The Rest of Europe

For some reason this morning I randomly woke up at 6:30 AM, after staying up til 2. I'm not sure what is going on (I am adjusting to my work schedule for the summer?) but anyway I will sieze this opportunity to finish telling you all about Europe. I am back in the states now, so I don't have much else better to do.

So during the course of my trip, I ended up spending I think about 4 days in Tuebingen, where Rachel and many other foreign students study. The best word that can be used to describe this town is "cute." A lot of things about the city are stereotypically "German," such as the buildings and the attitudes of the people. A lot of the town seems pretty traditional, but it's not like it's not modernized or anything. Just that you can still go to the market to buy all your fruits and vegetables and you can buy pretty much everything else that you need in little shops. For instance, when I needed to buy a wine opener, I went and found a little wine shop. The Neckar River flows right through the middle of this town, and there is an island in the middle that I went and walked around on for a while one day. There are also other parks and such things too. Up a big hill is the Tuebingen Castle, which was pretty cool although I didn't actually go inside it. One of my favorite places was Kaufland, a giant Supermarkt full of all sorts of weird German foods and beverages. Food is really cheap in Germany, and so I tried to bring back a couple things for my family to try. In Tuebingen, mostly I spent my time sight-seeing, shopping, or sitting around doing nothing while Rachel and everyone else had classes. But I did get to do a couple exciting things. One night we went to a bar, and there was this drunk philosophy major there. We had a very openly Christian person with us, so there was a very lengthy debate between the two of them, which would have been more tolerable if we had been drinking more, but as it was it was very painful. I also got to go to a karaoke bar, where I ended up not singing because I am sort of dumb and don't know that many songs. Another one of my favorite things about Tuebingen was this restaurant that had 2 Euro pasta night, and subsequent bowls of pasta were only 1 Euro. Even if I was super hungry and wanted to eat like 4 bowls, it would cost 5 Euro, which is cheaper than like one in the U.S. See, food is cheap in Germany. Anyway, I could talk probably forever about Tuebingen but I will try to move on now.

The other place we went for a couple days towards the end of my trip was Switzerland. It took us a while to decide where to go, but we ended up choosing Grimmelwald in the Swiss Alps. Definitely I would say that this was a good choice. If you have facebook, you should really try and look at these photos, the area was very beautiful. The grass was green and full of wild mountain flowers, and the mountains themselves were extremely impressive. We went up on Saturday and stayed for two nights. On our first night we got to try Rösti, which is basically a big hash brown with fried eggs and cheese on top of it, a dish which Swiss people apparently like for dinner. On Sunday we went partway up the mountain by taking the train (going up the whole way was really expensive), but this is where we got all the great views of the mountains. We also did a lot of shopping here, I brought back enough Swiss chocolate to feed a small army (and I even have chocolate Swiss army knives for them to use). Anyway, we didn't do a whole ton of stuff while in Switzerland besides gawking at the scenery, but it was still definitely well-worth going there. If you are in Europe and have any chance to go to the Swiss Alps, I would highly recommend it. The only weird thing about Switzerland is that they don't use the Euro, instead you get to use weird funny-looking Swiss francs.

All vacation have to end at some point, and unfortunately I had to go home this past Wednesday. My flight was out of Stuttgart so I got to take the bus from Tuebingen to the airport, which is always fun when you have big heavy luggage. In Stuttgart, security didn't really like me a whole lot and decided that a glass thing that Rachel had sent home with me was perfume. They didn't seem terribly amused by my chocolate Swiss army knives either. But eventually they sent me through. I flew to London Heathrow, which is I have to say the worst airport ever. The airport itself is not too bad, but they just have far too many flights going through there. My plane from Stuttgart had to circle around for like 20 minutes before they would let us land. For my flight back to Seattle, they didn't have enough room to bring my plane up to the terminal. Instead, they bussed out the passengers to the plane, which was far away in the end of this parking lot. Somehow we made it to Seattle somewhat on time, but then going through customs took forever and my taxi back to UW was expensive. Chuck then drove me to the greyhound bus station, after I traded him Rachel's stuff for some of my stuff. Finally, at 1:20 AM after 16 hours of travel that day, I was back home.

