When bored, go see a castle...

If I haven't said already in my previous posts, Sundays can get pretty boring in Germany because nothing is open and students at the University use it as a day to get their work done (no different from home of course).

I was going to spend today just fiddling around on my computer, listening to the NFL Playoffs, and getting some mild work done in between, but last night I found out that there was a castle in the Dortmund area! Why weren't we ever told about this?

It turns out, the castle is not marketed to the public because it is still a private residence. Schloß Bodelschwingh is located northwest of Dortmund-Mitte and definitely off the beaten path. Although I guess everything around Dortmund is well off the beaten path.

The property has been in family ownership since 1302, although the main part of the castle was not built until 1618. Since the family still resides in the house, no tourists may enter. They are only permitted to walk up the driveway and to the gate nearby the castle and its surrounding buildings. I took this photo this afternoon while the sun protruded a nice light from the sunset. It looks warm, but its actually really cold!

Well now I'm back from my quick excursion, which took only 20 Minutes by Train followed by 15 Minutes walking, and now I'm back to procrastination. When the weather warms up, I'll try to find some more interesting places around the area.

"Creme Seife" - A Tale of the Ages

It was one of those Ganske-style mistakes. Something that could live in infamy or something that will just be laughed about for a few weeks. One simple blunder mean't everything...

The day was Tuesday, the 10th of January, 2006. The weather in Dortmund was very cold, so cold in fact that the wind also blew and the weather dry. With this, I found that my skin became very dry and more importantly my face. In order to solve this apparent simple problem, I eagerly applied "Creme Seife". At this point, I assured myself that this "Creme Seife" was lotion and everything would be better.

The next day, I awoke with a drier face so after my shower I applied more "Creme Seife". Naturally, this would be the optimum solution; to apply lotion right after a shower. The day seemed to be going well, but it was even windier. By the end of the day, my face was bright red and would need more "Creme Seife".

Thursday morning, yet again, I applied the "Creme Seife". At this point I had some doubts about it, but I figured it was worth one more shot. By Thursday afternoon, my face was very very red and obviously not normal. At this point you are probably thinking, why would he still use the "Creme Seife"? I didn't know what to think as well - I had developed a list of possible causes and solutions in my mind regarding my red, dry face.


1. Windburn - The wind sometimes was unbearable and it perced my soul with the cold. Solution: I would need to wear a scarf or something similar outside and at other times stay in warm weather.

2. My room was too warm - If you know me well, you know I like things warm. If, in fact, the weather outside is cold and you enter a warm room, it will dry out your face. Solution: The temperature in my room must decrease.

3. I was allergic to my new cereal - I had just bought a lot of Fruit Musli Cereal (Granola) and it had various nuts, oats, and dried fruits in the ingredients possibly giving my face an allergic reaction. I basically threw out this approach later deciding that I had never had any type of allergy earlier in my life and the cereal was just too delicious and cheap to stop eating it. Only 1.50 Euros for 1000g. Solution: Stop eating the cereal.

4. The Shower Soap - I was using the cheap shower soap and I knew it definitely does tend to dry out the skin and on Tuesday, I stopped using it. Solution: If this was the cause, I would need to apply "Creme Seife" and it would be gone soon since I hadn't been using the crappy soap on my face.

5. Alcohol - Wednesday night was Susan's Leaving Dortmund/Going Back to Ameria Party. I didn't drink much, but I thought it was possible a little wine could make my face turn red and work against the "Creme Seife". I'm not Asian, but I know my brother Chad gets a little red sometimes. Maybe this was happening to me.

6. The "Creme Seife" - Maybe the "Creme Seife" was not in fact a lotion at all. This was hard to imagine at first because it felt good when I rubbed it into my face and when I was done, my hands didn't turn red, but maybe my hands were just tougher than my face.


With such multiple possible causes, I decided to consult the professionals. 1. WEBMD.com and 2. Dr. Kathryn Ganske - Mom, Nurse, Professor, and Doctor of Nursing (How could I go wrong with this approach, my mother is a real Dr. Mom)

Yet again, I make the wrong decision. A low-point in my decision-making process. Basically, I cracked under pressure. After waking from an afternoon nap, my face was again dry. I decided to call my mom and consult her, but she was in a meeting... My best resource was unavailable and I had no options. I decided to consult the web, which to no avail said to apply lotion. So, what else was I to do? I applied the "Creme Seife".

