Germany

I found out who my host family is!!

Günter and Mary Meetz
Ahrensbergstr. 13a
34131 Kassel, Hessen, Germany


I e-mailed them last night to introduce myself, since an e-mail address for Mary was provided with the street address. I have not received any reply to the e-mail yet. But I remain hopeful!!

The good news is, that the host family will be ready for me already on New Year's Day. You see, I booked Sara's and my airline flights two days earlier than they should have been, which accidentally caused an uproar at IWU college in Kassel. No one knew where to stick these two American girls for two days...they wanted us to either find a hostel or re-book our flights. (!!!!)

Sheesh! I put my foot down to not do that, because I got a g-r-e-a-t deal on tickets, and due to their lax-itinerary, Sara and I weren't even sure how late to schedule our arrival. So, we thought we were doing them something good, by scheduling an arrival date one day before the posted start date on the original study abroad flier. We are guests in this country, so we didn't want to inconvenience anyone with us arriving tardy.

Anyway, we had to hire an escort to pick us up from the airport in Frankfurt and get us to the train station, where Sara and I will take a train to Kassel's station, called Wilhemshohe.

Now, our host families will be waiting for us at Wilhemshohe, to take us back to their homes for us to start living with them. Yay, I am so excited!!

I tried to Google the shit out of the names and addresses, Günter and Mary Meetz, to see if I could get a picture of their place, or if they had any children, or what kind of professions the husband and wife might have.

The only thing I found out was that the father, Günter, is really big into fish and aquariums. And taking pictures of fish and nautral aquariums, called "pool gardens." (???)

"In this year can our association, which looks back aquarium and Terrarienverein “SCALARE” 1925/55 registered association Fulda on a five-and-seventy-year old association history. The association area “pool garden” was inaugurated before 30 years. Here some data from the quite moved association life.

Eleven nature-connected friends met in the May of the yearly 1925 in the Fuldaer restaurant “for protecting”. Their hobby was the Aquaristik. They decided to create an association and gave it the name “sea-rose”. Our former honour member friend William transferred the presidency winter, it deceased as last initial member to 93. Lebensjahr, short time after our sixty-year old association anniversary.

Starting from 1 July 1926 one attached the VDA (federation of German aquarium and Terrarienvereine) gau 18 (Main gau) and already accomplished themselves in the second year of its existence an aquarium exhibition. This successful advertising-look took place from the 3. until 8 September 1926 in the red hall of the Orangerie and with the bronze medal of the VDA one honored."
--Taken from Translated Google Search Result.

Apparently Günter took over the office of this government organization after his friend died or retired or something. (???) Nowadays, Günter owns photography rights to print any photographs of the huge "pool garden" that first started in 1925, exploded in size and popularity, then shrunk and got bombed to hell in WW2, and then slowly grew back to whole size by the 1970s. And by whole size, I mean 13,000 square meters.


Christ, that's a lot of fish.