March Madness and Long-Overdue Catching Up
Hey everyone!
I’m still alive! I was travelling throughout March and while I had my computer with me, didn’t take the time to blog.
My second semester started on April 6th, and brought with it all the busyness that new semesters have. So April and now May have completely flown by and here I am in June!
Wait. JUNE?! I’ve been here for 9 months?!
This realization hit me hard the other day, when I was looking at the weekends I have left and figuring out travel plans. I only have 2 months left. Incredible. When I imagine myself going back to Alaska, it just sounds strange to me. My life is here, and I can’t imagine what it will be like to go back. I had a similar feeling before I left Alaska, but this is a little different because I know I won’t be coming back. This exchange experience is happening now, and I’ll never have anything like it again.
Whoa, almost got sentimental there. I’ll save that stuff for August ;)
But anyways, here I am halfway thought my second semester. Again, I love all my classes and this semester I have a lot more contact with literature-quite the reading load, but I’m loving it!
My trip in March was incredible! I can’t write about everything and it couldn’t be adequately summarized anyways.
It was sooo much fun to meet up with Destiny, my friend from Palmer! Since I only had 1 day there, I wanted to see the Trevi fountain and the Colosseum. She showed me her favorite gelato place in Rome and I almost died. I always thought that Italians were just snobby about their ice cream or that people over-exaggerated but if you find the right place…gelato is a gift from the heavens…
We met up with my friend Giuseppe (from Bielefeld) in Verona next! Him and his brother were such great tour guides and his family was so, SO hospitable! One of my favorite nights was the night at Giuseppe’s, when we had a really long (Italian style) dinner and sat around the table sharing. Staying with locals makes all the difference while travelling! Verona was such a beautiful city, I would love to spend more time here! And we say Juliet’s balcony! :D
We sat on this sunny river bank in Verona for like, 2 hours waiting for our train while eating Nutella and cookies…it was rough ;)
Next, we travelled to Munich. Munich is such a cool place-Destiny and I had 6 days there so we got to take it slow and just hang out. It was even more fun because we met people in our hostel, so we hung out with the same people every night and made friends from New Zealand, Canada, Austria, and Belgium! :) During the day we explored Munich, hung out in the English Gardens,where we saw people surfing in the river and did some tours and a day trip to Rothenberg,which is a really well-preserved town from the Middle Ages. The castle tour we went on was awesome! It was a sunny day and Neuschwanstein was breathtaking-the whole area was. We had a HILARIOUS tour guide too-and not because she was trying to be funny. If you’ve seen Frozen, just imagine Oaken’s wife, if he had one…complete with “yoo-hooooo” ;) ALSO, wild story! In our hostel in Rome, Destiny and I met a guy in our hostel room,who we later stumbled upon in Munich…crazy! This happened again with me when I met someone in Budapest and later in Krakow! It really is a small world sometimes :)
surfers!
Bavaria definitely reminded me of Alaska.
us and our new friends from New Zealand :)
Our favorite Belgian! The other Belgian guys were too cool for pictures.
Inside that building was a CHRISTMAS VILLAGE…which was magical! One of my favorite places!
Picturesque medieval German town! <3
Saying goodbye to people in Munich was hard. It was strange to say goodbye to people and know that most likely, you’d never see that person again. I guess that is the cost of travelling and falling in love with different places and meeting new people. I knew I would see Destiny again, when I return in August,and of course I live with Kari in Bielefeld (and he was meeting us in Prague in a week), but the others…time will tell.
This picture was surreal for me-here I am,saying goodbye to a Palmer friend, Bielefeld friend,and a new Munich (from Canada) friend.
I may or may not have been crying while waving goodbye to them from my train…the price of travelling, right?
After a week in Munich, I headed to Vienna! I met my flatmates there and we got BLOWWWWN around! It was so windy for 2 out of the 3 days! If I had to describe Vienna in one word, I would use “ornate”. It’s very beautiful-so many museums with intricate facades, etc. Everything looks intentional and expensive, but I also spent most of my time in the city center. Fede, Elisa, Momoko, and I shared a room with a guy from Berlin, who merged into our group. That’s the COOLEST thing about hostelling-you can meet some really awesome people! But again, the goodbye was sad. In Munich, one of the people we’d met was from Vienna, so on my last day I met up with him for a quick tour around Praterstern and lunch. Unfortunately,due to a miscommunication between my flatmates and I, I missed our bus to Prague. I was scared at first, but I met two incredible women who gave me a GIANT map of Vienna (which was unnecessary but super nice!) and they let me use their cell phone to call Elisa. We figured it out; I’d gone to the wrong bus station. I found it and waited 4 hours for the next bus with available seating.
