Thursday, August 16, 2007
pictures
You can check out my pictures from Europe on my flickr. :D I don't have many up yet, but I'm working on it. oh and sometime...I'll have to put pics up of my crazy short hair. yaya.
Europe: part one
Europe.
Europe is amazing. I would love to live there any amount of time. I'm so excited about
going back. I don't know when I will or where or how, but I know I will.
GERMANY. We arrived in Frankfurt around 10 am in the morning. We met Thomas and Sabine, Ines' good friends, at the airport and we packed all our luggage in their minivan and mercedes and drove the 30 minutes to their house in Goldbach. Where we stayed they had three little towns really close to each other. There was Goldbach, Auschaffenburg, and Unterafferbach.
We rested a bit at their house, met their beautiful daughter, Janina, ate an amazing
lunch, fought to stay awake and tried to get aquainted with each other. Since Thomas and Sabine couldn't keep all 9 of us girls at their house, we split up into 3 groups. Steph, Julie, and I went and stayed with their neighbors, the Beisslers, who gave us the whole flat underneath their house for our own. They used to rent it out but stopped after they needed the extra room. They have 3 kids…Maria who is 15, Ruth who is 13, and Noah who is probably 10 or 11. Hammond and Monika are some of the most amazing people I have ever met. SO hospitable and friendly and welcoming and open…just above and beyond anything I ever expected. They all spoke English very well. Ruth and Noah not as much but they could understand a bit.
The next three days in Germany, we went to a few castles (in one, we went in and there was this barred off room which was a burial resting place. I looked through the bars and this whole great scene just started playing out in my mind. of a king who went in to pray to his gods, carefully sidestepping the place where his ancestors were buried and his servant comes in and asks him what he needs…how he can serves him. yes I have an insane imagination.) we went to a palace, walked through Auschaffenburg, walked through an amazing forest in the rain, ate lots of gelato, and went to BierGartens (beergardens). now…Andy thought that this was a place where you just go and drink beer. but…its actually quite different. you can eat here and of course get beer but we ate bratwurst which was sausage in bread (really really good) and sauerkraut and gelato…then we would always walk around in the gardens…huge gardens that look more like forests. They have rivers and brigdes and a lighthouse and its beautiful. A lot of it is manmade but you can only tell by the water which is quite stagnant. But everything else looks real.
The last day we were in Germany, we went to Wurzburg. We took a train there, which was exciting because it was my first time taking a train. :D We were going to go to a wine festival that day but there were so many people there we decided not to…but we did see a lot of the vineyards on the train ride…which were really interesting.
I remember mostly that it was really hot that day…and we saw a Brazilian "festival" there were shirtless Brazilian men and Brazilian women dancing in thongs in the middle of the street with like a whole band of drummers. we wanted to stay and watch but there were SO many people and it was really hot…but we did get to see a little bit and the funny thing was that there was this old man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat that as soon as he saw them coming down the street, started dancing like freakin' crazy with them. It was so funny.
The last morning we were in Germany, we ate breakfast with the Beisslers. The typical Bulvarian breakfast is bread with laberkasse (really yummy meat sort of like the texture of ham but it tastes completely different), different assortments of meat and cheese, big homemade pretzels, rhubarb cheesecake or some other cake, orange juice sometimes, and coffee. Monika made us the most delicious amazing Italian cappuccinos for breakfast that morning. Sometimes they even eat cold bratwurst sausage in the morning and we tried it because Noah wanted us to ;) but it almost made me gag eating it that early in the morning. After breakfast with them, we sat around and talked for a few hours before we went to the airport. Hammond told us about his travels in the US when he was young. He traveled for about 3 months…pretty much all over the US. Stayed with people he knew, stayed with people he didn't know, worked when he needed money, hitchhiked…I loved hearing about that.
