Things are starting to wrap up over here. The semester is over, and people are leaving to travel more or to go back home. Marni will be leaving onThursday for Munich, and she will spend some time there and then head home to Australia. Lots of other students have left or are leaving this week. It's getting to be a sort of prolonged agony, saying goodbye to everybody and knowing that you're eventually going to have to leave too. I organized all my stuff today and chose which things to mail home. That process included taking down my wall posters, which I was dreading because there's nothing to remind you you'll be leaving soon like blank walls. Ugh. I slapped up a couple of my extra "throw-away" rough prints and drawings for now, just so the walls won't be totally empty.
This morning I went to the print shop to collect my last Bescheinigung (course certificate) from Louise and to say goodbye to her and Katrin. I wrote them thank-you notes on two of my extra prints. They were absolutely awesome teachers. I'll miss them for sure! It wasn't my ultimate last time in the print shop, though--I still need to go back this week or next week and finish my series of Grandma. So at least I don't totally have to say goodbye to the Finkenau campus yet.
I met Marni in the computer lab so we could go to a café and draw, but we ended up walking along the Alster loop path down to the Binnenalster and getting ice cream instead. It was a nice cool day, perfect for walking! We happened to run into Liana, one of the students from New Orleans, while we were walking, and she was literally toting her suitcase to head off to Berlin for a few days before going home. Though we only had a minute to talk because she had to go, it was good to see her one more time and say goodbye.
Spent the afternoon doing the aforementioned organizing and weighing of my stuff so I can send off the package this week. Trying to keep it under 10 kg so I don't have to pay the highest fee.
At 5 pm Marni and I went to Berliner Tor for the end-of-semester international students' BBQ. It was a weird spot to have a barbecue--there is a lawn, but it's in between a bunch of big office tower buildings (including the IBM headquarters, which is huge), and the grass area was like a wind tunnel. It felt like we were back at the beginning of the semester, it was so chilly! We were all in the shade of the buildings and it did not feel like July at all. But it was actually a really good time, at least for me. I was so glad to get to see most of the other students before we all parted ways. They had sausages on the grill for everybody (I finally got to have an authentic wurst with the classic curry ketchup!), and there was a live band, which was cool. They were called Compulsive Gambling and although I could tell they normally probably play fully amplified in club gigs and stuff like that, they were completely unplugged this time except for a mini amp the bass player was using. No mics or anything. I was especially impressed by the lead singer--she had a super powerful and versatile voice, and hearing her without any microphone showed me how good she really was. I stayed for probably two hours total, and it was really fun (aside from the ridiculous blasting wind). I saw Eirini and Agapi (Greece), Emese, Eszter, Fanni, and Rita (Hungary, the latter two of whom I roomed with in Berlin), Laura (Spain; she went with us to Miniatur-Wunderland and was at the public viewing for the game vs. USA), Candace (my fellow CSULB student), Cindy (Virginia; she was the one who told me about Le Procope in Paris), Elisha (the classic girl from D.C.), Hanne (Norway), Ninni (my Finnish buddy from the Berlin weekend), and Sam (Melbourne; she went with Marni to Israel) were all there, so I got to talk to them for a while, which was great. Ingrid and Nora, the coordinators for the international students, were also there, and so were Anna, Mona, Moritz, and Cristina, our HAW "tutors" who planned and chaperoned our events. (Hendrik was MIA.) I won a prize too! Laura and I ended up being the only two entries for the Hamburg selfie photo contest, and Laura got first place, which meant she won the Hamburg flag that everyone signed at the beginning of the semester. I didn't mind at all that she got the flag, because I won a Hamburg mug that exactly matches the one I bought at Miniatur-Wunderland, so I now have a pair! And the mug was full of Haribo Color-Rados, so I was happy as a clam. The only not-happy part was saying goodbye to everybody. But some of us will be here till the end of the month or even beyond, so if I get lonely in my last couple days there will still be a few peeps I can do things with. Ninni and I are going to do another try at the Hamburger Dom when it opens for the summer.
I took the train home with Cindy, since she lives at Georgi-Haus too. It was really nice to catch up with each other. We talked about our travels and about our class experiences at HAW. Cindy is a fashion major, so she was doing textile and wardrobe design courses at the Armgartstraße fashion-design campus. I wish we had gotten to hang out more this semester, because I like Cindy a lot. She's cute, funny, and super chill. Hopefully we can do something together before we both leave at the end of the month.
When I got home, it was almost 8. Indra had invited some of her friends over for a game night, so they were already comfortably settled in the kitchen by the time I came in. They were going to play Warhammer, which is a fantasy game like Dungeons & Dragons only it uses weapons and skills rather than magic powers. Or something like that. I've never played either before, so I don't know the ins and outs. Anyway, Marni had never played before and wanted to try it sometime, so Indra called up her friend Ben (who made veggie burgers with us waaay back at the start of the semester and who is apparently well versed in fantasy games) and planned the game night. So Ben was there with his girlfriend, and of course Marni and Indra were there, and also one of Indra's other longtime friends named Johannes. Indra even persuaded her brother Aljoscha to come! We made more of the baguette easy-pizzas, and Indra had bought a watermelon, so there was lots to munch on. I didn't really join the game because I was trying to finish drawing a card for Roland and Gaby, but I ended up sort of unofficially jumping in later by making myself a silly secondary character of an old tailor with no powers or skills (but with a very funny shrimpy voice), and then when Aljoscha left he gave me his character and the shrimpy tailor ended up inheriting a bunch of weapons that he had no clue how to use. It was actually a very entertaining night. I didn't ever know before exactly how the fantasy games worked because I'd never seen them played, but I learned that basically everybody gets a part and makes up a character, and then one person is the narrator and has a basic pre-written outline for a story, and the characters are told the scenarios one at a time and have to try to complete their quest by deciding what to do in each scenario. Everybody, especially Johannes and Marni, made up really goofy and hilarious characters and we spent most of our time just cracking up at their pretend dialogues. The game went really late, and in the end Ben (who was the narrator) had to just tell us the end, because nobody was awake enough to solve the mystery anymore. It was a really fun night, though. I don't think Indra or I have laughed that hard all semester! It was a very un-serious game, but that made for a super enjoyable time.
Tomorrow Roland and Gaby are coming for the evening!!! It will be sad to say goodbye to them, but I'm so glad we will get to see them one more time before Marni and I go home!
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