Off campus escapades continue!
Studying off-campus from OWU is a rather simple matter. It involves a few trips to Blake Michael’s office(director of studying abroad), the filling out of not a few seemingly pointless forms, and then some more forms to top it all off and to be sure it has a healthy dose of bureaucracy. Also, a few meetings in there. As well as a lot of other things I’m glossing over for time and interest’s sakes. It’s straight-forward, though, and there are a ton of programs to choose from. Being a language major, it narrowed my choices quite effectively down. There were two that I was looking at by the end of things, namely Munich or Heidelberg, and through some smashing decision making arrived here. It’s a very nice program thus far, and I’m looking forward to the rest of my semester here. There are nigh limitless possibilities for the student in the Heidelberg program; there are a ton of classes to choose from after taking the DSH, which is the German language proficiency test. That’s what the first month of study here is spent preparing for; the group that I am here with gets a go at it on March 12. One can also get a part time job, and internship, or any number of other exciting things. I myself just got an internship at a local elementary school, where I will be herding wee-ones about as a mystical Native Speaker of English. Quite a good time, to be sure.
Heidelberg is a lovely town, and exploring it has been quite a joy. I highly suggest a solo hiking of the Holy Mountain from the very bottom; none of this sissy tourist taking a car to the top stuff!! And please be respectful to the area while you’re at it; some of the tourists were less than understanding of the sights to be seen, and that’s just beyond the tacky Hawaiian button-ups the best of tourists are usually prone to. But more on Heidelberg another day. Recently we spent the day in Frankfurt, saw Goethe’s childhood home (if you honestly have no idea who dear Goethe is, please go Google him at the least; Germany’s Shakespeare disserves at least a vague awareness, don’t you agree? He’s a bit bawdy at times for my tastes, though, to be quite honest. Erlkoenig is a nice poem, though.) as well as some of the most important buildings in the Holy Roman Empire. Important stuff, really. After the DSH we’ll be taking a trip over to Speyer, a city near Heidelberg. We also have a group trip to Berlin as well as another group trip towards the end of our stay that will hit several cities, including Weimar, Goethe’s city of choice, in which not a few very exciting Ginkgo trees will growing, much to my delight.
A slideshow of some pictures from Frankfurt
More pics from Frankfurt
German Word: Germany has many options of public transport. You've got the Busse, S-Bahns, U-Bahns, Zuge, and more. It's fantastic. Bus is clearly "bus", but it's pronounced 'boose' like 'moose'. An S-Bahn is a fast train for traveling within a city, an U-Bahn is an underground, and Zug means "train". There are several types of trains, though, so one has to be careful of which one one uses depending on how quickly one wants to get where!
In an entirely unrelated note, Patrick O’Hearn is working on a new album, which makes me happy in ways that I can not possibly fully articulate.
Enjoy some classic Patrick O’Hearn music while getting excited with me about the new stuff to come!
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