Lernen, Deutsch zu sprechen: Beginnings in Bad Mergentheim

Hello all!

I have now been in Germany for 5 days and it has already been a fun and exciting experience. However, one downfall is my access to Internet is very limited. My laptop doesn't pick up the wifi provided by my apartment complex which makes it difficult to keep up with this blog like I wanted too. I do have wifi on my phone which is what I am using to write out this post now. So, please excuse any autocorrects or awkward misspellings. I will do my best to go back and catch them, but we all now how difficult typing things on a smartphone can be.

Anyways, when we all arrived in Bad Mergentheim by train which wasn't as hard to navigate as I thought it would be. We were able to get our tickets at the Frankfurt train station, which is attached to the airport, and the man who printed out our tickets also printed out a sheet that told us which station to switch trains at and our different train numbers. The journey to Bad Mergentheim was fairly uneventful, except we were all very tired from the flight. I am staying in the same apartment complex where 4 other UNF students are staying as well and when we arrived we were greeted by Herr Kruhm. He is the landlord of the apartment and knows little English so trying to communicate can be a little difficult. He gave us our room keys and we filled out some paperwork. Then I attempted to ask how we receive and send mail which took a lot of hand motions and looking at words in the German/American dictionary but it was all in good fun. I was able to communicate with Herr Kruhm even though I felt like I was playing charades and we were both able to laugh and understand what the other was trying to say. Hopefully once classes start, I will be able to communicate more effectively with him. The rest of the day was filled with getting groceries and exploring the town.

Over the next couple of days we all explored the town some more. Abbie, savannah, and I discovered a cemetery that was interesting to walk through.

A grave of a family in Bad Mergentheim.

A statue of Jesus with fresh flowers and lit candles.

Another grave, liked most of the graves in the cemetery this one has plants growing over the grave. I believe this is an old pagan tradition that had carried over through German culture. There was one grave that had a whole tree growing out of it. Needless to say, this leads to a much more interesting cemetery than one with cement blocks everywhere.