The Hundertwasserhaus-not a straight line in its architecture!
One of the days, Elisa and I escaped the windy weather by going to the Schmetterlinghaus- A tropical butterfly garden! Better than being blown around with the boys! ;)
There is an amusement park at Praterstern, but I didn’t have time to ride any rides.
Belvedere
Sissi’s Palace!
Us and our new friend at a fancy Viennese cafe- but no, the coffee wasn’t worth 4 euro and neither was the cake, the special Sachertorte.
On the way to Prague, I realized I’d be getting there after trams stopped working, etc, so was frantically Goolging the nightbus schedule. I got to Prague at some ungodly hour and found the night bus pick-up (after some helpful grunts from another bus driver to point me in the right direction). Everything written was unfamiliar, I only knew where to meet my flatmates. I asked a fellow bus-stop-waiter if I could buy a ticket on the bus, he said I couldn’t. I want to break something in frustration: I couldn’t buy a ticket anywhere else at 3 in the morning! A nice, young man apparently overheard us and gave me HIS ticket- I couldn’t believe it. I, a total stranger. I had thought he was showing me what kind to buy,but then he said, “No,for you. You can have it.” I was floored. Twice in one day, total strangers had gone out of their way to help me. On the bus, he asked if I needed help to find my stop. Now, I know disclosing such things to strangers is risky at 3am on a bus in Prague, but I went with my gut instinct: he was also a young person loaded down with a backpack and was now risking being caught riding without a ticket because he’d given me his. We actually got off at the wrong stop, but he pointed me 100m straight down the road to the next stop (my actual one) and then went on his way. I don’t know his name,but I can never thank him enough.
And I have never been so happy to see my flatmates EVER.
Prague was magical, one of my favorite places I went! I loved the feel of it and kept thinking what a cool place it would be to study. I also loved hearing Czech. We took advantage of the pay-as-you-want walking tour of the “old town”. We walked across the Charles Bridge quite a few times in our 3 days there. It was a small city so we were able to navigate it pretty well. We didn’t do any museums, we mostly just walked around, checked out markets, and such.
Famous Astrological Clock
Charles Bridge
On the Charles Bridge
All the flatmates are together!! :))
Next was Budapest! I never knew it was such a huge city. We stayed in a “party hostel”, the cheapest we could find, and all that meant was that the hostel was on top of a nightclub…so everynight the party could be heard through our floor! I can assure you that the Instant Groove Club in Budapest can really bump their bass…haha. Budapest was really big,and we walked everywhere,so by the end of the days there we were exhausted! But we did check out the ruin pubs-which are the COOLEST places! They’re these clubs, bars, cafes, and the life built into these old, falling-down (but safe) communist buildings that were never repaired. They’re all different, and kind of alternative but really unique! I loved them! Definitely my favorite pub/clubs I’ve ever been to. In addition to a walking tour, we also did a pub crawl in Budapest, which the perfect place to do one. We met up with some Erasmus people who live in Budapest that we knew from Bielefeld, which was fun to have them show us their favorite place.On our last day, Elisa and I went to the famous Szechenyi thermal baths, which were a wonderful place for a sunny day! We relaxed after 4 days of walking in the different pools and actually got really tan! I also discovered a new favorite (but so unhealthy) food- Lángos. It’s also called Communist Pizza. It’s fried bread dough (yuummm) with sour cream, cheese,and garlic…yes, it was delicious. I am drooling just thinking about it!
Fisherman’s Bastion
Thanks Angela and Zita! :)
The club under our hostel ;)
We got tan!
BUDAPEST <3
And finally- Poland. Warsaw was first! Our good friend that we knew from Bielefeld who lives there, Kacper , picked us up and brought us to our hostel, which was a really nice apartment that had been converted. Warsaw was also huge, and this time we had to buy a tram ticket because it just wasn’t walkable. I turned 20 in Warsaw! The excitement of that day was dimmed by the fact that an ATM machine from a bank ATE my debit card…which,yes, sucked. The bank was super unhelpful and apparently has an ATM that eats foreign cards. Warning: Do NOT use Polski Bank ATMs!! The rest of the trip (6 or 7 days), my amaaaazing flatmate Elisa paid for EVERYTHING for me, while I had to cancel that card and wait for a new card from Palmer to arrive. But we had a good lunch (Polish Pierogi…need I say more??), after which I was given a sucker instead of a shot like Fede and Elisa. Turned 20,still got mistaken for 18<…haha. We went to Kacper’s house that night for my birthday, and his mom cooked a yummy Polish soup for us! We stayed up late talking with him and his girlfriend, it was such a good start to my 20th year J Kacper showed us around Warsaw for the few days we were there. We went to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which was an EXCELLENT museum about,well,the Warsaw Uprising in WWII. I didn’t know anything about it before. I also really liked the Warsaw Old Town. We accidentally went to a really classy, high-end restaurant dressed in our student/travelling clothes and just ordered starters…it was quite hilarious. Poland is really inexpensive in general, and from the outside it looked like a normal restaurant, but it was on the expensive side..we were just really out of place! Kacper was such an amazing host, and after a semester before that together in Bielefeld, saying goodbye didn’t feel real. I was sad to leave our hostel,too…I would totally move in to a little flat in Poland!
