I haven’t written in a while; so, I thought I’d give ya’ll an update.  Germany is amazing; it was a little iffy there for a while when I had a few bouts of homesickness…though I had a few instigating factors. One instigator was when my professor gave me a B+ on a 3-page paper because it “wasn’t enough like a newspaper article.”  W.T.Heck?! There is no such thing as a 3-page newspaper article!  In my almost 8 years of journalism I have learned enough to know that your editor would KILL you if you wrote a 3-page article.  Then, I hurt my back and couldn’t walk.  I went to the doctor and he gave me a script for 600mg of Ibuprofen and a shot of what I am pretty sure was saline.  Thanks, Doc, I keep 200mg of Ibuprofen in my purse, and I know how to multiply.  Then, we had a few conflicts with in the R-87 group, but we’ve worked it out.  Tension within the group always happens during this time of the semester; people just get tired of each other.  To future study abroad students, it’s okay to want to kick your fellow classmates in the teeth.  People are generally obnoxious creatures, (with the exception of myself, of course) and spending almost all of your time together doesn’t help matters.  I found that venting really helps. If you are looking for someone to vent to, you can always Skype with me.  My screen name is digginfordollars.  Also, taking a nice long walk always helps ease stress.

Don’t worry things have definitely improved since my bout of homesickness. We recently activated our Eurail passes, and we have been making quite good use of them.  That is partly the reason why I haven’t posted in a while.  So far I have traveled to Budapest, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Spain.  They all were amazing!

I finished both my Beer and Wine degrees, and I am thinking about putting it on my resume right next to the part where I mention that I am a Reverend.  Don’t believe me? I have the certificate to prove it!  My friend Hanna came for the weekend and we got a diploma together; she got her wine and I got my beer.  We ended up playing Go Fish with coasters that night, and the funny part is that it actually worked! We both have keen imaginations.

Bethany in Barcelona

Since my last post, I have also acquired a pet duck named Bethany, and I love her.  We have been traveling the world together. Get ready for some amazing pictures.  She is currently sitting next to me while I write this little blurb. (Don’t worry she’s a stuffed animal.)

Let see, what else can I tell you…I started reading Catcher in the Rye again.  I love Holden Caulfield.  I really do.  I identify with him.  I feel bad for not actually reading it in high school.  Sorry, Mr. Hill.  It’s not that I didn’t like you; I just didn’t like being told what to read.  I think I might have Oppositional Defiance Disorder.  It’s a real disorder look it up on Google.  I’ve always wanted  to use that as an excuse.  “I’m sorry I didn’t finish the homework professor, I have a ODD.”  How far do you think that would get me? I’ve also always wanted to ask a teacher how to spell a word during a spelling test.  What do you think they’d do? Now I am off track.  I hate it when I do that.  I was telling you about life in Germany.  Like I said before, Germany is pretty much amazing.  I have discovered 3 new addictions: Bretzels, Haribo candy, and Rittersport.  And that is pretty much the summary of the Life of Hayden at the moment.  Stay tuned for more in the days to come. Ciao!

We rarely go to class here in Reutlingen.  As a case in point, our professor took us to Budapest for 5 days were we visited both Buda and Pest.  It’s two cities combined. Get it?  And as I don’t really feel like writing about the trip take a peek at the video below.  Enjoy!

Just an update for those who read my last post, my zit problem is getting much better. I found some of my prescription zit cream, and I have declared war on those pesky zits.  I am winning.  I am proud to say that I am now only battling one white capped devil, and it is looking like I am going to come out as victor.  Woot Woot!!

Okay now on to the next post….

My parents keep asking me, “Do the you ever go to class?” The answer is not really.  Here’s our class schedule:

Not too bad, right? Remember, this program is geared toward achieving a European experience and traveling on the weekends is highly encouraged.  I may not be learning in a traditional academic setting, but I am definitely getting an education.  Since arriving here in Germany I have visited Stuggart, Zweifalter, Tubingen, Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Thuringia, and Saarland. With every trip I have gained valuable lessons.  For instance, what to do if you missed a connecting train because you were busy getting a noodle box.  I have the answer to that! I haven’t had a chance to post much about these experiences, but I will soon!

