Greek Food - It's the Best in Germany

Mmmmm.... Greek food. Before traveling to Germany, I had never really had Greek food before, but pictured above is the best meal I had in all five weeks abroad. I think I mentioned earlier that a bunch of us went to - oh no, I forgot the name, but it was a Greek restaurant that started with a "P." I blame Criminal Law for my lack of brain cells this evening... I had to make room for 52 pages tonight... I guess the name of the restaurant was pushed out : ). Anyway, we loved it and wanted to share it with others. So we did. What I ate they called Gallos.

Here is Andrea, me, Denise and Trent at dinner that night. There were two bottles of wine instead of one and lots more Ouzo. I was bad off at the end of the evening...
We invited three professors out to dinner with us that night. Luckily I only had one of them for class, Prof. Carroll. He taught Internet Law. Above is the director of the program, Prof. Brauneis. With him (and Deanne, on the right) is Germany's version of a bachelorette. Instead of just an evening out with the girls, these would be brides have to work for their wedding. They go from venue to venue, U-Bahn stop to U-Bahn stop selling little things to make money for the wedding/honeymoon/home. They sell items like breath mints, gum, condoms, whatever. It can get pretty funny. It looks like Prof. Brauneis isn't going to participate : (.

The next morning, all hung over, I dragged myself to the European Patent Office, and subsequently got sick... from all of that red wine and Ouzo - blah. But really, that was an experience in itself. How many can say that they got sick at the EPO right in the middle of a lead examiner's long (very long) lecture?? No worries, I made it to the restroom : ). By that evening I felt tip top again and was able to work on one my papers.

Many folks left that same morning (some as hung over as I) for various places throughout Europe, including Rome and Amsterdam. For me, I was planning on going to Rome with Tom and felt the need to work a little bit. I stayed in Europe an extra week while other students were planning on heading back to the States and knew I wasn't going to work on any papers the last week I was there. I was strolling through Marienplatz that weekend in solitude and stopped to listen to these muscians. This was nothing unusual. There were always musicians somewhere, and they were good too. Quite unlike the NYC subway crowd : ). Okay, better go crash - work AND two classes tomorrow - I'm back - ugh!

Get on the Bus!

I just finished the last paper of my summer career and am about to send it off. Back home, back at work, back to the relationship, back to the friends, and soon back to school and the stress that comes with it. A large part of me feels a little lost, and that lost part of me wants to go back to Germany. But who knows, if I was still there, I might be longing for home. Funny how the grass is always greener...

But this blog will go on, because I'm only on weekend no. 2! So, I will get to remember and relive, if just for a little longer.

Above is the Castle Neuschwanstein. Beautiful, isn't is? Too bad it was never finished and really never lived in. King Ludwig II was claimed insane, and they hauled him out of this very castle. He was found dead in Lake Starnberg the next day, the shallow part of the lake. He was a great swimmer.

Here's me on the way in to the Castle! It started to rain, again, right after this picture was taken.

Another beautiful shot of the Castle. It kind of resembles the Disney Castle here, doesn't it? This picture is currently the desktop of my computer. I need to remember good times as I sit down to Con Law next Friday : (.

Okay, off-roading time! We were waiting for the train to take us back to Munich (the castles were two hours away in Fussen), and all of a sudden a woman comes out of the station and notifies us that the train will not be coming! There was something on the track and we all had to get on a bus to take us to a station where the train would arrive. All of a sudden a mad rush of us, other Americans and Japanese tourists running to get on the bus. By passing a couple of pushy people five of the six of us found that were the last allowed on with standing room only. Hmmm... did I say five of six, oh yes, I did. One of party decided not to get on the bus and let others push past him. Hello?! Just get on the bus!!

The ride was a trip! We went off-roading in a coach bus! We traveled down little dirt country roads, so narrow a BMW had to back up to let us pass. No two cars could travel down the road at the same time!! Finally, we made it to the train in the pouring rain and traveled for another hour until we reached Munich. Fun times : ).

This is a picture of the Max Planck Institute where all the magic happened ; ). Our classes were held here. It is a really nice building. I took this picture before a group of us met to go to a reception at the law firm of Bird & Bird.

Now that I'm home, in my messy apartment, I am feeling the urge to straighten it up. I miss living abroad, it was so much cleaner in my apartment there!!

