Berlin: Trip to Bielefeld!

Hello bloggers. Exciting news today! This weekend I traveled to a small city in Germany's western providence named Bielefeld. It's a relatively small city, but what makes it particularly interesting is that I have relatives there from long ago. I had tried to meet up with them last time I studied abroad in Bonn, but the plans failed due to lack of driver! This time things went better though. I took... the bus!
It was about 5 hours from Berlin to Bielefeld, but that was fine since I have plenty of studying to do before Exams... yes. Exams for my first semester here haven't even occurred yet! Things are a tad different here with the school system, but I don't mind. I was really busy the day before I left. I had tons of shopping and arranging my class work to do before I set off. One thing I take particular pride in buying before I left was a new digital camera, so I can actually load some new stuff onto this blog now! The good news is that it's a 10.1 megapixels that cost me only 99 Euro. The bad news is that it only holds 4 photos without a memory card! I knew the size would be few without it, but I thought I'd be able to take a few more without it. Oh well. No worries. I just had to be very careful with what pictures I saved on my trip to Bielefeld. This first photo is of the family I came to visit. We're standing here on top of a hill overlooking the city. The next picture was what was to my back; a castle of course (What else you think they put all over the mountains in Germany?)

The father is Matthias Letzel, the older girl is Lea and the younger is Jona... I have no idea if I got their spelling right... The mom is Susanne. She's the one I'm related to. My great grandfather, Hinrich Peter Bose was... the uncle of her grandfather I think? Pretty sure that's what we decided. He left for America in 1909 when he was only 25 I believe, and started the amazing legacy this is now our family... The Bose name is running out though, which isn't too tragic since the name means "angry" or "evil" in German... where does a last name like that originate from? Oh well.
It was so fun being with them, and discovering a bit of my own heritage. They had a 30 page document which was the final memoire written by my great grandfather. It was eerie and supernatural reading his words written over 60 years ago before his death. He really had an amazing life. Oh, here's the picture of the small castle... very small for German standards :P

They took me to an "animal garden" the day I got there, which is essentially a zoo, only it's free to enter, open all day round and a bit less kept, kinda like a farm with exotic animals. I liked it way more than average zoos. Aside from the animals being a bit less exotic, they are very much in their prime and very active. Normally zoo animals look so imprisoned, but these ones were super friendly. Everything just felt much more real there. It was fun. Here’s a picture of Lea feeding a bunny, and two pretty cool horses.




I was really happy that I got to speak so much German while I was with them, and eat genuine German meals, which you tend to get the idea of it pretty fast; lots of bread, cheese ham and marmalade. They called dinner "Abendbrot" which pretty much just means evening bread. I guess one could say that in English, though it would sound like old English really. I learned also from my friend from Taiwan that they call their dinner the equivalent to “evening rice"... I think we're missing something in our language now... perhaps we should introduce the phrase "evening pizza" as our own prototype of this international trend :)
So yeah... it was a fun weekend, but also sad, because many of my Irish friends are leaving now. They have to go early, because their next semester starts before the German one ends, so this building is going to be missing a few really nice fellows in the immediate future... I'll do as I have, which is to keep my chin up and eyes open for more opportunities to get to know ppl. I know for a fact a few new Americans and Germans have moved in around me, so I'll try what I can to meet them. Thanks for reading all, and till next time!
Dave