Gutentag Lüneburg!
I have successfully made it to Germany! Can you believe it? A couple of slight snafus along the way though.... Yesterday I went to pick up my ticket for the train to Germany, and their machine couldn't read my credit card. I had already purchased the ticket several weeks ago, and was supposed to pick it up when I got to Paris. They told me that since they couldn't read the card, I had to buy a new ticket and whoops, it now cost €400. I got very upset, because if there's one thing I don't have it's €400 (though now I can type it what with these newfangled European keyboards!) and if there's another thing I don't have it's the ability to successfully communicate in French. They kept asking me, "Parlez vous un petite Francais?" which I took to mean, "You can't even speak a little French? You stupid American!" and I just kept running the words through my head that I knew. Dimanche. Gauche. Poussez (push). Tirez (pull). Nothing of use. Eventually they brought the manager over who unplugged all the little machines and then replugged them back in. It could finally read my card. I got my ticket and I was on my way!
But before I left, with the help of one of my art history professors, Joanne Lukitsh, I was able to find the Island of the Grande Jatte, aka, the island where Georges Seurat painted his famous painting, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grande Jatte." I went and took about a million pictures and walked all around the island. I've decided that once all my loans from grad school are paid off (ha ha) and I'm independently wealthy (ha ha ha) I'm going to summer on that island. It has apartments on it and everything. It's a little bit far away from the city, but I wouldn't mind, because it's incredibly beautiful, and quite scenic.
After spending some time at the park I made my way to Gare du Norde, the train station in Paris, where I boarded my train to Hambürg. I had a cabin that I shared with this very nice German girl named Alexandra. We stayed up late talking and reading. We were going to watch "Ally McBeal" which she had on her laptop, but we fell asleep. It was just like a real slumber party!
I got off the train in Hambürg and got on the train to Lüneburg, which was only about twenty minutes. I met up with Wiebke, the German girl who the program set me up with as kind of a study buddy, and she showed me around town and the campus a bit. Later on we're going out to lunch and then I get to see my apartment. Hooray!
Right now I'm in the computer lab on campus. I definitely like the keyboards in Germany more than the ones in France. In France the letters were all over the place, but here it's almost exactly the same, except instead of QWERTY in QWERTZ. Oh, and look at all the letters I can type without having to press alt: ü ö ä ß
Those crazy Germans! What will they think of next?