away we go, auf nach irgendwo

ours is a busy house today. the kids leave tomorrow for a week in the states, and i am off on my own epic journey.

my trajectory:
freiburg ➞ salzburg ➞ vienna ➞ bratislava ➞ high tatras ➞ frankfurt

i'm really looking forward to a few days on a train, away from children, with some good books and a traveling-to-slovakia playlist. but i am most excited to see some old friends that i love and miss like crazy. my friends are scattered all over these days, but sometimes that works out nicely. because i have couches to crash on in some really wonderful cities...

24 things

24 things to do before i turn 25

1. hike in the black forest
2. drink blueberry wine at Brennessel
3. stand in the dreisam
4. visit slovakia
5. spend a full day with my grandparents
6. climb the schloßberg tower
7. go to a dance club
8. finish a book in german
9. go to a couchsurfing event
10. road trip with emma
11. bake a pie with my aupair kids
12. have an adventure with my sister
13. summit a new mountain
14. go on a picnic
15. start a costume box
16. add something to my tattoo sleeve
17. send postcards to montana friends
18. learn a new song on the banjo
19. read 24 books
20. bike going-to-the-sun-road
21. have more big vegan breakfasts with my mpls friends
22. celebrate Fastnacht
23. cook for friends
24. bike in a critical mass

(the inspiration)

what twenty three sounds like

my twenty third year began with sushi and wine in minneapolis and ends here in germany, with german food and wine? i don't know yet.

in between there was a suburb, an elementary school, a road bike, a beloved vegan restaurant, halloween dressed as germans, folk music at the 331 club, a thanksgiving 5K, a banjo class, a commute to work, a jugband competition, hundreds of netflix, an Amy Tan novel, a christmas at home, Kristin Lavransdatter, a luminary snowshoe race, mofongo in puerto rico, piña coladas on the ocean, an oldschool roller rink, perler beads, dodgeball, a job search, cuban breakfasts at Victor's, a brewery tour in wisconsin, a road trip west, a couch in missoula, a haunted hotel, a little cabin in montana, a mountain range, a powwow, some jim beam, some slovak lessons, a new SLR digital camera, a polebridge party, a dive bar, a rave in the forest, taiwanese hot pot, some new tattoos, lots of goodbyes, a plane ticket, two hours in iceland, four kids in germany...

twenty three was rocky, and then it was great, and then it was strange, and after today it's DONE.

here, i made y'all a mixtape:

this expatriation

yesterday makes one month in freiburg.
and only seven months to go. if i stick with that very tentative plan, then i am already one eighth done with this job. that is both sad and totally fucking wonderful.

no offense freiburg. i love you, i do.

i probably can't call myself an expat, then. in eight months i'll be on the road to montana. eight months is cake.

Kürbis

i'm mindfullly forcing halloween on the kids.
germans aren't excited about it, but i need halloween.
yesterday we tackled the pumpkin.

today was swell

1) a giant care package from mother dearest

2) a raspberry icecream cone eaten on the sidewalk

3) vintage halloween cartoons with the kids

4) a train ticket to Salzburg (next week i'm going on a journey)

5) a letter from kelly in NYC

6) a violin in the house! (it's been a while, but i busted out some etudes)

7) a bottle of wine and the last chapter of persuasion

Münster

here are some pictures from my weekend wandering. there's an incredible old church in freiburg, and climbing the church tower is one of my favorite things to do on a sunday. construction started in the 1200s, which means the chunks of sandstone i'm standing on, 116 meters above the square, are eight hundred years old. hard for a minneapolis girl to fathom. minneapolis became a city in 1867.

i've never gotten a decent picture of the big west tower, but there are some good ones here.

oktober

i had a pretty day in the city. it's so cold here already!

how to live with a german

last night i went with my aupair family to a musical production at the junior high. i watched a 7th grader dressed as a red cabbage do-si-do with a 7th grader dressed as currywurst. it seemed like a normal sort of family outing.

i know a lot more these days about the everyday lives of germans.
the last time i lived in freiburg, i didn't much like my german housemates. we didn't get each other. sometimes i left my breakfast dishes in the sink until after class. the germans always washed their pots and pans before they ate their food.

in college i turned in a story titled how to live with a german. i wrote it because i had no idea.

this winter is a lesson in the mundane. and in doing things the german way. i'm really immersed this time, often frustrated, usually bored, but it's helping. i am, for instance, an expert countertop composter. that's huge. it's only recently that i can sort my trash with any confidence. i can set the water temperature on the washing machine (in celsius) so the colors don't bleed, and empty all four of the dryer's lint traps. i know what condiments to set on the breakfast table to satisfy four kids, and their parents. i know, finally, what to pack for school snacks, which days to send gym shoes to school, which days the kids have recorder lessons, when the piano teacher comes, what time to leave for soccer practice...

