Glashütte und Downtown

Hey all, this is to make up for yesterday. I’ve been kept very busy, and by nature, the German’s walk and eat more than I’m used to, so I also feel extremely worn out by the end of the day’s long activities... so... I feel my time is better spent getting a bit of sleep sometimes. We get up at 6:30 AM... so maybe that’s why I’m so pooped.

Our day started out like the others, excpet I felt a little more rested since I skipped posting yesterday. I managed to get ready very quickly today; before Vio without getting up as early as she did! I used that extra time to just chill and observe her routine.

When we left the house, we didn’t go straight to school. Instead, she pointed out that she hadn’t had time to make me anything for the Pause, so she took me into Rewe, a nice little “supermarket” with a tiny bakery and a selection of drinks for later.

I went ahead and got a simple Poweraid water with lime flavoring, just so I could get away from the bubbles for a bit. Vio got a cranberry juice. Then, she bought me some food for later and we headed off to school.

Once school started, we didn’t really have a meeting.

Instead, we went straight off to Frauenau to visit the Glass Factory.

It didn’t take too terribly long to get there, but the ride seemed slower since none of our Germans were able to come. Instead, only the “cool” Germans came... but they don’t talk to us much.

The Glass House was smaller than many of the American’s expected.

I really wasn’t expecting anything too big though, since this is Germany, and Steven had already given me the heads up not to expect a ton from this place.

We got a nice little tour from a man who had once been a glassblower for his profession, but was now retired.

He talked about how his profession was in a decline nowadays because of the mechanization of glass blowing. Of course, he spoke all of this in German, so Frau Smith had to translate... but it wasn’t even normal German, it was Bayrish, so Frau Smith already had a hard time understanding him. He also told really long stories in between, so there were lots of things that Frau didn’t translate.

Although the factory had handblown glass

It also knew that the machines these days are much better for things like etching into the glass. So, the Glashütte also had:

For some fancy places that wanted the glass, they also had to hand paint the color onto the stuff and put it through a drying machine. The final products looked mostly like this:

After the tour of the place, we went to the gift shop:

This is where any reject glasses went to if any from the batches for the clients didn’t pass inspection.

Afterwards, we were all kind of sleepy, but it was only about 10 AM. So, we went to the bus and ate our Pause food, which was a Kasepretzel mit Ferraro and Wasser (Cheese pretzel with Ferraro hazelnut candies and the Lime Poweraid water):

It was good, and filling... but since the bus ride back to the school was long and Germany is so green and sloping, we all fell asleep. We arrived back at the school around 11:30, and found that we had arrived much earlier than was expected. The Germans were still in school, so instead of invaiding their classes (or getting bored/confused), we followed Frau to get some money from an ATM and then went to a little Cafe, initially to find a new place to sleep. When we got there though, the others decided they wanted to snack because their pause stuff wasn’t enough. Sarith and Iva got me to order, and they had:

A Chocobanana and Cappuccino.

It was then that Maddie discovered that she was missing the 100 Euros that she had just gotten from the ATM. So, she went looking around thinking it had dropped out of her pocket (she was wearing tight jeans which push up on stuff that’s in the pockets...) but unfortunately could not find it. So, there was a damper on the mood.

Eventually, we decided we’d wasted enough time, so we walked back to the school and waited around a little outside for the Germans to come and find us so that we could finalize what we were were going to do.

Yesterday, Steven had asked us all to go to Downtown Deggendorf with him, just to see things, so we tried to get everyone together to do that (even though Amanda and I had already gone with Mili and Vio). The main reason was to take Iva. Still, Vio had more school to do, and Michael had driving class, so it was just going to be Steven as the German. Maddie and Sarith both wanted to go, but Lisa and Kerstin had a test to study for, so they didn’t want to. Instead, Sarith and Maddie told them just to leave and that they could find a place to sleep... but, they couldn’t with such a last minute plan, so they ended up having to take a bus route to get home.. since Lisa and Kerstin had already gone (they live too far from the school to go back and forth easily).

So, after all of that was squared away, it was just Steven, Iva, Amanda, Rob, and I that went downtown to the small mall. Steven wanted pizza, so we follwed him to this “cheap” pizza place where I had a veggie pizza:

The pizza was a good size, but we ate with a knife and fork mostly. It had olives, mushrooms, two kinds of pepper, cabbage, and “pepperoni” (the long greenish one) – a type of pepper. All in all, it was alright, but I would have been better off not ordering anything since the drink ended up being way overpriced and I wasn’t really hungry anyway (they were though) I won’t bother ordering that again.

After lunch, we walked around to the two shoe stores and spent a good amount of time there for Amanada and Iva to look around. I’m pretty sure Amanda ended up getting some nice bronze colored shoes, but Iva didn’t get anything. Then, Rob and I went into an actual GameStop to check out the slection. We found that they had a good amount of cheap PC games, but nothing else that wasn’t overpriced. After that, we all went into an electronics store and compared prices with American prices. Everything was quite overpriced except the Apple computers, which were the same price as a German PC - still considerably cheaper than in America. We also saw some new models of Samsung phones that hadn’t reached America yet, but I didn’t take a picture.

We had to cut things short at 3:30 PM because Steven was to be picked up and he had to study for a French test. Vio met me outside the mall and as we walked home, we grabbed some ice cream since the weather was so hot.

The Domino brand was a passing ice cream bar, but nothing special. One side was dipped in chocolate and the other was spongy crackerish stuff (like an ice cream bar). I’ll have to try others.

Since we were so hot, we ate on the terrace.

After that, I went ahead and started on the blog because I’m feeling so tired that I want to drop to sleep right now xD.

Before I could finish though, they fed me another meal..

But Vio told me that it wasn’t dinner... so who knows what more to expect.

Tomorrow, the schedule doesn’t say we have anything planned, but I know Frau is going to walk to the local graveyard, so we’ll all probably go with her instead of the first classes. After school, there is a big party for the ending of schooling for many of the 13^th graders / “beach” party on the Danube. I’ll probably be going to at least a little of that, so... I should sleep. I’ll get back to yesterday’s events after I shower I guess.

Later all!