Nach Lingen: A Lingen: To Lingen

At the end of our road trip, we found ourselves in Lingen, hometown of Malte and Daniel, and our friend Phil. It's a small town with big traditions and lots of history. I love it!

This is the town square. The old town hall is the white building. It was restored a few years ago by Malte's dad, who is an architect.
Our two guides, Daniel and Malte, show us the restored guard tower exploded during an unexpected attack on the city. It has an interesting story, as the city decided that it needed to either build bigger walls to protect themselves, or to tear their walls down altogether (because having walls meant there was something worth protecting-ie: worth attacking for). The city took the walls down and no one attacked again...armies would apparently march right by, assuming it was just a poor town.


Malte explaining a statue given to the city as a gift from the young men's club in the town, the Kivelinge.

We got special priveleges since Malte has keys to the Altes Burgerhaus, which is home of the Kivelinge. The group was started to recognize young men in the town. This started after a war in which all of the men in the town were killed or wounded and the only people left were the young boys who went to the front lines and saved the city. Now, the group has about 250 male members. There is a similar group for married men in the town. Every few years they throw what is called Kivelingsfest, to remember the battle won by the boys, and they consider themselves service-members of the town.

After snacks and chatting at Daniel's, and a rest and planning-for-Cologne (Koln) adventure at Malte's, Daniel and Malte brought us to Gruner Jager, a bar/restaurant where we had fantastic Schnitzel and the boys had their first truly German beer(s). Apparently the men's and women's bathrooms were separated by fishtanks, one of which was for baby fish and was labeled "the nursery"...in German, of course.

Next, we headed back into Lingen, where we went to their favorite local bar, and we were served by their favorite waitress. An interesting thing about Germany is that in bars and some restaurants, your coaster is your bill, which is also a contract. Malte said there is a saying that says the world's greatest deals are made on coasters...meaning that big things happen in small, community-oriented places, and a signature on a coaster is as good as any written contract because it is so personal. Really an interesting concept. Too bad, I'm pretty sure "coaster-contracts" wouldn't work so well in the US.


Me, Dan and Tom at the bar...which is not like a US or Spanish bar. It is more like a restaurant with tables and chairs that just serves drinks.

Daniel convinced Tom to have "JUST ONE MORE" beer...so he got a baby-beer, which was still huge!

After the bar, we headed to get "Doners" which is equivalent to going to a Kebab/Durham place in BCN. They were super-excited, and when we saw how much better they were in Germany than Barca, we understood why! We sat and yapped for a while, then it was finally time to hit the road so I wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel. We dropped off a Daniel who was ecstatic about the option of visiting us in Spain for less than 200 Euro-COME SEE US! Then we drove to Malte's and left him to fend for himself in the rain as we took his directions back to our hostel in Osnabruck for the night. It was sad, but the day with them was fantastic. Hopefully they will actually look into coming to visit--there's always room for friends!

Deutschland mit Malte: Alemania con Malte: Germany with Malte

So the day started off like any day...except that we are in Germany! :)

We got up around 7:30 for breakfast--which was awesome! They had cereal, coffee, cappuchino, tea, bread, deli meats, fruit, nutella...it was definitely a treat. Had breakfast with the German Soccer team...well, in the same room...and then we had time before Malte and his friend were coming, so we decided to do one of the best-known German pasttimes: wandern...that is literally the verb for hiking...pronounced "von-dern." Tom and Bob got a kick out of this.

There was a trail behind the hostel, so we climbed the stairs, and just wandered around in the woods for a while. We saw a soccer field that was actually made of grass, a mini-playground...which we clearly took advantage of, and lots of mud...which took me a while to clean when we got back to the hostel. We also happened upon a colony of birds with HUGE nests who lived in a flock in one section of the woods, and close-by we came across the zoo...who knew?! We also saw a memorial sign for students and teachers killed in a bombing of the area during the war. On that sad note, we wandered back to the hostel and got ready for our day with Malte and his friend, Daniel.

As previously mentioned...these are our two guides and their wall of TP from around the world, in the bathroom of their apartment! If you have some, I'd be happy to send it on to them, I'm sure it would be appreciated. Daniel, on the left, is Malte's apartment-mate and a fellow Lingen-er (which is my way of saying they are both from the town of Lingen). He is studying physics. Malte is one of my friends, who I met through Phil (an exchange student in Buffalo and friend of my neighbors, who introduced us). Malte and I have kept in touch since we met on his visit to the US back in 2003...hard to believe I hadn't seen him in almost 4 years!

