Ich möchte eine tasse doppio Cappuccino

Most of my friends know I'm fond of good coffee. And I'll look for a coffee place wherever I go. So when I was learning a few essential German, ordering coffee was on my list. Interestingly the second chapter of the German language book I bought already was teaching that, though it's to ask if someone wants to have a coffee (probably they expect the next thing after greeting a person would be to ask him/her out for a coffee):

Drinken Sie eine tasse Kaffee?

But what if I just want to order a coffee for myself? A few chapters later it taught me how to order things. So I combined that and got this:

Ich möchte eine tasse Kaffee.

Equipped with this know-how I boldly went to a coffee shop today (with Martin and Jens) and ordered my first cup of coffee in Germany. To my surprise, there wasn't any coffee! All they had was those Expresso, Mochaccino, Americano (closed to regular coffee), Cappuccino ...etc. And they had difference sizes (for sure...)!

So I improvised:

Ich möchte eine tasse doppio Cappuccino.

Here "doppio" is "double" in Italian, which means medium in this context.

And it was a SUCCESS!

Successfully ordered a medium-size Cappuccino in German. Ah, the taste of achievement!

The lady making the coffee was smiling, so were the 2 guys in the front and the lady at the back. I could only hope they were appreciating my effort =D

And the coffee was grrrrreat! Will go again and order in German with more confidence next time.

A very German dinner

Before I left for Germany, people told me Germany was famous for sausages and beer, and sooner or later I'll get a taste of that. Well, I did on my second night.

Martin has kindly invited me to his place for a BBQ dinner with his family and some of his friends. It was a nice house with a great backyard. In the backyard there was a table, a few chairs, and of course the BBQ stove. I wanted to help but apparently he had everything covered, all I could do was lighting some candles (yeah, it's very cozy along with the ambient music).

The way they barbecued was different from the typical Canadian gas-tank way, it was also different from our proud Hong Kong everyone-gather-around-the-brick-built-stove way. It's the old fashioned (yet effective) charcoal way.

So what did I have? Look.

My dinner. Sorry for the image quality, it's my phone and it was dark outside (perhaps they should invent a candle-mode).

On the left, is a bottle of beer made in Germany. Then the mustard, ketchup, sausage, and bread. So here you are, sausage and beer.

However, there is a misconception about Germans being beer-lovers. From what I heard and people I've talked to so far, very few Germans actually drink lots of beer. Most of them prefer wine instead, though a typical beer bottle is half a litre.

It was a great experience and I cannot thank Martin enough for inviting me over. For a person who just came here for the first time for the first few days, this was a very friendly gesture.

But that's not the end of my first taste of Germany. You might have heard that Germany is a place where bicycle is very popular. 

And that's how I got back. A ride at the night that was chilly outside, but with a warmed heart inside by the great hospitality.

Destination Magdeburg

The central station of Magdeburg, to my understanding, Hbf is short for Hauptbahnhof, which means Central Station.

My destination was a city called Magdeburg, which was the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt. In 2010 its population reached about 230k, which made the city having the largest number of inhabitants.

(source: http://www.halleforum.de/nachrichten/aktuelles/28918/Einwohner-Magdeburg-ueberholt-Halle.html)

Frontal view of the Magdeburg Hbf, it's a mall with a train station. I was standing at the plaza area.

A PhD student, Martin, came and picked me up at the station. He asked me if I wanted to take the railway, or just walk to the campus. Noticing the nice weather I decided to walk... with my 50lbs suitcase. It wasn't that bad except the road wasn't made for rollers. Fortunately my suitcase was strong enough to withstand the 30min bumpy ride.

A monument in memory of a soldier saving a girl.

During the walk, Martin showed me this monument facing a 5-story building. According to him, it was in memory of a Russian solider who used his coat to catch a little girl who fell from the 3rd floor of the building. Both were safe in the end. A marking of bravery and wisdom.

At night I was taken out back to the neighborhood of the central station (I took it as the downtown area) for dinner with Martin and his friend, Rene. The place we went was called Kucaf (http://www.kucaf-md.de/). It's a nice cozy place with very good atmosphere. Dim lighting with candles at the table, and some ambient music.

The menu, of course, was in German. Because of that Martin was ordering for me, and he ordered the big portion instead of regular. I had a turkey pasta (Pute Pasta in German)and it took me a while to finish all (I usually don't leave anything behind). Price-wise it was pretty good, costing only about 7euro, and it tasted really good.

Martin had to run for some work, while Rene took me for a walk back to the campus (where I was staying). We walked along the River Elbe and it was nice. I would say it would be a nice and romantic walk if I was walking with a girl.

But that wasn't the end of the night. I had to get some grocery or I would have nothing to eat. Fortunately there was a 24-hour grocery store within 10mins walk from my place. The counter lady said something super quick in German, and I could only work out the last word as "karte", so I assumed she was asking if I was paying with credit card. I just said "cash" and handed her a 20euro bill. Over there they kept saying "bitte schön", from Google translate it means something like "here you are". All I could say was "Danke", for now.

After that I just crashed because of the exhausting flight.

Touchdown at Germany

In 2012 I was given a chance to participate in an exchange program between my university and the University of Magdeburg, Germany. Took me some effort to get all the documents and other stuff, but most of them were settled with the help of many nice people.

On 14 March 2012 I took off from the Toronto Pearson International Airport and flew to Leipzig. This was the closest I could get to Magdeburg, the rest has to be done by the famous train system of Germany.

But, there wasn't any direct flight to Leipzig either, I had to stop by Frankfurt and take an 1 hour connecting flight.

I've heard different stories about the Frankfurt International Airport. Various custom checks, the long passage one has to go through... etc. In fact there is a forum thread dedicated to this:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles-more-lufthansa-austrian-swiss-other-partners/982019-beginners-guide-connecting-fra-fra-connection-thread.html

But it turned out to be easier than I imagined. As long as you pay attention to the gate displays (they change the gates from time to time, so don't trust your boarding pass if you print it ahead) and the directions (they have German and English most of the time), you will be fine.

The looong passage from international terminal to domestic terminal in Frankfurt International Airport, ~350 steps from end to end.

Gate A25, connecting flight to Leipzig.

As mentioned the gate of my connecting flight was changed (from A21 to A25), which was only shown in some of the gate displays. I arrived at this gate at about 8:15am and the boarding time was 8:55am, so there was still time.

My first impression of Germany is quite good. Things are tidy and clean (Japan is still the best I've seen, but here is good enough), people are in general helpful, polite, and quiet.