Ok, posts about Venice, Vienna, Cesky Krumlov, and eventually London will be up...well...eventually, but for now...
I'M DONE WITH FINALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That is all.
Now, off to the lake and then end of program dinner!
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Passau, Germany
Wow, I'm getting behind! On Tuesday, June 5 we went to Passau, Germany for the day. We left at 7am so we could take the scenic route on the way there. Apparently we drove along the Danube and through some really gorgeous parts of the Austrian country-side. I have no idea. I got on the bus and slept almost the whole way there (as did most people). Oh well! Passau is this small town in Germany, right across the borer from Austria. 3 rivers meet there and the main part of town is on this little "V" of land with the rivers running down the sides of it and meeting to form the third river (The Danube) at the point of the V.
We went to the University of Passau, which has apparently been rated as having one of the prettiest campuses in Europe (and I believe it), for a short lecture on German arbitration law. It was cold and rainy so we went straight to the center of town after the lecture instead of looking around the campus at all.
Once we got to the center of town we all went to find something to eat and then find a bar where we could sit and relax, grab a drink, and, most importantly, stay warm and dry. After about an hour or so of hanging out in the bar we found, I decided I didn't care about the cold and rain anymore and I wanted to go explore...so, off I went!
I started by wandering over to the Cathedral in the center of town. It claims to have the largest Cathedral organ in the world. It was pretty huge. This cathedral was absolutely beautiful. They had trees indoors lining the aisles and paintings on the ceilings and walls, and it was just beautiful. It was very different from some of the other typically ornate churches in Europe. Even though it was huge and very ornate it felt..lighter and more airy than most "typical" ornate churches. It was very light and bright inside. I stayed in there long enough to hear someone start warming up on the Organ. They have two free concerts each day at the Cathedral but I missed them both due to the timing of our lecture and when we were leaving.
After leaving the Cathedral, I wandered through the town to the Rathaus which was right along the river and you could see the fortress on the other side of the river. It was a really cute square and the fortress looked like it would have been fun to go explore, but I wasn't sure about the timing of the buses to it and didn't want to risk running out of time or being late for the bus back to Linz.
From there, I decided to walk along the water and follow the river to the tip of the land where the rivers meet. Along the way I met a really nice British couple who took a couple of pictures for me. They were taking a river cruise through central Europe and were very excited to talk to me about school and what I was doing in Europe during the summer. We went our separate ways and I continued down to the park at the point where the rivers meet. The view was really cool! You could stand there and see the rivers converging.
I walked up the other side of the "V" and quickly ran into a slight problem. The river was overflowing and covering the path. It was actually very cool. I walked around the overflow and wandered back down to the path along the water. Apparently the river is always overflowing a little bit on that side because a sandy beach has been created where the path should be. In places you can see the path, or parts of it, being covered by the water. I decided to walk along the "beach" a little bit and see where it took me. I came across all sorts of people who had the same idea as me- from business people in suits to couples strolling and families with kids playing in the sand.
Not wanting to wander too far away from the center of town, I headed up a steep flight of stairs away from the river and back into the center of town. From there I went to a cafe that I read about as having great coffee and desserts. I think it was called Cafe Simon. A couple of the girls from my program were inside so I sat down with them and grabbed a cup of coffee with amaretto and a piece of some cake-like thing for dessert. Everything was really good and I was definitely glad I stopped in.
After coffee we went to see if we could find the rest of the group that had stayed at the bar. They weren't there anymore so we wandered to another cafe. From there I went to wander around a little more and finally bought myself an umbrella. It has been very rainy the whole time I've been here and I left my umbrella at home. It wasn't consistently raining enough to merit buying one seeing as the ones I had found were around 8-10 Euros, but I found one for 2 Euro and decided it would be worth buying. (In case you were wondering, it was!)
I ended up finding a bigger part of the group in my wandering at that point and we all headed down to the bus park place where we were supposed to be meeting since it was getting close to time to leave. The bus ride home was pretty crazy. Everyone was having a blast. I don't think we quite achieved the levels we reached on the way home from Salzburg, but we had a good time. I won't go into detail for the sake of those involved, but suffice it to say that someone fell asleep and sharpies were involved.
Well, back to studying for me. I'll try to get a couple more updates in to get caught up as I need study breaks!
We went to the University of Passau, which has apparently been rated as having one of the prettiest campuses in Europe (and I believe it), for a short lecture on German arbitration law. It was cold and rainy so we went straight to the center of town after the lecture instead of looking around the campus at all.
