You Sing a Sad Song Just to Turn It Around

So I went to Italy, and it was exactly like Germany but with big big big mountains.

Just to warn you, this post is very long (it's a week's worth, after all), so, if you aren't already on your lunch break, you might want to go get a snack or a drink or something and turn off the phone and jot down a little list of the other things you wanted to do today, 'cause you'll probably forget them after this. You can also take it in smaller pieces (it took me two days to write this), but I don't write capsule style, so that may not work out well. Don't be afraid to read it a few times- there's not much going on this weekend, so I doubt I'll have much more of interest to tell you anytime soon. I have also been slowly adding onto this post throughout the day, so if you read it earlier, you may want to go back and discover that I've added more as I've thought of new things. (Last edit 9 Oct 6:31 pm)

There is a new song of the month, because it is a new month. It is called "You Had a Bad Day" and it is by Daniel Powter and I love it because it is so pretty and German radio is playing it just frequently enough that it is coming up to replace "You're Beautiful." There were of course many songs of the day that you missed while I was on vacation, and today's, declared at some point after midnight last night in a bar, is Nena's "99 Luftballoons."

And onto the stuff you actually want to read about, now that my overly wordy introduction is through:
I'm going to start with Friday, because I got home late and was too sleepy to finish blogging (for which I apologize to those of you who forgot I was going to Italy and thought that I maybe fell off the face of the Earth). Mary and I had the most awesome (and perhaps shortest) trip to Bonn to buy her a train ticket to get back from Brussels, where she is at the moment, and I'm jealous, because Belgium has the best chocolate and french fries ever, and because she isn't here to hang out with me right now. But we did buy some really amazing chocolate at the big Kaufhaus thing, and ate it on the bus and it was so so yummy. Also I saw Mary's house (and finally picked up that card from my mom that I forgot in Tübingen)! And then there were public transportation adventures which involved getting on a bus to get back to Niederkassel and getting there only to find out that the bus to Uckendorf literally left 3 minutes before my bus from Bergheim arrived and that was pretty annoying but I got home and ate and Katrin came and whisked me off to mandolin orchestra, which is really truly an orchestra that plays classical music and has lots of mandolins and they were all excited and found me a really old mandolin to play but the music was hard and I barely managed to get a few notes in. Next week they say they will have a better mando that I can keep for the year. Did you know that European mandolins are smaller than American ones (everything is smaller in Europe) and have this giant bulge on the back that makes them so so hard to hold? It's going to take a while to get used to the thing.
So I got up super super super early on Saturday and got in a car and spent 10 hours with 3 children (children are almost as bad as cows, but at least they don't stink)and drove through Baden-Württemburg (state containing Tübingen) and I got too excited when I saw the little 4-part trash cans that B-W has and NRW doesn't that make recycling so easy in public places- I still miss those trash cans. I cannot explain how terrible I feel not recycling things when I throw them away at the bus stop, which only has one trash can. And we drove over the Neckar and I got all sentimental, but we didn't actually pass Tübingen proper. BW is still a magical state, though. It had to end, though, and then there were mountains everywhere and, somehow, Italy looks exactly like Austria, which looks exactly like Bavaria (where I'd rather not spend too much time), and everyone speaks German, although they have thick accents that are difficult to understand. And Italy is full of old people who hike these super-super-super huge mountains, no matter what the weather. And I tried to hike, but the air is so so so thin that I barely made it the 100 or so yards to the next farm thing and I was ready to collapse because I absolutely could not breathe. I think I know what it feels like to have an asthma attack now, and it is not at all fun. I took myself back down to our little bed and breakfast and put myself into bed and watched a lot of CNN, including a really awesome episode of Larry King (randomly playing at like 10 in the morning) featuring Judge Judy, who is now my hero. This was maybe the highlight of my vacation, which is sad. We did go down the valley one day, which is infinitely more fun than the mountain, and we walked along some path that follows some sort of German-Italian irrigation system, and then it rained so we hurried back to the car (Italy has the worst weather ever- fog and rain and clouds and freezing cold) and then we went to a real city and it made me very happy- there was even actual Italian on the signs in this city! (I determined that I know more Italian than many of the people I talked to while in Italy.) And we ate pizza that was slightly above mediocre and we went in every single outdoor sports store to try to find Anna a pair of hiking boots and ended up going back to the very first store and buying the first pair that she liked. But I got to see a real Italian city! Italy apparently loves chestnuts, and it is apparently chestnut season and that means random street vendors roasting them and it smelled like Christmas at Maymont, which made me all happy.
