"Schönes Leben, schöne Welt"

     Monday evening I met Kalle, Andrea, and Ben in Goetheplatz where they were having a little picnic. We hung out for a bit and went for a walk once it was too cold to sit still any longer. Tuesday evening I went out for drinks with Niall, Marcella, and Matt. We also met up with Niall's friend, Sebastian, and another German stranger who ended up joining our table. We went to a "Rock" bar, which was quite the interesting atmosphere and unlike any other bar I've been to in Mainz. On Wednesday, Joe and I hung out. We went to a pizza restaurant that I had been wanting to try, and then we went for some ice cream at one of my favorite places. It was nice to hang out with him, as it had been a few weeks. I got some drinks with Marcella, Clare, Judith, and Martha on Thursday afternoon. We also went together to buy tickets for the theater on Saturday so we could sit together. Friday was hot, and the rest of the weekend only got hotter. Niall, Clare, Marcella, Matt, Tom (Matt's friend), Sebastian, and I had a little barbecue on the Rhein in the evening. We grilled some food and hung out for a few hours. Afterwards, we went out to some bars. Clare, Marcella, and I went for dinner on Saturday, followed by the theater with Martha, Judith, and Daniel. We saw Don Giovanni, and apparently a very modern version of it. I wasn't familiar with the story beforehand, but Clare, Daniel, and Martha talked about how modern and weird it was. I basically spent the whole time reading the German translation, as I obviously couldn't understand any of the Italian being sung.

     Sunday was when my real weekend adventure began. I made my way to Frankfurt where I got my bus to Nürnberg. The bus ride was only about 3.5 hours and I was able to take a nap. Once I made it to Nürnberg, I caught a local train to the festival, Rock im Park. Marc met me at the train station, and we went back to the camper. I met his friends, whose names I can't remember, and we grilled some food and chatted awhile before we headed to see the bands around 5:30pm. We first saw Fall Out Boy, who was better than I expected. We saw a little bit of Die Fantastischen Vier on our way to see Young The Giant, and both were good. There weren't that many people at the Young the Giant stage, so we got up to the second row. Finally, it was time for Linkin Park, the headliner for the day. Germany continues to surprise me with how inefficient it can be, and Rock im Park was no exception. For some reason, the crowd was divided into three sections. To get into the first two, which were the closest to the stage, you had to go through a series of gates SINGLE FILE. They also would not let you through the gates until they decided that enough people had left. There were thousands of people trying to get through these gates, and they made us wait 15 minutes to do so. Naturally, the crowd got restless and angry, and began pushing. By the time they finally opened the gates and began the process of letting people in one by one, I was easily touching 5-8 other sweaty bodies (keep in mind that it was in the low 90s that day) at any given moment. I probably could have lifted my feet off the ground and not moved at all. Once we actually got in front of the stage, we only had to wait a few minutes until Linkin Park started. I've always liked Linkin Park, and they put on a fantastic concert. They were easily my favorite act of the day. Afterwards, we saw Jan Delay & Disko No. 1, as well as Example. We didn't stay at either for very long, as it was nearly 2am at this point. We went back to the camper, ate, chatted some more, and then went to bed.

Made from beer bottles. It is Germany, after all.

     Monday morning we got up, had some breakfast (yes, still a typical German breakfast despite the location), and then they walked me to the train station. The trip home was rather uneventful. Since I had not showered since Sunday morning and then continued to sweat for the next 24 hours, I stunk pretty badly. I was probably a little too excited to get home and take a cold shower.

     Today I had my first test! It was in my Translation Skills 1 class, where we translate from German to English. I was only allowed to use a monolingual German dictionary (the German students were only allowed a monolingual English dictionary). My dictionary is for those who learn German as a foreign language, so the definitions are a bit more simple and clear. We had 30 minutes to translate 7 lines of text. This text happened to be about Wikipedia and the false information that ends up on it. I took the whole 30 minutes, spending time tweaking and rereading it. We are only allowed 7 mistakes on the test, otherwise we fail it. I'm very interested and nervous to see how I did.

     This weekend I'm heading to Leipzig where my friend Max lives. Max is a friend I met at MSU who is from Germany. He spent the past year studying abroad at MSU, and he just returned home. We're going to spend the weekend sightseeing around Leipzig before we head to Berlin on Sunday where we will meet up with Zou, a friend from Belgium who also studied abroad at MSU last Fall. Excited is an understatement!