Welcome Week was a success.......wait GREAT SUCCESS

So it has been a couple of days since I last posted anything.....I need to think of all that has transpired since the last post.........all I know there were quite a few social gatherings at various establishments on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night...

Wednesday Night (April 2nd):

I believe our entire crew (40 or 50 people) met at the Grünfeld Pub for a social hour or two prior to the welcome party at the Edel Pink club. It was fun to interact with people from all over the globe. Most people are Europeans (Spanish, French, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, etc) but there are some folks from Mexico and China as well. It's awesome to see all of these students speak German with each other, some are really good, some are like me, just trying to get a hang of it.
Edel Pink club was a blast.........there was some good dancing going on and lots of mingling. I met a few German students who were our "hosts" for the evening. They are super friendly and eager to help with getting stuff figured out here. And all of the Cologne citizens are really proud of their Kölsch Bier. One interesting fact about it is that at the bars or clubs it is served in these tiny 0.2 l glasses, and don't make a mistake to make fun of it. They believe beer tastes better from small glass as it's fresh and at the right temperature when served from the tiny glass.
I think I finally made it home around 2am.......not too late, but I had been out since 7pm, so it was a long night anyways.

Thursday (April 3rd):

In the afternoon I went to the City Hall to register as a resident. It is a step everyone staying in Cologne for more than a couple of weeks has to do. The paper they issue there is useful in many ways, as it allows you to open a bank account, join the library, etc. After the registration I had a couple of hours to kill before the next event, which was the Colonia Express. Cologne's public transportation consists of busses, trams, subway, and trains. The Colonia Express is an old tram turned into a tour vehicle equipped with a bar. So the point of this event was to hop on this tram and tour the city for 3 hours while enjoying some more Kölsch. It was so much fun. We literally went all over the city on this tram and got to see the city, plus it was a great way to meet some more folks.
Around 10pm, the tram dropped us off in the middle of the city. At that point there was one thing we could really do: go to a club. Very conveniently, the tram dropped us off in front of Das Ding, a nightclub that everyone around here claims it's terrible but yet people still end up going to. It was ok with us though. We partied till 3am and headed home for some well deserved rest.

Friday (April 4th):

I woke up with the Lufthansa guy knocking on my door. Three days later I finally received my suitcase. It was nice to be able to wear some other clothes finally.
We met again at 1pm for a guided city tour. We first went to Cologne's most famous landmark, the Dom (Cathedral - the picture on my blog's starting page is of this building). I believe the tour guide told us that they first started building it in 1250s but finished it in 1800s. The Church ran out of budget a couple of times, and this being a Catholic Church there was also the stop in construction due to the schism between Catholicism and Protestantism. The legend has it that the bones of the 3 Wise men are buried underneath this church. I must say it is a very peculiar building, very different than anything else I've seen so far.
Later we toured the old city, which is now mostly a tourist destination. There are a few Brauhäuser (Breweries) and they all brew, you guessed it, the infamous Kölsch Bier. We also managed to sneak a peak (from outside) at a couple of museums, which I'll need to go visit. One contains Roman art pieces (the city of Cologne was founded by the Romans, so the mix of architecture and history between the early times and later Gothic period is quite evident and interesting).
The final part of the tour involved visiting a Brauhaus, drinking a couple of Kölsch and eating a Bratwurst mit Senf......sehr gut.....sehr gut
Oh and we did walk through Hohestraße, which is a pedestrian area of the city filled with all sorts of shops. I am definitely going to go back there and check out the stores that we don't have in Minneapolis.
There was no party on Friday night. I went to bed early to recover from the previous 2 days.

Saturday (April 5th):

In the morning I decided to go for a run. I discovered a long series of connected parks in the vicinity. I ran for about 40 minutes, familiarizing myself with the city even more. There were people out running, biking and playing soccer even though it looked like it was going to rain any minute...and it did later on, I fortunately made it home before it started pouring. That's one thing that has been disappointing so far: the weather! It has rained every day since I came.
Saturday night was the Legendary Cologne Pub Crawl. We all met at the student Mensa (German for Cafeteria) where the current German students organized our track. We split into teams and went from station to station. Most involved drinking some sort of weird drink but others involved role playing, story telling and singing. One of our assignments was to go in the middle of the street and ask passerby’s to teach us Cologne Carnival Songs. Fortunately, our group had 3 native German speakers and we were able to gather quite a few songs. People are so easy to talk to in Cologne. Most people we stopped were willing to sing for us, which was pretty funny.
The night ended at Das Ding again as the other club we were going to was too crowded and we decided it was not worth standing in line for.
Dieu (my roommate) and I walked home from the club at about 3am in the pouring rain. I was soaked when I got home.....

Sunday (April 6th):

Well today, we were supposed to go to Bonn for a city tour. Most of us decided not to go, as it was way too early. So I am now sitting at home, writing this post and waiting for the soccer games to start........that's one thing I am going to love about living in Germany, all the soccer games that are televised.

Tomorrow the classes start. The Welcome Week ended with a bang, but tomorrow is another day and finally time to get studious. I still need to figure out where all my classes are. I am excited to begin as I am taking some interesting courses: Channel Management, Retail Marketing, Retail Mgmt, Logistics, and Int'l Financial Statements Analysis.

That's all for now.

Tchuß

p.s. I hope to post some pictures in a while too.