A Few Awesome Things About Italy:
Italy has shutters (you know, like on windows), and Germans are fascinated by them
Italy has soda in CANS- I wanted one so badly
Italian towels are actually large enough to cover one's body- the German word for towel is "Handtuch" and they truly do give you a little bitty hand towel for showering, which is really not enough and still annoys me
Italian weather is terrible, Germany wins this competition (it is all warm and sunny here)
Italian radio is also awful, no matter what language it's in. It did, however, provide the entertaining discovery of a "clean" version of "You're Beautiful:" "she could see from my face that I was flying high" (those of you not familiar with the song will have to be incredibly creative to figure out what usually goes in place of flying)
Unfortunately, we did not spend very long in the city, and I was otherwise really bored. Came back on Thursday and I still don't like spending 10 hours in a car and there was some really crazy bad wreck on the other side of the Autobahn at one point- a white van literally on top of some Porsche, as if it had decided to park there, and then like 4 or 5 big trucks that were somehow involved and as we passed there were ambulances and police cars and a helicopter and everything- it was insane.
AND, at some random rest stop in Bavaria, I found DR PEPPER. Germany does not, excluding some Kiosk that Mary found in Bonn (and of course this rest stop), actually have Dr Pepper, and I'd forgotten how amazing this soda is. Not only that, but the label claimed (in English) that Dr Pepper "solves all your problems." For a little while at least, I swear it did (the batteries in my CD player found new life, the radio started playing awesome songs, the weather turned prettier, and we got out of Bavaria, which is always a good thing). We got home and I slept all happy in my own bed, able to finally sleep in now that I am not sharing a room with an 11-year-old who likes to wake up at 7 and watch tv.
So then came Friday, which was strange and difficult and I ended up visiting Experiment's office and we have come to the decision that I will be switching host families. No, there wasn't any big huge crisis, nor are there really even bitter feelings or anger or any of that. . . mostly we just somehow don't fit. We like each other well enough, but there's not really the close relationship or friendship or whatever necessary to happily live together for a year. We're just too different, and it's mostly a relief, now that I've realized that I've just been kind of living beside these people, not with them, to know that I'm going to start over and maybe have that really awesome host family experience that everyone else seems to enjoy.
Also Maja, who was one of our Betreuers in Tübingen, is totally working at Experiment now and she was there and I got to see her and that was really nice and she had good advice and made me feel better about a lot of things. Also she made me a cup of tea, and tea makes lots of things better.
But I'm not leaving yet (hold onto any mail you planned to send, though), and last night we headed into Köln and it was wonderful because I love Köln. We went on some ghost tour thing, and it turns out that all of Köln's ghost stories are pitiful and mostly involve some vaguely interesting haunting that got magically cured something like 100 years ago or someone dying in a medievally violent fashion, so there's not much spooky left to see. I do, however, now know all sorts of Kölsch folklore that I can share with everyone who comes to midyear when I take you to all the coolest hangouts in Köln! (Also the lame hangouts that happen to have cool statues- every single story had a corresponding awesome statue) And then we went closing down the bars (2 of them, as a matter of fact) and I am not going to tell you how much Kölsch I enjoyed, but it was delicious. Did you know that there are all sorts of songs about Köln that Germans know and love to sing and that they play in their bars and every single person in the room sings along? It's weird but cool and I really want to learn these Köln songs.
I slept in too late today, but I was also out too late last night.
And I bummed around the house and sort of worked on my English homework but not really (considering I'm not 100% certain I'll be going back to this school, I wonder if I should bother) and played some German game called Niagara, which won game of the year for 2005, but is actually not all that great. And ate sauerkraut, because I am, after all, in Germany. Then there was watching of Bridget Jones and eating potato chips and drinking something that is related to wine but not as aged and doesn't have as much alcohol and is sweeter and actually tastes good (ignoring Mary R's opinions). . . I forget what it was called precisely, and a German name probably wouldn't help you. It tasted exactly like sparkling cider, however, and I enjoyed it.
Now I'm picking through Dorian Gray (I just finished the third chapter and I'm starting to give up on looking up all these words because Oscar Wilde thinks it necessary to tell me exactly what kind of carpet Lord Henry has in his library, and what flowers every single thing reminds him of, and overly long metaphors that have nothing to do with the good parts of the book) and, obviously, internetting, and I don't want to sleep because I slept in too late this morning. Oh, the terrible spiraling relationship with my bed and my pillow and that comfy comfy blanket. . . I don't have to get up tomorrow morning, but I should maybe try to be out of bed before quarter to three.