all of these incredibly uninteresting things add up to some sort of cultural understanding that i was lacking the last time. and it's kind of rad to see this side of a place. you rarely see the lint traps and compost bins when you stay in a hotel.

quiet weekend

1) the schlossberg is the best place to hear sunday's churchbells
2) delicious avacado spread and coffee at Aran

Hannover

a few days ago i took the train to Hannover with my aupair family. the grandmother lives there, and the parents had a convention to attend. the kids and i spent most of our time feeding ducks by the canal and collecting mountains of acorns on the playground (and reading; now it's the bell jar).

and then somehow i found myself on on busy subway car in a big city, with three children in tow, on my way to a german "Biotechnica" convention.

i haven't taken a science class in over five years, and i have never taken one in german, so the convention didn't interest me much. an attractive man in a very nice suit tried to convince me to take a poster (of his company's chemical "Farbstoff" scale), and it was then that i ducked out, left the kids with their parents, took the subway into the citycenter. i wandered the streets of Hannover in the dark, in the rain, all by myself, just like the good old days.

my best friend in germany is Sherman Alexie.

i have a lot of time.
this has never happened to me before.
the last time i was in germany i had to go to class and to my internship. i had to write papers and give presentations, and i had to go dancing twice a week and sample all the delicious beer that freiburg has to offer. and i flew frantically around europe, trying to see and photograph everything in 12 months.

this time i'm getting a lot of reading done.

Haus

i live in a house in germany with four kids.
i pick them up from school on my bike.
they let me carry all four neon orange backpacks.
i cook them lunch, with meat (unpleasant).
yesterday i bought a whole chicken at the market.
the chicken seller cut it in half for me with one repulsive hack.
this week i laughed out loud about a hundred times a day.

get your germany on

today i was a tourist in a city that used to be mine. i'm trying to look at freiburg through new eyes this time, since the people i knew here are not here, and that changes everything about a place. i know my way around intuitively though, and familiar sights take me back to some wonderful moments.

this afternoon i wandered through the market by the münster. i sat inside the church for a while. i ate rhubarb yogurt on a bench by the rathhaus (my favorite food in the world, let me tell you). i wrote letters and drank coffee at Cafe Aspekt, my old favorite studying spot. it was a nice saturday, and i look forward to more of them.

fernweh

i am in freiburg. finally. and i still don't believe it.

freiburg is the city i lived in in college. and it is the reason i started this blog, once upon a time.

this time, though, i have turned in studying and partying for backyard soccer and making sack lunches. i'm living with a german family as an aupair (read: foreign nanny). there are four kids in my care (two sets of twins, in 1st and 3rd grade), and all of them are so-far-wonderful. life never ceases to be completely bizarre.

i'll take some photos of my fantastic new digs after i get settled. for now though, i just finished putting my montana photos online. you can find most of them here.

the good times are killing me

to borrow a phrase from my mother, leaving swiftcurrent is like "poking sharp sticks in my eyes." it was a long and awful drive through north dakota, with a broken heart and puffy eyes. i will miss the mountains, and my beautiful seasonal friends, and delicious taiwanese breakfast sandwiches, but new adventures await.

right now i'm having a short tryst with minneapolis. my friend jess drove here with me from montana, and we've fit as much citylove into the last three days as possible: cocktails and vegan food and biking and new tattoos and retail therapy and dinner with family and old friends. gotta pack it in, because tomorrow i pack my suitcase and fly to germany.

swiftcurrent mountain

yesterday was my last hike of the season - the highline trail, over swiftcurrent pass, up swiftcurrent mountain to the fire lookout, down into our valley, home to the swiftcurrent motor inn. i probably won't be back at swiftcurrent next summer, so climbing swiftcurrent mountain on my last day off was as symbolic as it was beautiful. and i needed some mountain time to clear my head.

we ran into two bears on the way home, and they were not afraid of 5 large humans like i had hoped. we booked it home, bear-calling furiously.

and afterward...went to the cattle baron and ate a buffalo steak. don't ask me why.

sisters in wonderland

sister was in glacier for the final days of summer-ish weather. we did some hiking, swimming, beach-lounging and soaked up some sun. now swiftcurrent is blustery. so it's almost time to go.
1) we hike up Shangri-La, 2) we explore Rising Sun, 3 & 4) we visit my secret beach

siyeh pass

sister came to swiftcurrent last week, and i had lots of days off to adventure with her. on day 1 we hiked Siyeh Pass, from Siyeh Bend to Sunrift Gorge. it's a beautiful pass, and sissy agreed to venture off the trail, up some intense little peak that i cannot find on the map. so wonderful to see MY FAVORITE PERSON IN MY FAVORITE PLACE!