Bells! (and hot mulled wine.)

On November 29, 2011May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany6 Comments

This is up in the upper levels of the Regensburg Arcade, which is basically a shopping mall:

The outside of the building is draped with the dangling blue-white strings of lights also. I have no idea if this is a year round decoration, or if this is a holiday thing, but it looks beautiful. I doubt most of the people who go to the Arcade even bother to look up, but the decorations are quite lovely..

As I walk around Regensburg, its hard to miss that all the Christkindlmarkt, or Christmas Markets, have opened up. We walked past a rather large one in the old city the other night on the way to other food and drink establishments. There were large crowds, a carousel, and a whole lot of tents.

Last night, I went with some people from my office to a Christkindlmarkt that was held at an actual castle, Thurn and Taxis. A castle! There are quite a lot of castles in Germany, including the one that the traditional Disney castle was based on, from what I’ve been told.

At the Christkindlmarkt, I had a chance to try Glühwein, a hot mulled wine. I had been warned about its potency and it’s deliciousness in advance, so I deliberately went slowly. Still, there were many different varieties and flavors, and when it’s that cold outside, a hot mulled beverage is very easy to consume rapidly. I stuck with the apfel (apple) flavored variety, but I may need to go back to try the blueberry sometime soon.

After the hangover from the first round is done, that is. (Kidding!)

I’m feeling a little foggy…

On November 24, 2011May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany

The weather report (well, one of the weather reports; they don’t all agree) says it’s going to be unseasonably warm tomorrow, and I don’t think I should believe it. The weather has been hovering pretty close to 0C, sometimes just above it and sometimes just below it. It’s been cold and wet and foggy and just generally not sunny for most of the time I’ve been here.

Here, to illustrate my point, is an Ikea. No, really, there’s an entire Ikea store in this picture! A giant enormous Ikea! Just up the hill there:

That picture was taken on my first Monday here. I have since seen the building a little bit more clearly, but never with the sun shining on it. The sun shone a little bit my first Saturday, and a lot on my first Sunday, and then only once since then. It’s just been misty and foggy and generally gloomy.

When I’m taking the bus into work in the morning, I rarely have a good distance view of the countryside. The basketball hoop pictured to the right? I’m not entirely certain that there’s not an entire high school basketball team back there, hidden just out of view in the fog.

The days here are incredibly short right now, and I find myself looking forward to a month from now, when the planet turns just slightly and the days start to get just a little bit longer, day by day.

But first, and more importantly, I badly need to find an apartment. I’ve been looking since I got here, but it’s been difficult. For one thing, I don’t speak enough German (yet) to navigate this without help. I’ve been relying pretty heavily on the people in my office to help me make sense of everything. They’ve been helping me by finding listings, making phone calls for me, and even going with me to look at flats when I can arrange to meet the Immobilien (basically a realtor for those of you back home.) I’m approaching the end of my second week in the hotel, and I’m starting to get a little stir crazy. Eating out every night is only fun when it’s a choice and not a necessity. I want my pasta boat, damn it.

Fur-many

On November 22, 2011May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany4 Comments

Puppy Bus — A girl and her pup on the bus.

Back in October, Jan from This German Texan posted about Germans and their dogs. I read it, filed it away mentally, and then forgot about it until I got here- and started to see the same thing. Germans take their dogs **everywhere!** The picture to the left is from my daily bus ride- that little fellow was just snoozing away the ride.

Last week, Michael from the office took me to a traditional Bavarian restaurant. At one point someone walked into the restaurant with a little yappy dog, and there was a round of solid loud barking between that dog and the one four inches from my feet- the gentleman to my left had brought his very large, very relaxed dog with him and the larger dog was so quiet and well behaved that I didn’t even realize there was a dog there until the interaction with the newer smaller dog. And this was the kind of dog you could put a saddle on.

Yeah, Jan was right. Germans take their pups everywhere.

Dinner

On November 17, 2011May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany

Dinner, a photo by stevenglassman on Flickr.

Two mistakes were made by me on this dinner.

Mistake the first: I’m still not used to the value of a euro, so I didn’t realize I was buying an ENTIRE pizza. I felt guilty for wasting food so I ate half the pizza before I could eat no more. It was delicious, but there’s no fridge in my hotel room, so I have no idea what I could have done with the second half.

Mistake the second: I thought I was eating at Joey’s Pizza, but I spotted Joey’s Pizza across the street as I was walking back to the hotel afterward. I was in the incredibly accurately named “Pizza & Pasta,” which was delicious. I just wasn’t where I thought I was. Oops!

First Day.

On November 16, 2011May 30, 2020 By StevenIn Life In Germany2 Comments

My first few days here have been a rush of Getting Stuff Done, coupled with occasionally sleeping. I posted before that I got in on Saturday, but what you can’t tell from the post is that shortly after I wrote that entry, I passed out and slept for more than twelve hours.

When I woke up, it was Sunday and I had time to explore the city a bit. I first walked over to Sam Kullman’s Diner which is an American style of diner, all neon and chrome. The website shows a location that’s even physically styled like an American diner, but the Regensburg location isn’t quite as obvious. If I hadn’t been on foot, I might not have spotted it at all, even though I was actively looking for it.

Still, the food was a nice breakfasty start to my Sunday. From there I walked through the old city a little bit.

Regensberg has a lot of tourism, as it turns out. First of all, there’s a lot of very, very, VERY old architecture here. There’s an Old Stone Bridge that was built by the Romans, and which still gets foot traffic. There’s a lot of industry here- there’s a BMW factory nearby (that’s Bavarian Motor Works… I forgot entirely that BMW is a Bavarian brand until I got here.) Siemens has a major presence here. There’s a massive company called Krones which I had never heard of until this week, but they make parts for other factories, and they have a huge employmee base here. There’s also a university which is the bane of my existence while apartment hunting- it turns out that they had a higher number of students than ever this year because of a recent change to their enrollment rules, so a lot of the good apartments have been scooped up by students in the weeks and months just before I got here.

I digress, however- I was talking about Sunday and my walk through the touristy bits. The Old Stone Bridge, and the really impressive Cathedral in the old city are both really impressive to see. I also went to a historical museum, the Museen der Stadt Regensburg,” which had artifacts from the middle ages- architecture, stained glass, stonework, paintings. I walked into the museum originally because I was still a fair distance from the hotel and I really had to use a restroom, but I’m glad I stayed and walked through the museum after. I’ll have to go back some time in the future when I understand enough German to read the labels on everything.

Speaking of the loo, one of the random differences that I love about this place is that restrooms are often marked as WC, which as fans of any BBC Brit-com will know, is short for “Water Closet.”

The latter part of Sunday, I walked further into the old city to visit an Irish pub called Murphy’s Law. A Strongbow and a shepherd’s pie made a perfect dinner for my first full day in my new city. I’m fond of telling people that the best meal I had during the entirety of a two week trip to Hong Kong in 2008 was at an Irish pub. What can I say? I like Irish food. And drink.

Due to a flaky hotel WiFi connection, this took much, much longer than I had intended to write up, so I’ll stop here.