by Julie King ’12

Early Monday morning Bill flew home back to the United States. He left before the end of our winter semester here to make it back in time for the beginning of spring semester at Dickinson, where he has to be due to ROTC obligations.  Of course a proper farewell was in order, so Friday night the six of us Dickinsonians, Janine Ludwig, Jens, and some of our Dickinson “family” friends (i.e. Insa, Jan) enjoyed an evening together at Schüttinger, a microbrewery and restaurant in the Altstadt of Bremen.

Bill, Doug, Ethan and I went to Schüttinger around 7:30, just in time to get a beer during happy hour (only 2 Euro for 0,4 L!) and to have a traditional German dinner while we waited for the others to arrive.  Bill and Doug both ordered the Leberkäse Pfanne, which they deemed appropriate, as Bill’s quasi “last supper.”  I’ve never ordered it myself, but Leberkäse is kind of like a better, German version of spam. “Pfanne” means pan, so it came served over hash brown-like potatoes with a fried egg on top.  Ethan and I each ate Flammkuchen, which is a sort of flat bread with toppings.  His had baby shrimp and onions on top of a sour cream like spread, and mine was the same except with bacon instead of baby shrimp.

After dinner we moved to a bigger table and by about 9:30 everyone had arrived.  We presented Bill with a partially completed scrapbook with pictures from the past 4 months.  With the help of glue sticks, red and yellow paper, and lots of Stabilo pens we all wrote notes to Bill and finished the scrapbook.  Hopefully when he is missing Bremen he can look through it and get a sense of his home away from home here in Bremen.  Although we didn’t get our dance on underneath the disco ball to “Take Me Home Country Roads” at Schüttinger, we finished our night at Tower, a popular dance club near the train station.  Even though we’ll miss him there’s a chance he’ll come back to Bremen for a visit in May, but regardless a perfect way to say goodbye as a group a our small yet lively “Abschiedparty.”