A Full Day

Posted on by Jackson Crawford

I went into Dornbirn yesterday morning with Agnes by bike. We visited the farmers market there, with tons of fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, bread, fish, flowers, anything natural you could think of. It was in the main square in front of the Dornbirn Church and we browsed through for a while, Agnes bought flowers for Trude (my host grandma) and fruit for the house. We watched some street performers and decided to sit and get something to drink at the Steinhauser Cafe. Then we got a Semmel Sandwich from a meat shop and got back on our bikes. After returning from the market we had lunch (Leben Knödel) which is liver meat balls. It was surprisingly good! Beni had a football (soccer) game at 2 so he left early. We followed suit at 1:45 and drove to the Schwarzach football field. It has a nice upper deck complete with restaurant and picnic tables. The game was about 2 hours, and though the Schwarzach team lost it was still fun to watch. Afterwards, Agnes and I went and picked up Clara, then went back to the field to get Beni and Jakob. The 5 of us, all in the Yaris, drove to Dornbirn to have cake with Ernst's family (Ernst couldn't come ironically). I met Klaus and Carmen, Klaus is Ernst's brother, as well as their sons Jeremy and Elijah. We had Apfel Strudel and Tiramisu (no complaints there) and sat around and I got to know them. We spent about an hour and a half there and I really enjoyed talking to them. I showed them where Bozeman was on a map, and the Rocky Mountains, and I was surprised by the map because it put Bozeman on there! Afterward, we drove back home and relaxed for about a half hour. Then Beni took me to meet up with Micki and Patrick (another friend) and go into Bregenz. We rode the mopeds to the McDonalds in Hard and I was shocked by how high quality the building and decorations and everything else was. We ate up, then drove into the heart of Bregenz and parked at the Bahnhof. By foot, we went through the main park by the lake and ended up at "Beach Bar Bregenz", which was an all-age club with a beach theme in the middle of Bregenz. There were few people there, being only 9 o'clock, so we wandered down by the lake for a while. For some reason, every weird thing that could happen, did that night down by the lake. First, we saw a big group of hardcore "goth" kids. They were blasting heavy metal and smoking and drinking in a big group (probably about 50) in the middle of the park. Then, down at the end of the peninsula we were on, a guy dressed in boxing robes did a handstand, then got his robes signed by a couple girls. What? Of course two dogs just sprinted by after that. We started back toward the downtown area and saw the street performers that I had seen just that morning playing again. The lake was really beautiful right then because of the sunset, so I got some pretty nice pictures. We roamed the main streets for a while and went back the the Beach Bar. All of us sat and looked around for a while, but there was still very few people there. So we went back out to see what else weird was going on. There was more. Two of the goth boys were screaming at each other for about ten minutes at the top of their lungs in dialect. It was an interesting conversation I am sure. Then we noticed three police cars parked by one of the main buildings in the park. We went over and saw two cars lined up like for a street race, hmm. Losing hope, we walked back to the Beach Bar one last time. Finally, they found some friends there and we sat and talked for a while. I am now realizing that I really need to learn dialect. Even though I can speak hoch Deutsch, no kids use it so I find myself just sitting there silently until someone directly talks to me in hoch Deutsch. After an hour and a half there we rode back to Schwarzach and went to bed. I did just about everything today, and I had some fun.