Today, Brandon and I had our first trek out into the German world on our own. Because of Peter, Alina, and Alicia’s schedule this week, we’ve planned outings for ourselves the next few days to account for whether we need to go along to certain events or not. Today, everyone had things to do that we did not need to attend (not that any of the events we are invited to are mandatory, but it lets us spend more time with everyone), and we wanted to give ourselves a big enough challenge to test our public transit skills without going overboard. Therefore, we left after breakfast this morning and headed to Münster.
Münster is a city just northeast of Hattingen. We took the Straßenbahn from the station close to the house and rode to the main train station (Hauptbahnhof) in Bochum, where we transferred to an express train, or ICE, that took us to the heart of Münster. We decided on Münster because Alina and Peter suggested it as they had both studied there. The Straßenbahn was fairly open when we picked it up this morning, so finding a seat was not too bad. The ICE, as happened during our initial trip to Essen upon arrival, was a little trickier to find seats, especially two seats together. We did find some, though, and they weren’t reserved (many people use the ICE trains for major travel and can reserve seats ahead of time), so we lucked out once again! Once in Münster, I found a small convenience store near the exit that was selling postcards, so I picked one up because I am trying to keep a “postcard log” of our travels. Despite being in Hattingen for four days now, I have simply just not yet gone to seek out a postcard from here. But I will get there! We then continued onto the street and picked a direction. As we walked, we looked at the signs to guide us towards the Altstadt. It was beautiful! We found a cheese shop where we bought a green pesto cheese. It was delicious and the young woman helping us was very nice! There were several churches that we were able to walk into and around. One of the churches had informational booklets about the building and history of the church in four languages: English, German, French, and Dutch (I think…I can’t quite remember). I bought the English book for 2€ (I would have gotten the German one, but there were no more), and I also threw 1€ in one of the collection boxes to help support the music at the church. We continued through the Altstadt to walk around some parts of the university. We also found another, bigger church called St.-Paulus-Dom. It was HUGE and, again, gorgeous. When we walked in to look around, we heard singing. There happened to be a choir of kids from what I assume is a nearby school practicing for a concert. At the time, they were singing “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent. They sounded wonderful! For lunch, we found a place called Cafe Extrablatt. The menu looked like a newspaper! The server was a very nice guy about our age who heard one sentence of German from me and very kindly offered to use English “if it was easier”. Later in our meal, we think he forgot that offer because he used German again, which was fine since we’re trying to improve our skills :) Brandon had an Italian burger and I ate a pizza. They were delightful! We then walked around the shops some more and found a small mall where we got some ice cream. The last part of our day involved finding the small model of the city designed to be accessible to visually impaired users. Alina had sent us a pin for it earlier in the day, but I had misinterpreted part of her messages and took us elsewhere in the city before Brandon figured out where we needed to go. The model was very cool, but also quite inconspicuous. I still think it’s a wonderful feature for the city! We then started to make our way back to the house. The ICE was delayed, so we hung out at the train station for a little bit and got a snack. Once in Bochum, we thought we found the track for the Straßenbahn back to Hattingen. However, we figured out very quickly that we were on the wrong side of the tracks because we watched the train we needed pull in on the opposite side of the platform from where we were. So, until we figured out how to get to the proper side of the tracks, we had to wait a little bit before catching the correct train home. Alicia was still at swim class when we returned, so Alina went to pick her up and Peter left for a meeting at his rowing club. When Alicia and Alina returned, we all sat on the porch while Brandon, Alicia, and I enjoyed some food. Alina encouraged my German practice by having me talk about the day in German, which was overwhelming, but especially because I am VERY out of practice with recalling past tenses. So, that is certainly a focus. Overall, another wonderful day here! Onto the next! P.S. An additional note from yesterday: here is the link to the street food festival we attended, in case anyone was curious of the available options :) https://www.linden-bewegt.de/
2 Comments
Lauren Smith
6/14/2022 08:22:23 am
The architecture is absolutely beautiful! Tolle Bilder ;)
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Alicia
6/15/2022 02:26:14 pm
Vielen Dank meine Freundin :)
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