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 »
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 »
The first day that Sarah and I walked around downtown Stuttgart to check out what used to be the longest shopping street in Germany (I don’t know what it is now, but apparently it’s been outdone somewhere else), we got hungry and decided that it would be a good idea to get some food. We also thought that it would be appropriate to go to and get some typical German food so we could keep exploring the culture. Then we realized something… We didn’t know what typical German food was. That is, the food that that normal Germans eat and not the stereotypical “wurst and beer” which was all we could really think of. Unfortunately we didn’t really know where we were going and my German was even worse than it is now, so we sort of had to rely on pictures or by what we could see, so we settled on crepes, which is pretty far from German but damn good (and cheap). View full article »
