Barcelona!!!

So I actually didn't really care about visiting Barcelona... meaning it wasn't on the list of cities I really wanted to see. But there were really cheap tickets there and I was invited so I figured, why not.

And Barcelona is my new favorite city in Europe. It's so pretty! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So Friday at noon we jumped on a subway and met up at the train station. From there we got on a 1.5 hour train to Memmingen. The trick with our tickets (which were 40 euro round trip) is that we were flying RyanAir, a discount (very discount) airline that as a result flies out of the neighboring German city. Luckily we could use a Bavaria ticket for the five of us so it was only $5 more to get to Memmingen. From there we took a 20 minute bus to the airport and from there we boarded our flight. Only two airlines fly out of that airport, Ryan Air and another discount German airline. Baggage is an extra hefty fee so we were all packed in a backpack for carry-on. We walked out to our airplane and bordered. The flight was a little less than two hours and it was only the landing (I'm pretty sure planes aren't supposed to bounce... we're pretty certain it rocked up on one wheel...) was a little concerning. The flight itself was okay though. We flew over the Catalian mountains (if that's indeed what they are called? Mountains without snow!!! Such a concept for us since we're only used to the Alps!) Step two of course was that we landed in Reus and we had to get to Barcelona. This meant another 20 minute bus ride from the airport to the city of Reus and from there another 1.5 hour train to the city of Barcelona. So we finally got in around 10:00 at night having started travelling at 12. Of course taking into account that we paid an entire 60 Euro round trip for all forms of transportation to and from the cities and we were a group of 5 and had the time... it was probably worth it. Anyway, we spent the next 20 minutes wandering aroudn Barcelona trying to find our hostel. See, they don't really believe in street signs there it turns out... at least not around the main train station. We finally did find it. It was an amazing place. The lady at the front desk took us to our room, brought us a lamp becasue people were sleeping, gave us a map and circled all the nearby bus/subway stops and all the main attractions and how to get there and pointed us towards a grocery store down the street. IT WAS OPEN AND IT WAS 11:00 BY THEN! Points for Barcelona right there! We bought frozen pizzas and warmed them up in the oven and ate a very much awaited dinner before going to bed.

Saturday we woke up to rain with the promise of sun in the afternoon so after the hostel supplied breakfast we grabbed our towels and suits and hopped onto a subway to Sagrada Familia, the "temple of the holy family". Wow... that's all I can say. The most impressive church I've seen in Europe. It's a work by Gaudi, if you don't know, and started back in 1882. Gaudi is long since dead but they're still working on the church. Expected completion date is currenty 2030. We'll see. Still, really cool. Completely unlike anything else I've ever seen. We paid the 9 Euro to go in because it was raining still and even though the inside is largely unfinished, the part that was was absolutely amazing. There was also a museum inside and the workshop where they were building the plaster models. We also saw the guys working on the church.
By the time we left it was starting to clear up. We took the subway to the Arc de Triomphe (but the Spanish one...). We weren't sure the actual significance (the downside of not having a free tour...) but it was really pretty. In fact everything is really pretty. The architecture is breathtaking. You could literally take a picture of every building there because they were all so unique. There are also some pretty impressive fountains scattered everywhere and palm trees! We walked through a gorgeous park to get from Arc de Triomphe to the beach. It's where the zoo is among other things. We got to the beach just as the sun came out. Surprisingly, however, there is absolutely no fast food on the beach! Just really expensive restauruants. But you'd think there'd be a place to grab snacks or something within 5 minutes of the sand... there isn't. We wandered for quite aways before we found Spanish Doners. Very different than the German ones but also really good. After lunch we lounged on the beach for the next 6 hours or so. The water was perfect- cold at first but by the fifth wave at your feet (I counted) comfortable enough to wade farther. I put sunscreen on every two hours... anyway. It started to get chilly around 7 so we headed back up to our hostel in search for dinner. We found a nice looking place that enticed us with tasty fruit milkshakes advertisements. The guy looked surprised when we said we were there for food. Apparently most people just use it as a bar. He informed us that it was Columbian food and asked if we were looking for Spanish food. We said sure and sat down. He looked confused. We realized that they are not the same. (Okay, we actually knew that but the question was awkwardly phrased) Anyway, the food was really good as was the service... and the fruit shakes. It was like a milk based smoothie with fresh fruit. So tasty! After dinner we were pretty tired so went back to the hostel to rest for a bit and shower off the sunscreen/sand/salt water. That's when I noticed my sunburn. Actually 4 of the 5 of us were sunburned. I wasn't happy. So much for the use of sunscreen. The hostel nicely provided aloe though... apparently it happens a lot. Later that night we ended up talking to a Canadian who was in our room and he suggested we head to the beach if we wanted to do something that night. We did... and took him with us. What a good idea! There were a fair amount of people there for it being midnight but it wasn't overly crowded and it was a lot of fun. Very different but very cool.

