If I'm already running out of blog post titles, this is going to be a long year...

What a günstig meal!

This Saturday AYF went to Basel, Switzerland! It's only a 45 minute train ride south of Freiburg. We did a bit of pell-mell sight-seeing and tour-taking, lead by Ulli, our program director, who has just been to the city so many times that he knows bits of random stories and facts. Then we were let loose on the city. Cherice, Tucker, and I went on a search for lunch, but Switzerland so SO EXPENSIVE. To give you a comparison, lets do some math. The Swiss Franc is worth about $1.08 USD right now. Out of curiosity, we stopped in a McDonalds to look at the prices. One burger/fries combo meal was 11,80. That's about $12.75. If you're going to pay that much, you might as well get real food, right? The average meal in a regular restaurant was between $20-30, and street food averaged around $15. So instead, we found an Aldi's and bought some bread, salami, cheese (Swiss, of course), wine, grapes, and pudding for dessert, and each paid about 5 Euros. Then we took it to the Münster and ate it overlooking the river and the mountains.

Cherice and I getting cozy at the Münster

Then on Sunday we all went to an SC Freiburg Fußball game! It was wonderful. Hundreds of people all dressed in red and drinking beer and eating currywurst, shouting and hugging and cursing together. Fortunately, we won, so there was much more hugging than cursing. 5-3 win! I'm thinking I'll have to go back for more very soon. First I have to buy some paraphernalia though, because I don't own a stitch of red.

Sonya and I at the game

Otherwise, I had my first German test today, and I've got another one tomorrow. And some laundry to do. So I should probably do that. But before I go, I will leave you with another German observation: dogs can go into shops and onto the trains here. Almost everywhere people can go. And when you're walking in the park, most dogs don't have leashes. That's because they're so well trained they won't bark or run off or attack other dogs. They just wag their tails and trot along next to their owners. Also, there is at least one guy, possibly two, who walks around with a cat on his shoulders. The cat just hangs out and looks around like he's sitting at a window or something, but he doesn't jump down or hiss or panic when he sees a dog. Animals here are weird.

And so, off to memorize some verbs and their corresponding prepositions. To give you an idea, pretend like you don't know very much English. Now you know what the word "think" means, and kind of how to use it. But do you think about? Or think it over? Think it through? Think of? Which preposition is it?! Well, I'm going to find out for about 40 German words. What fun.