Deutschland Cup + Red Bull München Game

One weekend in November, the Olympia-Eisstadion hosted the Deutschland Cup, which apparently is an annual thing, but it's a three day tournament of semi-professional hockey teams from Slovakia, Switzerland, the U.S., and Germany. I was going to go to all three U.S. games but it was a bit expensive and I had other fun things to do with my Friday and Saturday afternoons :) so we just went Sunday afternoon for the U.S.-Germany game. "We" being me, another American friend from New York, and Hannah, who was cheering louder than either of us Americans, haha. 

The stadium is a little strange; the corners are actually right angles, as opposed to following the curve of the ice. They built it as a boxing stadium for the '72 Summer Olympics, then converted it after. There were some jolly drunk German men in front of us yelling at some other drunk U.S. fans across the corner, then they would turn around and fist bump us :)

This little guy is the hockey mascot they use for the Red Bull games, and he was at the Deutschland Cup game too. I'm not really sure why, seeing as he is neither a red bull or anything particularly German. Hannah and I decided he looked like a mouse/dinosaur, but he did a cartwheel on the ice so he got our approval.

It was weird (and cool) to hear all the announcing in German, and all the chanting and cheering, though there was more of that at the Red Bull game than the Deutschland Cup game. It was also interesting to hear the German national anthem and to hear a non-native speaker sing the U.S. national anthem. She was a pretty good singer and you could understand all the words she was saying, just a few times she used the wrong word, which caught us off guard. Some of them were entertaining, but I don't remember them anymore :/

Here's the stadium at the end of the game when they announced the results. We won the game and the tournament :) 'murica. 

Oh! One thing in this picture you can see, the face-off circles in the corners were filled in with ads, in addition to the middle one and all the other normal ones on the boards and such. At the Red Bull game that whole end section was filled with standing fans (including us) and what sounded like a full drumline. There might have only been two drummers, but they caused quite a ruckus and had a back-and-forth chant going for the majority of the third period.

I can't write a whole post and not mention food :) so here goes. At the U.S.-Germany game I had my first experience with Currywurst, which is delicious and VERY saucy. I'm surprised I didn't get any on me or spill it all over the place. I didn't take a picture, as my hands were a little full, but it basically just looks like a hot dog with spiced ketchup on it...which is exactly what it is.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Germany does this nifty thing where they charge you an extra deposit for the cup your drinks come in. That way you can use the same cup and get however many refills you want (are willing to pay for), then turn your cup in when you're done and get your money back. It would be like going to an amusement park and paying for one of those souvenir cups, then you could keep it forever or just give it back at the end of the day and get your money back. Magic.

Also off topic, but I'm doing my laundry so still related to life. It's a dark, scaryyy dungeon down there. The laundry machines are in the basement, which does have windows; HOWEVER daylight only lasts until about 4, so unless you get up at the ass-crack of dawn (which seems like kind of a popular time to do laundry a.k.a. it's impossible to get an open machine) chances are you will be in class or doing some other important thing during the non-terrifying hours of possible laundry doing time. Any other time you will have to brave the dark scary stone corridor where the lights are NEVER on (actually it might not even have lights) to make it to the laundry room with the automatic lights that are also NEVER on when you go down there, and only turn once you have practically run into the dryers.

Happy days!

General Update

Before I go into all the trips I haven't written about, I wanted to get a general thoughts and feelings update type of deal down on paper (figuratively). The posts show up newest first so this might not be in order anyways, but here you go :)

First for all of you Californians complaining about how cold it is there, you shut your mouths! hahaha. Someone on Facebook a few days ago posted a screen shot of the iPhone weather that said it was 39 degrees, and I almost felt bad for them UNTIL I saw that it was 9 IN THE AM. Not sorry, the high at 2 pm was still 57! Yes I went back and found the post to check, I also switched my phone to Fahrenheit so I can accurately tell you how cold it has been here. This week has been 45 degrees during the day (7 Celsius for my non-American friends) and yesterday I used the phrase "it's been warmer this week." I can actually walk around without zipping up my jacket! Last week it was 30 degrees. APPARENTLY in January and February it's know to be 0 degrees Fahrenheit on a regular basis, so that should be a fun time.

I'm actually really enjoying the cold right now, besides the fact that leaving my room is a full five minute ordeal. You can't just "run out of the house", you have to put on a million layers first. I LITERALLY factored in extra dressing time when setting my alarm clock for morning class on Tuesday. It's serious. Anyways, once I get all the extra layers on it's really great. I wear my high-er top TOMS with the fabric (almost spelled that with a k, thanks German) inside every day without my feet getting all hot and sweaty and gross. Sorry SLO, but you fail in that respect. Also in the whole "white Christmas" thing, although I guess it doesn't really snow on Christmas here, but it has snowed a few times so far and when it does it makes the Christmas markets all cute and magical.

Now sort of switching to school but still on the cold weather topic, I'm convinced that they have 15 minutes between each class because of the whole dressing-undressing ordeal, haha. It's like shedding every time you go into class, and each of the classrooms have a row of coat hangars next to the door, which about two people per room use. Everyone else just piles all their crap on their chair. Most restaurants have coat racks too, lined up on the wall and sometimes on the pillars next to tables, AND the long-distance trains have hooks next to the windows. Everyone dies of heat in the subway cuz there's always a billion people, and the heating in class is hit or miss. Either the professor likes it warm and it's stuffy, or they like fresh air and have flung all the windows open, making it freezing cold. German windows also have this nifty movement where you can crack them open a bit at the top, which makes the temperature of the room deceiving. You think it's fine until you're suddenly freezing again half-way through class.

So to speak about actual class, I have three engineering courses and three general studies courses, which make a whopping 14 hours of class a week. It's been a little like being on a 3 month vacation, since there are no homework assignments or projects or midterms or anything. We did have our first lab for my controls class on Monday, but when we got there the lab tech said that it wasn't mandatory and that we didn't have to stay. What. We did anyways, and I got to use electrical equipment that wasn't from the stone age! There were different colored lines on the display and everything, such a novelty.

There are lots of little things that are different about German classrooms (at least at my university, can't say anything about the others). First, the chalkboards are actually green, thank the Lord, not that awful orange-brown color that you can't see squat on. The chalkboards fold open, instead of those slidy ones they always show in movies about Ivy League schools or whatever, AND they move up and down, which I'm guessing is an ergonomic measure for the professors, since it really doesn't help out slow writers like yours-truly. Whenever they get to the bottom of the board and move it down to write up at the top again I have to stand up to see the notes.

They are also big fans of colored chalk/pens. Each classroom has a box with white, red, blue, yellow, and green chalk all neatly organized, and most students I've seen have a set of colored pens. Also, instead of the projector screens that you pull down and then roll back up when you're done, they have a solid square board that swings out to the angle you need. Certain professors are better at aligning it to the projector than others, haha. One of my professors is also really fond of using the pointer stick thing and the first time he used it it made such a solid scratching noise it kind of startled me, just one of those things that you're not used to. The students also do this thing where they knock on the desks at the end of lecture, it's just a respectful gesture to the teacher I think, like clapping. We've started to do it in classes where there's only international students, but it just doesn't sound the same with only 6 people, haha which is in two of my classes.

That's all my brain can remember at the moment, I'm sure other things will come up as I write about the various trips.

Oh! There is one thing. It may be because of the whole immersion thing, but I think the stereotype that German is an ugly language is silly. I find it to be rather pretty, call me crazy. It's grammar could be a little simpler, but it definitely doesn't sound as harsh as everyone seems to think/how it's portrayed in movies. At least for the Munich dialect, no guarantees about anywhere else!