Being out late meant we slept in the next morning but then came the sight seeing. We started out at Guell Park, which is the park Gaudi designed. It's amazing. There's so much to see. Mosaic benches wraping around the center square, columns made of tiny rocks holding up a walkway, a mosaic dragon fountain... mosaic is the key theme. From there we hit the other two Gaudi sights, the two houses Casa Batllo and Casa Mila. The first is famous for looking like it's made out of bones and the second has some famous chimneys on the room. We also photographed several dozen buildings along the way. These houses led us straight to La Rambla, the main street of Barcelona. That was also an experience. It was the tourist strip obviously. There were all sorts of street preformers and street vendors. One was selling chipmunks! (along with birds and gerbils/hamsters/mice) The street was pretty cool. We walked all the way down until we hit the harbor and then walked along the ship yard and back to the beach. It was around 4:30 by that point but the sun had come out and it was gorgeous again so we hung out there for a bit (with more sunscreen!) We ended up leaving around 8 and heading back up to a place we had passed along the way that was selling paella an apparenty very Spanish food. It's usually rice with seafood but Ashley and I opted for the veggie one instead. We supplemented with sangria, which is another Spanish special. It pretty much tastes like cold Christkindlmarkt wine I decided but it's basically red wine spiced (usually with oranges and other such fruits it turns out) and something like sprite which takes the edge off the wine. It's basically fruity wine punch, I guess. Anyway, the food was very tasty. When we left it was 10. We wandered past a Deutsche Bank (the main German bank which literally means "German bank"... in Spain... we were amused) and then took a subway to the Magic Fountain.

I'd read about this online and I have to say it pretty much ties with the Sagrada Familie for my favorite event there. It plays every half hour from 9 to 11 and basically it's this huge fountain that has a "magical" show. Music plays and the fountain starts spurting water in all different forms (like a water show) and changes colors. It was so mezmorizing. We got there at 10:40 so we caught the last half of the 10:30 show and then stayed till 11:30 when it finally shut off. It was amazing. I have a video in the case that I can manage how to post it...

Anyway, we wandered back to our hostel after that and headed to bed. Monday was another travel day. After breakfast we checked out of the hostel and headed back to the train station. It was pretty much the same. We left at 11. Train from Barcelona to Reus, bus from Reus to airport, plane from Reus to Memmingen (with a little safer landing this time... and we flew over the French Alps instead!), bus from Memmingen airport to city, train from Memmingen to Munich. We got back to Germany and stepped off the plane... First off, did I mention that it was 80 degrees and gorgeous the entire weekend? (minus the first 3.5 hours of 70 and rain that morning...) Well, we stepped off the plane in Memmingen and instantly grabbed for our jackets. It was 50 degrees and raining quite heavily. We considered turning around and getting back on the plane...
Anyway, by the time we got to Munich it was a downpour but Stammtisch was starting in 30 minutes so we figured we might as well go get free food... and we did. Which was a good choice becasue it was Japanese and it was basically a curry rice. The second best Stammtisch ever (Hans said after the American Thanksgiving) and it had more spice in it than I've eaten in the last 10 months in Germany. I'm pretty sure any Germans who had been there were dying. Anyway, we grabbed seconds and then went home. The week since Barcelona has continued to be in the 50's and raining... but I've heard about your midwest heat wave and no, I don't want to switch... I do want to take my sweatshirt off though, I mean it is almost July...

But anyway, the weekly life is picking up as the countdown ticks... I'm home 6 weeks from last Thursday... which means less than 6 weeks from today!!! My exams start in 3 weeks, my papers are due then... basically I'm starting to remember that I'm actually in school here... riiiight... So the Friday/Mondays off are turnign into intensive work/study days.

I did take advantage of a student housing sponsered excursion to a brewery tour in Munich today. The brewery is mostly local (as in not known world wide but it was Hacker-Pschorr in case you do know it). It's been around in Munich since 1500 something so it's pretty long standing. It was interesting to see. We got a tour by the brewer owner and it was neat to hear the German beer brewing bit since I'd toured A&B last summer.

But yeah, I think the travelling is probably at a rest for a while. Next weekend is the 4th. Turns out there will be a lot of guests in town since a lot of family members are coming to visit and I might have two girls I know from U of IL (who are on the Darmstadt summer program) coming to stay with me for the weekend. We're trying to organize an American barbeque to celebrate. But for now...

Pictures:
Front of Sagrada Familia (Passion side)
Back of Sagrada Famlia (Nativity side)
Inside the church
The ceiling
The windows
Us in front of Arc de Triomphe
Guell Park
The rock columns
Casa Battlo
Casa Mila
An awesome sandcastle with both water flowing out of it and fire burning within it
Me with palm tree!

Video: Magic Fountain

8 Months Down, 2 to Go

So following two insane weeks of travel life settled down a little... I spent the first week after Steve left trying to catch up.