Quiet

Most of us are gone, a few remain. Final exams are finished, final papers are not. Unfortuately I fell for the paper scam. I have two to complete. So today I did research for most of the afternoon. It is slow going.

It is quiet here, as most students left this morning. The few of us that are here traveled up to Schloss Nymphenburg, one of Germany's largest baroque palaces, and then to Hirshgarten, to finish the evening with some hendl and apfelschorle. Sadly enough, nothing is novel anymore and it is shame that tonight at Munich's largest beer garden, a couple of us didn't even have any beer, and we all headed home before the fireworks. As is becoming the pattern tonight we said goodbye to another friend. This will repeat itself tomorrow and maybe the next day. Sad really. Most of them traveled from D.C. and are already making plans to see each other again. I am the only student from Minnesota.

But enough of that! Maybe if I shut off this Yanni (what the heck?!) that is streaming over my online radio I'll be able to pull out of this mood. As James would say, I am being way too "emo" : ).

Above is what we all looked like after Session I finals: happy, with beers. This is the Seehaus Beer Garden, and my favorite beer garden so far. From left to right, me, Andrea, James, C.J., Trent and Kate.

That evening, was Munich's 850th Birthday Celebration. Pretty much everyone in the program enjoyed some part of the celebration/festival that night. If you scroll down, I've posted some videos of my experience. Above is the giant ferris wheel you could take a ride on. Right down from the ferris wheel was this crazy band, Chicks on Speed... and that is exactly what they sounded like .... I didn't get too close ; ).

The next day a bunch of us traveled to "the castles", Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. It is a day trip and two hour train ride but its worth the ride. Above is Schloss Hohenschwangau, King Maximillian's family castle.

Here it is, the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, from afar. This picture was actually taken from Hohenschwangau. 'Mad' King Ludwig commissioned this castle and watched it being built from Hohenschwangau. He actually hired a set designer rather than an architect to design th castle. He was in love with Wagner's operas (and perhaps Wager himself?) and wanted to build a fairytale castle to make the fantasy world of his operas come alive. Walt Disney fashioned the famous (and trademarked) Cinderella Castle after Neuschwanstein.

After visiting Hohenschwangau, you have the option of walking or taking a horse drawn carriage up to Neuschwanstein. Here are Denise, Corrina, Andrea and C.J. starting up the long and steep path. Notice the smiles... they were gone when we reached the top. I think we all burned off a couple of beers that day! I have more pictures of the castle trip, but they will have to wait. I am tired and am picking up Tom at the airport early in the AM : )!

BMW Welt

It's a quiet Tuesday night. After a couple of invites to go to dinner, I think it is time for a night off, of socializing that is. Last night simple plans to go to dinner turned into a nightmare on the U-Bahn. After a wonderful Mexican meal (yes, Mexican, I know I'm in Germany, I miss Chipotle, okay?) we all decided to look for more drinks. So, doing what any logical tourist would do, we pulled out the map :). After walking up and down the same street for 20 minutes, we found a potato bar. No worries, they didn't serve only potatoes... of course, there was beer!

The U-Bahn shuts down around midnight, and I make sure I leave around 11:30. I get to the platform and train is going the wrong way! Someone assured me that it is coming back, the right way, so I wait. I get on going the right way, the train goes two stops than then starts going in reverse! I get off at the stop where I got on, and the train keep going. It then comes back on the same track going the right way, so I get on again. By communicating the best I can with a couple of folks, we all have to get off and transfer to another train to get home. What was a 10 minute trip took an hour with all of the confusion. There were announcements about all of this, but of course they were in German. When I frantically asked in German if anyone spoke English on the train, they all answered in perfect English, "No, I don't understand." It's very strange that just after I posted the video on language barriers the same situation happens to me!! So, given that not so pleasant adventure, I think I'll just cook my frozen microwave lasagna dinner in a saucepan on the stove top and stay in tonight.

Continuing with the BMW trip, above is Riccardo in one of the luxury cars. They were everywhere. It was a showroom and business all in one.



This is the corner stone of the building. As you can see it is fairly new. Many sponsors and businesses wrote little notes of prosperity and placed them in the corner stone before it was placed in the ground, kind of like a time capsule of sorts.



