I guess I should start off with why I'm coming home when everyone thought I was going to Switzerland for the spring semester. I knew in the beginning when I applied for school in Switzerland that it would be a bumpy road. I applied rather late (even though I got my application in a month before the deadline) but I also had to get a visa (which takes a minimum of 6-8 weeks), and before I could apply for my visa I had to be accepted into the school. So time was against me. I finally got accepted towards the very end of Nov./beginning Dec. and went to apply for a visa right away. Check, finished all that. What next? Housing. Which played a huge role in the decision. I had planned to get a place with my friend Maddie. We did tons of research for apartments in Lausanne, many late late nights. Sent tons of emails asking questions about the ones we liked and got responses back which is good. We found a really good place slightly out of Lausanne but easily manageable and the cheapest place out of all the ones we'd found. Maddie went to visit the place and everything was super, but we found out it wasn't available until Feb. 1. Which was quite the problem for me. I finished school the 12 Dec. and then traveled until 22 Dec. so then what? I had more than a month without a home. I was tempted to just go live in the mountains during this time but figured mummzy wouldn't like that. I had another plan which I was relying on a little too much in the beginning and it ended up not working out so I was literally homeless for a month. I could've just traveled during this time but that cost money, plus it still wasn't certain if we got the apartment. I forgot to mention that other people had already looked at the place and then the lady would pick who she thought would be the best to take care of the place. I could've stayed in a hostel and done some intense research for other places but that would've costed a min of 10 bux a night and then I might not even find a place. Soooo...in the end it turned out being too much of a gamble. Another big factor was that I had finally decided I won't be continuing with french. I've gone back and forth with french. If I would've gone to Switzerland then I would've just taken all french courses because they didn't have any art courses for graphic design. So when I decided, no more french, my semester in Switzerland would be a waste (credit wise) I know I would've had a super amazing time there, and I was soooo looking forward to climbing to the top of a mountain, but I guess that will have to wait. Thank you parents and Maddie for helping me with all the papers and forms I had to do for Switzerland.
Onto Eurotrip 2009.
I'll do my best to remember everything, but sooooo much has happened this past week. Joy (a friend who studied abroad in Oxford this semester) arrived on Saturday 12th. I had planned on meeting her at the train station but miss Joy didn't know the station she was coming into is one of major train stations in Paris and is huge. So the only message I got was when she would be arriving. Silly girl. Plus I got the message late because I was busy earlier in the day. So I ended up getting the the station an hour late. Spent a fair amount of time searching for her, but it's just too big. Figured returning and hoping she found some internet was my best bet. Luckily when I got home she was online. Found out she was at a hostel with some friends. See, a bunch of her friends were also doing a eurotrip and so happened to be coming to Paris first. So it worked out she was with all of them in a hostel and not just alone roaming the steets of Paris. We decided to call it a night and wait until the morning to go out sightseeing. Silly me, set my alarm nice and early, woke up, turned it off, fell back asleep. So I was still sleeping when they had already left to go look around. This is Sunday 13th. This so happened to be the day I had to leave my host moms house. And I still had to pack, which is why I set my alarm nice and early, but screwed that up. I asked my host mom if Joy and I could stay a couple days at the house before we left to Berlin but I guess that was a no can do. So we had to find another place to stay. Thought we had a place at the dorms on a friends floor but that didnt work out either. So I spent a good couple hours packing that morning/afternoon. So by the time I had finished they were pretty tired and cold. It was very cold in Paris during their stay, which is good and bad. The past month had been rain pretty much every day. I would rather take the cold over rain, so thats what we got. Sunday evening I met them at the Arc de Triomphe.
I had never been there before which is kind of sad. Had seen it in the distance but never up close. From there we to the metro to catch the Eiffel Tower light show. I had seen it before but we watched on the opposite side I had been on before. It's kind of tough to take a picture of the light show (this isn't even of it) but lights travel up and down the whole thing moving at different speeds, changing colors, etc. It's quite the sight. The second picture is the Eiffel Tour gone crazy.
And then from there we went back to the Arc de Triomphe but this time to walk down the Champs Elysees to see the Christmas lights and what was left of the Christmas market, most booths were closed. It was very beautiful and we walked the whole distance. Think it's like 2 miles? We walked the whole way because in the distance there was a gigantic ferris wheel calling our names. There wasn't a line at all maybe because it was 10 euros and freezing outside. I figured since I didnt make it up the Eiffel tour I should do this. It was an excellent view over the city even though the windows were a bit unclean and fogged up.