On Saturday, Tim, Kristina and I went to Dachau. It was the first concentration camp opened up and is in a little town about 20-30 minutes outside of Munich. It's actually still in the public transportation system- that's how close it is. Unfortunately it was a really overcast day and started raining as soon as we reached the meeting point for our tour group. Turns out a lot of the tour was outside. It was an organized tour for students in English and TUMi had sent us an email about it. It was obviously very depressing. Dachau was actually a concentration camp and not used extensively for mass murder. It was still a pretty sober place and there was still a lot of death. Everything was really gray, no color anywhere. By the time the three hour tour was over we were cold, hungry and kind of humbled.
We weren't done yet though... we had Stammtisch shopping to do. And so we headed off to the store and loaded a cart with 15 loaves of bread, 15 packets of cheese (we cleaned the store out of that kind...) as well as noodles and margarine and chocolate and marshmallows and jello and graham cracker substitutes. We got some weird looks at the cash registers. All the stuff ended up the floor of my room. The cooking party was Sunday. It took considerably less time than last semester. Amy, Tim, Hans and Matt formed a grilled cheese team in my room using both burners. (pretty sure Tim, Hans and Matt were in charge of buttering bread and unwrapping cheese... we left the boys with the easy jobs) while Amy flipped. Kristina and I went down to her room to make the jello. The entire process only took like 3 hours including cleanup. Then we packed all 150 sandwiches back in the loaf bags and carted them up to Tim's fridge. Kristina and I had fridges full of jello cups. We sent Amy and Matt with huge bags full of the dry ingredients (mac & cheese and s'mores).
Monday at 6:30 Hans showed up and helped us pull 150 loaves of grilled cheese out of Tim's fridge and load them into backpacks. Then we awkwardly layered 150 not-quite completely solid jello cups into boxes with cardboard in between for layering... and headed out to the subway. I know how weird we looked because everyone kept running to open the subway doors for us. We got to the church and started trying to boil insanely large amounts of water in three pots. The water ended up taking almost an hour to boil. Wow. Turns out that was okay because 15 minutes into our cooking we were told we couldn't serve the food for an extra hour... because there was a concert goign on for the first half and they wanted people to go to it. We were mildly annoyed. The people waiting for food would soon be even more annoyed (not that I blamed them). We started warming up grilled cheeses on one oven shelf and warming up marshmallows on the other. We laid out 150 plates, forks and s'more halves and then slowly started putting it together.... and finished a good 30 minutes before we were still allowed to serve. We got to eat at that point though. Yummy. The result for everyone else sadly was slightly cold grilled cheese and mac & cheese but we still found it tasty... I actually didn't hear any reviews from the outside... except for one of the Tutors who pointed at the mac & cheese and asked what kind of "cheese" was on it. I explained it was fake and it was powder. He repeated, "what kind of 'cheese'?" We eventually explained the concept of fake cheese, which, we pointed out, was also in the grilled cheese...
But, all else aside it was a success simply because we successfully managed the meal. Definitely not as grand as the Thanksgiving Feast, but still fun!

Anyway, the rest of the week went on as normal except for other random holiday on Thursday. Something about Communion or the Last Supper or something? Except according to the previous days off, Jesus had ascended last week so I'm not sure exactly why the supper was happening now... but it was a day off! As a result, on Wednesday night we headed to a big International Grill Festival happening at StudentenStadt, the other big student housing. It was quite the festival. Lots of people bringing their own meat to throw on a grill. The most exciting part, however, was meeting Alex.

I had heard about this mysterious girl named Alex from St. Louis as of November or so. I just hadn't managed to meet her yet, despite my best efforts. I saw some of the people who knew her at the festival, asked, and one of them accompanied me up to her room because she lived in the complex! Well! It turns out she went to Parkway West and lives about five minutes from me by Manchester and Weidman Rd! And we have a large handful of mutual friends since she was in debate and knows all the debate kids from South. It was so weird to talk to her!

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was surprisingly mellow. Thursday-Monday all turned into mostly work days. Thursday night we had a group dinner. Friday, Kristina and I had an extensive orgo study session. Saturday Kristina, Amy and I hung out in the English Gardens and laid out in the sun while I read my lit novel. Sunday we went to Munich's 851'st birthday party! It was a big event that stretched across several city blocks (Odeonsplatz to Karlsplatz over Marienplatz if you've been here). It was a combination of a city fair, Christkindlmarkt and Oktoberfest. Stands are set up selling all kinds of food and goods. Marienplatz was turned into one giant Beer Garden with tables and tents all over the main square. Music was playing, events were going on. It was pretty cool to see. Happy Birthday, Munich!

This week (Mon-Thurs) in Garching there was the Garnix (Gar for Garching... but Garnix is slang for "gar nichts" which means "absolutely nothing") summer festival. All week they had music playing during the day with a beer garden and fresh grilled food, as well as sports events in the evening and open air movies at night. Kinda interesting... it's just out open in the field in front of the chem building. School sponsored. The sister festival takes place next week on the main campus (creatively titled Tunix (Tu being short for TUM and "tunix" being slang for "tu nichts" or "do nothing").

Anyway, that brings the week to a close. Tomorrow at noon we're taking a train to the airport in Memmingen to fly out to Barcelona until Monday afternoon so expect an update sometime after that. Until then, I'll be home 7 weeks from today. The countdown is less than 49. I've got exams and papers due in 4-5 weeks. It looks like the next couple of weekends will be studying and writing and seeing the things I've missed in Munich.

