Germany

Germany……hmmmm wow what did I do?! Gosh I can’t remember, I must’ve drank WAY too much German beer. Hahaha totally kidding. Well, it was my first trip flying Ryanair, the really really cheap European flight service which is a gift from God. It’s more expensive for me to fly from Manhattan to KC than it is for me to fly to Germany or Paris….I love Europe. I went to Germany to visit my friend Johannes, who was a friend of mine from highschool who was a foreign exchange student during my sophomore year. Anyways, my round trip tickets to Germany were 12 pounds total. Yes. I was actually wondering if I’d be taking an actual plane or if they would just catapult me across Euorpe. Well, I got to the airport and it turns out to be a legitimate plane! It would’ve been a pleasant flight over had there not been two drunk French guys aboard. They honestly slightly scared me, they kept getting up and wandering around the plane drunk. The flight attendants kept having to come over and tell them to stay in their seats and settle down. Well if that wasn’t enough, when the pilot came on to say we’d be beginning our descent and everyone was buckled back up, even the attendants, one of the guys got up and started running towards the front of the plane. I don’t know about you all, but when someone gets up when everyone is supposed to be seated and started bolting for the front of the plane, you kinda freak out. Well, I did anyways. Thankfully one of the flight attendants flew out of their seat to chase after him, and turns out he needed to use the bathroom…again.

After that super fun flight I landed in Memmingen airport and got through security to face many many German signs. Awesome. I eventually found Johannes and we began to head to his hometown of Kaufbeauren in Bavaria. Thankfully they drive on the correct side of the road in Germany, but the autobahn is pretty scary to drive on as no speed limits exist! Johannes gave me a tour of the city centre which is like a town from a story book! The big town hall, with the fountain the middle of the cobbled street, all the shops painted different colors of pastel shades. It was such a pretty little town! After this, we went to his house where I got to meet the rest of his family. His mom speaks English, and so does his dad and brother, but not quite as well as Johannes. His littlest brother is around 10 years old and speaks only German, and even though I could not understand anything he said to me, he was still the most entertaining kid I’ve ever met! I loved hanging out with him. I was shown many books, and all of his toys in his room…in German…and he loved every minute of showing me all of his stuff, which made it even more fun for me to see him so excited about showing me all of his things.

the centre of the town of Kaufbeauren

Later that night we went to a marching band festival. In Bavaria at least, most towns have their own marching band, made of members of all ages. Johannes is in his town’s marching band and they had a two different contests the weekend I was there. The one I went to Friday night was more a concert band style concert. They even had judges that held up numbers after they were done playing them, ranking them on different categories from 1-10. Well…since this was in Germany, everyone spoke in German, so I just clapped when everyone else clapped and pretended I could understand what was being said before each band came on. I think I got the numbers 6-9 down though, those were said a lot! It was still really neat to see!

On Saturday we got up and ate breakfast, which usually consists of lots of different breads and cheese and meat if you want. I ate the different breads of course! They were so good! And…Johannes’ mom makes all of the jam that they use, so I definitely ate that up. It was amazing. She gave me her recipe…hopefully I can recreate it. My track record of cooking doesn’t provide a promising outcome though. We shall see! After breakfast I went with Johannes to his friends’ wedding. It was in an absolutely gorgeous Catholic church. They obviously didn’t need to spend any money on decorations, the church stood on it’s own. Johannes and his friend also wore traditional Bavarian outfits to the wedding. I was informed that this was not usual attire for weddings, but that they had just felt like wearing them and asked their friend getting married if it would be all right. Haha it was pretty entertaining. The entire wedding was also in German of course, but it was a catholic mass so I sort of kind of new a little bit where we were in the ceremony…but overall..I honestly had no clue haha. But none the less it was fun to witness!

After the wedding we went back to Johanne’s house where his mom made Schnitzel for dinner…it was sooo good! Then after we left to go see Neuschwanstein castle…the castle that Disney based their castle off of! It’s situated right near the start of the Alps, so it makes a for a pretty much breathtaking view, and tons of beautiful scenery around it. We went and looked around near the castle and also at some lakes nearby, one being “Swan Lake”. I still have no idea if the ballet was based off of that lake…I should google that. Anyways, it was a great day out as well, so it made for a perfect time to wander around some Germany forests and mountainous areas.