Pierogi…yummmm
Loved the Old Town!
My birthday! Those are my candles :D
Thanks Kacper! :)
But while Warsaw was huge and industrial, I liked Krakow more because it wasn’t. I can’t decide if I liked Krakow more than Prague,but it might edge ahead of Prague just a little bit. Krakow had the same “small” feel that I loved about Prague and it wasn’t new and industrial either. We met up with our friend Aga who’d been in Bielefeld with us and with our friend Jakub (who is still here! Ones less goodbye! Haha). Aga was able to show us some good bars (free shots…) .We did a free tour of the Jewish Quarters and then spent the next day at Auschwitz-Birkenau…which was incredible. Unreal. I couldn’t believe I was there…I took some pictures but really, these places aren’t something you take pictures of and show all your friends back home. In Auschwitz, some of the barracks have been turned in museum-like exhibitions, and there are rooms full of shoes…shoes whose owners were gassed, etc. The baby shoes were really hard to see. Everything about that place was powerful. We saw pictures that had been taken of people waiting to be sorted at the camp (live/die) and then stood in that same place. Although it’s hard to imagine so much death there, with all the tourists, I think everyone could benefit from going there. I was also kind of inspired by this thought that everyone should see it-I know that in my high school, there was a Civil War trip, where students and a teacher went to the East Coast and visited the battlegrounds, and I even know that there is a Europe trip. But what I was thinking, is that when I’m a teacher, is that I would totally spearhead a WWII trip, visiting places such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. On our last day, Aga took us to this big gravel-pit-turned-lake that the locals know about and flock to in the nice weather. We didn’t sleep the whole night that night while in transit to the airport. The flight from Katowice to Dortmund was so quick, and the just like that, my trip was over.
Market hall in Krakow
Awesome old man dancing :)
Market Square! And Exchange students!! :)
aaaand my breakfast one day…haha.
In truth,I was ready to sleep in my own bed. And I never thought I’d be so happy to hear German! :)
Destroyed my shoes from walking everywhere!
So, that was a real quick rundown of my 3 weeks travelling!
When I got back, I spent an hour in Bielefeld before going to Hannover. Felix’s family had prepared a barbeque dinner and birthday presents, so that was really nice to have a real birthday celebration,not that the Warsaw one wasn’t “real”, but not having my debit card eaten this time was a plus ;)
Easter is celebrated on 2 days here- Easter Sunday and Monday, and Good Friday is a holiday too! So I went to Hannover for Easter, and on the Saturday of that weekend Felix, his parents, and I went to Hamburg. It was a sunny day and we had a harbor tour on a boat! I ate a Hamburg specialty of some kind of fish-mashed potatoes-of some sort. I liked it :)
And then-life as “normal” as it is here in Bielefeld! In April I found an English church and English Bible study group here, so that’s an answer to prayer. Super happy to be making friends through those groups too! There are new Erasmus students here now too, which is fun, even though I really miss some of my friends who have left.German class is with a new teacher now,which is going really well! I love learning and using my German :)
Some random pictures from a daytrip to nearby Stadthagen, a German class fieldtrip to the Stadttheater, May Day,Night of Open Museums,and more!
Hamburg with Felix and his family!
Nachtansichten-The museums and galleries were open until 1 am and the city was colorful with light shows! 
Stadthagen
May Day! We grilled with friends and then went to the animal park :)
AND my first professional soccer game! Hannover 96!! :)
Tena and I cheering for Hannover!
After the game we went to the Frühlingsfest to eat and then to a beer tent-Germans CAN be loud, they just have to have good soccer vibes and beer ;) The shots are half fanta, and you drink them both at once! kind of challenging but fun :)
And here’s some exciting news! This Wednesday I’m going to Croatia!! My wonderful friend Tena invited me to spend a week there with her! Helloooooo seaside and sun! :)