So, a couple of pictures of Stammtisch before I go!
Hans, Matt and Kristina making the food
Hans preparing to load up for the subway
Me dishing out mac & cheese
Ashley with the s'mores

Brussels and Bruges, Belgium

Sorry! I know I left off on the way to Brussels. I didn’t forget about it! So we took a Thalys train from Paris to Brussels and got in a little after eleven. Steve had three Belgium friends who had spent the fall semester at U of IL and they all picked us up from the train station. One of them actually lived in the city of Brussels, the other two a little bit outside, so we dropped our stuff off at Boris’ house and were driven into the city. We started out with a night tour of Brussels. It is an absolutely gorgeous city. The main cathedral in the city center, St. Michaels’ looks remarkably like Notre Dame… especially when you’re coming directly from Paris! We also saw the city square, the Grand Place which was absolutely gorgeous, especially at night. There’s a City Hall that very much resembles the New City Hall in Munich and gold rimmed guild houses. The tour also took us to the ever so famous Brussels statue of Mannekin Pis, which is a little boy peeing. The story goes that the city was under siege and the enemy had placed explosives all around the city walls and lit the fuse. A little boy found these and saved the city by urinating on the fuse to put it out. He also has a female counterpart (who was added much more recently) by the name of Jeannekin Pis. She happens to be situated across from our next destination, Delerium Café. It turns out Belgium is very much known for its beer. Granted the reason you don’t hear about this in Germany is that Germans would not consider Belgium Beer to be beer… Germany has the “Reinheitsverbot” or Purity Law. Only the four ingredients in beer are allowed to be put in beer. Belgium doesn’t and that’s what its beer is famous for. Most notable is Kriek Biere, or cherry flavored beer (which does not taste very much like beer at all and is actually quite tasty!). However, also famous are raspberry beers, strawberry beers, blueberry beers, peach beers, honey beers and even such things as coconut, chocolate, banana or mango beer. Granted those are just the fruit beers. There are also dozens of not directly flavored beers that taste very different. The book of beers offered at Delerium Café is approximately 3 inches thick and that’s not an exaggeration. Also cool, each different beer has its own glass. The Belgians claim that the beers taste better in their own glass. We quickly decided that Kwak was the coolest kind- not only because of its name, and its taste (also not overly beery!), but also because of its glass. It looks like it belongs in a chemistry lab!

But moving on from beer… Saturday morning was our native led tour of Brussels. After a breakfast of nutella bread we met the other two Belgians and headed around the city. We started at the Cinquantenaire triumphal arch, which was built by King Leopold for the 50^th year jubilee of independence. It’s free to get to the top to look out and there’s an elevator. Two points for Brussels right there. There’s also a really cool aviation museum attached/inside the gate. We were amused by the fact that most of the planes had targets in the pattern of the Belgium flag painted on the wing and body of the plane… that seems anti-purposeful. Then we headed over to the EU Parliament building. If you didn’t know, the EU has its headquarters in Brussels. The building is really, really cool. It was also really neat to see all the flags of the different countries flying and “European Parliament” written in all the different languages. Unfortunately it’s only open to the public on weekdays so we couldn’t go inside. Both of these buildings are a little outside the main city square so on our way back there we stopped for lunch at the “best Pommes Frites” in Belgium. Those, of course, are French Fries which are really Belgium Fries. Well, if I were a bigger fan of French fries I might have enjoyed them more for what they were, but it was the experience that counted. We also had a very awkward kind of Belgium sausage thing. Not really sure what it was. We found out, however, that the majority of Belgium food is extremely fried. Not what I was expecting. Also ended up trying Belgium Fanta. I have to say, it is amazing. It tastes remarkably different from both the American and the German version, proving, I guess, that it’s manufactured separately for every country.

Anyway, after our lunch break we walked past the king’s gardens and then the Royal Palace. Belgium still has a king, if you didn’t know it. We then saw the upper town square, a couple of churches (one of which was hosting a wedding in an hour) and some cool older buildings. Then we took the metro out to the Atomium, which is Brussels “Eiffel Tower”. It was built for an exposition and is basically a giant representation of iron… Yes. A bunch of metal balls connected by “bonds” which are really escalators connecting the spheres. You can go up in to the top for a great view as well as check out exhibits in the other spheres. It was a really long wait. Turns out Belgium efficiency actually fails more than the Germany version. The only way to the top is single elevator that is also bringing people down. The elevator supposedly fits 20 people. This explains why the guides were ushering in between 11 and 15 people each time even though there was plenty of room. The line, meanwhile, was circling in on itself around the inside of the building. But we finally made it to the top and were impressed by the view. You could see Mini-Europe park from the top, since it’s actually right under the Atomium. That’s a park with to-scale models of all the big European monuments- the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, leaning tour of Pisa, Coliseum, etc. The other spheres showed exhibits about the making of, etc. One was a café. Another is open for group children sleepovers. That’s kinda cool. The best part was the super long, thin escalators leading between the spheres. You’re traveling on bonds!

