trier – Kim Koelling

Visit from Pops!

My Dad came in town this past weekend! It was so nice to have a face from home, as well as someone to show all these things I’ve come to fall in love with! He’s still on his cane from some knee surgery so I tried to keep the walking to a minimum, which actually wasn’t so hard since Trier is so tiny!

He got to the train station at 8pm from a week of business in Amsterdam, and we walked in the rain to his hotel that was right across the street from my house and got him something to eat in the restaurant on the ground floor. We enjoyed some tiny beers and then we headed over to my apartment so I could give him a tour and introduce him to my roommates. He finally got to see my room on the other side of the webcam! And I gave him some of my roommates fresh apple juice that she makes with her dad on their farm back home! yumm. And he also met the dreaded Crookshanks..

The next morning I met him across the street for breakfast, and then we headed to Karl Marx’s house that is now a museum. The Marx house was bought by the Social Democratic Party in 1928, but the house was confiscated by the Nazi Party in 1933 and turned into a printing house, which explains why the inside of the house has been cleaned out. It was a little strange to visit a famous house sans old furniture, but it also allowed for some pretty cool design elements to lead people through the house while learning all about the history of Karl Marx. Also it was cheap, and we got cool translating headphone things to hear it all in english!

After the tour, we went to the grocery store to get some things to make lunch in my apartment- caprese sandwiches and spargles with hollandaise! and Guiness! We ate and my dad iced his knee, and then we left, all full and fresh, to walk all around Trier and see the sights. I took my dad to the big Dom church thats pretty magnificent on the inside and has a really cool courtyard/graveyard. One of y favorites. Then we went on to the Porta Nigra- the main Trier landmark, though I had wished I knew more about it’s history before we went.. pretty spectacular none-the-less. We walked to my school and stumbled upon Jarred, who my dad had recognized from my amsterdam blog post! haha We got back to my street and went to the coffee shop on the corner in the Hauptmarkt and called my mom. We went back to our rooms to get ready to go to the wine tasting at Deutschherren-hof, and I had some last minute recruits- Jenn and Krista! Who had just flown in from Kansas to visit KP, but she stayed with me a couple days before KP got back from England.

The Wine tasting was sooo fun, and I think everyone had a really good time getting stuffed and being cultured. It was Jenn and my second time to this place, and it was even better this time around because we had some german under our belts to impress our foreign guests, and also the wine guy talked a lot more to our table than last time when it was a big group of students. At the bus stop outside the wine tasting place someone threw a donut out their window and it hit Krista and left a bruise. My dad went to sleep when we got back, and we headed off to the Panic Club and danced till 5:30 in the morning and my dad soon called me at 9:30 and was ready to check out of his hotel. We dropped his suitcase at my place then walked all the way down to the Mosel river. We got some coffee at a small place on the river and i got some apple pie with vanilla frosting. mmm breakfast. We took an hour boat tour and saw the university crew team practicing, and my dad tried to figure out what the german boater signs meant, because that’s what he does. It was soon time to take him back to the train station, but of course we found a little time to find a hole-in-the-wall thai restaurant and grab a quick lunch first.

A goodbye with a train is very dramatic. I didn’t really realize before, but trains are very “movie-esque” for me and most Americans I feel so I didn’t expect to cry when my dad left, but when the train pulled out and I was still standing there waving and watching my dad get settled in his seat, my eyes just started watering..

Love you dad. Thanks for stopping by to say hi 🙂

thoughts from the shower

I thought of this when I was in the shower this morning. thoughts..?

and then this was just a creepy picture i took last night of the basillica! I want to go back now with a make-shift tripod and a super long shutter speed 🙂 ooooOooOoOoOh

and yesterday was my roommate Claudia’s birthday and we had brunch together in a really cute cafe around 2ish 😀 She’s such a sweet person—it was sad because everyone was out of town and her boyfriend couldn’t get off work back in her hometown, but in a positive light it’s always nice to get to hang out with her one on one because she’s so quiet. She’s also so patient with my German speaking skills and teaches me so much! How did I get so lucky with my roommates?? Danke schön Jesus

Trier Photo Ketchup

crookshanks lovin on my new flowers from the market. My favorite—gerber daisies!

laundry time!

ice cream time!

anja not approving of me walkin around the city with booze and fallafels for lunch..

the really old basilica- haven’t gone inside yet, but it’s another really old trier site, and i bought a really cool old postcard of it at the flea market!

there were a bunch of really cool doorknobs that i took pictures of in the old cathedral called the “Dom”. It took 300 yrs+ to build so you can see all the big changes in architectural style through the times! So cool.

