Mayen City Tour

Yesterday was a lovely day in the city of Mayen!!!!

As I previously told, I said that we would be going on a Stadtour, (a city tour) of Mayen the city in which we are studying.

We all met in the alte Stadt (the old inner city) of Mayen at der Altes Rathaus (basically the old.... court house? I think this is what it translates to) at 4 pm. There was a lovely bakery right next to it, so I went and bought myself a piece of strawberry cake, which is more like strawberrys with a glaze, with a type of almost hard poundcake under it. It's really tasty.

So because we are here to study German, the entire tour was in German! (At first, I think most of us were shocked, lol, but then we accomodated). The tour was given by a man and a woman who lived in Mayen and were in a relationship. It was cute. We walked all around Mayen and learned so much. Apparently there is a volcano, maybe two even if I am right, and it supplied the lava for most of the stones in the city. The cobblestone walkways are made from black lava that cooled quickly and had only tiny airpockets. They are cool looking. There are larger black cobblestones from which the lava cooled slowly therefore leaving larger airpockets. There is also a third form of lava stone that is tan in color and has bits of all kinds of other rocks in it. These stones are used in buildings, walksways, benches, etc. Its really cool. The woman told us that with the last type of lava, parents will teach their children about it in Germany and then whenever the child sees a house that is built with it, the children will say, "that is a -----lava house." If they are right, then they usually get a bonbon. hehe. So in Mayen, since there are SO MANY houses that are built this way, we were left with the impression that children here recieve a lot of bonbons. hehe

We learned a lot, but one more thing that I feel is worth noting, is the fact that there are open drains. Meaning, like when it rains the gutters are full of water, well here there are gutters that are not like ours, they are concereted into the side walk and then closed up on all sides except the top. Well, back in the day, they used these gutters, if you will, as the toilet. And instead of the gutter only being full when it rained, it is full all the time, because a little stream to the river runs through it, so people would go to the bathroom out there and "wosh" there it would go. Kinda gross, huh?

Alright, so the tour went well and it went from couldy, to sunny and hot, to down pouring. lol. We walked a piece of the Stadtmauer (city wall) which was under a roof during the hardest part of the rain. It was a lovely Stadtmauer and you had a beautiful view of the city and churches. We also went up to the castle in Mayen and walked around the outside of it!

After the tour, I ate my now soggy strawberry cake. I had had the store lady wrap it up for me, and carried it with me on the tour since I had no fork to eat it with, but the rain got it. It was still delicious though. Then the whole group went to a Doner Kebab eatery. The doner Kebab is a Turkish dish, however, it is so well loved and eaten by the German peoples that it is their national dish. It was very tasty and we all had a good time eating and being merry.

The group separated, and while my two roommates went to find a phone, I went with Matthew and his roommate to his house. The house is old, but had been modernized. It is quite lovely with two huge gardens, a flower garden and a vegatable\fruit garden. Matt lives with an older couple. I would say a couple in their late 60's-early 70's. The only room in the house that I saw was the kitchen. We sat in there and talked for a very long time with the wife while she made toast for herself, her husband, and I (I felt too bad to refuse her, even though I was extremely full from the Kebab).

So we ate and talked, I again seemed to dominate the conversation. But we had a good time, eventually the mother-in-law of their daughter came to visit them, they all appear to be good friends with one another, and while the wife speaks no english, the mother-in-law is a teacher and I believe spoke english. Everytime I made a mistake I apologized and they got to the point where they told me to stop apologizing and instead to say thank you. lol.

So we went on this way for while till 9 pm, where we walked back into Die alte stadt, (old city) and we went to the Kneipe (bar) Mambo, it was a small place with lots of people and we had fun with a few drinks, from there everyone, but Matt and myself, went to the sleezy diskotech "twilight." Matt and I walked back to my house, so I could show him where it was and we sat and chatted there for a long time and ate chocolate that I had purchased the night before.

We then headed back into town to the bar Ewigelampe where we were greeted by our entire group who had danced and drunk themsevles into a loud, noisy mob. They were very rambunctious at the next bar we went to and well, we left because the bar did not appreciate everyone being so loud. A lot of people, because they didn't know what to do, went home, some went back to Mambo, and Matt and I went back to Ewigelampe and had a couple drinks and apologized to the bar for the drunk mob that had just swarmed their doors.

We did not want to associate ourselves with " typical, stupid, uncaring, americans." which is why we did not go with them to mambo, we stayed at Ewigelampe till about 1:30 am and then Matthew walked me home.

Overall..... the night was.... a wash, there was fighting amongst the group, aminly because we couldn't figure out what to do, and drunk people. Hopefully the next time the group goes out, they will be better behaved, because they were the "typical, drunk , Americans" that germans see us as.

And to end it on that note would be sad, so I will tell you, today we a doing a hike through the forest to Burg burrgeheim, or something to that effect, I will give the real name in the next blog. Sorry no pics still, I forgot my camera on the walk through yesterday so I will have to get the pics from my roommates.

Please all take care and I will update as soon as I can! Bis Dann! ;) and no worries, everything is peachy and fine, however, the weather today seems quite cool.