More of Europe

I meant to update this a long time ago, but instead you will have to deal with reading one big super-update that contains little or no detail about anything. So I am still in Europe (my trip is almost over, I have to go home tomorrow morning). I have gone quite a few places since my last post so I will try to cover them all briefly now.

Since Tuebingen is not entertaining enough to spend a week of my vacation here, Rachel convinced me to go take a little side trip for a while. So last Wednesday and Thursday were the days I decided to take this excursion. I planned everything all out, I was going to go up north from here and visit Koeln (Cologne) and Duesseldorf, and then head south to stay the night. Obviously this would make for a very busy trip, but I wanted really just to go see what several places were like, rather than stay in one city for a couple days. So Wednesday morning I got up early and went to the train station here in Tuebingen.

Unfortunately I am stupid, and so I was like a minute late and missed my first train. I then caught another train to Stuttgart, where I was going to head to Duesseldorf. But when I got on that train, apparently I sat in a reserved seat and some lady started yelling at me. Being confused and stupid (never a good combination) I got off the train, and started wandering around Stuttgart instead. Finally I got on a train to Koeln, having lost like 4 hours through my stupidity. Because of this I had to cut Duesseldorf out of my plans.

Koeln is a really nice city and I'm glad I got to go see it. When you walk out of the Bahnhof (train station) the first thing that you see is this giant silouette on the wall. It turns out this is the Koelner Dom, a big cathedral. I got to go wander around and look at that for a while, until I got bored with that and wandered down to go see the Rhein. After that I went in to look at Roman artifacts they found near Koeln in this museum. I spent the rest of the time in Koeln mostly just wandering around, looking at various shops and restaurants. I actually ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (very German of me, I know) but they gave me a free drink so it was cool. Eventually, I left Koeln and headed south on another train.

After my train was delayed half an hour, I finally got into the resort town of Baden Baden at about quarter til midnight. The desk at the hostel I was staying at closed at midnight, so I knew I was in trouble. I finally found a taxi and fortunately I got there before they left the desk so I was able to check in. But they didn't have my reservation and that was a little bit annoying. Anyway, Baden Baden is a resort town known for its spas and casinos. I didn't really have any desire to go there, but it was the only place that I could find an open hostel when I was looking online. I didn't really get to do anything at all while I was there, except wander around for like half an hour and take some pictures. Maybe next time I come to Europe I will gamble all my money away at a place like this. Right now I don't really have enough to spare.

Thursday morning I headed out to Strasbourg, France, home of the European Union. This was my attempt to go visit yet another different country, although I'm not really sure if Strasbourg counts as visiting France. They do speak French everywhere, but many people know German or Englisch so I didn't have a whole lot of trouble communicating. When I arrived there it was really, really hot and I was not really sure what to do. Then it suddenly started raining, and so it cooled off a bit and I wandered around and shopped for a while. Eventually I wandered over to some restaurant and sat in there for an hour or so. I got this weird flamee (sp?) thing, which probably isn't as weird as I thought it was. It was pretty good, it would have been better without onions. At this point I realized that I had an hour until my train left, and that I had no idea where the train station was. I tried to retrace my steps and eventually I figured out where the station was, and I got there shortly before it left. My trip back to Tuebingen was really nice, I got to ride through the Schwarzwald which I think looks really cool in the evening.

This trip (Koeln, Baden Baden and Strasbourg) was pretty cool, in that I got to see a lot of different places in Europe. Although in retrospect I'm not sure my destinations were the best choices. Much of the city in Koeln seemed very internationalized, and Strasbourg was in many ways similar. Baden Baden is really just a tourist trap, and at any rate I wasn't there long enough to enjoy it. Still, it was interesting to get to see these places and to compare them with the other places I've been. The other thing I didn't really like about this trip is that I traveled alone. That made it kind of boring, since it turns out that I am not a very interesting person. It just seemed weird to go to fancy restaurants and stuff without anyone else with me. So my plan is next time I go to Europe that I will bring someone with me to entertain me and keep me from being so boring. Assuming I ever get the chance to come back, we shall see.

