Stuttgart Hills
Because I was living in Stuttgart, it seemed weird to talk about travelling to there and around the city. Consequently I only wrote about other places that I went to when I was blogging at the time. Now I’m back home and I’ll tell you about Stuttgart!
There isn’t way too much to say about the city. It’s particularly beautiful because it was one of the few German towns (that I visited) that had hills— like big SF hills that brings me back to a feeling of “home.” It also has some fun things to do and has it’s special quirks, too.
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I know, I know.. I’ve been horrendous at updating. I still have so much to talk about my trip earlier this year, as well as some of the things I’ve been involved with this year! But before I start the madness that was my trip to Istanbul, I wanted to talk a little bit about zoos and why they are important to me (hence the fact that I make it a point to visit the zoo in every city I manage to— except third world countries because those just make me cry).
<–PS: King Crab says “GET IN MAH BELLEH!”
During my Europe adventure I went to two zoos. That’s pretty pathetic in my book, but I tried to make up for it by going to the Stuttgart zoo at least once a month when I was there. It was definitely one of the nicest zoos I’ve seen— Southern Germany lays such importance on horticulture, not just at the zoo but everywhere, that when spring hits you’re bombarded by pure colour and enough flowers to kill someone with moderate allergies. That, along with the beautiful, clean, and spacious enclosures for each animal made it extremely peaceful and a beautiful place to go. They also had bugs and fish and lots of other fun things! View full article »
I realise that I’ve been a bad girl and have not updated since I got back from Germany. But, I still have a lot to say and I’ll try to remember as much as possible! Then I will try to get back onto updating on a regular basis.
Köln— the Furthest North I Got
I was told by many people that I needed to get up to Berlin and Hamburg, and as much as I wanted to, I just didn’t have the funds this time around. But, I did manage to get up to Köln (or Cologne, as most Americans know it) for a week where I got to experience the magic of Lindt chocolate, a BIG church, and behind the scenes primetime television.
Above all, it was a beautiful little city. It definitely felt small, though I have a feeling it’s bigger than Stuttgart.
It is the birthplace of scent for men— and you can even go visit the boutique that first made the stuff. That would’ve been a useless trip for me seeing that I have no sense of smell, but it’s an interesting piece of history… I would’ve thought that cologne was invented by the French! But no, it was the Germans that decided that men should be allowed to smell “pretty” too, so… surprise! View full article »
I feel like I’ve gotten to know the Southern region of Germany pretty well since I got here, and for the most part it’s a very beautiful and busy place. I think the weekend that we decided to drive around down there had about 5 random holidays lines up in a row that we didn’t know about, which might account for the busyness, but it was fun, so there.
We pretty much just hopped in a car and drove aimlessly around the region (although there was an overall destination in mind). We drove through Ulm, Ravensburg, Weingarten, Lake Constance, a bunch of random tiny towns that I can’t remember the names of, and ended up in Füssen for Neuschwanstein for the second time— except this time it was spring and not winter, so it was incredibly more colourful (and warm). We passed by many cows, dandelions, and the Alps were almost always in the picture dead ahead. Here are two of the highlights which I found the most interesting. View full article »
For the radio I’ve interviewed a total of five bands now. One of them was a disaster and the other ones were mostly good. First off was an Indie band from Sweden called The Horror The Horror. The music is rather generic in my opinion, but the guys were really talkative and it was a good interview. Also, their performance was really good, too! Great musicianship and a positive attitude.
The crappy one was a band called Eagle Seagull, which was an interesting band with a few really interesting songs (the rest were kind of generic, too), but the interview was horrible. Actually, the first time I interviewed them it was turning out to be a great interview! Then my recorder completely failed and I embarrassingly had to go get another one and wait to redo it after the show. So after the show, not only did they keep me waiting for way too long, but the lead singer was PLASTERED and was saying all sorts of contradictory things to what he said earlier in the day. He came off as extremely self-centred and put down his band a lot. Who does that to a journalist? I mean, I know that journalists aren’t usually treated well, but you’d think he’d have some degree of professionalism or AT THE VERY LEAST not say things that make you sound like a big jerk. I mean, you do want to actually gain fans right? It sucked. View full article »
Spring is here, and my last Ladybug army has for the most part disappeared… I’m assuming they’ve either all died or figured out that my windows are open because it’s actually nice out.
So, I’ve had a ladybug absence for about a month, which has been a little saddening. Thankfully iGoogle now has a gadget that lets virtual ladybugs crawl across your screen when you’re checking your email, so I’ve been able to have at least some kind of ladybug presence in the meantime (albeit a virtual presence… not quite the same).
That said, spring is here, and therefore I was not surprised to find this: View full article »
Wow, I’ve really been slacking! Things have been a bit crazy here, so I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and write this stuff. Here’s a picture of the gorgeous spring dandelion infiltration to make up for it. Anyway, 1 May is a date for Germany which has three (maybe more) holidays smashed into one, and it makes for a rather interesting post. Conveniently, I was also being carted around southern Germany for the holiday weekend, which allowed me to get a somewhat varied experience (apparently not much happens in Stuttgart)!
The first part was originally a religious themed holiday called Maibaumstag (May-tree-day), where each town puts up a little decorated tree on top of a pole in the center of the town. Each town’s tree is different based on the individual town’s personality, and I thought it was interesting that it’s basically just a christmas tree at the wrong time of year. That said, apparently it used to be very common for people to try and take town the tree in the middle of the town so that they could fulfill the other tradition of the day, which made it so that many towns had to protect their tree! View full article »
Yesterday I had the honor of interviewing Cartridge, an Indie band from Denmark, on live radio here in Stuttgart. It was my first on air interview ever, much less in another country where I was speaking a foreign tongue, so needless to say I was definitely a little bit nervous. That said, it went really well and I only really had a few mess ups in the outros because I wasn’t sure about timing and exactly what else to say— but my technical assistant said that all that comes from experience, and that my job was actually pretty impressive considering it was my first time. We came in and out on time, I didn’t say anything too stupid (heh), and the band was in general, a decent interview.
As I said in the last post, I’m used to asking questions and I consider myself to be pretty decent at it, but I’m usually off screen and my voice is cut out… not to mention that it’s never live! This was indeed a new experience for me. View full article »
So if you didn’t catch it the first time, I’m here in Germany primarily to study at the media school here in Stuttgart. Learning German and travelling are secondary objectives, even though I find those more interesting to talk about which is why I haven’t really brought this up before. In any case, I’ve been doing some cool things here so I thought I’d write about it.
The big main course that I’m taking is Studioproduktion Ton (Studio Production, Audio), which is a major 12 credit class that takes up all of my Wednesdays and is taught completely in German. This makes it pretty hard… Thankfully I already have a pretty good background in audio recording, so I already know about concepts like Compression and Automation, etc. But when a big complicated piece of machinery is being explained to you another language without much slack given it can definitely have its stressful moments. In any case, there are one or two other kids in the class who have been gracious enough to take me and the other Canadian and try to integrate us into the group a little better. This is the big main board, the Vista 7! It’s pretty high tech, and worth about €5,000… tread carefully.. View full article »