Update: Wednesday 9:12 am...still at Paris airport, will be boarding in hourish
Monday 14, meet at the Louvre nice an early in the morning. Spent a good amount of time there, 3 hours. They all wanted to make sure they saw all the top pieces which is understandable. Plus the place is ridiculously huge and impossible to see in 3 hrs. After that, we had a short walk to the musee (museum) d'orsay. Which is known for it's impressionists collection. Unfortunately, the museum was closed. There had been a strike in Paris for the past month at least in the museums. The louvre was even closed for a while. And when it was on strike it was free to the public. To bad it still wasn't on strike when Joy and her friends came. Gotta love the Parisians and their strikes. So since we couldn't see d'orsay, we went to the sacre coeur (sacred heart) which is a chapel/church on top of a hill in Paris and makes for an amazing view over much of Paris. Although it wasn't a very nice day, cloudy, foggy, ick.
Tuesday 15, Joy's friends (one being a boyfriend) left around 5am tuesday morning. It was sad to see them leave and I had just meet them days before. They were a really fun group to hang out with. Was super tough for Joy to say goodbye but she got through and I did my best to talk when she needed to talk. We started the day off by going to La Defense. Sadly, another place I hadn't seen the whole semester. La Defense is on the very western edge of Paris and unlike typical American cities where the skyscrapers and big office buildings are in the center of the city, La Defense is just that, but not in the center. There are some pretty impressive buildings there and I do love my big buildings. There was also a pretty impressive Christmas market which we walked through. Scott, I didn't know that "Le Bru" had gone French?!?!
We followed up this impressive modern architecture with some crazy old architecture by visiting Les Invalides and the Opera House. I had seen this 'thing' from a distance but never up super close or actually inside. Joy and I didnt go inside either, cost money. All along I thought it was some government building but actually it's a museum of the French military. Very impressive architecture, loooooots of gold. The French love their gold. Never went in the Opera house either, just fun to look at. After Les Invalides, we swung by La Bastille which I have seen tons of times due to my photography teachers studio a minute walk from there. It had been a long day and Joy was worn out, I was too but it was so nice out, as in clear skies and the sun was setting. our hostel was right next to Sacre Coeur so I decided to go and sit on the steps one last time. It was weird to think that a couple months before I had been at that same place with pant and a t-shirt sweating. Now I was freezing my bum off and I couldn't make it until the sun set it was too cold. The lighting was amazing and I took some nice pictures of the Sacre Coeur and of the Eiffel Tour in the distance.
Wednesday 16, spent the day getting things rounded up before we left that night for Berlin. We took a bus because it was super cheap. Left at 7:30 pm and got to Berlin at 9:15 am on Thursday 17. Was quite the ride and by the end of it my bum was in major pain.
Update: Thursday 24, 5 am. Stuck overnight in Minneapolis airport. What a story. My plane from Paris to Dublin left over an hour later than it was supposed to so I got to Chicago airport super late, and I was stupid and didn't send my luggage straight from Paris to Minneapolis, so I had to wait super long for that, so by the time I got to check-in for my flight, it was the time it was supposed to be departing. Called my parents while I was waiting in line and found out from them that my flight was canceled. I got put on a waiting list for 3 remaining flights that night to the cities. I'm not quite sure why my flight earlier in the day got canceled but these later flights kept continuing. Anywho, I got on the 2nd flight and got to Minneapolis around 11 pm which was way to late for my parents to come pick me up and then go home so the second night spend in an airport. NO FUN AT ALL! Finished my book though and I'm working away on this badboy blog.
Thursday 17, ofta Berlin was cold. It wins the coldest place award. Joy and I got to the hostel before we could check into our room so we just put out luggage in the luggage room. Luckily things worked out swell and our friend Maddie who was meeting us there came minutes after we arrived. It was a rather decent hostel with a bar/restaurant in the main lobby and nice and cheap. We bummed around for a little then decided to check out the Jewish Museum which is quite famous for the inside and outside. You can google a birds eye view of the museum and you'll see it's like this zig-zaggy line, quite odd but very interesting non the least. Inside, on the first floor, there were a bunch of object ranging from pretty much anything you could think of, collected over the years belonging to people during that time and a background about each object. The second two pictures are "installation" type thingys with some for the remembrance. Then we went to the permanent collection which was like the history from the beginning beginning of the war and Hitler to post-war and modern age. There were videos and pictures of that time which were very interesting.
