Partyin in Bayern

Things are going great in Bavaria, Germany, where I have been for two days visiting Karin, my exchange partner from summer 2006.
She picked me up real early in the morning in Munich, here are some pictures:


The past two nights, Karin and I have gone to birthday parties for her friends. The parties are really lovely. There are lots of fresh pastries, and people sit around and talk and laugh and courses of food are gradually brought by the host(ess). On Thursday night, it was a rather small party, and we took a little stroll around the neighborhood - it was totally quiet and peaceful and we looked at the stars. Last night, our host showed us pictures from her trip to India, where she was a visiting doctor in a small hospital. Then we went swimming! Super fun.
We also went shopping yesterday in downtown Passau, at H&M, with Karin´s friends Benni & Stefan. I also bought my train ticket to Prague - with Karin´s translating help.
Yes, so.
Karin and I are speaking German to each other, mostly (although the language here is really bavarian dialect - which is like German, but I can´t understand it). It's pretty cool to be in a country where I can understand the language... the signs, the people, all that, makes me feel pretty smart... and pretty worried about Prague... where I don´t know the language at all, despite my attempts at learning...
Today Karin and I are chilling out, since the weather is not very good and we are quite tired.Tomorrow we must wake up very early, to go to the castle Neuschwanstein, a 4-hour drive away. (just because I said I wanted to - Karin is great!)
I had a great time last night talking to the Germans about politics (gasp) and such. It always comes up when you tell people you are studying political science... Yeah, so what´s up with the situation in Russia? And the Germans are watching our election closely - some said that they do not know McCain very well, because a lot of media coverage was devoted to the Hillary/Obama contest.
This reminded me that I´ve been completely out of touch with news since I got here... so I´ve got to go read the news. (Biden, really?)
Servus! (that´s goodbye in Bavarian..)