Aachener Dom

The Aachener Dom (the cathedral in Aachen) is the freakin' best. Whenever I evaluate the beauty of a cathedral that I'm visitng, it has to be more beautiful than All Saints in Sewanee. The Aachener Dom is much more magnificent.

It's cool because the 1st part of it was built in 700AD by Charlemagne (charles the great or whatever) and it was built in an octogonal shape. There's other cool additions to it that are really pretty. The inside has this cool black and white marble thing going for it in the arches and there's lots of fun stories to go with the whole thing. One being that the black and white marble thing was used when modeling the throne room of Minas Tirith in the Lord of the Rings. No, that's not on Wikipedia. I learned that from watching LOTR extra footage DVDs. Yes, I know I'm a dork.

black and white arches like in Lord Denathor's throne room.

The chain holding the chandalier in the center of the octagon (pictured above) looks like it's the same size going all the way up. That's because each link is made a little thicker and a little stronger to give it that illusion (and to hold it up, I'm sure).

Here's my favoirite story about the Aachener Dom:

When the Dom was built, it was apparently so expensive to build that the people of Aachen had to make a deal with the devil in order to get it built. The devil was promised the soul of the first person who entered the completed church. Because it was a catherdral, it would be christened by the bishop and for the ceremony, he must be the first one to enter. Of course the devil thought that he was getting a great deal out of this bargain. But the people tricked the devil and sent a wolf into the church first. The devil was furious and ran to the church, but the doors were shut just in time.

It is said that the devil's thumb got stuck in the door and when you look closely at the doors, you can find his thumb. In the huge door handles, there is kind-of a thumb contructed from metal hidden where you would need to put your hand in to open the gigantic doors, if they were open-able.

Wikipedia has a lot to say about der Aachener Dom, too.


The Dom is totally pimped out with gold.

I was pretty efficient today. There's this thing called Schützenfest (an old hunting festival that's now all lame march parades. as you might guess, I'm not interested in celebrating it.) going on right now, so the kids didn't have school. The mom stayed home, though, so I didn't have to look after them. Instead I did about 5hrs worth of laundry and ironing (the fam's, not mine!). I also made two collages, went on a run, read some book (I'm reading "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. It's really well written! and also Le Petit Nicolas en francais, bien sûr!!) and I didn't fuck around on the internet except for a few e-mails answered, but that's all. Okay, maybe I wasn't so efficient, but the laundry really was a lot.

Do I use brackets too much? I could try footnotes. I like footnotes. It always feels like I'm finding something while reading.

July 4th

I skipped a really great July 4th CouchSurfing party in Bonn to celebrate Independence Day with one of my favourite ex-pats and some Germans.

Amanda had the idea to make this flag cake. I baked a yellow cake (vegan, of course) with sprinkles on the inside!! You know, like what you get when you're five? Amanda got soywhip, blueberries and strawberries from the store and then the magic happened.

Flag cake!

Amanda also had the idea from her Auburn days to pour vodka into a watermelon. You don't taste the vodka, but you do taste the nastiness that is watermelon.

Me and my friends out on Timo's balcony.


They found sliced cheese at the store, decided it looked more like playing cards than food and turned it into cards, however crudely.


The whole shibang. note the ketchup/mustard tube mix, american buns, tons of booze. also, quinoa salad. not pictured: tofu dogs.

Wine Tasting

I slept over at a friend's last night so in the AM we could go join some people for breakfast. We woke up to rain and a walk to be made across the city. I didn't have a jacket. Breakfast was nice; it was followed by a wine tasting in the city center. A French friend got me and some other kids hooked up with free invitations. I'm pretty sure that I was sampling some €100 bottles as well as some very high quality mustards (including fig and beer flavored mustards!).

I mostly hung out with a Japanese girl, who was fantastically and unabashedly inquisitive. We chatted a bit with the sellers at several tables and they cheerily refilled our glasses. One of the brand promoters shared with us how he viewed different nationalities described their wines. The Germans: very precise and analytical. It has this much sugar content and this much acidity. The French: very philosophical. Like a taste is more of a fashion of perseption. The Italians: like a woman.

