If you haven't heard by now, and if you haven't then you've been living under a rock for the past 3 weeks, there is an e. coli outbreak here in Europe mostly concentrated in Northern Germany. Perfect. The German Health authorities have not quite pinpointed the source, but there have been quite a few accusations as to its point of origin which has actually started to piss a number of people off. Considering I'm not a huge green vegetable eater this hasn't affected me as much but I'm still very cautious about what I'm eating. My host mom says it's a bunch of crap and that the media is just trying to influence the public with their endless propaganda for the government, so I'm having a hard time either 1) buying into this e. coli thing or 2) thinking she's a crazy liberal, vowing to prove the corruption of government and influence through media. Either way this shits kind of scary but I've survived it in America so I should have no problem here.
The weekends have been by far the most exciting times here in Germany and no I'm not saying that just because we go out and drink 95.5% of the time. There are actually a billion things, sights to see, and people to meet here in Berlin and I feel like I won't have the opportunity to see everything but I'm going to damn well try. The crew from State and I have gotten into this habit of going to local "Fests" and I've got to say they've been some of the more fun things we've done while in Germany. Not to mention they serve as great pre-game events before heading out to the clubs. One fest in particular that we went to was called Havelfest which was kind of like a street fair where you could buy local arts & craft?, and naturally beer and brats. I'm not sure if I'll ever tire from the brats and at 2 euro a piece it makes them hard to resist, especially when you need something to complement the mug of beer you just bought. My house mom keeps making jokes that I'm always trying to eat German food and why I wouldn't seems somewhat rhetorical. At Havelfest I'd say we experienced our first instance of anti-Americanism from the Germans which was a lot more frustrating then I thought it would be. The looks that we got from some of them were like we had just landed a space shuttle in the middle of their damn Biergarten and we were going to snatch all the wurst and run. Then another gentleman proceeded to show us his freshly done tattoo (hopefully it was fake) of a blue cross with a German flag in the middle, saying 'we are german' blah blah blah. Typical anti-american behavior. It got better though because we actually did run into some courteous, polite people and now I regret not recycling that glass bottle I threw away in my fit of rage. I also witnessed my first German sporting event of watching the qualifying match against Germany v. Austria on TV and man do they get fired up. It's interesting being in a country that likes watching soccer just as much as I do and it's unfortunate that their season ended right before we got here. Thankfully Germany ended up winning in the last minute or I don't know what would have happened.
I won't bore you with every little single detail of what we did over the weekend but I am having a blast here in Germany. It's only been about 3 weeks so I'm excited to see what else there is to do here in Berlin and I'm also thinking about scheduling something outside of Germany, but we'll see. Thank you for everyones support with my Grandmother passing and supporting me in general. Miss everyone like crazy back in the States and hopefully everyones' summer is going as great as mine.
Bis dann,
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