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“At 12 a.m. everyone celebrated my birthday!” |
Finally, a long awaited update! Second semester is now in full swing. I left the states on Tuesday, January 9th, arriving in Germany early the next morning. I finally made it back to Moore Haus around 1 p.m. and spent the afternoon catching up with everyone as well as sleeping. On Friday we had a brief introduction to each of our classes. Everyone spent the weekend in Heidelberg as we had a shortened weekend and classes officially began early Monday morning. It is not to say, however, that the weekend was uneventful. On Saturday morning several of us went hiking up Philosopher’s Weg (way). I had hiked up before, but not all the way to the top. This time we went all the way. Located at the top is a huge amphitheatre, called the Thingstätte, originally built for Hitler and the Nazis in 1935. The amphitheatre has an eerie feeling, such that one may imagine exactly the period in history. Located atop the mountain is also St. Michael’s Basilica, which now lies nearly in ruins. We ended up playing hide and seek tag there for nearly an hour, during which I took a full on face plant into the wet grass! After returning back to the city Elizabeth, Colby and I went to a little tourist shop and ate homemade banana nutella crepes-which were absolutely delicious. For dinner, Jacob, Elizabeth, Colby and I ate at Regie’s, a small café located downtown. That evening some of us ended up going to our usual locale, the Dubliner to watch a little football, while the majority went to O’Reilly’s, a recently discovered karaoke bar. I ended up going to the karaoke bar about halfway through to catch a few of my friends singing. It was all in all, a pretty good Saturday. Sunday morning Elizabeth and I were awakened by Colby to go play soccer at the castle. I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing before Monday.
After our first week of classes, Skyler, Stephen Scotti, Joe, Nicole, Kristi, Jacob and I were all supposed to go to Rome. However, all week European news had been discussing athis huge storm that was supposed to hit Germany as well as other areas. Our professors told us Thursday morning (the day we were supposed to leave) that flights could be cancelled, etc. We called all day to see if our flight was cancelled since the wind was pretty bad, however, no news. So we left class early and got a cut so that we could make it to Hahn airport in plenty of time. We got there checked in and kept waiting to hear/see information about our flight. Well, nothing. Eight o'clock rolls around, the time our plane is supposed to depart and nothing. We finally went to talk to a Ryanair representative and he told us "oh yes...all flights out of Frankfurt are cancelled." Meanwhile you can hear the wind roaring outside. Well by the time Jacob and I got back to the gate there was chaos to get everyone checked out and their flights reassigned. We waited for the mad rush through the door and then moved out to find that the line to change flights was ALL the way down the hallway. However, the line for a simple refund was basically nonexistent...we of course opted for the refund, choosing to go to Rome another weekend. We were all really bummed b/c we had such a great group and the weather in Rome was suppose to be like 60 degrees all weekend. However, we all felt really bad for Jacob (the faculty family's son) b/c it is his last weekend to travel before going back to Malibu for baseball season. It was really out of our hands though. After cancelling our flights we waited for the shuttle back to Heidelberg which came around 10:20 p.m. We finally made it back to Moore Haus around 1 a.m., having lost 40 euros in transportation to and from the airport. There was nothing we could do though since we called up to the last minute to see if we should not have gone. Let's just say we are all getting used to being ripped off by Ryanair despite their cheap flight rates! The storm though was pretty bad. All flights and trains in Germany were cancelled so basically everyone in our house came back home for the weekend. One ICE train was blown off the track and ran into a tree. We also saw quite a few large trucks tipped over on the Autobahn. We made it back safe though and that’s what matter’s most!
Despite our cancelled plans, the weekend still ended up being fun. We slept a lot, played soccer at the castle, and even tried to go to a dance club, though an extremely long line ended up ruining that. Sunday afternoon I tried out a little coffee shop I had wanted to go to for some time. While the atmosphere was fairly enjoyable the coffee, I admit, tasted terribly. The weekend overall, passed quickly and we booked Rome tickets for Friday, February 2nd.
Though I had already spent two weekends in Heidelberg since returning I wanted to stay the weekend of January 26th-28th as my friends from both the Florence and London programs were coming to visit. They arrived Friday afternoon and after some much needed catching up, we took them on a little Heidelberg tour, going to the castle, the old bridge, as well as Gino’s Pizza where we grabbed some lunch. That evening everyone went out to the Dubliner and at 12 a.m. all celebrated my birthday! Saturday morning we woke up to a fresh snow, the first major flakes we’ve seen in Heidelberg. I thus began my birthday by engaging in a huge snowball fight at the castle! The visiting girls decided to take a trip to Baden-Baden for the afternoon, however, returned early in the evening to officially celebrate my birthday! For dinner, a small group of my friends and I went to a quaint little Italian Restaurant called Mercato’s. I ordered the Gnocchi, a kind of round, potato like pasta covered in four cheeses. It was delicious!
After dinner the rest of the group met up with us and we again tried to go dancing at the club we visited the weekend before, however, the line again was ridiculously long. We ended up waiting for nearly an hour and a half, thinking we would eventually go in. However, we learned that they had a quota and could not let any more guests in until other guests left. By 1:30 a.m. it was time for the Florence girls to head to the train station. We walked over to McDonald’s and said our goodbyes. Though we had to wait for such a long time all for nothing, we ended up having fun just talking and spending time with each other. I miss my suite mates from last year SO much! After sending them off, Skyler, Shea, Kate, Folosho, Stephen and I ended up going to I-Punkt, a ridiculously tiny bar and dance club because-- hey we just wanted to dance! Haha! Anyway, we spent the remainder of my birthday there. Even though things did not work out as planned I still had a wonderful 20th birthday! It was great just being able to spend it with some of the friends I miss the most.
previous travel blog entry
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