My face was not improving. It felt better for a few minutes after the "Creme Seife" everytime, but afterwards wouldn't feel good anymore. What was wrong? Something must be wrong with the "Creme Seife"... or was there? I had only just Thursday morning stopped eating my new favorite, delicious, health-packed, value cereal. I had also only just Tuesday stopped using the crappy soap. And the weather had not been improving.

Suddenly, my mom, aka. Dr. Mom Teacher of Nursing, was no longer idle on AIM and I called her immediately using Skype. To no avail, she first said to use lotion or skin creme. But isn't that what I was using? Doesn't "Seife" mean skin?

The next 30 seconds of my life may be an ultra-low point of Ganske absent-mindedness, stubbornness, and stupidity. I decided it was time to consult a German dictionary. So why didn't I do this before? Well, I thought that at this point in my German studies, a simple word like skin was of course easy to recognize as "Seife".

I was wrong..

The dictionary clearly stated: "Creme Seife" = "Soap Creme"

This was a horrible mistake. My miracle lotion that was supposed to be helping my windburn slash allergic-reaction slash dried-out face was actually making it worse. My last possible cause for this dryness and redness was correct. The "Creme Seife" was no lotion at all, but rather soap.

Soap! Being the historical evil of dryness, I should have known better. My error of judgement was such a simple, yet big and awful mistake. Why was I so stupid, stubborn, and absent-minded? Why was I so arrogant to be so sure that "Seife" meant skin, when in fact skin means "die Haut"?

"Die Haut" - Something so utterly different I should be ashamed...

At once, I thanked my mother, cursed at my idiocracy, and hurried to the store. Not too far down the last aisle, "Lotion" was clearly apparent.

You mean the word for lotion in German is "Lotion". Shameful, another misconception and more reason enough that my German needs more work. Someone please tell Harper-Collins that there needs to be a toiletries and bathroom products vocabulary section in the textbook!

After applying this American Dove "Lotion", my face already felt more hydrated, smoother, and more comfortable. In retrospect, maybe I should blame the weather for being cold, or my dad for giving me Ganske genes, but these were not to blame. My German vocabulary was clearly guity.

I have no excuses... I should have been more careful... This lesson will live with me the rest of my life with one simple message: TRANSLATE FIRST

Some Brief Info on Dortmund

I just realzed that I had never really written anything about Dortmund, the city in which I'm living right now. It's a pretty normal since, not famous for anything because there isn't anything famous here.

Dortmund is located in the Bundesland Nordrhein-Westfalia, in central western Germany known as the Ruhrgebiet. This area, including Essen, Bochum, Duisburg, Mülheim, Dortmund, and stretching to Düsseldorf, is a metropole of about 5 million people. Dortmund is only a small part of this area, consisting of about 600,000 citizens.

The city is most known for its breweries and its football team, Borussia Dortmund. Many large beers come from Dortmund including DAB and Dortmunder Kronen. Beer is cheap and in many cases cheaper than soda and water! The football club, Borussia Dortmund, is a one-time winner of the European Champions League in 1997 and a multi-winner of the German Bundesliga. It plays host at the newly named Signa-Iduna Park (previously Westfalenstadion), which supports up to 85,000 fans. This venue will also host several games during the 2006 World Cup in June and July.

At the end of WWII, Dortmund was about 80% destroyed by allied bombings, there really isn't much of anything old to see in the city. Hansaplatz and Rheinoldikirche are nice sites downtown, but there is no old city-center like many other cities, such as Cologne, Bremen, or Münster. Previous to national-socialism, Hitler, and the Holocost, there was a respectable Jewish population in Dortmund (about 4000). However, most of the Jews were taken out of the city and killed at concentration camps after the city's Synagogue was burned to the ground. The U-Bahn station "Stadtgarten" now sits at the same site.

Obviously Dortmund is somewhat unique, maybe not all for good reasons. It currently has an unemployment rate of nearly 18% and many citizens rely on social welfare to get by (this is much higher than the national rate of 11.5%). This high unemployment rate is due to a few different factors:

1. Dortmund, as well as this area of the Ruhrgebiet, use to be a large coal-mining area including exports out of Germany. Today, this is not the case due to imports from China, Eastern-Europe, and the United States. There exists a very small percent of the original industry.

