München!

I'm not entirely sure if Blogger will cooperate tonight. It doesn't seem to want to post my pictures as much as I do. But I'll give it a try because two 3,000-word papers are not exactly what I want to be doing with my late-night hours.

Before I recap my journey to Munich, Germany, I'd like to point out that it's APRIL 23. Which means less than three weeks left here in Genève. That thought is a bit too much to handle right now. Because as much as I miss everyone (family, friends, 513-ers), I think I might miss this continent so much more. School right now is a bit rough, what with all these term papers and impending finals, but the feeling that we're winding down is pretty terrifying. Where did the past 3.5 months go? I feel like I was just getting off the plane, jet-lagged as all hell, trying to take in all the European-ness surrounding me. Weird weird weird.

But. München.

SO LONG AGO. More than a month actually.

On Thursday morning, March 10, I took the train(s) by myself for the first time, and it was honestly one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was so great to travel alone. Not that I don't love the people from my program, but we don't exactly get a lot of time away from each other. So I just read and wrote and looked out the window a whole lot.

I met Riley at the train station, and we found our hostel with minimal getting-lost. We stayed at the Wombat's City Hostel, which insists on putting the prefix WOM before every word (i.e. the womMap, the womBar, the womCrew, etc.).

Wom

After a so so so so so good dinner of Schnitzel and beer at a traditional German restaurant (where the waitress taught us some helpful German phrases and Riley pretended to know German), we enjoyed our complimentary drink at the womBar and went up to our room.

And that was when disaster struck.

Just kidding. But I did walk into the bathroom, turn on the light, and see a bedbug. After a pretty catastrophic experience at the UC Honors Retreat last fall, I was not trying to deal with that particular insect. After convincing Riley that bedbugs are much more harmful/blood-sucking/life-ruining than they appear, we went to the desk and had our room changed to one far, far away from the nasty little critter. Which meant that we had to sleep in the same room as some random-ass guy who was already passed out when we got there, but hostel life obviously isn't the most glamorous.

Since Riley is a lazy bum, we got a reasonably late start the next day. But the weather was gorgeous, and we spend the early afternoon exploring the city (after starting our day with a beer of course). I'm going to take this opportunity (and I'll probably take several more) to point out how much I love Germany. Love it, love it, love it. Everything about it is wonderful.

Karlstor (Carl's Gate)

Deutschland at its best

BAVARIA

We went back to the hostel after a few hours to meet up with Terence, Taylor, Dan, and Carli who had taken a train at 6 a.m. that morning. Spent the rest of the day walking around possibly every part of München and the evening having a wonderful German time.

We went to another fantastic German restaurant, and we experienced the less-than-hospitable personalities of what can only be described as very stereotypical, middle-aged German women. There was no small talk, and there was certainly no free tap water. You order, you eat, you pay. But it was so delicious. I had some form of pork/dumpling mess, and there were PRETZELS EVERYWHERE. And of course, we had some beer. I feel like every German has beer with every meal. It can't possibly be done any other way.

Frauenkirche (Cathedral of our Dear Lady)

Nues Rathaus (New Town Hall)

Feldherrnhalle (Field Marshals' Hall)

Theatinerkirche (Theatine Church)

That night, I met some English/Irish/Australian bros in the womBar who thought they could school me in geography; turns out they couldn't. I've found that although Americans get such a bad rap for being ignorant of anything outside America, it's pretty much the same everywhere else.  Although the fact that Europeans tend to know more than one language does give them some street cred. Point is, thank you Dr. Kevin Raleigh for teaching me European geography.

On Saturday morning, we took a tour of Dachau, the first concentration camp in Germany. It was an absolutely incredible experience. Definitely in the top five of all the things I have done/seen/experienced in Europe. We had a truly wonderful tour guide who gave us far more than the standard, paid-for tour of Dachau. He spends his spare time studying Dachau specifically, so his knowledge on the subject was pretty insurmountable. I highly, highly suggest taking the time to go to Dachau if you're ever in Munich. It was weird to take pictures of a place where such unbelievably cruel things happened. It's also strange to try to find things to say about an experience that is so deeply rooted in the darker side of world history. Go there, see it, think about it.