One particularly remarkable wine that I recall was something like an "oak fruit" or the like. Sort-of a nutty, berry taste? It was cool. At the sampling tables, I would be given a list of their wines and their descriptions, but they abbreviated the descriptive words, I think, so trocknen, or "dry," had... just something else by it. Basically a lot of fancy wine terms in German, so something I already knew little about might as well have been written in Chinese. I played tag-along and did a lot of, "I'll have what she's having!"

I am so proud of me!

After studying with the girls for a while on Friday, I went out with my Alabamian friend to help her show her parents a bit of the city. They'd just flown over. They seemed like a pretty classy pair: the father, a southern gentleman with a hefty vocabulary in words that I would not share with my grandmother; the mom, poor thing, jet lagged and suffering from motion sickness, and Amanda, who was a little stressed for the remarkably calm girl that she is, trying to make it all perfect for them. I had a fun time, but later I realized that I shouldn't've spoken so much German at stores and whatever because Amanda had wanted to show her parents that she'd learned something. Woops. Me and my big mouth.


Everyone was outside today.

In the evening I went to a party where I spoke mostly German and some French, which I realized has really gone down the drain. There was beer and very nice people. It was good.

This morning I got up early and met some people to go to the Lindtt Factory. (Yes, I plan on mailing some souvenirs.) The nationalities were Indonesian, Polish, Turkmenistanish, and of course, yours truly, the not-so-typical American. We were all speaking terrible German together, but I'm sure it was good practice. Afterward I took the girl from Turkmenistan around. She seemed to be only interested in shopping, so I took her to some neat, small, expensive stores. Neither of us were intending to buy anything.


It was nice weather.

Now I'm home and I should probably go out again (A friend of mine offered to teach me some guitar today.), but I think I may just have a coffee, pull out Six Feet Under, (maybe!) study German, then perhaps have a walk before it gets dark. The fam is off in Dienslagen, so I haven't got a single worry!

In sum= Rachel+socializing+foreign languages= I have succeeded in something.

A March Snow

moring

It snowed again and this is sort-of what it looked like!

afternoon


Yesterday evening it snowed a bit as well. I was walking through the city with a friend and fellow aupair. It was beautiful while we bitched about the dreadful aspects of our jobs in complete understanding of one another.

Nice Weather!

Aachen is blessed with lovely weather about 5 days out of every month. Other than that, it's usually cold and sleeting. Yes. Even in July. Actually I wouldn't know because I'd retreated to France at that time, but you get my drift. I went outside and took some photos.



We don't get shadows too often here!


Some lovely street art.

What I did for Karneval....

I'm going to sum it up real quick:

Thursday

I was really busy (I know! Weird, huh?) and didn't do anything.

Friday

I was at a really lame birthday party where everyone was stoned, then somebody pulled out a guitar and they played the usual Dylan songs. I left "early," but then spent the night at a friend's flat and he showed me cool photography stuff.

Saturday

It forking snowed!!! Here's a photo:

Then I dressed up as a pirate and high tailed it to Cologne. We pre-gamed on the train:

This is me and I'm a fool.

This is Timo and he's a Bavarian.

That party lasted from about noon 'till 6AM the next day.

Sunday

This day is the most important in Holland. I went to Maastricht to meet couchsurfers, but because of the late night before, I got there late and missed them. Schade. On the upside, the weather was fantastic and the celebration a lot better in comparison to Aachen's parade the following day. The costumes were more unique, there weren't buckets of sweets being thrown into the streets and not so much drinking.

Monday

I met some German friends in the city. It was very cold, windy, and rainy. It even snowed a bit. As aforementioned there was sooooo much candy being thrown into the streets. I mean, you had to watch out or a 3lb box of chocolates would fall into your eye. Or worse, your beer, an indispensible liquid for warmth.

