Germany - Day 20: 2/19 (Oberhausen - The Crossgates of Westphalia)

Days Left to Departure: 4

Today was supposed to be a really low key day. Go to school and run the study session, observe a class, and then either spend the day in Moers City, or get some work done for CDYR around Geschwister-Scholl Gesamtschule. Frau Canavan, however, had other plans. She wanted to skip town early (after the study session) and head to Munster. Realizing that funds were especially low, as I had forgotten my wallet in Kamp-Lintfort, I was pretty much at her whim and fancy for the day. The Munster trip was complicated by the fact that the rail ticket was going to be upwards of 20 Euro each way, plus whatever we were going to do that day, and that I was put in charge of getting lunch tickets for students. Without getting into overly grand (and totally boring) detail, this was a process that went no where after 90 minutes of negotiation.

Instead, wanting to get out of town for a while now that all of the students were with their hosts and had been fed for lunch, the new destination of choice was the largest mall in Westphalia, in Oberhausen. Price of ticket…4.10 Euro. Awww-right!

The mall was cool enough. About as large as Crossgates with prices ridiculously high, considering the ever less forgiving exchange rate. So we walked around and I watched Frau Canavan shop, stopping for lunch and grabbing coffee. Oh, and for the record, Spaghetti Ice Cream (which is vanilla ice cream, with raspberry sauce and while chocolate powder on top, simulating parmesan) is probably really good tasting, but it just looks gross.

After a relaxing afternoon of meandering around the mall and watching some guy try to interview Frau Canavan, and have someone from Citibank try to get us credit cards (Frau Canavan: “We don’t speak German!”), we headed back to Moers and I managed to take a 45 minute, 36 stop bus ride back to Kamp-Linfort. I then walked about a half kilometer or so back to the Schwich’s house. A light dinner and reading some more of In Cold Blood, which, despite me having some negative views of it (assuming that it was only good because it was vogue to like it), I am actually enjoying reading it. I spent a considerable amount of time working on online CDYR material until after midnight, despite designs to be in bed before 11 PM. This was not only thwarted by slow moving computer and internet woes, but as a bonus some lovely person from the greater Burnt Hills, whose identity is still unknown, decided to call me at about 2 AM (but on my personal cell, not the one that I keep by my bed for the explicit purpose of chaperon business and emergency contact). So readers, please! No texts or calls on the personal line and realize that I AM SIX HOURS AHEAD OF THE EAST COAST!!!!

So other than being grumpy when I awoke from lack of sleep and the mid snooze wakeup that kept me up for an hour, the day was low key. I am hoping the remaining ones will also follow suit and I have no reason to believe otherwise.