Dachau

Border of Prisoner's Compound

"Work will make you free."

That afternoon, we went to the Englischer Garten, a giant public park in the middle of Munich. It was the first day the park's biergarten's were open, so we enjoyed quite a bit of time sitting with roughly thousands of people, eating yet more delicious food, listening to the traditional brass band playing from the Chinese Tower (Chinesischer Turm), and obviously drinking beer. Obviously.

Chinesischer Turm

ZOMG.

We walked around some more and stumbled upon the Viktualienmarkt, where I saw some of the most beautiful spreads of produce and flowers ever to grace this earth.

Maypole

Om noms

As the evening rolled around, we decided it was only appropriate to dine at the famous (and infamous) Hofbrauhaus. Although the food was less than spectacular and horribly overpriced, the Hofbrauhaus might also be in my top five Europe experiences. Top ten, easily. We scored a table right next to the stage, where there was traditional German dancing and whipcracking all evening long. It's an absolutely unreal experience to be in a gigantic hall filled with people singing, eating, and consuming beer from barrel-sized mugs at alarming rates. (Cincinnati Hofbrauhaus, nice try.) We even witnessed a few throwdowns between customers and customers as well as customers and staff. Quite eventful, quite entertaining, quite expensive. I think we spent the remainder of the night stumbling around Munich, bar hopping and making generally questionable decisions. In other words, we were living the charmed life of young Germans in Bavaria. (I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to the city of Munich for taking unpaid advantage of your excellent public transportation system. We are very sorry.)

Possibly the Greatest Place on Earth

Blurry dancers

BEERHALL

Whipcracking!

Sunday was spent on the trains again, something like eight hours of travel time. Missing Munich more and more as I got further and further away, thinking about how unprepared I was to go back to Genf.


I think one day I might move to Germany. There is a very good chance. There's too much good there to be anywhere else, I think. Too much history, too much culture, too much to see and do and love.


And then I spent the next two days writing an economics paper. Gross. But the following Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, and there's only one place in the world where that particular holiday can be properly celebrated. So to continue the far-from-real life I had been living, I spent Wednesday night packing my bags for the Emerald Isle...


Right. Unreal.

Roma!

In a desperate attempt to avoid writing a reflection paper about the visit our Human Rights class took today to the International Committee of the Red Cross (which was incidentally pretty cool and very informative) and reading Le Petit Prince for French class, I suppose I'll detail some more of my European adventures.

Next stop: Rome, Italy.

What's up Vatican City!

I don't think traveling in Europe would be complete without a visit to the capital of the Roman Empire, the center of the Roman Catholic church, the Eternal City. So, back in January, several members of our program decided to book a tour of the Necropolis ("City of the Dead" under St. Peter's Basilica) and spend the weekend of March 3rd in the beautiful city of Rome.

I'd like to begin by saying that I'm pretty sure I gained five pounds in the four days of being in Rome. I mean, how can you not when surrounded by gelato, pizza, pasta, and vino?

Along with my three roommates (more of our group came the next day), I took an 8ish-hour train ride from Genève to Milano to Roma on Thursday afternoon. Nice trip, nice weather, well done. We got into Rome pretty late, had a bit of difficulty finding our hostel (which turned out to be a hotel), and then began our mission of finding some food. We ended up at a restaurant near our place where we had some marginal "Italian" food and some (obviously) delicious gelati. (I'm still confused about when to use gelato (singular) and gelati (plural), and I'm pretty anal about that sort of thing so if anyone has some insight, please let me know!) We had a great time that night, went to sleep late, and slept in I'm sure. The weather that Friday was shite, and unfortunately we had to drag our suitcases (and our asses) to the apartment we were staying in for the next two nights. We ended up getting off at the wrong metro stop (after confusing the metro with the train, which we were supposed to be taking), walking in the rain through the torrents of classless men trying to sell us cheap tours of the Vatican, going the wrong way, stopping for a pick-me-up pizza, getting lost again, and finally finding our apartment after calling the proprietor, an adorable Italian woman named Emanuela. But the fact that we could see St. Peter's Dome from our apartment's terrace absolutely made up for the frustration of getting there.