On Sunday we got up and had the glorious bread and jam breakfast again : ) I could live off of baguettes and jam…as you will also notice when I write my blog on my trip to Paris. Baguettes are the world’s greatest food. Hands down. After breakfast we went on a bike ride around Kaufbeauren up to this really old church...that was built around 1100. That is OLD. It was a gorgeous Sunday morning and the bike ride was through these fields that reminded me of Kansas. It was such a nice bike ride! Sunday afternoon I went to watch a Bavarian music festival parade that Johanne’s marching band was marching in. It was definitely a cultural experience! It was very German…of course…and definitely really interesting and fun to watch! I’ve never watched a German parade, just American ones…and this was pretty cool. Not only did they have these guys who played really long horn looking things, but they had girls doing flips down the street and girls playing volleyball…while walking forward. Impressive. The costumes were all very traditional as well. I also got to go in to a German beer tent. One German beer mug seriously must hold 8 beer cans…maybe more. I don’t even know.

After the music festival we drove to Munich where I got to explore the town for a while. Definitely a beautiful city with lots of great buildings and gorgeous churches…such as every city in Europe I’ve noticed, though! Also, the Munich soccer (football) team had just gotten back earlier in the day from winning a big game, and so all the fans were still around singing drunk German soccer songs…hahaha also very entertaining. That pretty much marks the end of my German adventure. The next day I just did some last minute souvenir shopping and was driven back to the airport by Johannes’ mom. It was a great trip and I’m really glad I could go visit! I definitely hope to make it back there some day : )

London!

So, this past weekend, myself, Cati, Jonathan and Forrest took an adventure into London. We decided to take the overnight bus (just like Harry Potter) that left Friday night and got into London around 7 am Saturday morning. I think the best part was when we boarded the bus, the driver asked only us if we had any alcohol because it wasn’t allowed on, to which Forrest responded, “Not Yet!” That overnight bus was definitely not as fun as the one Harry was on. It was rather miserable actually haha. Nonetheless, it was worth it! Once we arrived, we decided to attempt to find our hostel. The public transportation system is extremely handy in London, as you can get just about anywhere by hopping onto a bus. A creepy old man who randomly started talking to me actually sent us in the right direction…who knew? Well our hostel ended up being really nice, so that was a relief. The weather was really nice during the day on Saturday…it was sunny and warm, which has been quite rare here I’ve come to realize. That being sad, we decided to start our London excursion by starting out in Hyde Park. I think Forrest had the ultimate tourist outfit….grey sweatpants, a maroon Goofy sweatshirt, and a backpack. Classic. So, we walked through the park, saw the Princess Diana Fountain Memorial, the Peter Pan statue, and ended up on the other side of the park near Kensington Palace. We walked around the gardens there, which were absolutely beautiful. Being the cheap college students we are, we decided to save our money and not go into Kensington Palace but instead take jumping pictures by this “Physical Energy” statue…

After this, we went to see the Albert Monument and then walked on down towards Buckingham Palace. The park outside Buckingham palace is really nice place, as well as the gardens just outside of the palace. Of course there were the palace guards standing outside, doing possibly the most boring job in the world in my opinion. Then there was a policeman with a huge gun. Apparently the guards in the red coats and tall black hats aren’t very intimidating…

We then proceeded to go eat lunch…in the food court of the train station. We don’t’ need to experience expensive cultural London food….cheap Subway and McDonalds are cultural enough for us! After lunch we decided to go see how much tickets to ‘Wicked’ would be and if they had any left for the show later that night. Well…we ended up getting 6o pound tickets for 25..so I’d say that was a steal! We then decided to spend some of the afternoon looking for Abbey Road. Might I add that I had pretty much navigated us around town using a map and a handy bus map…considering my history and following maps and directions, I was doing a pretty decent job! Well…we waited at this so called bus stop that would take us to abbey road for an hour….the bus was supposed to come every 7-10 minutes. Lies. All lies. We gave up and decided to head to King’s Cross Station to see the one and only Platform 9 ¾ ! (Or, according to Forrest...Pier 3 ½). I naturally ran in there quite quickly with my Gryffindor scarf ready for the picture, and we couldn’t find it! I definitely did NOT want to be that American tourist that asked for directions to Platform 9 ¾….so we just kept looking and finally saw a group of people snapping pictures at something…and finally found it…

After we left, the usual rain shower began, harder than usual, so that was not so fun. Thank goodness we were just heading to dinner and then to go see ‘Wicked’. We ate at a pizza buffet…again in the train station food court, and it was amazing! I can’t remember the last time I had pizza…let alone a buffet…ahh how I miss America sometimes lol. After dinner we went to ‘Wicked’. It was absolutely amazing! The best musical I’ve ever seen by far. We had great seats and the music, sets, costumes, dancing, lighting, and everything was just unbelievable! Even the guys loved it…and so did Cati…who hates musicals. So it was definitely worth the money and probably the highlight of the trip for me.