LONDON, ENGLAND. London. The great wonderful historic city of London. I got off the plane from Frankfurt and was immediately hit with a blast of cold air…and rain. That was how the weather was the entire 3 days we were there. FUN. :P We took the Underground to the station closest to our hostel, then walked the rest of the way in the rain. Our hostel…wow. Well first of all, I wasn't even supposed to stay there. they only accepted people between the ages of 18 and 25 and I'm only 17. Ines had found a glitch online though that we could have gotten out of it had they said anything…but they didn't. :D Our room was on the 6th floor and thankfully we had the whole room to ourselves but we had to walk up these tiny really steep stairs every day. The room had a bathroom in it but everything was like…dwarfsized. TINY. our whole room was smaller than an average sized living room. there was a giant hole in the wall and when we took showers, water would come pouring out of it. kinda funny now but then we were kinda horrified.
One thing that was one of the big highlights of the trip for me was the Tate Modern Museum. We went to the British museum but I'm not really into old artifacts and such, as much as modern art. and the Tate was full of modern art…like three whole stories of it. I could have lived there…for days. It had such amazing art…rooms and rooms filled with giant canvases painted brilliantly. I was so astounded. There is so much life in art. so much story-telling. there's no way you can look at a painting and understand the worth and depth of it in a single glance…or even two. It takes immense studying and researching of the artist…at least for me. it makes a huge difference. and for me to be in the Tate for about an hour at the most because everyone else wanted to leave, and have all that art around me and have to speed through it…made me sad. like I said…I could have *lived there. ;)
We saw Big Ben (absolutely stunning…I stood there and just stared up at it for the longest time…probably one of the great beauties I've seen), Westminster Abbey, shopped on Oxford Street, lost Julie for an entire day, walked on the Millenium Bridge where this elder British lady yelled at us to "PICK UP YOUR FEET" yeah. we had been dragging our feet because it made a funny sound…so we looked at her for a sec, walked normally for about five steps, burst out laughing, and then dragged our feet again. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral which was beautiful (another great scene of a wedding took place in my mind there :P), took a red double-decker bus :P, rode the underground lots *fun stuff…I liked it anyway* we saw the Tower of London, did a little song and dance on the bridge, went to Buckingham Palce (where we waited an hour and half in FREEZING weather to watch the changing of the guards. we were all huddled together and talking a little bit but mostly, it was too cold. oh but we were talking about pickpockets one time and how bad they were. Beth was standing behind me and she said, "and you'll never even
notice if someone comes up to you and goes like this!" and she reached her hand into my back pocket and groped around for like 2 seconds and then pulled it out. it was so funny…and laughing warmed us up a bit. :P) we ate some amazing pizza, ate fish and chips, ate some absolutely incredible *but rather expensive* Indian food, ate at 'Eat', watched drunken men stumble around in the middle of the street at noon…after stealing a cabbage LOL, backpacked through Hyde Park on our way to catch the bus to the airport when we were leaving, and finally took our plane to our next destination which was….
BARCELONA, SPAIN. Barcelona was interesting. Not my favorite place, but it does have its beauty. Every place does, I think. You can always find beauty somewhere in something. It's always there…you just have to look for it.
I remember this city being very noisy because of all the moped drivers *everywhere. our hostel was very big…pretty nice. when we got there and checked in, the clerk told us since there were 10 beds and there were 9 of us girls they put a young man in that room with us. And he said he was from Las Vegas…and that became his name from then on. :P We talked to him a bit whenever he was there, but I don't think we ever found out his real name, lol. We woke up in the morning to the maid yelling at us that she needed to clean the rooms so we needed to get out. *sigh* I was feeling extremely sick and considered staying at the hostel, but didn't want to miss out on seeing Barcelona…and I'm so glad I went. we ended up going to Parc Guell.. took a while and thank God there were escalators because walking up a hill that steep was insane. There was this one view we saw looking over the city and there was this random sign on the middle of a rooftop that said "Why call it tourist season if you can't shoot them?" I got a kick out of that.
