Saturday night my hostmom asked if I wanted to go for a bike ride on Sunday morning. I said sure. I should preface this by saying it has been ages since I've rode a bike. I don't even have a bike anymore. I would estimate it has been since middle school since I've rode a bike. I was quite nervous, but I thought I should go along. Saturday night I couldn't fall asleep. I was so nervous to ride a bike again.
Sunday morning came and I was pumped up. I talked myself into conquering this. It can't be that hard. Everyone rides bikes here all the time. The only issue was that I was supposed to ride my host brother's bike, who is currently studying abroad in the US. However, he is like a foot taller than me, and the seat wouldn't go down enough for me to even think of trying to mount the bike. To make a long story short (for your sake) we made it work by switching bikes with my host dad. He is still rather tall, but at least I can swing my leg over this bike. We finally left 2 hours later than planned. I am seriously going to stop getting up early.
It was hard starting out because I couldn't touch the ground on my bike without tippy-toeing. After I got rolling, it felt good. I was actually on the bike and not falling over. My hostmom took off like a bat out of hell! She means business when they bike here. I was instructed to follow her....the problem was I couldn't catch her! By the way, they have special lanes for bikes here. Usually they are red brick on the sidewalks, and if they don't have a bike lane you ride on the road with the cars. This seemed scary to me, but fortunately our route had bike lanes.
I found it interesting that bikes have their own stoplights. At every stoplight it was so hard to start out again. My legs were screaming at me by the end of the day, and my butt hurt so much from having to strain to reach the floor.
We rode to Charlottenburg Schloss (castle). It was so beautiful! I have been wanting to tour the castle and gardens. They have a ton of walking/biking trails behind the castle. We got to a little bridge in a clearing overlooking the lake and castle. The picture above is my favorite that I've taken thus far. It's amazing how nice pictures turn out when the weather is nice. Sunday was the first nice day in about a week. It was actually getting depressing never seeing the sun and all that rain, even if it was only sprinkles.
We rode through the garden of the castle. Everything here is very pretty! I believe I said it before but it truly doesn't feel like a huge city like Chicago. There are so many trees and everything is unique. The architecture is always beautiful.
I saw the most interesting thing. Little kids ride these wooden bikes....without pedals. They propel themselves with their feet and stop the same way. It's to teach the kids how to keep their balance. And once they can, they get a regular bike. I think this is a rather genius idea. This cute little boy, he looked about 3 or 4, was quite good on his bike. He really could make that thing go! Although he had no fear. He rode in front of me, and not being so good on a bike, I nearly had a wreck with him. Imagine a 23 year old injures a small child who is better at riding bike that she is.
We rode along the river for quite some time. They have wonderfully, gorgeous bike paths, but they are quite narrow and busy! I had trouble swerving and still staying on the bike. Eventually we got to an arts market. Everything there was hand made. They had really gorgeous things!! But expensive as well, without even considering the € to $ conversion.
I should preface this next story with my previous story of stupidity. True to my practice at school and work this summer, I never dried my hair when I left the house. This worked fine, except that it's pretty chilly in the mornings here. After a week of this, I could feel myself getting an ear infection. So my host dad and I went down to the apotheke to buy something for my ears. This apparently was an organic pharmacy. I came out with some sort of liquid to put in my ears. All the lady could say is that it's really good. They didn't have any pills, only liquid form of everything. It actually helped. After 2-3 days, it was gone. I had told my host family I wanted to buy a hat because my ears were cold all the time. Everyone, except my region back home, calls these sock hats. I could not for the life of me get my host family to understand what I was talking about. I tried to explain what it looks like and that it's for winter, but I failed.
Now, back to the market. They pull me into a booth with "my hats," or the ones they think I want. These are what I consider fashion hats, all look and no function. I humor them and look. The most normal looking black hat was €39. Holy cow! was my response. The vendor had "fun" putting all these ridiculous hats on me. Really fashionable people can pull this off...not me. It becomes quite obvious that I am not leaving this stand without a hat. My host mom is now siding with the vendor! What?! So I pick out a black one, but they inform me I wear too much black already so I need a colored hat. Imagine me with a fire orange hat on....I think not! She then puts a more subdued brown hat on me. She even tucks my hair under neath to show me how versatile it is. Fine, that's as good as it's going to get. My host father buys one so mine is only €30. Of course they have a fit I have to wear it. Imagine this....black sweatpants, bright yellow Riverwalk Apartments free T-shirt, Thimo's maroon sweatjacket he gave me, and the crazy hat. I was quite the sight. And sadly there were pictures taken. You must be dying to know what this hat looks like, so I will post a photo soon. :)
We proceed on through the market. My host mom isn't a fan of my black scarf either. She must think I'm gothic or depressed. On Friday night when I went out, she dressed me like a doll. My jacket wasn't cool enough, my scarf was depressing. I'm pretty sure I wore as many of her clothes as of my own. I didn't mind it so much. This is where my scarf purchase arose from. Only €10...pretty good deal.
There was a stand for beer keg type things. It looked like it was a solid PVC pipe sanded or something to expose different colors. It was about 5 feet tall with a spout at the bottom of the base. The thing was amazing!! It was so pretty! I have no idea how the guy created it. It was so unique! It was €5000, "just a bit too much," my host family said.
We rode to a cute little pub along the river. They ordered me flamkuchen and a some drink that I forget the name of. Turns out a flamkuche is like a pizza. It's quite giant and we each got one! The only catch was that they don't cut it at all. You have to use your fork and table knife. I almost knocked mine on the floor several times. Also, they don't seem to get the concept of pizza. There was just giant sections of each topping, all the cheese in one giant block, all the onions in another area, all the tomatoes, etc. I had a Mediterranean one. It was fairly good. Although that drink...not so good. It had some sort of spice flavoring. I'm not even quite sure what it had in it.
Most host family proceeded to point out the Americans to me. She said they were identifiable because they wear "shorties." Sure enough one entire family had shorts and tank tops/T-shirts on. This day was quite cool. Probably about 62 degrees or so. I realized it's completely like Americans to go on vacation without even thinking to check the weather. The more I watched them, the more I hoped I didn't stand out like that! haha!
The rest of the day I followed my host mom from store to store. She is quite the shopper! Wow! And I thought I shopped a lot. I am a complete noob compared to her. She also has expensive tastes. I felt so out of place in my sweats. She had a fit I needed to buy a peacoat because it was only €120. Maybe that's a good deal, who knows. The remainder of the day was uneventful, homework, bread dinner, the usual :)
PS: Sorry for the book! (And the delay...I was in France for a week! Post on that will come this week hopefully :)