Once we got to the center of town we all went to find something to eat and then find a bar where we could sit and relax, grab a drink, and, most importantly, stay warm and dry. After about an hour or so of hanging out in the bar we found, I decided I didn't care about the cold and rain anymore and I wanted to go explore...so, off I went!
I started by wandering over to the Cathedral in the center of town. It claims to have the largest Cathedral organ in the world. It was pretty huge. This cathedral was absolutely beautiful. They had trees indoors lining the aisles and paintings on the ceilings and walls, and it was just beautiful. It was very different from some of the other typically ornate churches in Europe. Even though it was huge and very ornate it felt..lighter and more airy than most "typical" ornate churches. It was very light and bright inside. I stayed in there long enough to hear someone start warming up on the Organ. They have two free concerts each day at the Cathedral but I missed them both due to the timing of our lecture and when we were leaving.
After leaving the Cathedral, I wandered through the town to the Rathaus which was right along the river and you could see the fortress on the other side of the river. It was a really cute square and the fortress looked like it would have been fun to go explore, but I wasn't sure about the timing of the buses to it and didn't want to risk running out of time or being late for the bus back to Linz.
From there, I decided to walk along the water and follow the river to the tip of the land where the rivers meet. Along the way I met a really nice British couple who took a couple of pictures for me. They were taking a river cruise through central Europe and were very excited to talk to me about school and what I was doing in Europe during the summer. We went our separate ways and I continued down to the park at the point where the rivers meet. The view was really cool! You could stand there and see the rivers converging.
I walked up the other side of the "V" and quickly ran into a slight problem. The river was overflowing and covering the path. It was actually very cool. I walked around the overflow and wandered back down to the path along the water. Apparently the river is always overflowing a little bit on that side because a sandy beach has been created where the path should be. In places you can see the path, or parts of it, being covered by the water. I decided to walk along the "beach" a little bit and see where it took me. I came across all sorts of people who had the same idea as me- from business people in suits to couples strolling and families with kids playing in the sand.
Not wanting to wander too far away from the center of town, I headed up a steep flight of stairs away from the river and back into the center of town. From there I went to a cafe that I read about as having great coffee and desserts. I think it was called Cafe Simon. A couple of the girls from my program were inside so I sat down with them and grabbed a cup of coffee with amaretto and a piece of some cake-like thing for dessert. Everything was really good and I was definitely glad I stopped in.
After coffee we went to see if we could find the rest of the group that had stayed at the bar. They weren't there anymore so we wandered to another cafe. From there I went to wander around a little more and finally bought myself an umbrella. It has been very rainy the whole time I've been here and I left my umbrella at home. It wasn't consistently raining enough to merit buying one seeing as the ones I had found were around 8-10 Euros, but I found one for 2 Euro and decided it would be worth buying. (In case you were wondering, it was!)
I ended up finding a bigger part of the group in my wandering at that point and we all headed down to the bus park place where we were supposed to be meeting since it was getting close to time to leave. The bus ride home was pretty crazy. Everyone was having a blast. I don't think we quite achieved the levels we reached on the way home from Salzburg, but we had a good time. I won't go into detail for the sake of those involved, but suffice it to say that someone fell asleep and sharpies were involved.
Well, back to studying for me. I'll try to get a couple more updates in to get caught up as I need study breaks!
Monday, June 11, 2012
The Best Cab Ride Ever...Munich Part 2
Ok, so its been super busy and I'm just getting around to my Munich Part 2 update... Passau, Venice, and Vienna, will follow!
Back to Munich and my Bday weekend... On Sunday we had a grand adventure to go visit Neuschwanstein Castle. (Its the one that inspired the Disney Castle.) For those of you who don't want to read this whole thing, I'll give you the quick summary: AMAZING!!! Pictures are at the end of the post since Blogger isn't cooperating right now.
For the longer story...
We started out the morning getting ready and heading to the train station. We got the Bayern (Bavaria) train pass that let us ride all regional transportation for the whole day, which was way cheaper than getting individual tickets for every part of the journey to the castle. We had planned out which trains to take to get there the night before and were ready and excited to get going.