2. Dortmund's population consists of a great number of immigrants, mostly Turkish, who either immigrated to Germany during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s as Gastarbeiter, or guestworkers. Many of these people worked in Dortmund in the industrial sector, but as jobs have been outsourced it has been harder to find work. Furthermore, it is more difficult for the Turkish immigrants to find work than a native German. The unemployment rate for these people is much higher than that of Germans, similar to the situation of immigrants in France.

Due to the immigrants living in the north and the wealthy Germans living in the south of Dortmund, one can say that the city is greatly segregated. One can enter both of these areas and see clearly that there are two different worlds in the same city. Hopefully I'll know more about this relationship in the future. It is very important regarding social stability here in Dortmund, especially after the riots in France. Something similar could very likely break out here in Dortmund, given the current situation.

That is Dortmund in a nutshell. I will try to add more later as a think of some things I have missed.

where is the sun in northern germany?

It has now been 10 days since I have returned from home in Virginia and since then, I dont think I have seen the sun. Everyday it has been an overcast sky and it is only light out from 9 until 4 everyday! Not too exciting, but life is still going well.

Last night, we returned to Bochum for a Russian party, where we danced for a few hours to not just Russian music (some American, latino - all the big hits) so that was a nice change from the last one.

What is really exciting is that there are only 4 weeks left in our Wintersemester and then I will have a month and a half break. Mike, Tom, Sarah will join for part of it and then my brothers will come soon after for a visit. Until then, I'll be sticking to the Dortmund area in order to save funds for the journies. If anybody can come and visit in February, that would be awesome because I will have plenty of time to wander somewhere.

Wintersemester 2005

I'm almost 1.5 weeks through my first semester here in Germany. Everything has been going well so far and I only dropped one class because I couldn't understand anything and the topic was boring. Here's a list of my current classes:

1. Banned Books in American and Germany in the 20th Century
2. Comedy on German and American Stage
3. Hörverstehen, Leseverstehen, Textproduktion
4. Postwar and Reconstruction: Germany under Allied Control
5. Listening Comprension
6. Conversation
7. Theory of Social Democracy

Don't be alarmed, because in Germany classes only meet for about 1.5 hours once a week so this is a pretty light load because I will be starting an internship with a local Social Democrat representing Dortmund in the Nordrhein-Westfalia Bundestag.

Since I'm getting back in the grove of things here in Dortmund, I've also had some more time on my hands. I'm back to reading some Harry Potter (trying #1 auf Deutsch) and watching some German movies. Tonight its student bar night at Eastend, where drinks are always 1 euro.

Great news this week: Tom and Mike have booked tickets to come see me over their Spring break! I'm sure we'll go castle hunting and see the beautiful Rheinland in southwestern Germany.

I've also updated the site and more updates are to come. Let me know if you have any ideas!

POLSKA!

Just the day after I arrived back from Belgium, which was again after Spain, I left with Miguel (classmate at Uni DO) to Poland! After just a quick hop of 2 hours through the air, we landed in Krakow, where Marlena (another classmate) greeted us at the airport.

The first day, we toured around Krakow, where we found most things to be pretty cheap with the Polish Zlotys. Krakow was a beautiful city with a lot of older buildings from the middle ages that were unabstructed by WWII. The best sites included the main square, the cathredral where Pope John Paul II was, and a castle along the bank of the Wista River.

Following Krakow, we visited Auschwitz, which was the location of the largest Nazi Concentration Camp. Over 1.5 million Jews, Gypsies, and Pols died at this camp alone. Following return to Krakow, Miguel and I parted from Marlena and went to Zakopane, a winter tourist resort for skiing and skijumping. Without much time we were only able to have a quick ride up the cable car and hike for about an hour after checking out the town the day before. The highlight was staying with a random Polish family (met the guy at the train station) and having shots of Polish vodka!

Finally, we visited Warsaw where we had an entirely historical tour of the town including sites rebuilt from royal times, the ghetto wall, the 1944 Warsaw Uprising Museum, and the old city center. Its amazing to believe that 88% of the city was flattened by the Nazis in late 1944.

Early Sunday Oct 16, we made our way back to Dortmund via train. Via Posnan, Berlin, Magdeburg, Braunschweig, Hannover, and Bad Oeynhausen. A total of 14 hours!! See photos here.

Amo España... ¿por qué no?

The same day I finished my Intensive German Course, I rode out to Belgium to meet Bart and begin our exciting trip to Spain. First though, we had a late night at the local club Illusion. Times were especially good when Bart, the "hi-roller", decided to have champagne delivered to the floor.

