Ersten Wochenende in Deutschland!

On Friday the 2nd of September I up way too early. I took an 8 am tram to Achener Strasse where the city center is located and finally registered as a resident of the city of Cologne. While waiting for my appointment I met Alena, a girl from the Czech Republic and a few Chinese international students. Alena had an appointment before me though she was unlucky enough to be in the wrong city center. The Chinese girls also told horror stories of missing their scheduled time by 2 minutes and having to wait again so I was fairly nervous. I watched for my number like a hawk and when it finally appeared on a projected screen at the front of the waiting room I leapt from my chair and hurried to the assigned desk.

I seated myself in front of a woman who was about 2 feet tall (no joke, 2 feet!) and politely introduced myself in German. It quickly became clear that she spoke only a few words of English, though I could easily understand her slow and deliberate German. The whole process took 5 minutes and I was soon walking away with my city registration form!

I spent the rest of the day exploring an area of the city called Neumarkt (New Market) with the Frenchman Antoine. It was a crowded street lined with individual shops and large shopping centers. We explored for a while looking to purchase cell phones. I finally found a store called Saturn which was the German equivalent of a Best Buy and purchased a phone for the neat price of 15 euros.

A McDonald's sign in Neumark.
Translation: I'm lovin' it

That night I headed out from home for the apartment of a German student named Christian. Once, there I rang his buzzer and was admitted upstairs where he was sitting with another German student and James from Minnesota. We sat, talked, and drank beers for a time until more and more people showed up. Finally, the group decided to leave around 1:00 am for a club. I decided against continuing with them, knowing my money had limits until I could contact my bank on Tuesday to transfer money to my freshly-opened German account, and walked home with a German student named Adrian. Convinced he knew where I was going he agreed to walk me to my bus stop. However, it was (as I had suspected) the wrong stop. Not too off put I parted with him and walked the mile or so to the next stop and was home my 2:00 am.

The next day I woke up at 8, had breakfast and went to the Mensa to meet a group of students who would be departing for a tour of campus and of the city. I arrived just in time and met several of the people who had been at the party last night. Of the group who had decided to go clubbing, no one was present. After a quick tour of campus we took the street car downtown and I got  my first up-close sight of the Dom.

It was massive, with two main spires and countless smaller ones. The masonry was so intricate and detailed it was nearly incomprehensible. Each tiny spire was covered in a web of smaller spikes and each of those spikes had several more carved onto it. People were everywhere and the two squares that bordered the Cathedral were packed. Street musicians played on essentially every corner and a large group of Chinese tourists were flooding the squares just as we arrived. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to enter the Dom or to even linger for too long.

The Koelner Dom as seen from a side street

Our group at the Dom

Instead out group headed to a local pizza cafe to pick up some lunch. It was around 2 in the afternoon (or 14 by German time) and a group of about 40 of us crowded into the small cafe. We pushed 8 long tables together and when the waitress approached our table see noticeably grit her teeth and approached the far end. She took our drink orders (a task compounded by the fact that only a few of us spoke passable German) and then retreated to the kitchens. While we waited the group chatted amiably. I talked with Martin and some Chinese girls as well as Ricardo and Isabel, both from Mexico.

The waitress finally returned with the drink orders and set about getting everyone's food orders. This took an even longer amount of time though she appeared to remain patient throughout. I helped the Chinese girls deceiver the German menu and ended up ordering a margarita pizza for myself. We waited on the food at least an hour and by the time it arrived it was around 4:30. And the pizzas were huge!! For the price we paid  I had expected them to be larger slices for each of us but the waitress returned with the equivalent of a personal pan pizza for each of us. Isabel was the first to be served and she stared at the huge pizza in awe.

Apparently the Midwest tradition of being too polite to eat the
last of anything applies in German as well.

Giant pizza!

By the time the dust settled and despite some misgivings, each of us had cleared our plates. We were particularly proud of Isabel who was not that big though the first to finish her mammoth pizza.

Way to put it down!

By the time we had finished eating it was 6:00 pm. I caught a tram home with Zhao and we said a quick hello to our landlords and hopped upstairs to check plans for the evening. Soon after we caught the 7:00 tram to Ehrenfeld, a neighborhood to the east of where we lived to meet up with the rest of the group for a wild night of German frivolity! 

To be continued . . .