Germany DOES have peanut butter and microwaves

It’s been such an exciting week in Trier for me, and it’s only wednesday. I moved into my house on Sunday, and my roommates cooked an awesome dinner for me complete with spargles, crepes and hollandaise sauce 🙂 mmmm. It’s also stopped raining and the temperatures are picking up! I’m sitting with my windows wide open right now listening to the glockenspiel of the cathedral, and the people walking below chat over coffee and little kids screaming and playing. Typical..

views from out of my window

Yesterday was my first class (not counting the German class) and I had Type Design with Mr Hogan. Luckily He had already prefaced the project in the meeting we had with him on Monday, because when we showed up at 10, It was the hardest thing ever to stay awake and try to pay attention. Every now and then he would catch us up to speed and turn to the four of us and ask us what we thought about it—terrifying. I don’t speak in class much at home and I would probably throw up if I had to here.. But he did give us a ten minute break where we ran across the street and grabbed our caffeine filled drinks of choice, and when we got back we got to watch a movie in English!

About America!

And it was sooooo embarassing!

The movie discussed the importance of the Eames’ lounge chair, and the history and politics of the 50’s—the era it was invented. No worries. I wrote down very important points the film made, and here we are:

1) America did not care about politics during the Cold War. They “went into a political amnesia” and instead focused on designing their cookie cutter homes with these lounge chairs and wearing wrinkle free dresses.

2) The lounge chair was perfect for watching media programs and drinking an ice cold Budweiser©.

3) “The Lounge Chairs price is as high as its leather is black.”

4) America has “a culture as cool as its jazz” which was seen through the Eames inventions, and especially they’re star: the Lounge Chair!

This film was so cheesy and hard to watch in a room full of German students who have probably not been to America yet. We all laughed when it first started—mostly out of awkwardness, but more importantly to let the kids know that we thought it was a little redicuclous. Also, I got real uncomfortable at one point when the British narrator was telling about the nazis and what was going on in Europe at the time. Oh well. Now we only have to come to small critique groups every other week so no more of that.. Our project is to choose a designed object (such as the Eames Lounge Chair) or we can

choose a Person/Artist and then design a logo for them using a typeface that we design. From those few letters used in their logo, we will design the rest of the alphabet for an almost complete Typeface! The two idea I’m going to start sketching with are the classic high wheel bicycles, and then Jose Fernando Borges, a Brazilian printmaker. I’ll start sketching and then see which one I think has more potential, but I love the contrast of the bicycle with the thin and thick of lines, and the contrast in sizes seen with the wheels, and with Borges his wood block prints are very bold and playful, with lost of different textures and fun characters. We’ll see…

Last night the neighbors from upstairs came over for a dinner party, an older couple in their 40s or so and I think perhaps the landlords. I had already known this woman as the “wine lady” who had frequently trapped my roommates upstairs drinking wine with her for hours so I was prepared when they walked in with 4 bottles for dinner. Vera once again cooked an awesome meal from her hometown in Bavaria, Ulm. She made Bubenspaetzle (meaning little boy penis haha, but they were inch long skinny gnocci that she shallow fried), Sauerkraut with pieces of ham (vegetarian-style for me!) and Apfelstrizie for dessert. And before dessert, the husband instructed me that a real German meal has to have schnapps in between the courses in order to be able to finish the meal. So after the group finished the 3 bottles of red wine, we all took a shot of pear schnapps (gross) and then followed it up with some apfelstrizie and white wine. I followed the group to tanja’s room where the smokers could smoke, and we just talked and hung out until midnight. Or at least that’s when I couldn’t stand the smoke anymore..

It was fun to see people come out of their shell with their english speaking for me. It feels like it’s getting easier for people when they start getting to know me and I guess begin caring about me and wanting me to actually take part in the conversations. More and more times in the night someone would turn to me to help translate what was just said, and at the end of the night much of the conversation was in english. It was so much fun trying to listen to funny stories, and traditions, and listen to old German bands, and even talk serious about religions for a bit. I may have lost a year from second hand smoke, but definitely worth it haha.

