Wow!

So a lot has happened in the past week and a few days. Sorry for the lack of post. The one night I set aside time to post was the night that Blogger decided to be down for maintenance.

Anyway. In the third week of classes and have finally narrowed it down to the classes I'm hopefully taking. I have 18 credit hours if I want to compare to UIUC, of which I hope I'll only end up taking 16 credit hours worth of finals. Basically here you go to class and then sign up for the final exam and then take that and get credit. It's quite different than the US but works in my favor because it gives me time to decide what I do and do not want to take a final for. Which at the moment is quite helpful since U of IL is being quite unhelpful in approving my classes abroad.

Anyway! Austria was gorgeous. It was great to see my host family again, especially Lisa since I hadn't seen her since I left! It was also good to have a home cooked meal! I also got to meet up with a friend from school there and explore a little more of Austria. And see the MOUNTAINS!!! (pictures soon... I haven't uploaded the last week's yet).

This last weekend was also quite insane. On Saturday, TUMI took a train to Regensburg. Regensburg, like every other city in Germany, has a church. It's a large church and it's a pretty church, but it is just a church. It also has a really, really old bridge. They started building it in the 1100's and it took 800 years to build. At that time it was the only bridge over the Danube in that area, so it was really important. It's a pedestrian bridge now.

Then Saturday night was the "Long Night of the Museums" which is a yearly event in Munich where all the museums in the city (and there appear to be over 100) are open from 7pm-2am. You buy a 15 euro ticket and you can get into any or all of them all night. A group of 7 of us started at 8:30 and went till 2. We hit 9 museums. We started out with 20 minutes each... so it was more of "glance at the museum". It was quite fun though. The downside is that they are pretty crowded because of all the people, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Then Sunday TUMI went to Lindau, on the Bodensee. Bodensee is the largest lake in Germany, and it's on the corner of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. We took a train down to Bregenz in Austria, 15 minutes away and toured the city, then took an hour long boat ride around the Bodensee and then toured Lindau. It's quite the pretty city once the fog goes away! The mountains and the lake are really nice. That was almost 3 hours away.

Pictures:
Lindau- Bodensee with the Alps in the background, Bregenz's church (sorry, forgot to rotate!), the city hall of Linda (colorful house) and the only lighthouse in Bavaria with the stone lion
Austria- the Alps (x3 because they're gorgeous)
Regensburg- Regensburg's big church and the 1100 AD bridge