Me, Ellen, Anya

That afternoon, we settled in and then went to pick up our (honorary) roommate Adrianne from the train station since (unlike me and the complications with my quarter-to-semester credit hour financial aid discrepancies resulting from studying abroad) she has an internship here and was unable to get off work on Thursday. We went for another gelati run, got fancied up, went to a very classy Italian dinner complete with plates of pasta and live music, and had a pretty crazy night on the town in downtown (uptown?) Rome. Roman nightlife has to be some of the most fantastic in all of Europe. Which I think I am actually pretty qualified to judge these days...

Such gorgeous faces!

Saturday morning, we had to be up pretty early to get to the Vatican. After hanging out in St. Peter's Square for a bit, we waited in line to see the inside of St. Peter's Basilica; I think it goes without saying how incredible it was. Surrounded by works by Michelangelo, Bramante, Maderno and Bernini (among others), I was pretty much in awe. Absolutely massive, inside and out.

Obelisk

The Swiss Guard reppin' my country!

The Nave

The Nave Floor

St. Longinus

St. Peter's Baldaccino

The Altar of the Chair of Peter

The Pieta

I strongly, strongly suggest investing in the tour of the Necropolis for anyone who visits Rome. It is one of my favorite parts of Europe so far, and I don't anticipate it being overtaken by anything else anytime soon. As we walked through the ancient tombs, our tour guide provided us with the interesting history of the excavations of the area underneath the Basilica, as well as the much-debated history of the burial of St. Peter. The tour ended with a look at what is believed to be the remains of St. Peter, buried within the Trophy of Gaius. The history of it is way, way cool. We exited the excavation site into the Vatican Grottoes, where the tombs of former Popes are found. I really found it interesting to see the tomb of Pope John Paul II, where a large crowd was gathered to pray; there were two security guards exclusively at his grave.

After sending my family a postcard at the Vatican post office, I went with Adrianne to see the Colosseum, the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, and the ruins of the Roman Forum. Walking down the Via dei Fori Imperiali towards the Colosseum is one of the coolest things I have ever done. We got off the bus, and suddenly it was right there, a building (if you can call it that) I have seen a thousand times in textbooks, on TV, online, etc. Right there in front of us. Way awesome. After being conned into a 10-euro photo shoot with two Roman warriors (living out of a suitcase), we checked out the ruins of the Forum. They were pretty ruined, and it was getting dark/cold, so we snapped a few photos of the Vittorio Emanuele monument and got on a bus back to our cute Roman apartment.

Colossal!

Egyptian street performer in Rome?

Expensive photos 

Arch of Constantine

I look ridiculous

The only reason there are so many pictures of the outside is that we couldn't get inside...

Ruined things

Lots of famous things with lots of names that I forget

Picturesque

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II

Sunday morning, Adrianne and I rolled out of bed and walked to St. Peter's Square where thousands (that's my educated guesstimate) of people were gathered to witness Pope Benedict XVI come out to his little window and speak lots and lots of languages. The sun was shining, and it was pretty fascinating (despite the multitude of issues I take up with the current Pope and the Catholic Church in general).

Apparently he's a pretty important guy

Waiting for the Pope

What's up Holiness 

Vicar of Jesus Christ

A very crowded St. Peter's Square

After that, we spent what little time we had left in Rome trying to find the Spanish Steps. We found them, wished we had more time to spend there and in the surrounding area, acquired some more gelati, and walked through the Piazza del Popolo where the last day of Carnevale (a time of celebration before the beginning of Lent) was going on. Crazy, crazy costumes.

Spanish Steps!

Piazza di Spagna

As we spent the rest of the day rushing/running/sweating in order to get to all our trains on time, I couldn't help but think about all the things I somehow managed to miss out on seeing in Rome: the Trevi Fountain, the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Pantheon, etc. I realized that although it's not really in my personality to do lots of planning, Rome is one of those places where there are so many things to see that it's pretty necessary. So don't make the same mistake I did: Go see everything. Don't stay out till outrageous hours having fun raging; go to bed early so you can get up and see it all.