One thing I wanted to clarify really quickly from my last post. When I say I "miss America" what I really mean is a) I miss having my own stuff and not sleeping on the floor and in random hostels, and b) I miss being able to understand what people say to me. I'm not actually like "homesick" or anything, I just wish my computer, bed, etc. were here and that I actually spoke German.

Alright, this post is already way too long so I am going to save the rest of my trip (Tuebingen, Switzerland and going home tomorrow) for another post. Bis dann

Pictures

In case anyone cares, there are some pictures from my trip so far up on Rachel's facebook. I will be adding some new ones eventually as well.

Austria and Germany

So I am currently on my trip to Europe, I left last Thursday right after my final. So far it has been pretty awesome. I flew in to Munich, which is the third largest city in Germany. After I figured out how to take the train from the airport to the main train station, I met up with my friend Rachel from UW, who is studying abroad over in Germany this summer. We took my stuff to a hostel, except it started to rain on us which kind of sucked. That evening and then the next morning I got to go see lots of cool stuff in Munich, and try to get used to the 9-hour time difference. I think one of the neatest things about Germany is getting to go to weird old restaurants and trying different things. Occasionally I can even read what I am ordering in German, which is neat. Now if only Germans would speak slower so I could understand what they are saying...

After Munich, Rachel and I left for Bad Gastein, a little ski village in the Austrian Alps. Obviously, since it is summer we couldn't go skiing, but we did get to wander around and look at waterfalls. We also took the gondola up to the top of one of the mountains, which was pretty neat. It wasn't the most exciting place in Europe, but there was lots of pretty scenery and it was a fairly relaxing trip. That is one of the most difficult things about this trip for me, I have to choose between going a lot of places and being really busy, or to stay in one place longer and not doing much sight-seeing but getting to relax more. Since it is unlikely that I will get to Europe again anytime soon, I should probably try to do as much as possible. But on the other hand, after I go back to the U.S. I see little relaxation in my future for at least the next year. So hopefully I will find time to do a little of both, we'll see.

As of right now, I am in Tuebingen, the city where Rachel is studying abroad in. Last night I went to dinner with Rachel and some of her friends, which was interesting since it was pouring rain. Germany doesn't have Seattle rain where it just drizzles a little, it really REALLY rains hard here. I get to sleep on the floor which is really uncomfortable, but tonight I will probably have a cushion. This weekend we are going to go to Switzerland I think, but in the meantime I'm not really sure what to do. I guess Rachel thinks I should go somewhere on my own for a day or two, since Tuebingen is kind of small and not that entertaining apparently. So probably I will do that maybe.

For me the most difficult thing about Germany is that I can't really speak German. It's not really a problem (most people here speak at least some English), but I really don't want to look like a tourist so I try to speak German when I can. It usually doesn't work so well, I really wish I could speak better German. Also, Germans pretty much drink beer all the time, which takes a little getting used to. The other aspect of Europe that I have gotten familiar with a little is the train system, which I have been using to get around. It takes a little while, but even going from the middle of Austria to the other end of Germany only took 6 hours which isn't too bad. Anyway, I am having a good time and I am looking forward to the rest of my trip. Europe is a lot of fun, but on the other hand I think I am starting to miss America a little bit.

Finals

The quarter is finally almost over. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I guess it is mostly good, I'm getting tired of some of my classes and it will be nice to not have homework and tests for a while. But on the other hand there were some things about this quarter that I will miss, especially since I have no idea what I'll be doing a year from now. Anyway, today was my first final, for my german class. I think it actually went well, or at least good enough to get me the grade I want. My next final isn't until Wednesday, so I've got a few days now to catch up on some projects for my astronomy classes.

Of course, the most exciting thing going on right now for me is that I'm leaving for Germany in 5 days. So I've already moved most of my stuff to back home, and mostly what I have left with me now is stuff that I'll be taking with me to Germany. I'm going to be there for a week and a half, so I will try to take lots of pictures and maybe even post a couple of them on here. We'll see.

I suppose I should stop wasting time, I should probably go do work now...