A Rainy Weekend

After walking around Donaueschingen and Villingen, I came back home and fell asleep for 4 hours, I woke up and did my laundry, as I had given money to one of my roommates to buys the tokens I needed, and I really needed to do laundry. I think I used too much soap since my room smelled strongly like soap when I hung my clothes up to dry. There is no dryer, but I'm used to hanging up most of clothes to dry anyways.

I woke up Saturday morning and could hear the rain on my window. I made bacon and eggs for breakfast and headed back to Donaueschingen to check out the festival they were setting up for. Turns out I confused the rock music thing and this festival, the rock thing was Friday night apparently and what I was at translates to 'Home Days' which is an annual celebration that moves to a different town each year. There were many booths set up, I checked out a few of them, but everything was in German, so I didn't really understand much. I heard some traditional German music by a band in traditional German clothing, and saw some traditional dancing. It was interesting to see, despite the steady rain, and occasional heavy downpours. There were large beer umbrellas set up, so I stayed under there with the crowd for a while. I ate a grillwurst, a sausage on a bun, for lunch with a beer, it was very good. It was strange to have the beer served in an actual glass mug, much fancier than the plastic cups we get in Canada. I also tried a piece of cherry, chocolate cake, and it was pretty good too. At one point, during a heavy downpour, an older German couple came to stand under the umbrella I was under. He started speaking to me but I had no idea what he was saying, I said I only speak English. A few minutes passed by and he pointed to the sky and said "bullshit" with a German accent, made me laugh. I walked around a bit more, found a sort of trade show of all the companies in Donaueschingen, and there was a booth from where I'm working and I knew one of the guys manning the booth so I chatted with him a bit, and learned more about what the company does as a whole, it was very interesting. I then attempted to get back home, and it took much longer than planned. Because it was a Saturday, trains do not run as frequently. I probably should have taken the bus. It ended up taking most of the afternoon to get back. I managed to buy a discount card for when I take any longer train rides in the future at one of the train stations, so I felt like I did something productive. 

I tried to get on the internet at the school using my tablet, but it would work. Only seems to work with the laptop. Good thing I decided to bring it. I'm considering looking into how much a USB internet stick would cost me since it's not the most convenient to have to sit in the hallway at the school to use the internet. I had another kebap for supper, and then I went to the cafe by the train station where I met with a bunch of other people belonging to the couch surfing website. I have never done couch surfing, but I might try it this summer. It's where you put out a request looking for a place to stay when travelling to a new city and someone offers you a couch or a floor to sleep on. Much more cost effective than a hotel or even hostel, and often you'll have someone who knows the city well and might show you around. It was a great time, we ended up heading to another bar after a while. I guess I'm lucky in the sense that although I only know one language, it is the language everyone uses to communicate when meeting a group with people from all over. Two were from Germany, one from Italy, one from Russia, and another from India. It was a very diverse group. They all live in the area, so I hope to get together with them again a few times this summer.

I went to go post this at the school but the internet no longer works for me there for some reason, and then I realized my phone had completely stopped working, so I was essentially cut off from the world again. I would have went and bought a USB internet stick right then, but everything is closed. I don't understand how they've managed to avoid Sunday shopping for so long. I headed over to the internet cafe and was surprised to find it open, I was there for a while, chatted with my parents on Skype, and read my messages, it's amazing how dependent we are on technology. I thought my phone had started working again, but I was wrong. Mildly frustrating. Maybe cell service just isn't reliable here. I'm trying to cook something in the oven, I piece of fish of the unknown variety. Hopefully it turns out since I can't read the instructions despite the fact they have instructions in 3 languages. I could make some sense of the French, so hopefully it won't make me sick at least.

Well the fish turned out quite well, I got to bed relatively early last night, after cleaning up/rearranging my room and getting things ready to go to work today. Work was great today, I spent the day in the lab where testing of the product is done, so it was a nice change from studying the German words, and some people were able to practice their English, which I think is part of the reason I am here. I tried to get the bus home at 5:05pm, but I still think I'm not too great at reading the schedule, but it wasn't too bad. There is a store next to the bus stop, so I bought some groceries, and then caught the bus a half hour later. This was the first time I've taken the bus home and it looks completely different than in the morning, probably because I'm half asleep at 7am. I put my groceries in the fridge and went across the street to O₂ and bought the internet stick that is allowing me to post this right now. It's good to have internet access again, although I'm limited on how much I can use, so I won't be able to catch up on any television that I've missed (probably a good thing!), and I'm not sure how much Skype will eat up, but at least I can post these and research places to travel on the weekends.