Goodbye Marburg (insert sad face here)

So sadly our time in Marburg had to come to an end at some point, though I would not have minded if it had lasted longer. Marburg was a very fun and cute city, I plan on returning to it again before leaving Germany. Maybe even have a small Fulbright reunion there before we all head back to the States, who knows.


So after our lovely cooking class, Mariko and I had just under a week to finish up in Marburg and move to Braunschweig. We did lots of packing that week, and lots of cleaning... trying to get everything as ready as possible. But we had fun also that week. Tuesday we each had something fun going on in our language classes. In Kurs 2 we all had prepared a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm, and we had to tell our tale to the class (in German on course). I chose the tale Der Gevatter Tod, which is Godfather Death. It was an interesting tale, and I quite enjoyed it. Though I was rather proud of myself that I was the only one in the class that had my story memorized! That being said I was also the only one in the class that prepared for my story longer than one day in advance..... I'm sure that it if everyone took the same amount of time that I did (a week), I'm sure they would have had it memorized also. Kurs 1 accompanied us out to listen to our tales, and I believe that they understood most of them as well! We had a pleasant walk up to the Schloss, stopping at certain spots for each tale. Once we finished the last tale, we were right next to our lunch destination, the beer garden beneath the castle! We had a pleasant lunch with our teachers

Marianna reading 'Little Red Riding Hood'

Kimberly with 'Hans Gets Married'

Rachel reading 'The Elves and the Shoemaker'

Gabe flanked by our two teachers

After our lunch we all made our way back to the classrooms, as we were going to listen to Mariko's project. Kurs 3 was doing a radio broadcast at one of Marburg's local radio stations. They had divided up into groups and were each going to talk about the areas of the USA and common stereotypes in that area. Mariko however was one of the two moderators that "interviewed" each group and "ran" the broadcast. We got to listen to her talk quite a bit of German... though we are still waiting for a copy of the CD. When we get that, hopefully we can make it so all our family can at least listen (even if you don't understand it, it is still cool to hear).

The rest of the week went by rather quickly with packing and a short visit to Braunschweig (which has the city initials of BS), mainly to drop off half of our luggage and get keys to our apartment. Thursday night, our last night in Marburg, came too quickly for most of us. I had been setting up a small party near our building, and had procured firewood for a small fire and some S'mores (A big thank you to my teacher Andreas who figured out where to get firewood for us!). We started off with only a few people, but by the end of the night almost every Fulbrighter still in Marburg was there. We all had fun eating and talking, and I was able to let Raphael and Jose have their very first S'more. Though the S'mores were slightly different than what we would have had in America (we had to improvise with German ingredients), they were very good! Finally putting the fire out around 1am, Mariko and I retired to bed as some of the other Fulbrighters went out for the last time to the clubs.

Friday dawned and we headed off to Braunschweig, but that is a story for another time. We already miss all our Fulbright and Marburg friends, and know that our 6 weeks in that small town was one of the best times we had. 

Tata for now my friends and family, and until my next post!