We got to the main train station and found our train to Augsburg, where we would then connect to Fussen. We grabbed pastries for breakfast and got on the train all ready for what should have been a relatively straight forward trip. We killed time playing Monopoly Deal and then we heard the announcer say that the next stop was "blah-blah-blah Augsburg." Augsburg was our stop so we got off. Well, we were in Augsburg, technically, just not at the main train station where we needed to be. Oops. We checked the train schedules posted and realized that we wouldn't be able to make our connecting train to Fussen by taking any of the trains coming through the stop we were at. This made our decision to go look for a bus, which eventually ended in us taking a cab to the main train station. We found a very nice cab driver who spoke basically no English (and we all speak basically no German) but we could tell him we wanted the hauptbahnhof and, thanks to Erin, I could even ask him how much that would be before we decided to get in the cab! (Not that I had any remote idea what his answer was at first when he told me in German). So we got in the cab with maybe 15 minutes until our connecting train was leaving the main train station and essentially raced the clock to get there. The cab driver had the radio on and was playing American music. Katy Perry's TGIF came on and Sarah and I proceeded to sing along quietly in the back seat...we sang quietly until the cab driver heard us and CRANKED the volume! It was awesome! We had a blast rockin' out in the cab and we even made it to the train station in enough time to make our train!
This train ride was almost 2 hours, bringing our total train travel to just under 3 hours one way. The train ride was relatively uneventful, we played monopoly deal and looked at some awesome scenery. Once we got to Fussen, we took a bus to Hohenschwangau, the small town at the bottom of the mountain where the castle is. We got our tour tickets (the only way into the castle is through a tour), grabbed lunch, and did some shopping before taking another bus up the mountain to the castle. The castle is absolutely gorgeous, as is the area its in. Mountains and lakes and just wow.
We took pictures on the bridge that overlooks the castle and all around the castle. We weren't supposed to take pictures inside but Google "Neuschwanstein Castle Interior" and you can see how awesome this place was! The tour was pretty good, just not long enough. The whole tour lasted about 30 minutes and I easily could have spent the whole day in the castle looking at each of the rooms.
The rain held off until just as we were leaving the castle, which meant we took the bus back down the mountain and got pretty wet waiting for the bus back into Fussen. From Fussen we took the trains (which were absolutely packed!) back to Augsburg and then Munich. We grabbed Subway in Augsburg, since it was already around 9pm and we were hungry, and it was open. When we got back to Munich we headed back to the hotel intending to play monopoly deal some more, but actually ended up packing up our stuff and going to bed.
Monday morning it was off to the train station again so I could grab a train back to Linz in time for class and Sarah and Kaley could grab a bus to the airport and head home. It was an awesome birthday weekend! The pictures are below!
Back to Munich and my Bday weekend... On Sunday we had a grand adventure to go visit Neuschwanstein Castle. (Its the one that inspired the Disney Castle.) For those of you who don't want to read this whole thing, I'll give you the quick summary: AMAZING!!! Pictures are at the end of the post since Blogger isn't cooperating right now.
For the longer story...
We started out the morning getting ready and heading to the train station. We got the Bayern (Bavaria) train pass that let us ride all regional transportation for the whole day, which was way cheaper than getting individual tickets for every part of the journey to the castle. We had planned out which trains to take to get there the night before and were ready and excited to get going.
We got to the main train station and found our train to Augsburg, where we would then connect to Fussen. We grabbed pastries for breakfast and got on the train all ready for what should have been a relatively straight forward trip. We killed time playing Monopoly Deal and then we heard the announcer say that the next stop was "blah-blah-blah Augsburg." Augsburg was our stop so we got off. Well, we were in Augsburg, technically, just not at the main train station where we needed to be. Oops. We checked the train schedules posted and realized that we wouldn't be able to make our connecting train to Fussen by taking any of the trains coming through the stop we were at. This made our decision to go look for a bus, which eventually ended in us taking a cab to the main train station. We found a very nice cab driver who spoke basically no English (and we all speak basically no German) but we could tell him we wanted the hauptbahnhof and, thanks to Erin, I could even ask him how much that would be before we decided to get in the cab! (Not that I had any remote idea what his answer was at first when he told me in German). So we got in the cab with maybe 15 minutes until our connecting train was leaving the main train station and essentially raced the clock to get there. The cab driver had the radio on and was playing American music. Katy Perry's TGIF came on and Sarah and I proceeded to sing along quietly in the back seat...we sang quietly until the cab driver heard us and CRANKED the volume! It was awesome! We had a blast rockin' out in the cab and we even made it to the train station in enough time to make our train!
This train ride was almost 2 hours, bringing our total train travel to just under 3 hours one way. The train ride was relatively uneventful, we played monopoly deal and looked at some awesome scenery. Once we got to Fussen, we took a bus to Hohenschwangau, the small town at the bottom of the mountain where the castle is. We got our tour tickets (the only way into the castle is through a tour), grabbed lunch, and did some shopping before taking another bus up the mountain to the castle. The castle is absolutely gorgeous, as is the area its in. Mountains and lakes and just wow.