After the museum, Joy went back to the hostel and Maddie wanted to look for a picture frame so we went to the 2nd biggest department store in Europe! It's called KaDeWe. Not sure how to pronounce it, but ofta, what a store! Had pretty much anything and everything. Finally found some picture frames but they were quite pricey. The whole place was pricey. Had a lot of big name brands. It was fun to just walk through the place though.
When we left the store we saw a bunch of Christmas lights down the road so we walked towards them. Stumbled upon a huge Christmas market (gotta love the European Christmas markets). I got a satisfying nutella crepe (I'm going to miss crepes) and Maddie went for the Bratwurst. It was strange though, for some reason the majority of the bratwurst booths we came across had their meat to bun ratio slightly off. The pictures says it all. We also came across a ruined cathedral that got bombed during the war which was nicely lite up. We went inside and read about the history of it.
Friday 18, got up nice and early and went down to have some free breakfast. Was quite decent for being free, hard boiled eggs, cereal, bread, toaster, jelly, etc. I made two sandwiches for the day with some eggs and cheese.
We got up early to catch breakfast and also to catch a "free" tour of Berlin which we learned about from out hostel. Our tour guide was in my opinion excellent. He was a funny guy and knew his stuff. He graduated from Liverpool, England with a degree in engineering, came to Berlin, fell in love with the city and wanted to learn more about it so signed up to give these tours with this tour guide organization. They give "free" tours but let all the people know that they are doing this on their own time and appreciate tips. I mean, it's a decent job. There were about 30+ people in our group. Tour went for 4 hours, and when you think about it, the avg tip is probably 5 euro I would think. Thats a good sum of money in just 4 hours. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay for the whole tour because we had to catch a ride to continue on with our trip. We started off at the Brandenburg Gate, learned about that and the buildings in the surrounding area, then on to the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe"....which is kind of a weird name but it's also called the "Holocaust Memorial" too, which I think is a little nicer. It's similar to the picture above at the Jewish Museum. Then we went to the place where Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Its the parking lot picture, the bunker is right underneath. And then the second picture is just of a corner right across from the parking lot where one of Hitler's officers tried to burn Hitler and his wife (this was Hilter's wish) but the officer didn't reason that burning a body takes a lot of fuel and time, so the bodies didn't get completely burned so that is how they were able to tell it was Hitler. And then of course the Berlin wall. It's very interesting to think that that was just 20ish years ago the wall came down and that Berlin as a whole has city has only been like that for 20ish years. That day was painfully freezing though. We took a break at a cafe half way through where we got some hot chocolate and thats also when we had to leave the tour. The last picture is of the Berlin space needle. We didn't talk about it but walked really close to it and I love tallllll things so I had to take a picture.
Update: Jan 2, so I've taken quite the break from writing this blog and have talked about my adventures a couple times no so I'm kind of meh about writing the story over again so if there isn't as much excitement in my writing I sorry.
So we left the tour early. We had to catch a train leaving from Leipzig to Fussen (where the castle is) but you might ask, you weren't in Leipzig, which is correct. We took a car from Berlin to Leipzig. In Germany there is this "thing" called "Mitfahrgelegenheit" (found it out from my
German friend Elli). No idea how to pronounce it or what it actually stands for, but it's a site for people giving rides and looking for rides. If someone is going from point a to point b and has room in their car, they post on the site the specs about the trip, and then if someone wants to go to point b too they contact the driver, get a ride, pay for gas. Cheaper than trains and buses, great idea! So the 3 of us thought that it was just going to be us in the car, but it turned out there were 3 other people too, not including the driver! It was a packed 'van'. We made it to Leipzig on time to catch our train. Maybe a little too on time. Our train got delayed about an hour I think it was so we had to stand in the freezing train station. Joy and Maddie took up jumping to keep warm. The Leipzig train station was nicely decorated though and the train station itself (which I think I talked about in my other blog) is amazing.
Saturday 19. We made it to Fussen nice and early in the morning. We knew it was going to be along day spent outside so we bundled up inside the small train station. For the week trip I brought 2 pairs of pants and 5 shirts...I put them all on and 3 pairs of socks. PLUS, I came across some party in Paris one day when I was walking and they were handing out free space blankets, took one, and put it in my backpack and pretty much forgot about it. In the train station I remembered I had that with me so I got it out and cut it to pieces and stuffed them between my 2 coats (I think it helped nicely). We took a short bus ride from Fussen to the castle, well actually the little village right below the castle.