Well...as our tour began, it ws obvious that Daniel and Malte were hungry, and in one convo they has in German, I was attempting to understand and only caught "Barcelona"...and so...we walked around the block and I came to understand even better what they meant!

We continued on to many of the sites we visited in the dark last night, and made it to the same plaza, which we NOW realized is home of their City Hall ("Rathaus"-funny name, no?). We learned that Osnabruck is known as the City of Peace because, if I'm not mistaken, the treaty at the end of the 30 Years War was signed in this building. The boys are chatting on the right.

This church is in the same plaza, to the right in the previous picture. Apparently most days you can go up to the steeple, but it was closed on Saturdays...bummer. We managed to get some interesting insight on architecture in the area from Malte, since he was interested in architecture before beginning his studies in law. There is an entire architecture style named after this city. It consists of a facade that steps out over the street so that the walls collapsed into the street in case of fire so people inside wouldn't be crushed by the walls and would have a better chance of escaping. While this system's validity was questioned, it was still really cool to hear about, it to see...all over the place!

This is the Felix Nussbaum house. His works are house in this building which is comprised of an old part and an addition, done by famous architect, Daniel Libeskind. We didn't go inside, but admired his choice of material, form, strange window treatments, etc from the outside, before heading to brunch. I got currywurst; basically a sausage with medium-hot curry sauce and fries...it was reaaaally good. We are loving the food and the boys are especially loving the portions since the ones in Spain are so tiny!

After brunch, we walked to the rest of the university of osnabruck in the rain that had started since entering the restaurant. This is the main building, which was originally part of a palace, but now serves as an admissions/office building. After this, we had seen most of Osnabruck, or at least what we were told was worth seeing, so we headed back to their apartment, grabbed our cars, and went on a road trip at speeds of up to 170 km/hr to the "city" of Lingen...home to Malte, Daniel, Phil, and about 50,000 others.

Osnabruck, die erste Tag: Osnabruck, el primer dia: Osnabruck, the first day

So after about 2 or 3 hours of driving, a pit stop for some German fast-food at a rest stop (the soup was AMAZING!), and possible multiple traffic violations ("what was that flash?!") we made it safely to Osnabruck, where my friend, Malte, goes to school.

Bob and Tom are clearly ecstatic to be here!

We parked in this small, free parking lot near the edge of this "city" ("Stadt" in German), and walked to find the hostel, where we were happy to know that we could park right outside of it for free instead of walking two blocks. We almost had a run-in over the boys' lack of Hostelling International cards, but the guy just brushed it off and didn't give us a hard time. We headed up to the 2nd floor of this hostel/retreat center, to find our 4-person bedroom, equipped with our own bathroom and shower! Sweet!

Our bedroom...pretty swanky, eh?!

Afterwards, we started our journey into Osnabruck so that I could check for an email from Mike at an internet cafe and we could explore. There was a plethora of churches, a huge shopping street, and...as we were taught in German class, a Fussgangerzone (pedestrian zone), which actually went all the way through the center of the city along the shops and restaurants...we need a city like this in the US.

This would be the Fussgangerzone sign...precious, no?

We wandered until we reached the side of the city opposite the hostel, then came upon this castle gone...something-cool-looking! We'll have to ask tomorrow.

Then we headed back toward the city center. Bob was craving icecream, which should tell you how strange the situation was, even weirder, was that on a Friday night around 9 PM there were lots of open bars and restaurants with no one in them! One street that we walked down had about 15 people on it...DEAD silent...soooo Creepy! We did get some gelato for Bob though (yeah, Tom and I wanted some too, as usual!)...dessert first!

We ended up on the opposite side of a church we had seen while walking out of the city...that had a nice little courtyard where a group was gathered with someone who seemed to be in the military...probably a Brit, as I recall Malte saying there was a base nearby.

This is a view from said plaza.

That stepping facade along the roofline seems to be pretty typically German as far as I can tell from driving around today. The stepping pattern or just high gabled roofs in general are EVERYWHERE. As in Spain, the buildings are brightly colored, and I really love the vibe it gives off...it makes the street feel alive and homey.

We grabbed a pizza zu "mitnehmen" ("to go"-the only phrase about eating NOT in my phrase book), stopped at a grocery store to get a few things for tomorrow, and headed back to eat at the hostel and shower.

The pillows here are HUGE and fluffy--I need to get one of these for home!

This will be our first night with 8+ hours of sleep in quite some time...hooray for vacation!

Goodnight Germany!

We get to see Malte tomorrow!

Vamos a Alemania!: Let's go to Germany!

So we hopped on the metro early this morning and got to the bus station by arc de triomf just on time to catch one of the frequent buses to Girona Airport for our RyanAir flight to Dusseldorf/Weeze.
THIS was my view...when I was awake, at least...

