Marburg - First few weeks

Hello all and thank you for waiting. Much has happened over the last few weeks, and Berlin sure was beautiful. My american group and I walked all over the city, saw the nightlife, and visited plenty of bars. Little did you know, Berlin has legalalized prostitution and they are on about every corner. The busride was about 8 hours back but all in all Berlin is a must see city if youre ever in the area...i.e. europe.

Since Berlin, I have done much exploring, hiking, walking, bussing, baddle boating, etc. The city has a great bus system that bring me from my dorm in the mountain, down into the city, and to almost every key location i can think of. Walking is the biggest thing here, although bikes are popular (and extremely hard to get a hold of) costing at least 70 euro for the crappiest bike you could imagine. they go upwards of 1000 euro. I have seen one guy with a steet legal go cart, and a street legal 4 wheeler. they are pretty relaxed around here when it comes to the law.

One surprising thing is how many blind people there are here. There is a marburg school for the blind and ive never experienced such a rush of handicapped citizens. On another note, im thankful i can see because this place is absolutely beautiful. The clubs are kickin, the bars are fun, and the beer is...well, its german beer. Its much different here, being able to walk around the streets with open beer, and even drink on the city busses. The alcohol is so cheap and the quality is much better then those natty lights.

Class has started and one of them is up higher on the mountain I live on. Its nice to take a 10 minute bus ride and breathe in the fresh mountain air before 4 hours of intense german class, an hour break to get into the city, and then 2-3 more hours of intense german. sweeet. come 6 weeks, ill have class monday for 2 hours, tuesday for 2 hours, then a 5 day weekend.

apparently germany is modern country. you wouldnt have guessed by the fact that they dont have INTERNET. its impossible to find and im stealing a fellow americans' who stole it from a japanese girl living in his building. You have to supply your own here. My neighbor in my building may get it in 3-5 weeks but then it may cost 25 euros which isnt to my liking. Ive finally started grocery shopping and cooking. There have been many cooking fails so far. Since im not yet fluent in german, i ended up buying a whole chicken instead of what i thought was a package of chicken breasts. I had volunteered to cook for a group that day and i felt bad when dinner was ready 3 hours late. Last night I had someone teach me how to make pasta. easy enough but id never done it before. Today, I had a learning experience with eggs. oh how much you learn when you dont get have a dorm cafeteria or you dont actually speak the native language. I feel like the next 3 months are going to be interesting.

There are plenty of activities here, and no reason to be bored. Yesterday I went paddle boating down the river that runs through Marburg, I went to a club, walked around town, and went to a bar. Today we hiked to the tower that the repulzer story was based off of. We also hiked through a mountain full of live WWII bombs that hadent exploded. It was nice the warning sign not to go off of the path was at the BOTTOM of the mountain.

Overall I wouldnt have the time to write about the amazing experiences and the awesome people here but i hope this little recap helps you all understand that life in Europe is 1000x different in europe. There is no easy button here. Everything is different. laws are different, the way people act is way different. going to the supermarket is even hard. if youre ever in a bad situation, just be happy you atleast have the chance to figure things out in english.

now that some of my friends have the internet, i may be able to keep up with the blog. I apologize for keeping yall waiting and there will be more frequent posts from here on out. caio