Then we were off to Spain were Ines, Maria, and Maria's Mother, picked us up from Madrid and took us back to Jumilla. We got settled quickly before the Spanish pregame at midnight then head to the clubs until 6 in the morning. Its amusing see highschoolers get drunk in the parking lot of the public swimming pool!

Later, we drove to Murcia (Maria's hometown) and later to the beach at Cabo Roig, were we stayed at Maria's beachhouse. Then we went to La Manga del Mar Menor and swam on a beautiful protected beach along the Mediterranean! Then we were off again to Murcia, where we enjoyed a night in a heated swimming pool at a local Spa. The trip ended by touring Madrid and staying with another one of the girls' aunts. See photos here.

Köln Trip and more BVB Fußball

Everything is still going well in Germany, especially now that everyone is more settled in and we know quite a few more people.

Last saturday, we went on a daytrip to the city of Köln (Cologne), which is actually the fourth largest city in all of Germany. They are also the city that got beat by Borussia Dortmund last week :). The city is most famous for its huge Gothic Cathedral, which is the largest of its kind in the world, followed by others in France. We were able to climb the towers and check out the entire inside. This is the same cathedral that the new pope comes from. Köln is also cool becuase it sits along the Rhein river, although its north of the really beautiful part with mountains.

During the day, they had an Antikmarkt and I purchased a book from 1891 for 1 euro that is about English (British) History. Other than that we just hung out in the city and walked around the old area... even ate some awesome Chinese food that I think was more like actual chinese food rather than americanized. Köln photos here

Last night, tuesday, I went to another BVB game against Arminia Bieleld. We had better seats this time for half the price - 11 euros, in the standing section on the south side of the stadium. The singing, chanting, and yelling is awesome and anyone who comes and visits me between now and april has a chance at coming to one of these games for 11 euros (totally worth it) and it makes up for missing uva football... in a different way. See photos here

viele Grüße aus Deutschland

Hey I finally got internet here in my apartment! Everything is going well in Dortmund and I've already done quite a lot of stuff.

On my way over to Dortmund, I stopped in London and I checked out the city for the entire day. Everything was really expensive with the British pounds and all so I tried to only buy some food from the grocery stores. The city was cool becuase it had the European flair but they spoke English. Then I had to take a train to the airport at midnight and sleep on the floor of London Luton airport. (I originally was going to sleep in a hostel but I would not have been able to make it to the airport on time in the morning)

Here in Dortmund they planned all kinds of events for us. We have already been to Muenster, which is about an hour north of Dortmund and known for its classic German culture and its medieval architecture. Dortmund, however, is more modern but not a tourist destiation. Its a basic german city known for its industry, beer, and soccer. I went to see a game last sunday and Im going to see another on Tuesday against Arminia Bielefeld.

I live with two other guys, one German, the other from Iran. My room is the biggest one that I've ever had and I dont have to share it with anyone. Its even bigger than the one Danny and I shared in Bice. Out my windows, I can see the University Campus, the soccer stadium, and some nearby towns.

I went to a club last night in Bochum and it was an interesting experience. Apparently Germans like listening to music from the early 90s. I felt like I was at a wedding or something with songs like "Lets get excited (I just can't hide it)"

Beer is cheap at the student bars and its nice being able to drink alcohol everywhere! Sorry everbody.......

If you all want to, you can call me from skype or you can just send me some emails. Now that I have internet, I will be very easy to contact. And of course, check out the new photos.

i think the jetta is mad at me...

This past week, Maria and Ines came back to Charlottesville for some fun packed action at the County Fair here in Albemarle County along with some movie watching and hanging out in downtown Cville.

The most fun came during the weekend when we went to NYC along with Kenny. Visting the Guggenheim, MOMA, and getting a new wallet was all good until we got back and my passenger window was shattered and the stereo was stolen (sorry jarrett).

A sad goodbye with the Spanish girls means that I really won't see them until I go to Spain this time. Then after the ride back, the jetta revolts (i think because someone punched it in the face in Brooklyn), I would revolt too. This occured when the alternator died and the car mysteriously decides that its necessary to turn the flashers on by itself with no keys and me not in the car. I felt bad for the poor thing. Now it has to stay overnight in an unfamiliar place all alone in a scary garage.

.. or maybe he's angry I haven't fixed the check engine light problem 10 months after the light came on...