You might be wondering when I am not playing world traveler, what do I with my time… Learn, of course! Like I said in an earlier post, I am in Frau Brixner’s German 101 class where we learn how to speak German.  “Sehr Gut!”  The director of our program, Professor Szaniszlo teaches German life and Culture, where we learn about Germany’s life and culture, duh.  She also teaches a Math class, which I am not taking, thank God.  I am not much of a math student….

Herr Springer is our Art History Professor, and we are learning about the history of Gothic, Medieval, and Renaissance art.  He has us perform “living paintings” every class period.  Basically, we get into groups and act out a famous painting and he guesses the artist and the name of the painting.  It’s amazing he get’s it right 90% of the time, which is incredible when you look at our acting.

Mary of Egypt Among

Madonna with the Goldfinch

The Creation of Adam

Er in Arcadia Ego

Amunciation, detail of Fresca

Jake as David

The Last Super

In Herr Veit’s class we learn about the German and European economic system, which sounds really boring, but it is actually quite interesting.  Did you know that Germany is in the top 4 economic nations in the world, and they were the first to emerge from the economic crisis? How you ask? In a nutshell companies shortened the work week from five days to four days instead of laying off employees.  When the German economy began to bounce back the companies simply gave their employees more hours instead of wasting time training new employees.

See mom and dad, I am definitely getting an education here!

Disclaimer: If you have a queasy stomach, please do not read this post.  You won’t like it. But if you are the average young person who suffers from a blemish here and there you might want to take a gander.

This is what I have resorted to...

I am embarrassed to say it, but I am breaking out like a mad woman.  My face is having a zit fit.  It’s gross. It’s not like these pesky pimples are popping up in my normal “hotspots” (right next to my nose); nope, they’re everywhere, on my cheeks, under my chin, on my forehead, everywhere.   Seriously, it’s disgusting.

It’s gotten so bad that every time I show my face on Skype people make comments, “What’s that on your face?” It’s a zit darn it!  Isn’t it nice that people are taking notice from halfway across the freaking planet. It’s quite encouraging. Most people that I have talked to have also been quick to give me advice, “Well, have you been washing your face?” No, I actually douse my face with oil every night.  Unless you are a dermatologist or have lived abroad and had a similar problem, then you can’t comment.  As if I wasn’t embarrassed enough, my mom also comments on my newly blemished face.  My favorite, “That looks like it hurts!” Thank you Captain Obvious would you like to comment on any of my other imperfections?

For a while now, I have been trying to figure out the source of the problem.  Originally, I thought it may be due to the water here in Reutlingen, and I thought my face would clear up in a few weeks. False.  I’ve been here for a little over a month now and my incessant acne just keeps getting worse.  Then, I thought it may be the alcohol, but I don’t drink that often and I am not giving that up anytime soon. Right now I am thinking it’s all the traveling we have been doing lately.  Train stations aren’t the cleanest places on the planet and my skin may not be adapting all that well.   For now that’s the best answer to this embarrassing predicament.

If you haven’t read my bio, I am a nursing major, which means that I love puss; I think it’s a prerequisite in the field.  With that said, I, of course, pop my zits.   I can’t help it.  There is something truly satisfying about expelling that cream-colored junk and then dabbing the remaining crater with a toilet paper square. Lately though, I have grown tired popping my white caps.  Plus, I really don’t want scares all over my face.

You may be wondering if have I tried to cover up these mini volcanic masses? The answer is yes, but all of the foundation in the world won’t cover up my little problem. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and went to the bathroom and was so horrified with my face that I decided that I to find a solution immediately.  I Facebooked a former Reutlingen study abroad alumnus from whom I am still awaiting a response.  I got on the proactivsolution.de site to order some Revitalizing Toner, but I couldn’t get the toner to stay in the cart.  I kept getting the “Ihr Warenkorb ist leer. Bitte klicken Sie hier, um Ihren Einkauf fortzusetzen.” Which means: “Your basket is empty. Please click here to continue shopping.” It was not! I had just clicked the “Bestellen” (order) button! I eventually gave up and continued my search over the internet.  I didn’t find much, but I learned some important German words:

Zit = der Pickel

pimple =  die Noppe

Face = Gesicht

face wash = Gesicht Dusch

white head =  der Hopfentrieb

puss = die Fresse

So, there’s your German lesson for the day.  I will keep you updated on my zit dilemma unless I get in trouble for the content of this post, in which case you can email me hayden.oshaughnessy@valpo.edu.  I will be happy to answer any questions, especially to those who are interesting in studying abroad in the future! Thanks for reading!