We took pictures on the bridge that overlooks the castle and all around the castle. We weren't supposed to take pictures inside but Google "Neuschwanstein Castle Interior" and you can see how awesome this place was! The tour was pretty good, just not long enough. The whole tour lasted about 30 minutes and I easily could have spent the whole day in the castle looking at each of the rooms.
The rain held off until just as we were leaving the castle, which meant we took the bus back down the mountain and got pretty wet waiting for the bus back into Fussen. From Fussen we took the trains (which were absolutely packed!) back to Augsburg and then Munich. We grabbed Subway in Augsburg, since it was already around 9pm and we were hungry, and it was open. When we got back to Munich we headed back to the hotel intending to play monopoly deal some more, but actually ended up packing up our stuff and going to bed.
Monday morning it was off to the train station again so I could grab a train back to Linz in time for class and Sarah and Kaley could grab a bus to the airport and head home. It was an awesome birthday weekend! The pictures are below!
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| The waterfall |
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| View from the train on the way to Fussen |
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| Restaurant we ate lunch at! The castle is on the hill in the background! |
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| the top of the mountains are covered in clouds! |
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| Really Excited/Scared looking horse on a door in the castle grounds |
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Happy Birthday to ME! Munich Part 1
Happy Birthday to Me!! Or, well, June 2nd was my birthday...so Happy Belated Birthday to Me!! Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and tell you all about Munich in two posts because I think one might just be longer than anyone wants to read at once...ok to be honest, it's just longer than I want to write at once.
I took the train up over Munich on Friday and went ahead and checked into our hotel and then sat down to wait for Sarah and Kaley to get there. My train got into Munich about the same time Sarah's flight was supposed to land, but since they flew into the Ryanair airport and had to take the bus into the city to get to the train station to take the metro to our hotel.
The hotel was a few stops outside the main part of the city and pretty nice for what we needed it for. 3 beds, a bathroom, and a table and TV. Once Sarah and Kaley got there we went into the city center to find dinner and wander around a little bit.
We ended up getting dinner at a German Restaurant right on Marienplatz, the main square. It was pretty good. I had a salad instead of any actual German food because I was so excited to find vegetables on a menu, but it was tasty and I got the house wheat beer which was also tasty. The Germans like their beer. I got the "small" beer and it was a 1/2 liter.
From dinner we wandered around a little bit and found a cafe for coffee and dessert before heading back to the hotel to play Monopoly Deal and make it an early night. Kaley won some pretty epic games of Monopoly Deal, including one where she stole 2 full sets from me in one turn to win, and then one game where I was an idiot and handed over the two cards she needed as payment for a debt without even realizing I was handing her the two cards she needed to win.
We got up Saturday morning (my bday) ready to see the city. We started out wandering through the Viktualienmarkt, a big market area where we grabbed some fruit and pastries for breakfast. From there we really wandered in a big circle, hitting all the sights as we passed them: St. Peter's Church, Frauenkirche (which wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped), the Town Hall in Marienplatz, and finally the Royal Residence and Opera.
When we got to the Royal Residence we found an outdoor library in the square with hammocks and bean bags and tons of people just lounging in the square reading. It was seriously awesome and I want Atlanta to get one.
From the Royal Residence's Gardens, we realized we were right at the start of the English Garden and decided to wander through it. It is the largest urban park in the world (bigger than Central Park) so we definitely didn't make it through the whole garden. We did find the Japanese Tea House and the Chinese Beer Garden. The tea house was beautiful. It was closed when we walked past and from what we could tell, its only actually opened a couple of time per month. We wandered along the river in the park until we reached the Chinese Beer Garden and stopped for lunch. The area was pretty cool and we all got sausages for lunch (and a beer for me).
After lunch we decided to head out to the Olympic Park from the 1972 Olympics. When we got there we were pretty tired and decided that we really didn't care enough to pay to see anything in the park and we didn't want to just wander the park since we had just done that in the English Garden. The BMW Museum was right there as well so we walked in for a minute and played on the motorcycles outside.
Next we headed off to the Nymphenburg Palace. There was a wedding going on which was pretty cool, and we just wandered around the grounds a little and grabbed some water at a cafe (actually where the wedding reception was about to take place- we weren't dressed to crash it though...haha).
