Sonja's Corner

I read the signs since a few weeks already: “Shopping on Sunday”. In Germany everything except for restaurants and gas stations is closed. So a “Shopping Sunday” is more or less a special occasion. But this time, it was actually connected to a cultural event for Gladenbach. Being new in this little town, I decided to get some more information about the customs here. As I was told the festival called BrunneMarkt (brunnen = fountain or well, markt = market) is celebrated now since several years in Gladenbach every 3rd weekend in October. The origin was to celebrate the relaunch of the well on the Gladenbach Marketplace. So they do that with having many stands where people sell stuff, lots of food,different music, artists, fun for young and old…

As I figured during my 3 months living here, the people of Gladenbach are very active in townmeetings, markets and just anything you can imagine where people can gather. This is something I did not expect at first when we arrived in this rather small and quiet town. But it was a nice surprise and so I went last Sunday to the Brunnenmarket, caught some impressions and got one step ahead in becoming a Gladenbacher ;)

Today when sitting for quite some time in the bus home from university and reading, I stumbled over the following quote by Erma Bombeck. I thought it was pretty good so that I thought I’d share it… also as a reminder to myself.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained, or the sofa faded.

I would have sat on the lawn with my  children and not worried about grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn’t show soil, or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, “Later. Now go get washed up for dinner.”

There would have been more “I love you’s.” More “I’m sorry’s.”

But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute…look at it and really see it, live it and never give it back

Goodness.. it is scary how time runs by. Now I am already for one week  at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. But before that busy life of university started, we were also able to just relax for a few days with our dear friends Petar and Petra from Holland who came to visit us. It was a very good time filled with talks, cookie-baking and quite some games of Phase 10 and 11ns out :). We also went on two trips, one to Marburg and the other one to the Frankfurt Zoo. You can find the Pictures in the Gallery.

So back to university. Well, I did not have class yet, but we had a welcome week in which we got to know the school, the system, the classes and basically everything needs to know in order to not get lost in this big jungle of streets, busses, rules and people. So far I have a really good feeling about all of that.  Yes, everything is new and confusing in the beginning but it also seems to be fun and exciting. The city of Giessen is pretty huge and very nice, super cool for shopping and getting everything you need. The interesting thing about this university is that all its different sections and buildings are spread over the whole city, so that it can happen that if I want to go from my Auditorium for Chemistry to the main library and stop in between at the main building.. oh well this would be, depending on the connection a 20-30 minutes bus trip ;) But fortunately during my first semester everything is pretty much in one location. I did not have time to take some pictures yet but I googled some so that you can have a look.

That’s the news for now, I am sure a lot more will come up the next weeks… we will see how I find the time to write about it. It takes a little while to find the balance being student, houswife, wife and friend… :)