View of Tubingen houses from the river.

Another amazing view of the houses of Tubingen along the river.

Remember me telling you in an earlier blog  that Reutlingen was the quintessential German town? LIES!! Tubingen totally takes the cake. Tubingen is an adorable college town.  It was one of the few places in Germany not destroyed during the war.  All of the medieval aspects of the town are preserved.  It has narrow cobble stones streets that wind around the town.  According to our Professor, Herr Springer, it is super easy to get lost if you don’t know what you are doing.  Veronica, Katy, and I loved Tubingen so much that have been there twice since we got to Germany.  It is just gorgeous! The first time it was rainy and Herr Springer took us on a short tour and told us a little bit of the history of the town.  Herr Springer is our Art History professor and he is pretty awesome!  He lives in Tubingen and has done some pretty interesting things in his lifetime.  He crossed the US from Boston to Los Angeles hitchhiking, and he won a semi-offical race contest on the big water slide of the open-air pool in Tubingen.

Frau Brixner cutting Nate's food. Nate broke his arm and isn't great with utensils.

The same day Herr Springer took us on the tour of Tubingen, we had our first faculty dinner where we met the Brixners for the first time. We all LOVE the Brixners!!! They are our German language professors and are a ton of fun! The Brixners have been with the program since its beginning! Our group is Reutlingen-87, just to give you an idea of how long the Brixners have been with the program.  I have Frau Brixner for my German 101 class and she is a hoot! There are only 4 of us in her class so we all get a lot of personal attention.  The other day she asked me to “springen sie!” which means to jump.  That is the first time a professor has asked me to jump during class.  I wish I knew how to say “how high?” in German.

Graffiti house

Katy, Veronica, and I went back to Tubingen the next weekend when it was warm and sunny.  During our second trip, we ate at this cute little Italian restaurant, and the food was delicious.  After spliting a banana split we continued our walk around the Tubingen and took a ton of pictures! We will definitely be returning again soon!

Mercedes-Benz museum view from the outside.

Professor Szaniszlo took us on a class trip to Stuggart, capital of Baden-Württemberg.  When we arrived we took a tour of the Mercedes-Benz museum.  The beginning of the movie Get Smart with Ann Hathaway and Steve Carell pretty much exemplifies the atmosphere of the Mercedes-Benz museum.  When I walked into the state-of-the-art facility I seriously thought I had become a secret agent and was entering headquarters.  It was SWEET!!!  It was probably the coolest museum that I have ever been to.  The museum was modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in New York and was finished in 2006.  The entire building is state-of-the-art; every building material is top-of-the-line, even down to the cement which has a higher concentration of cement than the normal stuff making the walls feel like marble.  Pretentious much?…I think so! Our tour guide dressed like a secret agent and took us to the top floor using a futuristic looking elevator where the walls were lined with the leather in a Mercedes Benz.  Seriously, look up pretentious in the dictionary, you will find Mercedes Benz.

We only had around an hour and forty-five minutes to spend in the museum, and according to the guide one could spend more than forty-two hours in the museum in order to see everything! Crazy, I know, but totally true. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery early on during the tour so I didn’t get many pictures, but I took a lot of mental ones! Click!

Futuristic elevator we took to the top floor where we started our tour with our guide, the secret agent.

After the Mercedes Benz tour, we got lunch at the train station and then we were off to take a bus tour of Stuggart.  Our tour had both English and German speaking people so our guide spoke in both languages!  First she would speak in German, and then she would start speaking in English!  I was flabbergasted!  Even though we had an awesome guide, I regrettably suck at bus tours.  I tend to fall asleep within five minutes of the tour; I think it’s a combination of sitting down, the moving bus, and listening to a person with an accent that just puts me straight to sleep. Ask my parents about our trip to Ireland… So, I missed like two-thirds of that tour.  I did wake up just in time to go up in the TV tour.  I don’t remember how tall it was (I was asleep for that part of the tour), but the view was gorgeous. The sun had just come out and you could see for miles. I had to take a mental picture for that part of the tour too.  Click!