This is the "handing-off area". When you purchase or lease a BMW here, you get to go through a type of ceremony. They actually call it the "handing-off ceremony." You are brought to a room where they tell you all about your car. While you are going through all of the features and benefits your car is brought up from the basement in a glass elevator and placed on a spinning disc. You are then "ceremoniously" brought down to your car, which is shiny and new and spinning slowly for you to admire. You then drive it down the ramp within the building, out the door and on your happy way. Trent actually leased a BMW in this way and picked it up the first weekend to drive to Salzburg. It will be waiting for him upon his return to D.C.. Nice. I'm jealous.



This is where you can customize your BMW. You sit here with your salesperson and go through a computer simulation of exactly what features you want your car to have and can see exactly what it looks like on the screen. Cool.



The building we toured was the new building which purpose is the mostly sales and new cars. This is the older BMW building, which purpose is the manufacturing business. This older building also houses the museum. I haven't been to the museum. It wasn't part of our trip. Maybe I'll go next week. However, the BMW Welt trip was pretty comprehensive and I really don't feel the need to return... outside of my visit to pick up my new car that is :).

After the tour we went to their corporate office and sat for a presentation from the head of their trademark legal counsel. Unlike the presentation at the German Patent & Trademark Office, this one was all about trademarks. I loved it! And I want our presenters job :).

Barriers & Birthdays

This clip is true it's almost not funny - okay, it's pretty funny :). Whoever said that everyone speaks English in Germany is sadly mistaken. The younger population does usually speak English, although if you ask them, they are reluctant to admit it. On the first day I arrived, in the store at the airport, I asked if the sales lady could speak English... she said, "not really, but she could try if I really wanted her to". Whatever! Case in point - this clip is right on. (Thanks Bryce!)



This clip is just plain hilarious! And a message for the lady that works at the AIRPORT... she was such a liar.



Last Saturday was the Munich 850th Birthday Celebration! A group of us planned to meet up at Odeonsplatz at 9:00 PM to enjoy the festival. The place was absolutely crazy!! With a lack of cell phones, we all got split up. Luckily I found Brain and we were able to watch the show in the rain :). I met up with the others the next morning at the Central Station to go to the castles, and they had a different experience at the festival. There were concerts, techno music etc. going on all over the streets, and they were there. The above video is of the performers rehearsing for the evening's show at Odeonsplatz where it was held. This is a great video to get a sense of where I have class everyday...



This was an amazing performance. She was actually dancing on the side of the church!! The entire show was over 2 hours long, and consisted of the history of the city of Munich. Munich was incidentally hit by multiple waves of the plague. Brain and I discerned that her performance signified the devil's/death's want to take the church and the people's faith. The videos for this part of the show were of medieval drawings of the plague... kinda yucky.



This was another great part of the show I found courtesy of YouTube :). The pictures on the screen are of the great Kings of Bavaria. I hope you enjoyed these little movies... I should stop procratinating and get back to my papers :).

Conversations & Law Firms

With international students come international conversations, both in and out of the classroom. Over lunch yesterday, a few of us were having a discussion about citizenship in Germany. Professor Carroll remarked how unless you had family hertiage in Germany, the fact that you were born here doesn't make you a citizen as in the United States. Two students from Turkey remarked how this is the same in their country, and generally is throughout Europe. As a new country the United States wanted to grow and welcomed a law of citizenship by birthright. Even today, as the issue of U.S. immigration falls under great criticism, this rule of law remains. I don't know how many people know about Europe's immigration policy, that some may say is stricter than the U.S. Oh so many years ago, when I researched a permanent move to Belgium, I faced many obsticles without a work visa. And the work visa was impossible to obtain.

Later that same day, I was chatting with an international student about the structure of our Software Contracts class. This student is particularly inquisitive in class. Debating and questioning everything in a way that I have never seen done in the United States. He mentioned that it is very difficult for him to understand how the professors can end a class with the answer to all of the questions as "it depends." I explained that "it depends" : ). But really, it does in a common law system, where one decision doesn't always follow the one before. Each side of the argument is (well most of the time anyway) given a fair shot. He explained that in the civil law system, where there is a statute for nearly everything, there is (or should be) an answer. People know what crimes they are committing and what their punishments are, and never ever would a professor leave a question so openended and unanswered. There are points to both sides.

