Winter Break I

Bill and I are in our second week back from winter break, which gave us two weeks off from school. The first week we didn’t do a whole lot. I was studying for my first exam in Human Sexuality, which I uncharacteristically over-prepared for. The first Saturday, Bill had his second tennis match. He won the individual match 14 games to 2, which everyone found very impressive. But he and Nico, as well as the other two Zwonitz player, Hubert and Uve, tied their doubles matches, which naturally made Bill very frustrated.

On Wednesday, a teacher from school, Herr Auerswalt, took Bill and I to an old mine in Aue. The region we live in is called the Erzgebirge, or the ore mountains, and it’s riddled with out-of-use mines dating back many centuries. The tour was pretty cool. It was, and had been, snowing like mad for a couple of days, so the drive was a little frightening (small, windy roads, fast German drivers, etc). We arrived and had to dress in appropriate gear: cloths wrapped around our feet, then high rubber boots, then big yellow plastic jackets, then these leather belts with heavy battery packs on them connected by a long hose thing, which wrapped under one arm and over the other shoulder, that ended in a sort of flashlight, and finally lovely plastic helmets. It was only the three of us and our guide, a young dude whose English was not quite sufficient (but working together, we translated most of what he was trying to say). We descended into the mountain, first noting the opening cut in the top of the door for the bats to get in and out. The tunnels were very narrow and low (not ideal for Bill, who was fortunate to have his helmet) and we were quieted a few times so as to not wake the bats sleeping a couple feet above our heads. It very much reminded me of the mines of Mordor, from Lord of the Rings (dorky me, I know), especially when we looked down at one point into the caverns below us, once active parts of the mine, that were entirely flooded. It turned out to be a very worthwhile and interesting cultural field trip. Bratislava, which I will talk about later, turned out to be less worthwhile and interesting, unfortunately.

Thursday morning, while I was studying and then taking my exam online, Bill made a big show (for the Lehms) of cleaning the apartment. We packed, I took my exam (and missed only one question, which was annoying), and then Herr Lehm drove us to the train station. We didn’t get to Colin’s apartment in Berlin until after 10 that night. Then we spent the weekend in Berlin, met several of Colin’s new friends there, went back to the really really cool club I mentioned in my New Year’s Eve post, and had a generally good time.