I got over the whole “What the Hell was I thinking” phase pretty quick.  Pretty much the second after we touched down in Munich, I entered the “O.M.G!” phase, and I think this phase is going to last a bit longer than the last one.  Germany is could quite possibly be the coolest place on earth!  After everything we see, I am like “O.M.G!”  Not literally, only newbs and divas actually talk like that, but figuratively.  I don’t sleep much anymore because I am too excited about what the next day will bring! So, if my eyes look bloodshot in the pictures I post, it’s due to lack of sleep; I haven’t been to Amsterdam yet…

We took Mercedes Benz bus to the University after we arrived in Stuggart.  Crazy right?! Mercedes is to Germans like McDonalds in the US; they are everywhere.  I’ll tell you more about it later on in the blog. Get excited!

Once we arrived on campus, Suszanna took us on a walk through town.  That’s when the “O.M.G’s!” really started to roll off my tongue.  (remember, figuratively, not literally) Reutlingen is what one would think of as the quintessential German town.  Google “German houses” and you will see what I am talking about.  As we walked through the town that night on the cobble stone streets with the Christmas lights were hanging above us; I turned to Veronica and was like “This can’t be real life!”  Except it is! Life couldn’t really get any better than this!

We stopped and ate dinner at Piatzo, which is like a fancy Italian fast-food restaurant, kind of like Noodles in Valpo.  I had the Salami Pizza and a Heferweizen; it was delicious! I have discovered a newfound love for pizza and beer, and that I am a lightweight.  Now Mom, I didn’t get drunk the first night, not even close, it was just one of my many discoveries thanks to magnificent Germany! 

For the past 48 hours I have had only one recurring thought going through my head: “What the Hell was I thinking?!!!”

Here’s how it all went down: I had my last dinner with the family the night before I was going to leave for Germany.  During dinner, I kept thinking about was how I was nowhere near ready to leave the country! I hadn’t even really started packing!! eeekkk What was I thinking? What were my parents thinking? I am a disorganized, irresponsible, self-centered, and not to mention accident prone, 20 year-old.  I mean, really, who in their right mind would allow me to leave the country??

Luckily, Eric my ex-boyfriend who was just in Germany this past semester was on Skype that night to aid me in the packing process. He also calmed me down after every single freak out, and there were a lot. (We are still on good terms…Obviously.) I didn’t finish packing until around 3:30 in the AM… Go me!  After finally falling asleep my mom walked in the room singing a little tune about how it was time to get up and get my butt out of the country.  I don’t really remember the words because I had my head buried in my pillow.  However, once she saw all the crap that I had packed, her sweet little tune turned into more of a rage as she flipped-out about how it would be impossible for me to cram it all on the plane. We had a little knock-down-drag-out about the whole packing situation, but we resolved in the end with minimal tears. I can’t really blame her for being angry; there was a lot. Although in my defense, I only brought the bare necessities in my two oversized rolling duffel bags, my medium sized purple carryon, my camera bag, and of course my backpack.  And you wouldn’t believe it, but I got it all on the plane! Win!!! Not to toot my own horn, but…. “TOOT!”

When we finally made it to the airport where LaDonna gave me my Eurail pass; then, I proceeded to go and check my luggage for the first time in my life.  A few choice words went through my head, but I won’t disclose them here.  Email me if you want to know.  Even with those PG13 thoughts rolling through my head, I did it! I actually put on my “Big-girl Panties,” and successfully checked my luggage on my own. Double win!!  We grabbed some pictures of the Reutlingen and Cambridge groups then we were off to security, which I also cleared!  I was on a roll!

While we were waiting to board flight 907 destination Munich I had my last meal, a Big Mac with large fries and a large Diet Coke, an American Classic.  As I was sitting there enjoying my scrumptiously greasy treat, the only thought running through my head was once again, “Good Golly Molly! I am going to Germany! What the Hell was I thinking….”