By the time we got down, it was getting late in the afternoon and we were hungry. We took the metro back to the city center and walked through the sites we’d seen at night in the day. The city square was just as gorgeous as it had been at night. Then we experienced another aspect of Belgium custom while trying to find dinner. We happened to walk through a “tourist strip” of restaurants, mostly serving mussels and fries (apparently Belgium specialties?). The waiters seemed desperate for guests. They approached you on the street and practically begged you to come in, telling you all their specials and that all the food further down the strip was the same and more expensive and that they would give you a free drink… unfortunately we got wheeled in. One of the waiters had got the attention of the three Belgians and then proceeded to turn on me and telling me how I would make his night by being in his restaurant and he’d try to make my night with the food and calling me princess. I figured that was reason enough not to go but the guys liked the food and were amused so we went. Luckily they had choices other than mussels and we did get a free drink which was nice since beverages are expensive in Europe. Despite the filling meal Steve and I got chocolate covered Belgium waffles for dessert because we’d been pining for them all day. That pretty much marked the end of the day. We were tired for three days of intense city seeing and the other two needed to go back to their homes. Turns out all three of them had their bachelor theses due Tuesday…

Sunday, Steve and I made a day trip to Bruges. We had been told by his parents to see either Bruges or Antwerp while we were there and the Belgians recommended the former. It was only an hour away and a 13 Euro round trip train ticket so we slept in and took an 11:00 train. I’ll be honest, I knew nothing about Bruges. Apparently it’s a pretty famous city? It’s a gorgeous one anyway, as we soon found out. Extremely walkable and extremely touristy as well… but that wasn’t bad. We followed the other tourists off the train and across the street to the tourist office where we got our city maps and then followed the same group of tourists the 15 minute walk to the city center. The first thing to note is that every other shop is a chocolate shop. These are split up by lace shops, candy shops, waffle stands, souvenir shops and beer shops (selling all the sorts of Belgium beer and/or the glasses). We stopped in just about every chocolate shop trying to find the right prices. And even though it was Sunday, 90% of the city was still open and running. Bruges had a lot of little canals running through the city (Boris referred to it as the “Little Venice” but having been to Amsterdam I would say that Bruges has nothing on Amsterdam in terms of canals. Gorgeous all the same though, with the houses and tours and churches. We stopped by the church housing Michelangelo’s Madonna with Child- one of the very few Michelangelo pieces not in Italy. We also saw the city castle as well as the Church of the Sacred Blood. They have Christ’s blood in a vial! You can even go up and touch it! We semi-followed the map through the city, making sure to see the “top ten sites” listed on the map, which basically were churches, views and historical areas. There is a monastery there and apparently they brew beer. On our way back through the city we finally decided to get our shopping out of the way and stopped by the cheapest store we’d found to buy Belgium chocolate. The truffles are simply amazing. We also stopped for more waffles… and at one point Belgium chocolate ice cream (that one was good!!!) Not the healthiest travel day…

Also notable: for those of you who don’t know, Belgium has two national languages, Flemish and French. What I didn’t know, however, is that Flemish is actually a dialect of Dutch! (Dutch being the half English/half German mixture I fell in love with in Amsterdam) Whereas Brussels is mostly French speaking, Bruge, being in the northern Flemish district, was almost primarily Dutch speaking. I was so happy to see the language again! Steve no longer had to translate everything!

Anyway, we took the train back to Brussels and met Boris at his friend’s bar. They’re actually similar to boy scouts leaders and this is the meeting place, but after the meetings the leaders hang out there. They run it themselves and sell cheap pizza so we got dinner there and got to mingle with Belgians for the evening.

Monday morning we said goodbye to our host and Steve and I set off to explore the city on our own until our flight. We went in the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral. Of course it was Pentecost Monday so we walked into a service. Oops. Then we wandered around the city, happening upon part of the Comic Strip Route by accident. Throughout the city, walls and subways are painted with comic strip motifs. I’d forgotten I’d wanted to see that! We also got insanely lucky. We wandered into a chocolate shop giving away free samples!!! There we fell in love with the crème truffle… which they were selling for 11 Euro a box. We declined that one but later walked considerably farther away from the tourist center and found the same box for 3 Euro. So good!!! We ended our trip with a final Belgium waffle and a trip to “Quick”, which is a Belgium fast food joint. Yes! Fast food that did not originate in the US! We’d actually seen a couple in Paris, too and figured we had to try it. Pretty good. Pretty typical anyway. Given the French fries and fried meat we’d had on Saturday, the fact that Belgium creates fast food didn’t surprise me all that much. Hamburgers in hand, we got on our train to the airport and then boarded the flight with no issues. We landed in Munich at 5:40 and were home by 7. And that pretty much ends the trip. Steve flew out Tuesday morning to go home so Monday night was about unpacking and repacking. Tuesday I took him to the airport and then took a bus to Garching. Back to the norm of classes and work.

