I woke up this morning in my typical German-styled room. Almost everything is made of wood, everything is tidy and organized, and Sebastian’s cat loves to be in my bed. Still tired from the previous night, I was bothered by an everlasting hunger that would soon be satisfied by a delicious breakfast. At the table, I got news from Sebastian that we would spend the rest of the day at a concert. I was surprised but excited about spending my first whole day at a music concert. This, however, was no ordinary concert. In fact, Big City Beats is considered to be one of the largest music festivals in the world. Unprepared for what was to come, we took the S-Bahn all the way to the Frankfurt stadium–the same stadium that Eintracht Frankfurt uses for their soccer games. After finding this out, I got a rough idea of how big the festival would be. Quite frankly, I was not at all correct in my predictions, as the festival turned out to be even larger than expected. After checking through security, we were let into the soccer arena, where we met up with a couple of Sebastian’s friends and then headed directly to the pool session. This included a stage on which a DJ would perform, and a huge pool filled with people all appreciating the music. After splashing around for roughly an hour, we got news that Martin Schulz was performing on the main stage. Interested in seeing him, we left the pool area and headed directly for the main stage while picking up some lunch on the way. It was only when I stood at the center of the stadium that I really got an appreciation of how big this festival was. We listened to music for hours and enjoyed our lives. I got to meet a lot of new friends, and this turned out to be an amazing experience. Before I knew it, hours of time had passed by and it was almost 11 o’clock and time to leave. On the way back, we ate a quick Schnitzelbrötchen at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. Once at the Steinbach station, Sebastian and I walked home exhausted from arguably one of the most fun days of my life. We haven’t really spent much time doing more regular German things yet, as we spent the whole day at the festival. Nonetheless, I am still looking forward to what the future holds on my German exchange. ~Constantin Z.
In the morning on Saturday, I went to a park with my host family so that Selenay could referee a children’s soccer game. We got a little bit lost on the way there, but found it in time for the game. While Selenay refereed the soccer game, I climbed trees with Selenay’s 10 year old little sister Aylin and got to know her better. There was also a cherry tree next to the field so we picked cherries and ate some, although Aylin was more interested in using them as earrings. On the way home we stopped at a store so that they could drop off empty glass water bottles for recycling and get some of the money back for that. We had noticed that you could get money back for turning in your empty bottles to be recycled in Berlin, but this was the first time I had seen a store where you could do that. I also thought it was interesting that the store only sold drinks, because I have never seen a store like that in America- only stores specifically for alcoholic drinks or general drink aisles in larger stores. In the evening, we went bowling with Selenay’s aunt and two younger cousins- Devin and Deniz. The bowling place we went to played the exact same music as bowling places in the USA, which I thought was kind of funny. All of the little kids got much higher scores than the rest of us, and Devin won the bowling game. After that, we went to Selenay’s aunt’s house for dinner. Aylin, Devin, and Deniz played outside on a trampoline for a long time, and Selenay and I stayed inside watching a soccer game and talking while her mom and aunt cooked dinner. During dinner, Deniz showed us his album of soccer player cards, which I guess are very similar to baseball cards in America. Selenay mentioned that if you fill the album, you can turn it in for a soccer ball. After dinner we went back to Selenay’s house and went to bed. Overall, Saturday was a great day and I feel like I bonded a lot with Selenay and Aylin. ~Hunter M.
In case you’re wondering what some of the other students have been up to on their first full day in Oberursel, Frau Burgbacher and I bumped into Parker and his host family on Saturday at the Kastell Saalburg, a reconstructed Roman fortress and UNESCO world heritage site not far from our host community. ~Frau Greene