Bremen, Oktober, HSV v STP (cont…)

Ok.. so part 2 of the longest post in the history of blogs.. If you haven’t read part 1 of this blog.. go here

Anyways - so after spending the day in Bremen, we came back to Hamburg at around 7oclock.  I came back and was incredibly tired, but I made sure to skype with my mom and send my brother a message before I took a much needed nap.  I woke up at around 9 and was ready to take on the night. 

We planned to meet at a that we liked at 10:30.  Well as we were walking up, there was an incredible amount of people standing outside the bar.  We walked in and everyone is singing and swaying and luckily we were able to get two tables next to each other.  Anyways, I quickly realized that Saturday was the start of Oktoberfest in Germany.  Well actually the Oktoberfest is solely in Munchen (Munich), but all across Germany people celebrate Oktoberfest on the weekend.  The bar that we happened to be at was a Munchen bar, with the menus being in a Munchen dialect and the Hausbier being a Bayern beer.  SO, naturally where do most people in Hamburg go to celebrate the first night of Oktoberfest?  Of course, the Munchen bar in Hamburg!  Anyways, it was an awesome thing to experience.  We stayed for a while and I was trying to get into the singing and swaying, but it would have been awesome if I would have known some of the songs.  People all around were also dressed up in the traditional clothes and just having an awesome time.

I know this picture really does no justice to the experience - and it’s a bit blurry - but I hope you can see how many people were in this beer hall , which extended into two completely different rooms to the left of this picture (and yes, this was taken inside):

Anyways - so after spending a few hours at the bar, we went out for the night and made it until 6 in the morning to the Fishmarkt for a good final Saturday in Hamburg. 

I came back home and proceeded to watch my DVR of Baylor getting destroyed by TCU :(  - and then slept until about 3 in the afternoon.  I woke up and did a few things before heading off for a coffee and walk to the fitness center.  Although I’ve come to realize that almost EVERYTHING is closed on Sundays, this particular walk was strangely quiet.  There was almost no one of the streets and I couldn’t figure out what was happening.  I was ordering my coffee when I heard what sounded like an explosion going off.  It was a bunch of people yelling like crazy and I heard on the radio at the coffee shop that a soccer team had just scored a goal.  It was at that time I remembered that someone from my class had told me that the two local teams were playing each other this day.

Now it really is impossible to explain to someone just how important this game was, but I will try.  So there are two teams in the highest division of soccer here in Hamburg.  HSV, which has never been sent down from the top division, and sees success every year bringing in top players, let’s compare them to the Yankees - loved by many, hated by many more.  Now St. Pauli is another team here, they haven’t been in the top division for the past 7 years, but they made it back to the top division last year (for those who don’t follow soccer, at the end of the season - the worst three teams get sent down to a lower division, and the best three teams get brought up a division).  So as I’m walking down the street, all I see are people in small bars all along the street crowded together and screaming every few minutes.  Anyways, the game ended in a 1-1 draw, but just because the game ended in a tie, didn’t mean that everyone was happy.  Just a few minutes from where I stay there was a big fight on the Reeperbahn between fans of the two teams leaving 26 people hurt including 8 police!

So, that is soccer here in Germany.  Anywho - that was my weekend.  This is actually my last weekend here in Hamburg and it’s going to be kind of sad leaving this Friday.  I’ll be going from here to Frankfurt and from Frankfurt to Spain to go and visit my friends that I made here last month (excluding the tall old man):

I’ll spend a few days in Spain and on Tuesday, I’m meeting my dad and uncle in Ireland for a nice few days of relaxing and golfing!  I’m very excited about these next two weeks and can not wait to see what life has in store for me!  I hope I post again sometime later this week, but if not - I’ll be sure to post when I get back from Ireland!  Thanks for reading, and until next time - God Bless!

German Lesson #4 - Pronunciation:

Although many German letters may look like English letters, it takes some training to force yourself to pronounce them differently.  My notebook is filled with things like eu - “oi” .  Basically saying that anytime I see the letters eu next to each other, the will sound like saying “oi” in English.  So I’m going to share as many pronunciation tips as I can think of.

eu - “oi” (think Aussie Aussie Aussie, OI OI OI)
ski - “she” (anytime an s- starts a word, think to put schhh-then the letter)
w - “v” (wort = “vort”)
v - “f” (vor = “for”)
-er - “uh” (whenever a word ends in ‘er’ - then it sounds like “uh” ex - aber=abUH)
ä, ö, ü - the thing here I do is try to think that with an ‘umlaut’, the letter just drops to the next vowel in english.  so an ä, sounds like “e”, or ö = u.  And with the ü, I basically just imagine myself dropping from the ‘o’ to ‘u’ to some imaginary lower sounding vowel, but with the same progression as ‘o’ to ‘u’.  Anyways, taking this rule makes a word like Verkäufer sound like VerkOIfer (remember, eu sounds like ‘oi’)
Words that end in:
-d - “t”
-b - “p”
-g - “k”
Words that end in these 3 letters, sound like they end in the other letters.

Das ist alles!

20 September 2010 · Comments