This next bit is oh so entertaining…our attempt to return to our hostel for the evening. Well, you’d assume that we’d just go the exact same way we did that morning, right? No, I thought I’d be smart and attempt to get us there quicker. BAD IDEA. I got us on the wrong bus….but we didn’t realize it until the bus began to slow down and the loud speaker called “This bus terminates here”…hmmm we don’t know where ‘here’ is. So, we get off the bus…it’s raining…it’s dark…we have no idea where we are in relation to our hostel…and we’re kind of in the ghetto of London. Yep, I slightly began to freak out. After wandering around in the rain talking to people who didn’t speak English about taxis, we finally found a cab company who got us back to our hostel…that was actually only a few minutes away. Hey, at least we made it. That’s what matters.

Our stay in the hostel was quite nice…for the four of us we got a room of four with bunk beds…like camp! Haha. Breakfast in the morning was decent as well. Unfortunately, when we woke up, we realized it was raining…and the weather online said rain was in the forecast all day until about 7 pm. Great. The day we saved for sightseeing for the big stuff, it decides to rain. So after some wandering around on buses for a good hour or so and getting sort of lost..we decided to head to Harrod’s…the department store that sells a hair clip for 500 pound. This is naturally my kind of store! Haha. We first went into Burberry down the street, and we got some death glares walking in. We obviously did not look worthy enough to be setting foot inside their store. They even gave us plastic bags to put our umbrellas in so they didn’t ‘drip on the floor’. After that fun little excursion we made it into Harrods and looked around for a while. I’m pretty sure the candy store was our favorite. It literally looked like the candy store in your mind when you think of what you’d like a candy store to look like as a child. Following this, we found some lunch and afterwards decided to just suck it up and go out and ‘soak in’ all the sight seeing we could (Pun completely intended). Just as we go to our first destination, the tower of London, the rain started to subside and stayed that way for the rest of the day! Perfect timing. We walked along the tower bridge (They totally named the wrong “London Bridge”..because it’s pretty lame… the ‘Tower Bridge’ should definitely be the official London Bridge). Then we went towards the London Eye and walked along the river to see Big Ben and the Parliament Building. We saw Westminster Abbey and where Gordon Brown lives (though as I type this, the UK is voting on whether or not they will let him live there a bit longer…). Then we got on the bus to head back to our hostel to get our stuff to head home….the boys then noticed a huge sports store, so naturally we had to get off and look around. I must admit, it was a pretty awesome store, 6 floors I believe. Once we got back on the bus we went to the hostel to grab our stuff, and then set out to try and accomplish one more thing…finding Abbey Road! We wandered around a bit and tried to ask for directions and didn’t really get a very good response but eventually found Abbey Road. Obviously the picture in the Beatle’s Album cover is in one particular spot…and Abbey Road is a road that extends for more than a block…so we had no idea which way to go. Thankfully someone could blatantly tell that we were completely lost and stopped to asked if we needed help finding anything. The guy ended up being from California studying music in London and pointed us in the right direction. Thank goodness for him otherwise we never would’ve found it! So the last thing we did before we left London was get the best picture of the trip…

We then quickly got a bus back into town and ran and took some night pictures of London. It was incredible; London lit up at night is definitely a sight to see. It was sort of surreal taking pictures on a bridge overlooking the city of London at night. I feel so luck to be experiencing all of these things! I have definitely had such a blast here and am sad that I have to leave it all behind in just one month! But I definitely miss everyone back home so I am excited for that.

So the bus trip back from London was even worse than the way there but again, definitely worth it! I think the best part about Sunday was that we were so tired already that everything was absolutely hilarious and so even if it did rain all day, it wouldn’t have bothered us. This was definitely one of the most fun weekends I’ve had here and I wish we would’ve had more time. London is definitely on the top of my list of places to return to someday!

On an entirely different note, I was at a BBQ the other day and there were donuts on the table, so I asked for one, and the guy said "Well aren't you the stereotype!" GREAT.