As far as the following week, Saturday was a day trip to Dachau, the concentration camp, and Sunday was cooking for the American Stammtisch, which was today. Will update you on how that goes later, but might wait to add one of this weekend’s day trips, so it might be a week or so.

Here are some pictures!

The Atomium

The guild houses on the Grand Place

Some pretty cool Brussels buildings

The EU Building

The City Hall (Hotel de Ville) of the Grand Place... not Munich's Rathaus

Kwak beer in the glass...

Steve and I trying out Belgium beer (pretty sure mine was the honey one)

Cathedral of St. Micheal... not Notre Dame

Apparently (according to our map) the most photographed spot in Bruges

Paris- the City of Lights and Love

So when I last left off, we were boarding a night train to Paris. The train definitely wasn't the best night's sleep I've gotten... we opted for seats in the normal train car (sitting instead of laying) to save money. As the guy in our compartment pointed out, "cheap tickets mean cheap seats". But we survived and arrived in Paris bright and early at 9:30 the next morning. This was definitely the farthest out of my element I have yet been language wise. I mean, it was a fight just to figure out how to find the English option on the metro ticket machines. Thank goodness Steve still remembers enough French that we were able to get by. Prague had been a completely different language too, but something about throwing the huge bustling city in the mix makes it all the more complicated.
Anyway, we managed to make our way to the hostel and drop our bags off before heading down to the departure point of our free tour. It was leaving at 11 and we managed to get there with plenty of time. Unfortunately the weather wasn't gorgeous... it was warm enough, but very overcast, though luckily it never did rain. The tour started at St. Michel's Fountain right across the river from the Notre Dame and Sainte Chappelle. We then headed across the river, saw the Louvre, the old royal palace, some statues of famous people (kings and Joan of Arc), the French Academy where they make sure the French language stays "pure", the Jardin du Tuileries (gardens), the obelisk that Napoleon decided Egypt wanted to give him, l'Hotel des Invalides, where Napoleon is burried, Arc de Triomphe (from a distance), and, of course, the Eiffel Tower. The tour let out within walking distance of the tower, so we made that our next stop. The line for the elevator stretched from the ticket counter at one of the legs to pretty much the middle of the base. We made it to the front of the line for the stairs in about 10 minutes. And then we climbed. It wasn't really that bad. Mostly becasue you can only walk up to the second level and then you have to take an elevator to the top anyway (but no line for that ticket!). The view from the top was amazing. We got down around 5 and subwayed up to Montmartre where we got to climb stairs again to get to the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur at the top. Another great view, but interestingly enough you can't see the Eiffel Tower from the Basilica. We walked through the church then grabbed our first Paris crepes (yummy!!!) for dinner and wandered through the Montmarte district. Unfortunately we couldn't find Picasso's studio... the street wasn't on our map. We did see the Le Chat Noir cafe and Moulin Rouge, though! We grabbed a meter long Baguette for dessert and since it was 9:00 pm but still quite light outside, took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We'd had enough climbing for the day by that point and opted not to go up it. Instead we observed the completely insane roundabout surrounding it ("it would be suicide, not attempted suicide, but suicide, to try to cross that road" our tour guy told us). I'm surprised their aren't accidents every minute. There are no painted lines, no directions, just a really huge circle with 12 streets feeding into it. We were impressed. We opted on the pedestrian tunnel to the monument tried to get the entire arc in the picture from the middle of the roundabout. It didn't get dark till after 10, (Yay for travelling in summer! Your day gets extended by like 5 hours!) There was supposedly a light show at the Eiffel Tower for 5 minutes on the hour after nightfall, so we made our way back and sat down in the grass with a perfect view to wait. Indeed, at 11:00 the lit up tower started sparkling. So cool! Actually, I was hoping for colors, but it was still pretty neat. After the show we went back to the hostel and crashed.
The next morning there was free breakfast at the hostel (croissants!!!) and then we headed straight to the Louvre to get in right when it opened. I had read that there were multiple entrances, such that one didn't have to wait several hours in the famous glass pyramid entrance. Unfortunatley, we had quite the time trying to find these other entrances. One "entrance" we walked into led us to two French security guys who very quickly responded to Steve's "Parlez-vous anglais?" with "Non". So then poor Steve had to try to explain to the guy that I wanted another entrance (he directed us to the pyramid) and wasn't leaving till I found it. Finally we got directions. They took us down to where the pyramid also leads... but without the line! Perfect! And, it turns out, I get into the Louvre for free because I study at an EU University! Also pretty nice! So then we did a lightning tour of the Louvre. First stops were the Nike and Venus statues, and then of course, the Mona Lisa. Turns out it's actually not that crowded right when the museum opens! We waltzed right up to the front as the group in front left. We also checked out the Egypt area and then stopped by Hammurabi's Code. I think Steve and I were both equally impressed by the museum itself as much as the artwork. It used to be a castle and is just gorgeous. The foundations are another "exhibit" in themselves in the basement. Anyway, having seen the Louvre in an hour and a half, we crossed the river to Sainte Chappelle, the famous stained glass church of Paris. That one we had to wait for. It was only a 15 minute wait though, and mostly becasue you have to go through airport security (yup, X-Ray machine, metal dector and guy ready to search you) to get in. Not really sure why... it apparently used to hold "a piece of the cross Jesus was crucified on" and "a thorn from the crown" but when we got inside we found out that those were actually moved... the stained glass is pretty amazing though. It's actually a double church. There's a very impressive chapel on the bottom for the king's servants, etc. And then on top is the famous huge stained glass windows for the king himself. The windows are pretty much the entire walls of the church and tell the story from Genesis to Jesus. Very pretty. We walked straight from that church across the street to Notre Dame. Another very impressive church. Granted, big churches are slowly getting lost on me as I've seen my share, but still quite impressive. Especially the flying buttresses in the back. Those were neat. Following Notre Dame we headed off to Versailles for the afternoon. It's a 40 minute train ride and then a 5 minute walk. The palace is huge. Well, obviously, but still. And very extensively decorated. The funny part was that we had just been to Herrencheimsee a week before, which is the copy of Versailles. So we kept seeing things we recognized (fountains/rooms, etc.). That was cool. After walking through the palace, we explored the gardens for a bit. Unbelievably large. I can't even imagine how much the upkeep takes! Eventually we caught the train back to Paris and made some quick stops to the things we hadn't yet seen. Specifically the Pantheon (which has the bodies of Voltaire, Curie, Braille, Pasteur among others), which had closed minutes before we arrived. Oops. Then we grabbed dinner and I left Steve in the subway while I ran up at the Bastille stop... turns out the Bastille is an opera house now. That's fun, too! From there we stopped by the hostel to grab our bags and headed up to the train station for our 10:00 pm train to Brussels.

