"It's like a cultural experience"

First post thoughts: Germany is über (German for super, oooh yeah) legit. Jetlag is not.

* We arrived to Munich at 9:00 am Saturday morning, and met the group at Starbucks. I enjoy that the director picks the places Americans know how to find. I definitely do not "sprechen sie Deutsch" yet. Hello, Rosetta Stone, new buddy ole pal! Several students and I realized how slightly disheartening/humorous(?) it is to think that that dogs here know more German than we do.

* We spent Saturday afternoon touring Munich, which I later realized was the director's sneaky snake way of keeping us moving so we wouldn't just sleep from 2 pm on. We went Frauenkirche, this fancy cathedral, and Hofbräuhaus, a famous restaurant that seats over 2,000 people. Apparently every U.S. president has eaten there when they've been in/near Germany.
Restaurants in Bavaria are cool because you don't get your own table solely based on the people you're with, they seat you wherever there's room, so you get to know/be
around the locals. The local German man we were seated by didn't know English, but kept saying "CHEERS!" and clinking his beer stein against our steins...of water. I was brave and ordered Schweinshaxe (pig knuckle), and the nice German man took pity on me, a goofy American, and cut the meat off the bone for me.

* We weren't allowed to sleep on the 1.5 hour train ride to Regensburg (where I'm living this semester) since that's apparently the worse thing you
can do for jetlag. It was ridiculously impossible though...I've never felt so disconnected to reality. One of the assistant directors made, yes MADE, us play Catchphrase (until the Germans on the train got annoyed by the beeping), and let me tell you, it was not pretty. It took me, the English/Communication major, a whoooole turn to guess the phrase, "sandwich bread."

* Sunday was pretty great: started the day by walking along the BEAUTIFUL Danube River, to mass at a cathedral in Regensburg, where we got to hear a famous boys choir sing. The afternoon is where the title of my post comes from--as we were walking through Regensburg's city center, one guy in our group exclaimed, "Woooow, it's like a cultural experience!" If this isn't a cultural experience, I would like to know what is. (Insert haha's here)
Later on we went to a German fair, where we found many signs of Americanization, i.e. a pony ride called "Dodge City," themed like the Wild West. Poor, poor Kansas...between the "The Wizard of Oz" and the stereotype that we are still somehow stuck in the gunslinging days, its reputability never stands a chance.

* As you Americans spent this Labor Day not laboring whatsoever, I had my first day of classes. German history, geography and culture class, hoo-rah! Today was also our first experience at a German mall/buying necessities. I'm sure we got plenty of laughs looking at the hair products section for over 10 minutes, trying to make sure we weren't about ready to buy 2 shampoos or 2 conditioners. Playing charades with German drugstore workers is fun.

Plans:
-- Try every one of the 20ish coffeeshops in Regensburg, all precious, by the way
-- Go to local disco tech (uunce uunce uunce)
-- Conquer jetlag. And on that note, I feel like all the thoughts in my brain now sound like Ben Stein's voice. "Bedtime...bedtime...bedtime...anyone?" YES.