We saw a man playing a hang. one of the most beautiful things I have seen…and heard. its this instrument that you play with your fingers...it kinda looks like a giant upside metal bowl and you use your fingers to beat out notes…it sounds absolutely amazing. I could have stood and watched him for a very long time. I was completely mesmerized. He seemed to me the epitome of Spain…red shirt, long dreads, playing a musical instrument for his living in a sandy cave. just so beautiful in such a simple way.
We saw the incredible Fount de Mont Juic. A great beauty. It's a fountain which sort of has a light show. the water turns into different colors and melts to the rhythm of classical music…gives you goosebumps just standing there, the wind blowing in your face, beautiful music playing and a out of this world beauty before your eyes. takes your breath away.
The second and last day we were in Barcelona, we saw Sagrada Familia, ate in a delicious Tapas bar, and went to a club. Being able to drink legally over there is priceless. I loved it.
Leaving Barcelona was a bit crazy. We got up at 5am in order to have enough time to take a taxi to the bus station, and then to take the one hour bus to the airport. We had it all planned out. But...things rarely go as planned. We had called three taxis to come out to take us to the bus station but when only two showed up we split up into 2 groups. The taxi drivers took us to the wrong place, when we finally got them to understand we needed to go to the bus station, they started the meter again and when we finally got there and they severely overcharged us, we were too much in a hurry to stay and figure things out. We found our 5.30 bus running a bit late so we stood there and waited for Ines and Tab to show up. And...we waited until the bus left. There was another bus at 6.30 so we decided we would get on that one when Ines and Tab did get there. Well...we waited an hour. They still weren't there. We were all worried and stressed and half the group was crying. We finally decided against splitting up into *3 groups and we all got on the bus. I slept until we got to the airport where we finally found Ines and Tab. Ines was having a heart attack, frantically asking us where the hell we had been. It turns out...their taxi driver had actually gotten them there *before we got there and they had gotten on the 5.30 bus...the same bus we had stood by for 15 minutes until it left. And since we were so badly behind on time, we just barely made our flight. Imagine this...all before 8am. Yeah. It was insane.
So we ended up leaving Barcelona with quite a distasteful goodbye. But we all made it safely *and together* to...Rome.
Europe is amazing. I would love to live there any amount of time. I'm so excited about
going back. I don't know when I will or where or how, but I know I will.
GERMANY. We arrived in Frankfurt around 10 am in the morning. We met Thomas and Sabine, Ines' good friends, at the airport and we packed all our luggage in their minivan and mercedes and drove the 30 minutes to their house in Goldbach. Where we stayed they had three little towns really close to each other. There was Goldbach, Auschaffenburg, and Unterafferbach.
We rested a bit at their house, met their beautiful daughter, Janina, ate an amazing
lunch, fought to stay awake and tried to get aquainted with each other. Since Thomas and Sabine couldn't keep all 9 of us girls at their house, we split up into 3 groups. Steph, Julie, and I went and stayed with their neighbors, the Beisslers, who gave us the whole flat underneath their house for our own. They used to rent it out but stopped after they needed the extra room. They have 3 kids…Maria who is 15, Ruth who is 13, and Noah who is probably 10 or 11. Hammond and Monika are some of the most amazing people I have ever met. SO hospitable and friendly and welcoming and open…just above and beyond anything I ever expected. They all spoke English very well. Ruth and Noah not as much but they could understand a bit.
The next three days in Germany, we went to a few castles (in one, we went in and there was this barred off room which was a burial resting place. I looked through the bars and this whole great scene just started playing out in my mind. of a king who went in to pray to his gods, carefully sidestepping the place where his ancestors were buried and his servant comes in and asks him what he needs…how he can serves him. yes I have an insane imagination.) we went to a palace, walked through Auschaffenburg, walked through an amazing forest in the rain, ate lots of gelato, and went to BierGartens (beergardens). now…Andy thought that this was a place where you just go and drink beer. but…its actually quite different. you can eat here and of course get beer but we ate bratwurst which was sausage in bread (really really good) and sauerkraut and gelato…then we would always walk around in the gardens…huge gardens that look more like forests. They have rivers and brigdes and a lighthouse and its beautiful. A lot of it is manmade but you can only tell by the water which is quite stagnant. But everything else looks real.
