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Kurort

Mon, May 12th 2008, 05:17

Kurort a resort or spa area

This weekend we went to visit Mike's family again. It is warm and beautiful in Germany right now. Everything is green and there are flowers blooming everywhere. We ate most of our meals outside, and at night I could hear the frogs at the pond across the street.

We drove quite a ways to Oybin, which is a "Kurort" close to the Czech border. Oybin is most famous for the Oybin mountain, an exposed sandstone rock that towers above the town and on top sits the ruins of a medieval monastery.

The old church was pretty cool looking. There were several rooms you could go into. We hiked up the mountain, which was pretty steep, and then climbed these very narrow stairs to a tower of the church that had a great view.

Today I woke up with the idea in my head that I could go to the center and shop a little bit for souvenirs to take to my family and for some food. But then I remembered that it is a holiday (how many holidays do they have here, anyways?), so everything is closed.

I am terribly bored, and getting very anxious about my flight to Arizona this Saturday, so naturally, this week will be one of the longest I have had in a while. And it is really hot in our dachgeschoss bedroom (our room is in the roof, which means the ceilings are slanted and the windows are in the ceiling). There is not much of a breeze in here.

We found our new apartment in Gorbitz. It is on the first floor, so it will be easy to move into. Plus, it is slightly elevated and has a balcony that we can sit out on, and perhaps let Penny have supervised trips outside. The cool thing is that we are getting a brand new Einbaukuche (built in kitchen) that I get to pick! I also get to buy kitchen stuff and curtains, so that will be fun. We are hopefully moving in July. We just have to find some people to take our place in our current apartment.

I am going to have to start reading a book or cleaning soon so I don't go crazy with antici....pation. It will be so much fun to go shopping and eat my favorite foods and to see my family. Nathaniel is graduating high school!

 

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Comments

Thanks for the information.

All I know is that everyone seems to have a negative reaction when I mention living in Gorbitz, but I have realized it's not that bad since living here and that perhaps it has changed since people formed that opinion of it. I was also told by someone living here that during GDR times it was a coveted place to live because it was new and modern.

tessa left this comment on 28/8/08.

Changed since when? I think Gorbitz was a very popular and highly requested place to live during GDR times, because it was so modern back then. With the Wende everything East German suddenly wasn't good enough anymore.
I wonder how much they teach you about the GDR in school in America and if the information is accurate. To be honest: American history isn't covered at all in German history classes, it's being dealt with in English classes and not in great detail. My history book had a chapter about it, but we just skipped it in class.
If you're interested in the GDR you should borrow the film "Lebensläufe" directed by Winfried Junge in the Städtische Bibliothek (if you're not registered yet: it's well worth it, it's 10 EUR per year, they have lots of books, and get most new CDs and DVDs the week they are released in stores).
The movie is over 4 hrs and has an English voice-over, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Golzow. It's just one of the twenty films the director did about those people, but the only one that has the voice-over on DVD. The dialect of the people in the original versions might be hard (i.e. impossible) to understand.
This might sound boring, because after all it just shows the daily lives of those people, but it's not. In fact it's highly addicting, with far more insights than any reality TV show could ever offer.

By the way: I love that you're making so much effort to learn German, unlike one of my seminar tutors from some USSR country who refused to learn German the first five years he lived here.

Manuel left this comment on 28/8/08.

Manuel:

No, I actually feel quite safe in Gorbitz. I am in a nice section where the apartments have been all redone and mostly elderly people live here. It is quiet. I know there are worse sections of Gorbitz, but luckily I am far away from the socialized housing. I think parts of Gorbitz have changed a lot but most Dresdners don't realize it.

tessa left this comment on 28/8/08.

Gorbitz is not really the place to go as a foreigner, have you had any problems yet?

Manuel left this comment on 28/8/08.

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