Wien

On our way to Vienna (which was a very, very long train ride) we were pleasantly suprised by amazing scenery. Even though it was rainy and we had to spend all day on a train, the mountains, valleys, and tunnels definately made it worth it.

Once we got there, we went to our super fantastic hostel (Wombat's). We shared a bathroom with two other people and we got our own lockers and they even gave us towels and linen. We checked in, and then went to find something to eat. We found this fantastic little Chinese place that we ended up eating at more than once. On the way back, we got drenched in the rain, but the chinese was definately worth it.

The next day we went to the big Hapsburg palace-- it was awesome. It had these crazy statues out side with absolutely amazing detail. Then we went inside and saw the Sisi museum and the Hapsburg apartments, though first we had to go through the royal silver collection. I've never seen so many candle sticks. It was literally room after room after room of plates, forks, knives, candlabras, centerpieces, and gravy boats. The picture i've put up here is just half of one set.

We also got to see a very impressive interactive music museum. Tim went nuts, he loved it. We got to see how sound works and play with pitch. There were all these cool rooms with huge drums and samples of sound that you could mix together. There was stuff to jump on and this cool contraption that you stood in front of and the way you moved your hands dictated the way the sound changed. It also had a room each for 5 or 6 composers from Vienna. After getting to play with all the stuff, going through those rooms was very difficult. At the end though, you got to try to direct a video recording of the Vienna Philharmonic and when you failed (because it was super difficult) one of the people in the Philharmonic would stand up and tell you how awful you are at it. It was a good time.

We also went to see the Mozart museum. Can I just say-- How BORING. Probably the worst put together museum I have ever seen. It's in an apartment building, and you start at the third floor and work your way down. The whole top floor is just paintings of people who knew Mozart. Then you go down a floor and learn a little bit more about his music, but not much. The audio guide just went on and on about irrelevant things. The second floor is where all the speculation starts, and you begin hearing things like "he might have been a gambling addict" and "Cassanova might have been at the premiere of Don Giovanni in Prague". Then you finally get to the bottom floor, the actual apartments that Mozart lived in and you get to see how crappy the museum actually is. Apparently, Mozart only lived in the "mozart apartments" for 3 years, at his most lucrative time. Also, they don't seem to have any of his things. Everything that they had was a facimile, or it was 'something that mozart may have possibly owned at one time that could have possibly maybe looked like this table here, we don't actually know but we have this list that says he owned a table!' pretty disappointing, but made good fodder for the rest of the trip.

Over all, vienna was nice, but cold and rainy the whole time. At least in Rome and Venice we had some semblance of sun and not too much rain. Vienna was almost as rainy as Freiburg!

Venice

Hello! again, sorry about the delay, it's been a busy couple of months. Tim's still here, we're just bumming around Freiburg for now, recouperating after our trip and then my week of exhaustive final paper writing. anyway, onto the trip-telling!

4 Venice was way cool. The trip there? not so much. Instead of taking a fast train, we took a regional that should have takenhours, broke down, and ended up taking 8. It was disasterous. We got off in Venice, but quickly realized we needed to get off a stop earlier. We took a train back to Marghera and then a bus to our Hotel where this sweet older Italian woman was kind enough to let us check in at about 10:30pm. We were starving, so I asked the woman at the desk (in Italian!) where we could get some food, and she pointed us to an Italian resturaunt down the street. Then we had the best Risotto ever. We ordered too much food in general though, and we could hear the wait staff laughing at us on the other side of the bar, but it was ok because they let us take most of it home.

The next morning when we were about to leave the little old man at the front desk asked us if we wanted Coffee, and then made us free Cappuccinos. to our delight, he said, "you can't go outside in Italy without Coffee!" it was by far the best cappuccinos we had the entire trip. After, we went to Venice proper and saw St. Marc's square and the Peggy Guggenheim. the Guggenheim was AWESOME. so much Pollock and calder and kandinsky! We also saw the Modern Art Museum where we got to see more Kandinskys and Calders and Klimts. It was awesome, here are some photos:
this is St. Marc's square. the whole inside of the church was gold.the pigeons in St. Marcs square are absolutely insane. This is just some guy, Tim and I were too chicken to feed the pigeons ourselves.

We only spent a day in Venice. it was cool, and we both agree that we loved it, but it was definately doable in a day. By 6 or so we ran out of sights to see.

Rome

Hi everyone! tim got here about almost two weeks ago and we've been having a great time. on monday, we left for our big trip. First we went to Zurich, but the only thing we really wanted to see there turned out to be closed. so we walked around for awhile, but ended up watching a movie on my ipod in the train station until our night train showed up.