Karneval- a sum-up

The informative bit....

Karneval is a 5 day affair in this part of Deutschland, all along the river Rein, even including some Holland cities. It begins on the Thursday before Ash Wednesday. They call this day, "Fett Donnerstag," or, "Fat Thursday." It's called that because there's some kind of traditional fatty cake that's supposed to be made on this day. I have not seen one. The next three days aren't that important in Germany. I think that they give them each a flower name like, "Nelken Freitag," "Tulipen Samstag," and "Lola Sonntag," (the last I believe I made up) but they aren't really official. Monday is Rosen Montag and it's the day for the biggest parade. I totally forget the name for today, Tuesday, but it's got something special that's not entirely related to partying. (I'll edit it in later.)

Also, they have a day for the women (Thursday) and a day for the children (Monday). On Thursday at 11:11AM the women (in Aachen, at least) get the keys to the Rathaus (townhall) and open it and take over... or something like that. There's a whole bunch of dancing and music on this day; lots of kids about my age getting sloshed in the streets. Monday is the big parade day and they throw out TONS of candy in the streets.

They also have these... I'm not sure what to call them... royal families of Karneval, perhaps. A committee selects a prince, a treasurer, and some other folks and they become in charge of the communittee for the entirety of the festival. Kelmis, where I live, places a lot of importance on this and I would imagine that other small towns to as well. The prince has to attend all sorts of local events; I'm thinking stuff like BINGO at the old folks' home, but I'm not really sure.

Here's a photo of a friend of mine who was the treasurer in Kelmis a year or two ago:

The costumes varry a good bit. This one here is very traditional and very expensive. Like, €1000 or something. Some costumes are very ridiculous-looking; glittery, puffy sleeves and the like. Most are just very nice suits with the traditional hats like you can see in this picture:

There's a special kind of Karneval dance as well that can be pretty bad-ass. Because I cannot explain it very well, I'm posting the first two adequate YouTube videos that I found. The first is of some younger girls; you can see in the back the Karneval prince and the other important people. (They're wearing nice suits and funny hats.) The second is older, more skilled women dancing. Neither video is the coolest that I've seen, though. If they've got guys up there with them, there's be lots of lifting, throwing and tossing. Sort-of like "Bring It On," but German-style.

video 1
video 2

An Educational Momment: Brotchen

Brotchen is what we call the little bread that people eat here. There are different names for it all throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland and I'll tell you those once I find the book from my last German course (honestly, my room is better suited to a field mouse the way I keep it).

Back in December, when I was paying the Cologne Wheinachts Markts a visit, I ended up buying the bread for our little slumber party group. I don't know the names of any of these little breads, nor do I really care to learn. I mean, there's the one covered in sesame seeds, the whole wheat one with pumpkin seeds, the boring white kind, the pretzel kind, etc., so why bother with naming them with such litotes as Kaiser Brot?

When I was instructing the lovely baker woman as to which ones I would like, she deemed it an appropriate time to inform me of the breads' names to which I pointed with a tone that implied I should repeat, so as to learn the name. Between those awkward pauses I'd give a few, "Ja. Genau. Ich möchte das da." and wonder, 'Why does she have to exacerbate things if all this hungover, non-German kid wants to do is buy bread?' Even if I'd had my Vocab Diary back then, I wouldn't've bothered to write down such scrap. Eventually victorious, but feeling slightly deprecated, I marched back to the building where myself and the other kiddos were shacked up. Feeling that I had to prove a point to myself, I asked my lovely host if he knew the names of all the breads.

"Why, of course!", he quickly replied, "This one is Kaiser Brot and this here is...."

"That's enough, Ulf."

If I lived in France, everything would be a baguette and we'd all be settled and fine and happy.

Now some pictures of Brotchen. It says "Moss" all over the place because that's the name of this particular bakery chain.

^ Germany's lame excuse for a baguette. ^

^ These are pretty typical German breakfast stuff. ^

<-- and a wide array here. There's some more in the back.