Most of the time, I followed Tom's lead, though...a nap never hurt anyone!

OMG--That would be Germany!

Bob is geared up to use the tour book for our big trip through western Germany.

We got to the Weeze airport, and were completely baffled. It is the smallest, most deserted airport I have ever seen. After the baggage claim, I only saw 3 people who weren't working there. How weird! It was cool though, because it meant we didn't have to stand on a long line to get our rental car. That's correct...I said rental car and I am referring to a little French car named Clio, which became our new best friend and partner in crime today!

Bob and Tom are loading up the car.

I spent about 20 minutes making sure I knew how the car worked, from windshield wipers to lights to radio. Once we had it figured out, we took on the roads of the country of Germany...yes, that includes the Autobahn. I don't want to burst anyone's dream-bubbles, but it wasn't all that I expected and more...the Autobahn is simply a system of roads, not one straight, 20-years-into- the-future-superhighway, like I had previously thought. Tom played navigator and every 10 minutes I said "Guys...we're in GERMANY...and I'm DRIVING!" haha. Needless to say, today was the beginning of a great adventure!

Salimos a Meson David: We go out to Meson David

So after the presentations, we took a little respite and then we met at the Paral-lel metro stop and walked to Meson David, a restaurants made for groups who want tapa-like plates to share. I was a huge fan of the different types of tortilla that were offered, but a little put off by some of the meat. For the most part, though, it was a way to end the day on a good note before we all take a week off for spring break starting...NOW!

The waiter checks out a picture of himself with Theda, Sean's sister who is visiting...he fell in love with her immediately...gave her a flower during the course of dinner...it was basically a classic night out with CUarch. haha.

The group...in a laughing fit, for obvious reasons!

Me and Tom--WE'RE GOING TO GERMANY TOMORROW!!!!!

Christi and Eugenia at Meson David

Fist-pumping Felipe! Classic CUarch BCN!

Theda (Sean's sister) and Felipe, ready to go out!

Christi and I after dinner

Ben, giving his model looks...*sigh* haha. Nice one Benja! -and check out Rob in the background!

Yes, I live with this kid! Hehe--Oh Rob...(this lemon is probably going to be used as a candle in our apartment at some point...we're basically pyros...don't tell the landlord!

"BOB-We have to get up at 6 am to go to the airport! We CAN'T go out tonight!"-Tom

Tom and I went to studio to get everything we needed and I chatted with Mike, mom's friend from HS, who has been helping us out tons with plans for our trip to Germany for break. I'm beyond excited! Time for bed...tomorrow might be stressful!

El proyecto incompleto: the incomplete project

Ended up being in studio until 8 am, at which point I was hungry from only having eaten a few saltines for dinner. We have a lot done, but not nearly enough. I had to fight with the printer because it wasn't printing to the margins that it was set to on the computer. Then, about halfway through printing our analyses, the printer ran out of ink, so I had to spend another hour figuring out how to shrink the photoshop document to print the correct margins on an 8.5 by 11 sheet...which never did end up correct, but it was 3 or 4 am and I couldn't keep fighting the machine, so we just finished on what we had and continued the other work.

Felipe got the model done. Vic and I had to rearrange the template that we were given to fill. We were missing info that we had planned around, so while our info may or may not have been sufficient, it wasn't blown up to fit the template because we had actually planned to have more to our presentation than we ended up with. We presented anyhow, but I was disappointed in myself. We are definitely going to have to make sure we complete the template so that our project reads the way it is intended to. I like our project, even though it breaks the rules about building in the center of the plaza (which I was originally not a fan of), but the presentation of it just didn't explain it.

Just gotta suck it up and move on.

We're going out to dinner as a group tonight and then....GERMANY in the AM!

la fotografia y un dolor en la cabeza: photography and a headache

Sketching class today was awesome! Eugenia's photographer/architect friend, Adrian, came and talked about photographing architecture. He was poetic in everything that he said...so I have tons of quotes written in my sketchbook as notes for the class, but they are only a fraction of all the great and inspiring things that he said. His work was great, too...very impressive.

I am not doing as well as hoped in sketching class. I think I may just need to try to dedicate time to go back to the sites since I am aware that it takes me so long to do a good sketch. I will also be tackling watercolor again as I refuse to lose a fight with a paintbrush...we'll be friends eventually, it'll just take some patience.

Got lunch with Mon and have been in studio ever since...presentation tomorrow and I'm already freaking out because we had to re-do all of our analyses to make them read together and all of our drawings AND the model...this is bad.