And with that, I'll end this post with a few pictures and pick up from Brussels in the next few days.

Pictures:
In front of the Eiffel Tower
The light show at night
Arc de Triomphe
The Louvre (from inside)
the stained glass windows of Sainte Chappelle
Notre Dame
The flying buttresses of Notre Dame
Hanging out in Versailles

In and Around Bavaria

So... sorry for the delay, but the last two weeks have been chock full of excursions and activities! The weekend I left off, I was at least mostly productive in writing that research paper. I did take a break on Sunday to join Hans at the Residenz. This is the original palace of Munich where the Bavarian royal line watched over the city. It's a gorgeous building and has some impressive rooms. It also has one of the apparently more impressive treasury collections in Europe with crowns and jewels from the 1000's up. Monday and Tuesday involved a lot of getting ready and finishing up. Wednesday morning I met Matt at the subway station. His girlfriend was coming in the same day as Steve, so we went together to pick them up from the airport since their flights were only an hour apart. I dropped Steve off in my room and ran to my German Lit class, then picked him up again at 4 for the two hour Munich walking tour that I'm getting so much better at now. :) We ended this with a trip to the English Gardens so he could have his first liter of beer and as-large-as-your-head pretzel. Our weather was happily gorgeous. Thursday, a group of nine of us (Matt, gf, Hans, Kristina, Tim, and two girls from Hungary) took a day trip to Chiemsee. Chiemsee is the largest lake in Bavaria and has two islands on it, Herreninsel and Frauen insel (Men Island and Women Island). They have a monastary and abbey on them respectively. Most notable is one of Ludwig II's three castles that is on Herreninsel, which he named Herrenchiemsee. It was built to be a model of Versailles because apparently Ludwig II was mildly obsessed with the French and specifically Louis XIV. Like Neuschwanstein, the palace was never finished (it was about a third of the way through) and is considerably smaller than Versaillse, but the famous "Hall of Mirrors" was actually more extravagantly completed as its model in Versailles. After touring the palace and the old monastary (which is actually the Old Palace), we took the ship to Fraueninsel and wandered around before taking the train back to Munich. Then Friday, Steve and I hopped on the train to Innsbruck where we were warmly greeted by Andrea, Hannes and Lisa. I "toured" Steve around Innsbruck in the afternoon... touring being the extent to which I remember the city from three years ago. We hit the main sites though. That night we crashed early because he wasn't quite over jet lag yet. Satrday morning we walked around Hall. After lunch, Andrea and Lisa accompianed us to Wolfsklamm. If any of you remember from my Austria blog, I went there once with Lisa and a handful of exchange students. It's this hike up a mountain to a church/monastary on top. The best part, though, is that you're climbing up through waterfalls. It's absolutely gorgeous. Steve managed to set a pace up that had Andrea panting and apparently we made record time... 35 minutes instead of the expected hour. The trip was well worth it. It was as beautiful as I had remembered and I'm pretty sure Steve appreciated the waterfalls. After dinner that evening, we followed Lisa out to Innsbruck. I'd been promising her that I would go out with her in Innsbruck since my first trip in October but for some reason or another (I was tired/she was tired/she was gone) we hadn't yet managed. So we met up with some of her friends (and one of my old classmates!) at an Irish Pub in Innsbruck. Sunday morning, we went with Lisa up the new cable car to the top of Innsbruck's moutain. I say Innsbruck's mountain because it's the closest mountain to the city... in fact you can travel between the city and the top of the mountain in less than a half hour, most of that being the transportation up the mountain. You can't find that just anywhere in the world. It's actually the same mountain I learned to ski and snowboard on... because it's the mountain that the Planks have their cabin on. We saw the cabin on the way up, actually. From where the cable car let us off we hiked the remaining 50 meters of so up to reach the peak, marked with the typical cross and then we pretended we had hiked the entire thing. The view from the top was breathtaking. Afterwards the three of us met the group from last night at a lake about 15 minutes outside of Hall and experienced the "summer day" favorite past time for Austrians. Any day it's above 70 degrees it's warm enough to lay out in the sun, preferably by the lake. More the relaxing side to counter the mountain hiking we'd been doing. That evening we headed back to Munich and the following morning, bright and