Monday and Tuesday, February 8 and 9

Another Goethe Institut tradition is the "Stammtisch,"a weekly student get-together in a local restaurant. This week's Stammtisch (the first for this batch of students) happened to fall on my birthday. Having a bit of the birthday blues because I was so far from home, I was glad to be able to surround myself with lots of people. Of course, the big table (shown here) filled up before I could stake out a claim, so I got to watch those people have a good time from a distance.

Clockwise, starting with the guy with the goatee: Jason, Betsy, Matthias, Myriam, Agatha, Bjorn, Marcus, and Sarah. The dark haired woman facing away from the camera in the bottom right corner of the photo is probably Tamara, our Mediotek librarian.

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The is the small table, where the really cool people sat. Clockwise, from the bottom left: me, Alejandra, Reinhardt, Elena, Sabaedin, Herr Zellfelder, and Anja.

The blue things piled high onto a plate in front of me, sadly, are the candles from the birthday torte. I wasn't feeling old until I saw all those candles. Anja told me I had to blow them out with one breath, but it just wasn't in me (I needed two breaths). I felt better, though, when I found out Matt had inadvertently placed and lit 38 candles, one too many.

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My turn to take a picture of the small table. Clockwise from bottom left: Herr Zellfelder, Anja, Matt, Elena, Alejandra, and Reinhardt.