually, the website had told us to go in the complete wrong direction! We then had to backtrack all the way back to the main bus station! It was a good thing it was such a nice day today!

We got back to the station a little pissed at the world and the Naldo website for giving us such terrible directions. Not only did they not get us to the IKEA, but it got us no where close, and even in the complete wrong direction! We checked all of the schedules again to look for a map!

Here is my rant, which written text just could not express my true feelings of the maps:

Again, Youtube... you suck at picking attractive looking snapshots from my videos.

So, after being even more angry at Boeblingen, their inability to have buses that run frequently, their inability to post accurate and useful maps, and of course at the Naldo website which had given us TERRIBLE directions (it was a completely different town, that's how bad the directions were), we decided to walk toward the direction of the IKEA from what we remembered from last time. As we were walking, we found a shopping center with a map on it! 

We found the street that we needed to go to, and some of the streets in the area, and then made our way back to the bus station to find a bus to take us there. I found a bus that would take us to the next town's bus station, which was right by the IKEA, so worst case: we would just have to walk a little bit and backtrack to the IKEA. As we were riding the bus, a couple came on to the bus with an IKEA cart, so we knew then that we had for sure hit the jackpot and had gotten on the right bus! Go Emily, for picking a good bus in the right direction this time!

We made it to IKEA, finally, and began our shopping. I bought a lamp, a 5 Euro table, and some kitchen ware, along with an actually supportive pillow and a cover for it. It was a very successful trip to IKEA, now it was just a matter of bring all of our stuff back!

Here was all of our stuff. The green thing is my table. The bag on the left was all my stuff, complete with a relatively heavy lamp. The two bags on the right were Hannah's and also filled with some stuff for Rachel who had asked us to pick up some things for her!

We got on the right bus, and then made our way back to a train to Herrenberg. At Herrenberg, we found the right train, which took another thirty minutes after us climbing on for it to leave the station and make it's way to Tuebingen. The day took a total of something like six hours, as we got back at about 6:00 at night. It was quite an adventure. After we got back, we just wanted to relax after such a stressful day. We bought some food, made it at my place, built my furniture, and watched a show on my laptop. We were later joined by Rachel, Jake, Jake's friend from home, and Adam. After a while, we decided on a late night run to REWE for some groceries, as a lot of shops were still open late tonight for some reason. After coming back from REWE, everyone went to go watch a movie at Rachel's, except me and Hannah that is. Hannah went back to go to bed, and I stayed back to relax, blog, and now go to bed! Tomorrow I will just be doing homework, and then later maybe a Leverage party at Rachel's! 

 LOVE LEVERAGE!!!

Monday I have one class, then I think it will be some shopping in the day, and then at night we are having a Halloween party here at Froschgasse! I will keep my costume a surprise until then!

So after a super crazy past couple of days, I will say goodnight, and talk to you later!