When else will you be in Rome?

Please Mind the Gap

Alright so. I'm just going to continue down my list of February trips because I still have A LOT of work to do on this blog.

On the 17th of February, I easyJetted off to London, UK to visit my best friend in the world, Miss Ara Post. I flew into Gatwick where I was promptly questioned the hell out of by the immigration officer. No, sir, I am not coming into your country to bomb it, kill anyone, or steal any national secrets. But at least he stamped my passport, which has been rare in my experience so far. Next, I proceeded to exchange some Swiss Franc into pound sterling. Possibly the single most depressing experience of my life to date. The exchange rate these days is something like 1 British pound = 1.62 USD which means that one of my dollars can only purchase about 62 pence. Absolutely disgusting.

But anyway, I was in London, where I was confused yet happy about all the English language surrounding me. It had been over a month since I had walked around a public place and understood people talking, which is actually a much more disconcerting experience than one would think.

The next leg of my journey was a bit more difficult: getting to Brighton, England by train. I spent several CHF on the phone with Ara trying to figure out the best route, and eventually, after some train platform dancing to Daft Punk, I arrived at Falmer Station.

After not having seen my best friend in well over a month, it was the strangest experience to get off a train in ENGLAND and see her standing there. So crazy! After lots of best friend hugs, we climbed the hill to the Falmer campus of Brighton University, where she is studying until June.

We spent the rest of the night making dinner, catching up, and hanging out with her wonderful housemates. We went out that evening to celebrate the birthday of a girl named Leanne, an English girl who also studies at Brighton. There is nothing better than pub crawling via those (very English) red double-decker buses.

Obviously taken from the top level of a red bus

Somehow I forget what happened on Friday morning/afternoon. I do believe we slept in pretty late, maybe did some shopping (at Primark, what a great store), ate at the delicious Gourmet Burger Kitchen, and I had Lick frozen yogurt for the first time.

Strawberries, Oreos, and honeycomb...mmm

But wait. I think I take that all back. Pretty sure those things happened on Saturday, because on Friday we ventured to London city. We took the train to London and then hopped on the Tube, one of the most iconic London things of all time. After getting quite a bit lost, we found the building where Ara's sister works, acquired some tickets from her for our concert later that evening, and had some food at a sushi place in downtown London. Also we had more frozen yogurt.

You are welcome for this!

After some sustenance, we were ready to meet up with Madison, one of Ara's housemates, to see Maroon 5 and Sara Bareilles at the Brixton Academy in South London. Incredible show, although Sara's newest album had not yet come out in the UK at that point, so people felt the need to talk a lot during her performance. WTF. But she was amazing, and Maroon 5 obviously put on a great show. And during their encore, they sang Sunday Morning, which is perhaps my most favorite Maroon 5 song ever. Made my night, my weekend, my month.

I think we were pretty exhausted after that and went to bed soon after getting back to Brighton. The next day, then, is when all those things happened that I mentioned above. Downtown Brighton is adorable, with its indie shops and restaurants and eccentric people. Besides being in love with our waiter, we spent  the time in GBK people-watching out the window. Interesting, interesting.

Then that night we got really, really sick. We stayed sick all day Sunday which was horrible. My flight out of Gatwick was at 6 a.m. on Monday morning, so I ended up taking the bus then the train to the airport beginning at 2 a.m. I only managed to get everywhere thanks to Leanne and her friend Patrick, who (drunkenly) accompanied me all the way to the airport. I am so thankful for them; I would have been so lost and confused had they not helped me out! We parted with hugs at the airport, and I flew back to Genève to attempt to get better.

Things I learned in England:
1) Oatmeal is delicious with peanut butter and banana.
2) The way they talk is so much more adorable than American English.
3) The English love to make fun of American English.
4) It's just as difficult for them to do an American accent as it is for us to do an English accent.
5) We are spoiled living in Geneva because of how easy it is to get around the entire continent of Europe from there.
6) Caramel chocolate digestives are so, so good.
7) I love my best friend.