The next day, we arrived in Rome. still pretty beat, we didn't do much but bum around the city until we could check into our hostel and take a proper shower. We did get to see this great church and a museum that had cats living in it. Then we got free pizza and beer for dinner from our hostel, which was pretty fantastic. it was really good pizza.

On wednesday we took on St. Peter's Basilica. Holy cow that place is huge. we missed seeing the pope by about 20 minutes, which was pretty disappointing. We did get to climb up to the top of the dome though, and we saw the place where St. Peter is supposed to be burried. We also saw the tomb of Pope John Paul II, which was classy, but plain in comparrison to all the dead pope's tombs around them. (his was just a slab of marble, most had statues and busts and crazy decadent things on them). I forgot, before we went to the basilica we saw some catacombs that had been entirely decorated with human bones/mummified remains. ok, after the basilica, we walked to the Pantheon and then all the way back to our hostel. After dinner, we were fast asleep by 8pm.

Yesterday, we toured the Vatican and saw the Colloseum. the Colloseum was really cool, as were the ruins of the roman Forum next to it. The vatican just kept going and going and going and going and going. there were some crazy mummies there too, though. We also saw the Sistine Chapel which was different than I had expected, and also, way to croweded to really enjoy. Plus, the gaurds kept yelling "NO PHOTO. NO PHOTO. SILENCE. SILENCIO. SILENCE!!" which ruins it pretty fast.

anyway, Today, we're off to Venice!

Fastnach

I walked into town today to get some coffee and a salad, completely forgetting that fastnach is this weekend. Pretty quickly, I cursed myself for not having brought my camera, but it's ok because it should keep going for another couple of days.

Mostly, it's rag-tag groups of people in scary matching outfits doing the marching band bit with the smell of glühwein and sweets in the air.

oh noes, another month?

I guess another month has gone by without a blog. Sorry, Everyone. I've been simultaneously busy and not busy at all. Since Christmas, here's what's happened:

New Years was a blast. I hung out with some friends over at the Student Dorms and then we all went to O'Kelly's, and Irish Pub to meet up with my friends Eddie and Annie(his sister) and Eddie's girlfriend, Casey. Eventually, Eddie and Annie and I kicked most of the people I arrived with out of the pub because they were being inappropriate, loud, and obnoxious. So they went to climb up the big hill to watch the midnight fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in Germany, except on New Years. So, At midnight we all went out to the big open area in front of the state theater/my university and watched tons of people gather to shoot off fireworks. It was insane. there was no regard for safety, it seemed because people were shooting fireworks on dry grass, down hills, and they were the big sort of fireworks. the loud ones that fly up in the air and go POP and shower everyone with sparks. all in all it was really amazing.

as for new years resolutions, I'm failing on both accounts: keeping my room clean, and blogging more often. Hopefully I'll be motivated enough to pick up my room today, but considering I'm already blogging, who knows?

After New Years, Two of my best friends in the whole world, Jinda and Jenna, came to visit me. We had the most amazing time! I'm so happy they were here. We spent the first hour of every day reading (for which my room mate Benni teased us) and then we generally went and did something. We went to Basel, which good and bad. It has this amazing art museum with original Warhols, Dalis, Van Goghs, Monets, Manets usw usw. We also got to see the Rhine. Other than that, though, Basel is a terribly boring city. Their Cathedral didn't really hold a candle to the one in Freiburg-- at least from the outside, and most of the main section of town was just plain ugly and drab. I'm not a big fan of Basel. We then went to Heidelberg and had the best luck of weather ever. It only rained when we went inside somewhere, and when we were outside it was sunny. We got a little lost in Heidelberg because the train station is further from the Altstadt than you'd think. We ate at this great Thai resturaunt. We took our waiter off guard because I ordered in German, Jinda ordered in Thai, and Jenna ordered in english. The guy must have thought we were insane. Thats ok, though. We got to go up to the Castle there, which was fantasticly beautiful and had a great view of the city. When we came back down we tried to go to a pub that Mark Twain used to hang out in all the time, but it was closed for winter. Generally, We just had the best time. I'm super happy they came to visit.

Since then, life has been pretty quiet. Mostly trying to get all my work done for school before the end of the semester, even though it's not due until end of march. trying to get a lot of stuff done, mostly, Plan my semester break trip, figure out how my credits here are going to transfer so I can figure out what I need to register for for next fall, trying to figure out if i'm going to graduate on time of if i'll need to take a summer class.