The last day we were in Germany, we went to Wurzburg. We took a train there, which was exciting because it was my first time taking a train. :D We were going to go to a wine festival that day but there were so many people there we decided not to…but we did see a lot of the vineyards on the train ride…which were really interesting.
I remember mostly that it was really hot that day…and we saw a Brazilian "festival" there were shirtless Brazilian men and Brazilian women dancing in thongs in the middle of the street with like a whole band of drummers. we wanted to stay and watch but there were SO many people and it was really hot…but we did get to see a little bit and the funny thing was that there was this old man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat that as soon as he saw them coming down the street, started dancing like freakin' crazy with them. It was so funny.
The last morning we were in Germany, we ate breakfast with the Beisslers. The typical Bulvarian breakfast is bread with laberkasse (really yummy meat sort of like the texture of ham but it tastes completely different), different assortments of meat and cheese, big homemade pretzels, rhubarb cheesecake or some other cake, orange juice sometimes, and coffee. Monika made us the most delicious amazing Italian cappuccinos for breakfast that morning. Sometimes they even eat cold bratwurst sausage in the morning and we tried it because Noah wanted us to ;) but it almost made me gag eating it that early in the morning. After breakfast with them, we sat around and talked for a few hours before we went to the airport. Hammond told us about his travels in the US when he was young. He traveled for about 3 months…pretty much all over the US. Stayed with people he knew, stayed with people he didn't know, worked when he needed money, hitchhiked…I loved hearing about that.
LONDON, ENGLAND. London. The great wonderful historic city of London. I got off the plane from Frankfurt and was immediately hit with a blast of cold air…and rain. That was how the weather was the entire 3 days we were there. FUN. :P We took the Underground to the station closest to our hostel, then walked the rest of the way in the rain. Our hostel…wow. Well first of all, I wasn't even supposed to stay there. they only accepted people between the ages of 18 and 25 and I'm only 17. Ines had found a glitch online though that we could have gotten out of it had they said anything…but they didn't. :D Our room was on the 6th floor and thankfully we had the whole room to ourselves but we had to walk up these tiny really steep stairs every day. The room had a bathroom in it but everything was like…dwarfsized. TINY. our whole room was smaller than an average sized living room. there was a giant hole in the wall and when we took showers, water would come pouring out of it. kinda funny now but then we were kinda horrified.
One thing that was one of the big highlights of the trip for me was the Tate Modern Museum. We went to the British museum but I'm not really into old artifacts and such, as much as modern art. and the Tate was full of modern art…like three whole stories of it. I could have lived there…for days. It had such amazing art…rooms and rooms filled with giant canvases painted brilliantly. I was so astounded. There is so much life in art. so much story-telling. there's no way you can look at a painting and understand the worth and depth of it in a single glance…or even two. It takes immense studying and researching of the artist…at least for me. it makes a huge difference. and for me to be in the Tate for about an hour at the most because everyone else wanted to leave, and have all that art around me and have to speed through it…made me sad. like I said…I could have *lived there. ;)
We saw Big Ben (absolutely stunning…I stood there and just stared up at it for the longest time…probably one of the great beauties I've seen), Westminster Abbey, shopped on Oxford Street, lost Julie for an entire day, walked on the Millenium Bridge where this elder British lady yelled at us to "PICK UP YOUR FEET" yeah. we had been dragging our feet because it made a funny sound…so we looked at her for a sec, walked normally for about five steps, burst out laughing, and then dragged our feet again. We saw St. Paul's Cathedral which was beautiful (another great scene of a wedding took place in my mind there :P), took a red double-decker bus :P, rode the underground lots *fun stuff…I liked it anyway* we saw the Tower of London, did a little song and dance on the bridge, went to Buckingham Palce (where we waited an hour and half in FREEZING weather to watch the changing of the guards. we were all huddled together and talking a little bit but mostly, it was too cold. oh but we were talking about pickpockets one time and how bad they were. Beth was standing behind me and she said, "and you'll never even
notice if someone comes up to you and goes like this!" and she reached her hand into my back pocket and groped around for like 2 seconds and then pulled it out. it was so funny…and laughing warmed us up a bit. :P) we ate some amazing pizza, ate fish and chips, ate some absolutely incredible *but rather expensive* Indian food, ate at 'Eat', watched drunken men stumble around in the middle of the street at noon…after stealing a cabbage LOL, backpacked through Hyde Park on our way to catch the bus to the airport when we were leaving, and finally took our plane to our next destination which was….
