Viele Abenteuer - Day 9

Yesterday (Tuesday, 6 April, Day 9) was our first day with orientation activities after a lovely long weekend...which was made much worse by the fact that we had to be at a government office at 8:00 am to turn in some forms.  But after dragging myself out of bed into the freezing morning and turning the forms in without any problems, the day turned out to be quite enjoyable, if a little strange.  A large group of us ended up having breakfast together at a bakery that's right around the corner from the JYM building.  I still don't know everybody's names, but I can at least recognize most people, which I suppose counts for something.  The meetings we had at JYM weren't the most exciting in the world, but it was interesting to learn a bit about the differences between the American university system and the German university system.  After we finished, a group of us grabbed lunch at the near-by Mensa (a food-court-ish place for students) and then we were going to go shopping, but my friend Kathryn and I got separated from the rest of the group, so we ended up walking around by ourselves, and had a few adventures along the way.

Kathryn and I went first to Koenigsplatz, which is right around the corner from the JYM building.  One of the Bavarian kings or princes decided to build the three buildings in the Greek style; now two of the buildings are art and sculpture museums, and I'm not sure what the other one is.  There are a couple nice parks in the area too, where we can have lunch or just relax. 

Koenigsplatz:

We did a little grocery shopping, but then headed back to the center of town to see the Viktualienmarkt, which is a giant food market that's open almost every day.  We passed this church on the way to the market - there really are churches on almost every street in the city:

We also passed this statue of Juliet (Romeo's Juliet).  The story goes that if you rub a certain part of the statue, all of your romantic troubles will be solved.  I wonder who added the flowers, and if that means they had extra problems that needed solving:

We walked around the Viktualienmarkt for a while, but then needed to find someplace for Kathryn to buy some shampoo, so we went in search of a Mueller pharmacy, and this is where the slightly strange part of the day came in.  First, we ended up by the Opera house, and took the opportunity to take a few pictures:

As I took a picture of Kathryn for her, a man offered to take this picture of us together for us, which he did, but then he decided to stand and continue talking to us for about 10 - 15 minutes about his favorite music and how good our German accents were, at which we just nodded and smiled.  Finally, we managed to say goodbye and go about our way - this was the first of four interesting encounters for the day.  Next, two guys about our age asked us how to find a Subway.  We thought they meant the U-bahn, but they said no, they meant the place where you eat sandwiches.  We told them we didn't know, and they proceeded to tell us they were here on vacation and ask us if we were from Britain because apparently we had British accents.  First: why come to Germany and then eat Subway?  Second: is it better to have an American accent or a British accent?  Neither Kathryn or I could figure it out.  Our third interesting encounter was mostly our own doing - we asked for directions to Mueller, but the guy couldn't understand us, so we just kept repeating the word until finally I spelled it out and he understood.  What we didn't realize was that there's a Mueller pharmacy, which is what we wanted, and that there's also a Mueller bakery, which is where he ended up telling us to go.  So, with no shampoo we headed back to the StuStadt because we were meeting some friends for dinner.  Our final less than pleasant encounter came when some random guy in the U-bahn station tried to hit on me.  What we learned from all of this: do not travel alone when it's at all avoidable.  Not that I didn't already know that, and not that I felt threatened for my safety, but it was just a little too weird for my liking.

So those were our four Abenteuer (adventures).  The rest of our evening was much more enjoyable and relaxing.  Kathryn did an exchange program while she was in high school, and she's kept in touch with one of the German students she knew then.  The student, Julia, lives in Munich now, so they made plans to get dinner together, and Kathryn invited me and several others to come along.  It was great to have a chance to talk to a German student...we live in buildings where German students also live, but since the semester hasn't really started yet, most of the students in my building don't really seem to be here and so I haven't had much opportunity to meet any German students.  I don't know if I'll get a chance to talk with Julia again but hopefully I'll meet some other local students here once the semester starts.  We'll see how that Abenteuer goes...