Day One: Adventures of No Sleep

**Sorry about my spread out blogging times in this post**

On the Airplane:

It feels like I shouldn't be starting a new post now because I am still stuck in yesterday. I didn't sleep AT ALL on the plane, and now my day in Germany is starting. It's currently 1:00 AM in Pittsburgh, but on the plane, it's beautiful, bright and sunny.

That Night:

For some unknown reason, I always thought being in another country would feel like a dream. Now that I'm so tired, it kind of does. I'm blogging from my hotel room after our first full day in Germany. It was truly amazing.

We landed in Munich and walked around the airport for a while, where Lindsey tested out her German skills. I wanted a pastry from a bakery but I know that I completely butcher the language, so she stepped up and ordered a "jagerkrusti" for me, which I thought was the chocolaty treat next to that sign.  Turns out it they actually didn't have it and thought we were just stupid German speakers. So I pointed to the longest word I could find in the pastry case to try to trick Lindsey, but she ordered it and we were surprised with a pumpkin roll! Oops, but it was still delicious! 

We don't look like tourists, right?

I exchanged my currency for euros in the airport, and, like a true American, the first thing I bought with euros was a tea from Starbucks. We took a bus to the hotel, and I tried my best not to fall asleep but to no avail. I slept for less than 10 minutes and woke up just as we approached the hotel.  We were assigned roommates (I got Sam and Sarah, some other girl engineering students) and we were given our pin number.  I don't know if all hotels around here work like this but we have a 6 digit number that gets us into both the hotel and our room. The reception desk is not open 24 hours like in hotels in America, so it's odd to me that we have to use our code to get into the hotel itself. The rooms are snug and nice but nothing to write home about (which is ironic because that's kind of what blogging is doing...). The three person rooms have a bed as soon as you walk in and two beds closer to the window. The bed is SO light that if you just bump it, it literally flies across the room. Not even exaggerating; it's actually pretty entertaining. It's very clear that the hotels are only for sleeping; there's very little luxury or space in each room. It would be pretty hard to hang out in one of these rooms, but luckily there are also quiet hours so maybe its for the best. OK now my biggest annoyance with the room... the shower door. The door is clear and its handle is just a circular hole in the door (of which all the water flies out). It's hinges swing both ways and when you open it, it just swipes all the water at the bottom onto the floor of the bathroom. And if you open it toward you, you get trapped behind the door and can't get out. Just dumb.

I didn't take a picture of my room... but here is the basic set up of a 2 person room (although I had 3)

Home for 2 weeks... (I didn't take this picture until our final night there)

After exploring the hotel for a little, we met the organizer from Germany's side, Sonia, and ate pretzels and sandwiches.  She gave us little University of Augsburg tote bags (perfect souvenir) with our itineraries and other little whatnots. We also got our first taste of German pretzels from a bakery called Wolfe (which I continued to go to all week because I loved the pretzels so much).
We then took the tram to downtown Augsburg, where we met up with a few of the German students who volunteered their time to hang with us. We toured Augsburg as a big group, where we are staying the whole time as kind of our home base. Some of my favorite spots on the tour were the cathedral (a church) with absolutely beautiful stained glass and the gold room in the Town Hall. Both the stained glass and gold room were so intricately detailed and unique.

Lindsey, Jan and me in the Golden room, and then me in front of a church in the city

Me with the first of many pretzels

We met up with a tour guide for the Fuggerei, which is the world's oldest housing complex. It is a series of beautiful apartment-like complexes that can house people who fit the requirements. The basic qualifications to live there is to be in good social standing in the society and to be in financial need. The rent is a symbolic 88 euro cents annually, which is crazy cheap. I loved the architecture of the houses.  They all looked as if they were made of clay and were covered in ivy.

During the tour, we started to get to know the German students, partially bonding because of our mutual desire to fall asleep while the tour guide talked.  As interesting as the tour was, the woman at Fuggerei was a boring presenter.  She spoke in a monotone voice and was not very engaging. I spent most of the time reading things in the pamphlet I found instead. My favorite part of the tour was when we went into the underground bunker from World War II. It was made into a sort of museum and had a lot of historical pictures from the war, some which were of places that we had seen on our earlier tour of Augsburg.

They ivy was beautiful. It reminded me of Madeline (the children's tv show/book)

At this point, I had gone roughly 27 hours without sleep. I was so loopy during dinner that I kept zoning out and missing conversation with my tablemates, Lindsey, Alex and Sydney. We had dinner at a beer garden that served traditional Bavarian food, where we (I think) were supposed to mingle with the German students, who all joined us, but we sat very separately.  I had already written two blog posts at this point, which we thought were funny. So one of the German students, Patrick, read my already typed blog posts for half the people there (I edited, after realizing how dumb it sounded out loud). Dinner was an experience for everyone, I think. We were served by waitresses in traditional Bavarian dress.  There was some sort of meat and gravy, along with some big yellow balls, which we had no idea what to expect.  Turns out they were potato dumplings. Patrick laughed our confusion to the weird yellow balls on our plates, saying "It's nothing more but potatoes. That's it." I ordered Spezi to drink, which is a German drink that is basically orange Fanta and Coke mixed together.  It's something that you wouldn't think to put together, but it works very well! For dessert, we had an apple strudel with literally vanilla sauce and I was very confused at the consistency. It was like melted ice-cream, but it was supposed to be like that. And it was delicious. 

Spezi was delicious! And if you're lucky, they serve it with an orange slice in it

Two tables of most of the American girls 

I saw.

I came.

I conquered.

Patrick (one of the German students) making fun of my selfie face

Veronica's Struggle of the Day:

I kept dropping things the entire time during the Fuggerei tour, in addition to tripping over several things. So after knowing the German students for less than a day, they concluded that I was a "schussel" or clutz. I think I'm going to make my signature "Sincerely Schussel" now...

Sincerely Schussel