PANIC club

Last night was sooo fun! I made pizza with all Anja’s roommates and danced the night away at Panic Club! When we first got to Trier we went to a restaurant called Astarix, and saw these “fetzig” (retro german way to say awesome) flyers for Panic Club, and picked one up to save. I saw them again when we dropped Jenn off with her 2 new guy roommates, Thomas and Beautiful Phillip, and it turns out that Panic Club was the next party that Phillip was DJing at. So last night was Panic Club, and before we went, Anja me and Jenn went to visit the next house Jenn will live in with 4 other guys, and talked and learned retro-German words like fetzig, souß and zouf boen!/ tanze boen!—all phonetic spelling of course. We just had to walk a block or so to get to panic club from her new flat, so we went, got our schtampe, checked out coats, and walked into the dance floor to a shout out louds song! It was so fun because I knew almost every song they played and even rocked out with jenn to “Love me love me! Say that youll love me fool me fool me! Go on and fool meee…” Awesome. We left around 5:15ish in the morning, and stopped at a kebab place before dropping Jenn off at her place.

When Anja and I got home, we went to the kitchen to eat some, and Timo—one of her roommates—came in shortly after and slightly intoxicated, and we ended up just talkin until about 6. My feet hurt soo bad, but I had such a good time, and learned a lot of german, and danced my feet off. The end.

guten tag!

Ah man, it was an adventure getting here to Trier finally! I rode on the plane with another classmate from Dallas, Anie, and we made it to London after watching 3 movies on the plane. She liked my idea to leave the airport and explore London over our long layover, but really we did not have as much time as we thought because apparently London traffic is the worst. Anyway we caught the Tube to Hyde Park Center and got to see some of the city on the ride. We walked through some parks and got to see buckingham palace and wandered around, got coffee, and stumbled upon a group lesson for roller-blading going on in the park. So awesome. The tube took 45 min to get to Hyde Park Center and we had to be at the airport 2hr prior to our next flight to Frankfurt, so we only had 1.5hr in London until we went back to meet up with Jarred at a pub in the airport for lunch. None of us were hungry because it was like 2 in the morning in the US, but Anie and I shared the fish n chips for novelty.

When we got to Frankfurt it was about 5 and they were in for going to Heidelberg first, so with help from many people we got our train tickets and boarded a full train and stood with out luggage for an hour next to the bathroom listening to people pee.. so far so good right? We ran to our next platform to get the Heidelberg train from Manheim and the same thing happened, but at least it was only 30 min. We got in late, and still had to figure out how to use the bus and find a place to sleep. What an adventure! We got to the hostel my dad had texted me directions too after riding the bus for 2 whole routes, and it turned out to be right next to a zoo! We could see the elephants right out of the window! We stayed in and had out first german beer and talked about everything that had happened in that one day that felt like 2.. then sleep FINALLY! except Anie didnt… darn jet lag

Next day we walked about 15/20 min to the city center (we had a good bearing of the city from our extensive ride on the bus the night before) and shopped at H&M where I got my “really german” jacket!! I’ll post a picture later, but I’m so happy! We ate at an italian restaurant and then headed back to the jugendherberge to sleep more and walked right past the bears habitat at the zoo next door. Only in Germany I guess? That night we caught the bus again to the city center- no more walking for us that day- and we searched for the bar we read about, Destille, known for the big tree growing in the middle of it! It was small and we were there early i guess because it became packed around 10 because it was the bartenders birthday! I got free german cake that was delicious! A big group of marines had a good time trying to flirt with Anie and I and Jarred ended up making 15 euros at the end of the night for the change from all the drinks they made him go get.. I was dubbed mama bear and got us safely back to the hostel after running away from the pirates! (the marines tried not to give up their identity as marines and thought pirates would be more believable?) 🙂

I’ve been staying with anja in Trier, and am about to leave to go meet my future roommates and then off to the foreign student party with free bier! haha More stories tomorrow! Enjoy the update. Guten Abend

I’m not Homeless!

With the help of Anja, I found an apartment in Germany today! Here’s her secret email to me (she’s so awesome! ha)

Yeeeeeeeah.

Kim. Kim. Kim.

I have a room for you!!! It’s the “1rm/250E” one.

I write this via Email only to you cause I don’t want the others to get jealous.

It’s 4 min from Anja’s house, she told me, and ONE minute from school! Apparently they have a cat, which I’m very much a dog person, but my roommate back in lawrence just got one, so I guess this will be a good learning experience.. Anja Also sent me some pictures of the place. It looks so bright! I’m excited! Though, please note the washing machine sandwiched in between the stove and fridge.. haha. I will be living with 2 other girls, who are excited to be able to practice their english. Their names are Tanja and Claudi. Hopefully everything works out since no contracts have been signed, but I’m still excited!