It was getting pretty close to dinner time by then so we headed back into Marienplatz to find dinner. We really had no idea what we wanted, but did know that we didn't want German food. We ended up finding a little Italian Restaurant with good pizza. From dinner, we headed to the Hofbrauhaus to really celebrate my birthday. I got, and finished thank-you-very-much, the BIG beer. Full liter of the Hofbrau Original beer. It was really good, and there was a ton of it. We split some apple strudel for dessert and just sat outside enjoying the night. Eventually, despite Sarah and Kaley turning my beer-drinking into the next sport deserving of commentary, which was absolutely hysterical and kept making me laugh, I did finish my liter of beer. I dedicated sips of it to my Dad and my friend Dillon, who commissioned as a 2nd Lt. in the Marine Corp that day! (You're welcome!) We headed home after the Hofbrauhaus to figure out exactly what we needed to do for our Sunday Adventure to the castle and, of course, to play more Monopoly Deal!
Overall, it was a pretty awesome birthday! I'll update soon about Munich part 2, our trip to Neuschwanstein Castle!
I took the train up over Munich on Friday and went ahead and checked into our hotel and then sat down to wait for Sarah and Kaley to get there. My train got into Munich about the same time Sarah's flight was supposed to land, but since they flew into the Ryanair airport and had to take the bus into the city to get to the train station to take the metro to our hotel.
The hotel was a few stops outside the main part of the city and pretty nice for what we needed it for. 3 beds, a bathroom, and a table and TV. Once Sarah and Kaley got there we went into the city center to find dinner and wander around a little bit.
We ended up getting dinner at a German Restaurant right on Marienplatz, the main square. It was pretty good. I had a salad instead of any actual German food because I was so excited to find vegetables on a menu, but it was tasty and I got the house wheat beer which was also tasty. The Germans like their beer. I got the "small" beer and it was a 1/2 liter.
From dinner we wandered around a little bit and found a cafe for coffee and dessert before heading back to the hotel to play Monopoly Deal and make it an early night. Kaley won some pretty epic games of Monopoly Deal, including one where she stole 2 full sets from me in one turn to win, and then one game where I was an idiot and handed over the two cards she needed as payment for a debt without even realizing I was handing her the two cards she needed to win.
We got up Saturday morning (my bday) ready to see the city. We started out wandering through the Viktualienmarkt, a big market area where we grabbed some fruit and pastries for breakfast. From there we really wandered in a big circle, hitting all the sights as we passed them: St. Peter's Church, Frauenkirche (which wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped), the Town Hall in Marienplatz, and finally the Royal Residence and Opera.
When we got to the Royal Residence we found an outdoor library in the square with hammocks and bean bags and tons of people just lounging in the square reading. It was seriously awesome and I want Atlanta to get one.
From the Royal Residence's Gardens, we realized we were right at the start of the English Garden and decided to wander through it. It is the largest urban park in the world (bigger than Central Park) so we definitely didn't make it through the whole garden. We did find the Japanese Tea House and the Chinese Beer Garden. The tea house was beautiful. It was closed when we walked past and from what we could tell, its only actually opened a couple of time per month. We wandered along the river in the park until we reached the Chinese Beer Garden and stopped for lunch. The area was pretty cool and we all got sausages for lunch (and a beer for me).
After lunch we decided to head out to the Olympic Park from the 1972 Olympics. When we got there we were pretty tired and decided that we really didn't care enough to pay to see anything in the park and we didn't want to just wander the park since we had just done that in the English Garden. The BMW Museum was right there as well so we walked in for a minute and played on the motorcycles outside.
Next we headed off to the Nymphenburg Palace. There was a wedding going on which was pretty cool, and we just wandered around the grounds a little and grabbed some water at a cafe (actually where the wedding reception was about to take place- we weren't dressed to crash it though...haha).
It was getting pretty close to dinner time by then so we headed back into Marienplatz to find dinner. We really had no idea what we wanted, but did know that we didn't want German food. We ended up finding a little Italian Restaurant with good pizza. From dinner, we headed to the Hofbrauhaus to really celebrate my birthday. I got, and finished thank-you-very-much, the BIG beer. Full liter of the Hofbrau Original beer. It was really good, and there was a ton of it. We split some apple strudel for dessert and just sat outside enjoying the night. Eventually, despite Sarah and Kaley turning my beer-drinking into the next sport deserving of commentary, which was absolutely hysterical and kept making me laugh, I did finish my liter of beer. I dedicated sips of it to my Dad and my friend Dillon, who commissioned as a 2nd Lt. in the Marine Corp that day! (You're welcome!) We headed home after the Hofbrauhaus to figure out exactly what we needed to do for our Sunday Adventure to the castle and, of course, to play more Monopoly Deal!
Overall, it was a pretty awesome birthday! I'll update soon about Munich part 2, our trip to Neuschwanstein Castle!
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