Leeds to Mannheim

Wie geht es dir?

This last week has been another crazy one. Since my last blog post I have:

• Cleaned my whole flat after a burst kitchen pipe turned the living room into a paddling pool.
• Made a cake on my bedroom floor with minimal equipment (partly due to said flood).
• Washed my dishes in the bath (again due to flood).
• Been on a picnic for Sam’s birthday.
• Represented Leeds at the Universität Mannheim Study Abroad Fair and given a 30 minute presentation on Leeds to the 4 people who were interested.
• Been to Munich and back on a 6 hour overnight bus for Oktoberfest.
• Got a lot of work done.
• Eaten too much at the International Dinner hosted at the University.

Despite the kitchen flooding last Tuesday night, the plumber only came to fix it on Monday which meant that most of my pots this week were washed in the bath or bathroom sink. This did actually make it easier in some ways and I might try it more often (especially since the hot water tap in the kitchen is rubbish!). The only real problem with it was that I had promised to make a surprise cake for Sam’s birthday and, as the flood had only occurred the night before, the kitchen was pretty much out of use. This led to me making the cake on my bedroom floor. When I started making the cake, I also realised I had no scales, no whisk and no cake tin but I somehow managed and made an okay cake too!

The cake also successfully made it to our picnic (despite nearly falling off the bench because of melting buttercream). The picnic was amazing, everyone had brought a mix of foods and we were sat in front of Mannheim’s Wasserturm and fountains which look beautiful in the evening. The only real problem was that conkers kept falling from the tree we were sat under, but we survived!

The next day, after a double lecture, it was time for the study abroad fair. This is a fair held at Mannehim to try and get students to study in other countries and I was there representing Leeds. All the UK representatives were on one booth which made it all a bit crazy because there were loads of us! It was a fun afternoon though, I got to talk to loads of Mannheim students (most not interested in Leeds but I tried) and I got to try food that was on the other stalls. I also met a lovely girl who has offered to be my Tandem partner, so I might finally get better at speaking German. As Tandem partners we take it in turns to talk to each other in German and English so that we can improve. After representing Leeds at the stall, I had to give a presentation to potential incomers. It went better than I expected despite only 4 people turning up!

Friday was mainly a rest day, if you ignore the 3 hour lecture I had in the morning, as I was due to leave for Oktoberfest at 2:15am on Saturday. This involved waking up at 1:10am! The bus trip was just over 6 hours and fortunately I did manage to sleep for some of it. When we arrived, we were given a map of Munich, information on some of the key places to visit and two chocolate croissants for breakfast. Many of the bus group set off straight to Oktoberfest (despite it only being 8:45) so that they could get a table for when it opened at 12. As I’m not an alcohol kind of person, me and a couple of others set off to look round Munich first. I’m really glad we did this as it is an absolutely beautiful city. Most of the buildings look like something out of a fairy-tale and we got to see a good amount of the key sights in our guidebook. While in Munich, I also got to buy a fairly cheap Dirndl so that I could fit in at Oktoberfest!

After eating our lunch in the train station (and trying a free Lebkuchen) we set off to Oktoberfest. The initial views were awe-inspiring. It was a bit like a big music festival in the UK but with tents instead of stages and hundreds of fairground rides and stalls. We spent a few hours wandering round and taking everything in and we even paid 8 euros (not really my idea) to go on a big wheel. After exploring outside we decided that it was time to go and look in the tents. As I wasn’t planning on drinking anything, I wasn’t really bothered about getting a table but two of the girls I was with really wanted an Oktoberfest beer, so we set out to find one. However, after another hour of going in and out of tents and queues it seemed like this was never going to happen. By this point I was pretty fed up of Oktoberfest, there were too many people in the tents, the queues went on for miles and inside the tents the waiters, waitresses and attendees push you around (often by shoving dirty steins into your back) even when there is nowhere for you to move either! A security guard also made me bin a water bottle before entering a tent despite having bought it there which meant I didn’t get my 1-euro Pfand back and the tiny bottle had cost me 4 euros. By 4pm, me and Elena decided it was time to go back into Munich instead of queueing when we weren’t bothered anyway.

Back in Munich city centre we found a café and had some cake to cheer us up. After sufficiently resting we set off to find somewhere nice to eat tea. We settled on a traditional German restaurant where Elena could have Currywurst and I could have pork, sauerkraut and Kartoffelknödel. Although I was glad to be eating German food that I could tick of my list, it was actually very bland so I was quite disappointed. By this point, we were both tired and the day seemed like it wasn’t going very well anymore but we still had 4 hours till our bus which was leaving at 11:15pm. We ended up walking for a bit then sitting in the train station attempting German crosswords! It felt so good to get back to Mannheim and in my bed at 5am Sunday morning! Especially since the weather here has definitely subscribed to German punctuality and changed immediately from being over 30 degrees to being around 15 and rainy as soon as German summer time ended.

Sunday to Tuesday evening were then spent recovering and doing as much work as possible to get ready for my upcoming presentations and mid-terms since I’m away the next few weekends. Last night however was spent at an International Dinner hosted by VISUM, the international students society. In preparation for the dinner, in between lectures and work me and Elena went out and bought groceries and cooked meals from our home countries. I helped Elena prepare a classic Italian pizza and then I started to make a British toad in the hole. Both turned out really well and we made sure to try some before anyone else did! The dinner was amazing. People had brought their home cuisines from all over the world and we just worked our way round the tables trying everything from Australian fairybread to German Maultaschen, Swedish meatballs to Brazillian brigadeiros. The only problem was we both ate far too much, too quickly and ended up with indigestion but it was worth it!

I’ve now got to prepare and pack for Budapest at the weekend, going to have George Ezra on repeat until then.