BARCELONA, SPAIN. Barcelona was interesting. Not my favorite place, but it does have its beauty. Every place does, I think. You can always find beauty somewhere in something. It's always there…you just have to look for it.
I remember this city being very noisy because of all the moped drivers *everywhere. our hostel was very big…pretty nice. when we got there and checked in, the clerk told us since there were 10 beds and there were 9 of us girls they put a young man in that room with us. And he said he was from Las Vegas…and that became his name from then on. :P We talked to him a bit whenever he was there, but I don't think we ever found out his real name, lol. We woke up in the morning to the maid yelling at us that she needed to clean the rooms so we needed to get out. *sigh* I was feeling extremely sick and considered staying at the hostel, but didn't want to miss out on seeing Barcelona…and I'm so glad I went. we ended up going to Parc Guell.. took a while and thank God there were escalators because walking up a hill that steep was insane. There was this one view we saw looking over the city and there was this random sign on the middle of a rooftop that said "Why call it tourist season if you can't shoot them?" I got a kick out of that.
We saw a man playing a hang. one of the most beautiful things I have seen…and heard. its this instrument that you play with your fingers...it kinda looks like a giant upside metal bowl and you use your fingers to beat out notes…it sounds absolutely amazing. I could have stood and watched him for a very long time. I was completely mesmerized. He seemed to me the epitome of Spain…red shirt, long dreads, playing a musical instrument for his living in a sandy cave. just so beautiful in such a simple way.
We saw the incredible Fount de Mont Juic. A great beauty. It's a fountain which sort of has a light show. the water turns into different colors and melts to the rhythm of classical music…gives you goosebumps just standing there, the wind blowing in your face, beautiful music playing and a out of this world beauty before your eyes. takes your breath away.
The second and last day we were in Barcelona, we saw Sagrada Familia, ate in a delicious Tapas bar, and went to a club. Being able to drink legally over there is priceless. I loved it.
Leaving Barcelona was a bit crazy. We got up at 5am in order to have enough time to take a taxi to the bus station, and then to take the one hour bus to the airport. We had it all planned out. But...things rarely go as planned. We had called three taxis to come out to take us to the bus station but when only two showed up we split up into 2 groups. The taxi drivers took us to the wrong place, when we finally got them to understand we needed to go to the bus station, they started the meter again and when we finally got there and they severely overcharged us, we were too much in a hurry to stay and figure things out. We found our 5.30 bus running a bit late so we stood there and waited for Ines and Tab to show up. And...we waited until the bus left. There was another bus at 6.30 so we decided we would get on that one when Ines and Tab did get there. Well...we waited an hour. They still weren't there. We were all worried and stressed and half the group was crying. We finally decided against splitting up into *3 groups and we all got on the bus. I slept until we got to the airport where we finally found Ines and Tab. Ines was having a heart attack, frantically asking us where the hell we had been. It turns out...their taxi driver had actually gotten them there *before we got there and they had gotten on the 5.30 bus...the same bus we had stood by for 15 minutes until it left. And since we were so badly behind on time, we just barely made our flight. Imagine this...all before 8am. Yeah. It was insane.
So we ended up leaving Barcelona with quite a distasteful goodbye. But we all made it safely *and together* to...Rome.
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