early, we were on a train to Neuschwanstein. By the time our train reached the desired stop, the remaining 10 people in our car were all eurotripping American college kids. One was from St. Louis and one was from Chicago. We were lucky on weather. Once again it was absolutely gorgeous which was a plus since the last time I'd been it had been quite cloudy. I did realize it had been exactly three years since I went with the Planks though. It was the weekend before Penecost then, too! We decided to see both castles (well, that was actually probably me... I hadn't seen Hohenschwangau yet and wanted to) so we started with a tour of Ludwig II's parents castle and then did Neuschwanstein. The first castle was actually relatively small and not very intricate in terms of gold, but it was gorgeously painted. There were murals along all the ceilings and walls telling the story of the history of the castle. We decided to hike up to Neuschwanstein, and, specifically, to go via way of the Marienbrücke (Mary's bridge), which gives the most famous view of the castle. This required us to hike up a relatively steep grade for about 40 minutes. It was bordering on hot, we were out of water and I was exhausted and then we finally reached the bridge (turns out the castle is downhill from the bridge) and prepared for our amazing view! And guess which side of the castle is completely covered in scaffolding! Yup! The famous one! It was still gorgeous though and we determined (since we had made it) worth the strenuous hike up. It also gave us a view of the waterfall, which was neat. So then we toured Neuschwanstein. Surprisingly I got a lot more out of the tour in English this time than I did in German three years ago... I learned a lot this time! Then we rushed back to our train to Munich and went straight from the station to dinner. Erika had organized an "American" dinner which turned out to be pretty big since everyone had guests in town. It also luckily had German food so Steve got a real German meal. Schweinbraten and Knödel. Tuesday I actually managed to make it to some more of my classes (never fear, there was no class the previous Thursday (Christ's ascension to heaven?), and I have no classes on Friday so I had just missed two on Wednesday (Tim and Kristina took notes) and Stat on Monday). I dropped Steve off in the library and then after Orgo, swiped him in to the cafeteria with Kristina, Matt and I. After a quick tour of my campus in Garching, we took the train out to Erding, a suburb of Munich which happens to have a pretty famous spa. It's called Therma Erding. We went, however, for Galaxy, which is a big indoor water slide park. Exclusively water slides. It's got about 14 of them. Three are rated "extreme" and have a minimum age limit of 14 to ride. One (Steve tried this one) takes you up to 40 miles per hour in an enclosed slide. I finally worked up the guts to try the short red one that spits you out into the air so you go flying before you hit. Ow. That's all I can say. I felt that in my neck for the next two days. We both avoided the one that pretty much takes you almost straight down for the equivalent of two stories. We did appreciate the other ones though. It was pretty cool. You pay by the hour so we put two hours in. By that point it had started to rain and was, in fact, thunderstorming by the time we made it home. This was actually quite possibly on the second thunderstorm I have ever experienced in Munich so that was pretty cool. Wednesday morning I left Steve with my keys and instructions of how to get to BMW world, how to get to Marienplatz to see the Glockenspiel, and how to do laundry. I went to all three of my classes! I met him back at 4 and we both packed our stuff for Paris/Brussels. We managed to pack in my big green travel side pack and one backpack which I thought was pretty good. Then, because he hadn't seen it yet and we had some time to kill still, we circled Olympic Park and climbed "Olympic Mountain". The day was once again gorgeous so we got a very nice view. After a quick stop to grab our stuff from my room, we headed to Marienplatz and went to the famous Hofbrauhaus for dinner. If you aren't familiar with it, it's a world famous beer hall, or, as they translate it "Beer Palace". Steve's mom was very insistant that he have Wiener Schnitzel so we ordered that and Apfel Strudel and of course, beer. (well, I stick with Radler's, but...). We hung out there, surrounded by waitresses in drindls and a Bavarian band in Lederhosen until 10 and then walked to the train station to catch our 10:45 night train go Paris.
And with that I will end this post as it is already pretty long. Paris will be up shortly.

Pictures:
Inside the Residenz- the mirror room
Another picture of the Residenz
Steve and I at the Biergarten
The scaffolding covered Neuschwanstein
Hohenschwangau and the lake
Steve and I on the top of the mountain