Last night we had a reception at Bird & Bird, an international general practice law firm that has a renowned IP reputation. I knwo this to be true, as I was able to work with paralegals and attorneys from their Hong Kong and London offices on a project for a mutual client in South Carolina. I still remember their dissapproving faces when my boss offered up Hooters as a suitable place to have a business dinner. Sorry, side bar. The food was great (at Bird & Bird, not Hooters : ) ), and the attorneys were very friendly and informative. As the American J.D. students will most likely not be practicing Bird & Bird attorneys, the firm was more interested in meeting the local L.L.M. students as possible new hires. Either way, I collected a couple of business cards and know I will be seeing their name in the future, if not working with them as foreign counsel for IP protection abroad.

But, more commentary on great food!! A group of us (above from L to R, Richard, Trent, Brian, Chris, Amy, Andrea, Denise, James, CJ & Pinky) went out to an amazing Italian restaurant, and to a bar in the University district for a few drinks.

My dinner at the Italian restaurant: tortellini (filled with veal, I think?) in cream sauce with ham. Yummy! And of course, you can't forget the accompanying beer!

This is my beer (a Wiessebier) at the Paulaner restaurant. I had some yummy sausages and mashed potatoes with it. This was a casual dinner that followed class and a trip to the Hofgarten to have a beer. It was a nice day for once so we had to take advantage of the sunshine, and what better way than to sit outside and have a few beers. By the way, this is a baby 1/2 liter beer. Liters are really the way to drink around here.

We were all meeting at the school before we headed over to BMW last weekend. I got there a little early, so snapped this shot of the sign. We don't have classes in this building, but most of the student lockers are here as well as a study room. The study room is always a bit crowded and noisy. I've moved to the library to get any reading done.

Here we all are at BMW. We are just milling around in the lobby before the tour starts. This was an amazing building, very modern. More BMW to come... stay tuned...

Austrian, Greek or German... The Food is All Good!

IT'S STILL COLD HERE!! It's is currently 58 degrees, cloudy and rainy. This is not what I signed up for. I just checked the forecast and more rain tomorrow. All of the nationals say that this is why the country is so green. But enough already, I could stand a little less "green" and a lot more sunshine. Its Tuesday is business-as-usual, which includes class, studying and running errands such as purchasing replacement pencil leads. Yep, it's not all glamour in the country of the Fairytale Castle. It was an uneventful Monday and one of the first weekday evenings I've had "off" as pretty much everyone is up for going to dinner to try new German or other wonderful European cuisine with, of course, a sample of what the special beer or other tempting beverage of the house may have : ).

Speaking of meals... Munchner Suppenkuche!! When it rains, one wants a nice hot bowl of soup, and where better to go but a soup kitchen!! No, we didn't have to show our student IDs to prove that we needed free soup (it's not so free). Could it have been the model for the famous Jerry Seinfeld "Soup ___" (shhh... it's illegal to say that word here), one never knows. All I know is that it's good!! I'll have to take a picture next time (and there will most likely be a next time : ) ) I go.

But, I am not done with my exursion to Salzburg - there's more! Above is yet another photo from the tour van (I think you can see my reflection in the window) ... this is where Constanze, Mozart's widow lived after his death. I know it's just a building but I love all this history stuff : ).

This is a monastery in the city of Salzburg. You could walk up this small mountain (yes, I am being sarcastic) to take a tour and eat at their restaurant. This was the first restaurant in Salzburg, and the city started with this monastic development. I bet they have good beer : ). Side note about monks and beer. I have learned that the beer in Munich is so good (and so famous) because the monks who first developed the area brewed and perfected their own. When they would fast, they would brew a special beer that was like a meal so get them through their hunger. I think it was either the Helles (lager) or the Weisebier (wheat beer), I forget. I think I may have had a couple of them by the time someone was telling me this story : ). Another side note: food: I had the best Wienerschnitzel yet in Austria. Yum!

The Salzburg Music Festival happens every summer in late July. They were already preparing when we visited.

This is the interior of the Hohensalzburg. It is the fortress that the Prince-Archbishop would retreat to in times of war. I believe it was built in the 1400s. I didn't really get a great shot of the outside (it was cloudy and rainy - go figure!), but I thought the inside was impressive. This was the last shot I got before I was told to put my camera away - oops!!

Ahhh, the perfect end to a day trip to Salzburg - Ouzo. After we returned, we journied to an excellent Greek reastaurant. The food was the best I have had so far. So good, we want to enlighten others and are making plans for another trip : ). As is Greek tradition, you finish the meal with a shot of Ouzo, a licorice tasting liquor. However, the waiter didn't just give us a shot - he gave us the bottle.... [insert your own ending here] : ).