Pro(beer)en

Pro(beer)en – To try different beers
The German word for “to try” is probieren, so whenever we try new beers we say that we are pro(beer)en. Last night we had a grill out at the Hedwig Pfeifer House to celebrate the 4^th of July and our last night in Weimar, and therewith came some pro(beer)en. There is a grocery store and a getränkeladen right down the street from the house, and we have frequented both. The getränkeladen is a store just for drinks, not just alcoholic beverages, but also juices and such. For some reason they don’t sell any types of drinks at the grocery store. But anyways, the getränkeladen has a copious selection of beers, all of which you can buy individually and for very little geld. They had one beer from Tschechoslovakia called “Budweiser-Budwar”, and it reminded me of America…so I pro(beer)end it.

The grill out was a lot of fun! We had an organ-player from one of the nearby churches in attendance, and she played our national anthem while we all sang along. We grilled some hamburgers, and I’m not sure a hamburger has ever tasted so good. (They don’t eat too many hamburgers in Germany.) I also found a small watermelon (from Spain) for the grill-out at the grocery mart and had to buy it, because you can’t celebrate the 4^th without watermelon. It was somewhat of a strange feeling celebrating an American holiday in Germany, drinking Tschech beer, and eating Spanish watermelon, but I guess that’s Europe for ya. Prior to the fourth we had a very busy school week, and therefore we did not partake in our usual excursions. Tuesday we had the finals for both of the classes that we took in Weimar, and Wednesday we gave our final presentations.

We did manage to get away from school a little bit though. I took a couple runs through the park, and a couple walks. On one of my runs I found a little orchard in which there was a cherry tree absolutely loaded down with ripe cherries - They were yummy. I also tried some different flavors of ice cream, one of which was not so good. It was blue and accordingly named “azzura”. Unfortunately, the name did a good job describing the color of the ice cream, but not so much the flavor. It was bubble gum toothpaste flavored. It actually tasted a lot like the fluoride mouthwash that my dentist used to make me rinse with. For some reason it was also very melty, and as a result it had a consistency similar to that of…toothpaste. The whole time I was eating it I had to convince myself that it is ok to eat toothpaste. But I survived and all is good, but I might just stick to pistachio from now on.

I am on the train to Munich now and getting some much needed rest. And by rest I mean physical rest, because our journey today has been rather arduous. Between the 25 participants in the LBAT program we have quite a bit of luggage, and after 7 weeks in Germany it is getting pretty hefty. Today I was on baggage duty, which entails loading and unloading all of the baggage on and off all of the various forms of transportation that we have traveled with today. We had to switch trains in some tiny little town and we were supposed to have a 12 minute layover, but our first train was 10 minutes delayed. Two minutes to unload some 30+ pieces of luggage and reload on a different train was kind of pushing it, but we made it, and we are now on a nice comfortable ICE Duetsche Bahn to Munich. I think we are scheduled to arrive within the hour, and upon arrival we will commence the third leg of this tour of Germany!