Neuschwanstein Castle (Disney Castle was inspired by this castle)
From this picture we are in the small village. We had the option to take a horse and carriage (cost money) , vehicle transportation, or walk up to the castle. We chose to walk since it was such a perfect day, clear sky, sun shining, not too cold. That all changed though with the falling of snow by the time we got up to the castle. Weather changes really quick there. There was a fair amount of people up at the castle and we had a good 30+ min wait to go inside. We took a 10 euro tour of the place which took maybe 15 mins? It was super quick, tour guide wasn't very good, and the inside of the castle was pretty lame. O well! When we had finished with that, we walked back down but took a hard turn onto a random snow covered road we saw when we were talking up to the castle and walked BACK up the mountain on this road for a good hour I'd say.
So we got back down to the little village to the bus stop, but we missed the bus, in the sense that there was a huge line infront of us, and they filled the whole bus up and we found out the next bus didn't come for another hour. We knew the bus ride wasn't that long so we decided to walk back to Fussen. We came across a hiking path which had signs and how long it would take to get back to Fussen so we just followed that. As we were walking the sky just opened up and SNOWED. But it was the most peaceful thing ever. There was no wind at all and complete silence. We made it back to the station with plenty of time to spare before our train left. Sadly, Maddie had to go back to Lausanne because she had to take care of the dog. Joy and I figured we could just stay in the station until our train but since it was such a tiny station, the owner closes it up each night. So we went to McDonalds to wait in search of coffee, warmth, wifi.
Sunday 20. Got to Interlaken in the afternoon and checked into our hostel, which was run by a 90ish year old lady who liked us much and gave us chocolate. So Maddie has left us in Fussen the night before but wished should could've came to Interlaken with us. I had sent her messages when we would be in Interlaken and if she found a train and wanted to come she should! Well since none of us has cell phones, and when Joy and I were at our hostel there was no internet, we had no way of knowing if Maddie had decided to come. So Joy and I were just doing some sightseeing around Interlaken when all of a sudden Joy says "MADDIE" and across the street Maddie is walking with her dog! It was such random luck that we ran into her, else I have no idea how we would've found her. Anywho, so we spent the day just walking around Interlaken. That night we got some Fondue because Maddie said it was must since we were in Switzerland. Fondue is a pot full of cheese over a small flame which keeps the cheese melted and delicious. Then you take some pokers, stab some cut up bread pieces and swirl it in the cheese. It's quite wonderful. It cost about 20 bux per person, plus we got a bottle of wine. So the bill for the three of us was 87! but worth it.
Crazy Maddie just found a train ticket for one day, she she had to leave that night/morning 2 am. So after fondue we had lots of time before Maddie had to leave so we decided to go to a warm bar. Passed a good amount of time playing card games which was a fun time. Not having a good nights sleep and all the sightseeing was catching up to Joy so she couldn't muster the energy to stay up any long, so we went back to the hostel, grabbed Maddie's stuff and her an I went to the "bus stop" to wait for the bus. We waited for about an hour and the bus never came. I'm not sure if we were in the wrong spot or what but it was weird and unfortunate. So we looked at the earliest train that came, was 5 something. So we went back to the hostel and sat in the kitchen until time came again for Maddie to depart. Was quite the night.
Monday 21. Joy and I took a train deeper into the mountains to a little village called Lauterbrunnen. We warmed ourselves up first by getting some hot chocolate then we went for a wonderful walk through this valley. The mountains were amazing. Words can't really describe neither can pictures. I could upload all my pictures I took of the mountains but it doesn't do justice. You look at this little square picture when in real life looking at the same scene you are just engulfed by mountains and puts the picture to shame. So I won't be uploading that many pictures at all of the mountains. If you want to see more just let me know and I'll send them. There were frozen little water falls all over the mountains. Some of them actually still had water coming out falling from ridiculous heights. And the best was when huge parts of the frozen waterfall would break free and fall to the ground. The sound would echo throughout the valley and was just crazy. I had my camera set to video and with some chance caught some ice falling, but the sound doesn't do justice to what it actually sounded like so I shant upload it. Joy and I had a fun little photo-shoot with the mountains which you can see below. After enjoying the peacefulness of the mountains, Joy and I headed back to Interlaken, said our goodbyes and went our different ways.
I believe I have explained about all the delays I faced coming home already so I guess that means this is the end of Parlez-vous Francais? Thanks for everyone who has followed my blog and hopefully enjoyed it. Sorry about all the spelling mistakes in this last one. I'm sure there are going to be a bajillion!
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