CBYX Mid-Year Seminar

CBYXers at the InWent Headquarters

75 (or well... 74 now. That's another story...) Americans together again in the 4th largest city in Germany for 5 days.....

Trevor & I outside the Kölner Dom

We arrived Monday afternoon, got re-acquainted with everyone, went out to a dinner paid by InWent (now, after their merger, called GIZ.... ) and then headed out to a bar by the infamous Dom. Every bar in Cologne has the local "specialty" beer called Kölsch, which is not the greatest, but it's EVERYWHERE. It was fun to just spend the night catching up with a lot of people I hadn't seen since August. 

The days were mostly spent in random seminars, some to share our opinions on the program thus far, pros/cons, and our experiences halfway through. Tuesday we were separated into 3 groups (depending on our interests) to go see a local Cologne sight. I went on the "Cologne Underground" tour, which I thought was going to be as cool as it sounded. Instead, it was us walking around the cold, rainy city looking at about 4 or 5 different Roman ruins (one was just a huge block of rocks inside a parking garage). The tour was also all in German, and I was pretty wore out from the night before. Tuesday night, we took a bus to Bonn to watch the craziest dance/comedy show in English/German I think any of us had ever seen. The show went through the days leading up to the actor couple being together, all which had bad acting, but amazing dancing, and some weird German humor thrown in. Definitely an interesting experience...

Terror Free Oil with a chart to explain

Wednesday we were again separated into 3 groups (again, according to interests) and I went on the Arts & Media tour. We got to tour the studio and building of Deutsche Welle, Germany's international radio broadcaster which provides radio coverage in 30 different languages... We even got some sweet free German language CDs to help improve our German... sweet! After stopping for lunch at Deutsche Welle's restaurant for lunch, the "Best Corporate Restaurant in Germany" (yumm!), we went to Bonn's Art Museum to see an exhibit on Mitch Epstein, an American photographer. The first exhibit displayed recreational life in the 1970s and 1980s in America, which were pretty cool pictures. The second exhibit showed America in the 2000s, and the theme was "the waste of power" or something like that. We had a pretty horrible tour guide who had no idea what she was talking about, and really offended a lot of us when she said some pretty ridiculous things about America. One picture I thought was interesting, though, is above, taken in Omaha, Nebraska.

On-Air with Beeck & Böhmermann

We ended the day at 1Live, the 2nd most listened to radio station in Europe for people under 30. This place was AWESOME. We started our tour in the Acoustics room, where 30 Seconds to Mars, Coldplay, and many others had performed. We then got a tour of Domian's studio, the guy famous all over Europe for taking late night calls about people's weird problems/habits (think Delilah in the States). While we were touring his studio, a guy comes in and says we can come into the studio next door and go on-air for their show! Our tour guide freaked out because she said in the history of her working there, even SHE has not been allowed to be in the studio while it is on-air. We make our way over, and find out it is the Beeck & Böhmermann show, the infamous comedy duo (and they were hilarious)! We were on for just a second, saying hi to everyone out in radio world, and telling them to listen to 1Live. We were also on their website's live web-cam. Woo, it was an awesome end to an awesome day. 

Wednesday night we went for pizza and then to a place called the Graffiti Bar, where I had been before when I visited Cologne in August. 

Graffiti Bar

Thursday, we all headed back to Bonn for the day to visit the InWent (now GIZ) Headquarters, and get a presentation from Dr. Renee Ernst, a representative from the UN, there to explain the UN's "Millenium Development Goals". She talked about herself in English, then gave an hour long presentation in German, even though the slides were in English, then she really offended some people when she said something along the lines of "America should be ashamed since they spend less of their GDP on world aid than Germany, and more of it on invading other countries". By then, her credibility as a neutral, UN representative was pretty much shot, and a lot of people tuned out after that. After that, we watched a movie about renewable energy sources, a.k.a....everyone passed out in chairs for about an hour and a half. It was a long day....

Vietnamese food... mmm

Friday, we had a morning seminar to evaluate the week, then said our goodbyes to all the participants. Me, Khoa, Tina, and Brent all stuck together and went to a delicious Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. Then we FINALLY made our way to the train station to head to Mainz, but not before one last stop at the breathtaking Dom...

Khoa taking another look

(Looks like a bad band picture)

In other news, my full-time internship starts Tuesday. I am super nervous since it is all in German, but we'll see how it goes. I'm excited to start the third part of the program, especially since I need to finally settle down in Mainz. It's just so crazy how these past 6 months have flown by....