I'm getting a new computer in February because mine's display has been busted since I got here, so once that comes I'll put new pictures up.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone! I know you've all gotten a lot of snow over the past few weeks, but today is the first snow for us. I'm pretty excited about it, actually, because most of the people I know think that frost counts as snow. Hopefully, now they'll see the difference between frost and snow.

I'm sorry I havn't updated in so long, I know, I should have, but the mood just never struck me. So heres a rundown of the things that have happened in the past month.

I went to Heidelberg and Mannheim for class. They combined two classes together for the trip, and the other class had things to do in Heidelberg, so the people in my class got 5 hours to bum around. It was good, the Christmas Market was there so we drank lots and lots of glühwein and went shopping. We found a pizza hut, but didn't eat there (I think we all wanted to, but nobody wanted to suggest it.) we did eat at this nice little thai place. Everything in Heidelberg is in french, english, and german, which is good for tourists, but a little annoying for us. We went up to the top of the cathedral there, which was super fun, though the stairs were really tiny. Peter hit his head on the way up because the stairs were also built for people who are only 5'5" or so. it was pretty funny. I was really disappointed that we didn't get to go to the castle in Heidelberg. I kept saying "Guys, I really want to make sure we get up this castle..." and everyone else said "oh, we have tons of time!" which, we all know is code for "we're never going to make it up there". It's a good thing i'm going back sometime in the next two weeks. Mannheim was nice, but we only got to see the Mosque there. It was a really beautiful Mosque, but by that time in the night we were all ready to go home and get to bed.

Ali, my friend studying in Spain, came to visit for a weekend. It was the tops. She came in on Thursday and left on monday. We had the best time. We took lots of walks and ate good flammkuchen, went to a movie (the golden compass... it was AWFUL), watched some TV, cooked for a bunch of my friends. It was so nice to see someone from home. Especially her, because we didn't have to do anything to have a good time. It rained the whole weekend, but that didn't stop us from climbing jesuitschloss or schlossberg. I can't wait to go visit her in Spain.

My friend Peter held a christmas party, which was super fun. I met a lot of new people that I hadn't met before, including some really rude French girls. It's very strange to meet the French here, theres a lot of tension between the French and the Americans... even amongst those who are friends. I've had french people tell me to burn my passport upon meeting me, and these girls at the party grabbed a pen and wrote "Stop The Iraq War" on Ryan's arm. He was telling me about how even though he agrees with that statement he found it extremely rude, as do I. My french is quite awful, (I only know a few phrases, such as 'what time is it?' and 'I don't speak french. do you speak german or english?') and it makes me scared to go to france. Whenever we do go to france, we usually try to speak in german as much as possible, and try not to let on that we speak any english. we shouldn't have to be embarrassed to speak english in front of these people, but we all are. My friend Jenna is coming soon, and she wanted to go to a smaller french town... It would have been ok for a day trip, but not only was it far away, but being a small french town put me right off. I'm ok with sticking to the larger/tourist cities such as Straßbourg and Paris, because there are many other germans and americans there. especially in Paris, where we might be american, but at least we're not the loudest. Anyway, Peter had this party, it was fun.

All of my room mates went home for christmas, so I've been hanging out by myself. I'm really enjoying the downtime. I've gotten to watch lots of movies, cook for myself, watch lots of TV without being in anyone's way. It's all very exciting. I spent Christmas with the local stray cat, "Willie/Wilhelm" or "Mishka" depending on who you ask. He's very sweet. He came by last night while I was making dinner for myself, and I fed him and let him sleep on the couch, until I had to kick him out for the night. In the summer, we just leave the window open and he comes and goes as he pleases. He came back this morning, and I let him in, he's been following me around ever since (climbing all over my keyboard, playing with my shoe laces, attacking the pillow on the couch). Right now he's fallen asleep next to me. He could use a little bit of a bath, but i'm not about to take on a task like that.

On the 2nd, two of my good friends from home are coming to visit, and I'm really excited about that. We're going to go to Heidelberg, Straßbourg, Basel, Shauinsland, and maybe Stuttgart. It's going to be the best. I can't wait to feed them flammkuchen and show them all my favorite hang outs. My roommates all speak a little english, which will be good for my friends. I'm excited for them to meet my roomies, they're all really fun.

Happy thanksgiving!

So, here's some pictures from last night, namely, what we ate (sadly small, right?) the gnome and the puritan, and a picture of all the IMP kids who were there. there were only 3 or 4 people missing. it was great!