This has been a great great week. I had a paper due on Friday, but of course that hasn't really been the focus until.. um… yesterday and today. More specifically today. Naturally. So really I had nothing to do all week and it was so relaxing and I got to do a lot of fun things!
On Monday night we got the chance to go to the Philharmonie Luxembourg to see the symphony orchestra "Solistes Européens, Luxembourg" perform. We got to hear selections from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt, Jan Sibelius' Symphony No7 in C Major op.105, and Beethoven's Symphony No5 in C Minor op.67. We got free seats in the boxes courtesy of our music professor (although I don't think these are actually considered the best seats in the house) and I got to get all dressed up. It was the first official concert of the new conductor of the orchestra, Christoph König, and so there was clapping GALORE. Maybe that was just normal, but when each piece finished people just clapped for ages and the conductor would leave the stage and come back out and leave again and people wouldn't stop clapping. Hilarious. I also got to see the Grand Duke of Luxembourg for the first time. No big deal, the leader of the country was just THERE. They played his own special hymn when he arrived and when he left and we had to stand while he entered. My music professor also pointed out the former head of the EU when we were walking in. I mean... holy crap. These people are a big deal. It was great… Anyways, I loved most of the Peer Gynt selections. I loved when they played In the Hall of the Mountain King - its just such a powerful, fun sort of song. I wasn't such a huge fan of any of Sibelius' symphony… except one part when the strings section went crazy. Then of course Beethoven's 5th was just excellent. Can't go wrong with Beethoven. All and all, I can definitely say I'll be going back for more this semester. Who wouldn't want to take advantage of free philharmonic symphony tickets every other Monday or so?
Then on Tuesday - and okay this is a little minor - I watched THE PREMIERE OF HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. Success. HIGH SIX! Still a good show. But more importantly, I got to go to a live jazz bar down in the Grund in Luxembourg City. It was really fun and the musicians were pretty good so I think I'm going to try to make it a habit if I can find people to go with me all the time. The only bummer was that the late trains run at 11:50 and 12:50… so I nearly fell asleep on the forty minute ride back to Differdange. I had to set an alarm on my phone when I knew we'd be close so I wouldn't end up at the end of the line or something.
So other than this paper, the week has been pretty chill. And tomorrow we leave for Rome and our music class tour in Italy. I am SO EXCITED. Let me list the reasons:
1. Well. It's Italy. That's a good enough reason to be excited.
2. I get to speak the 7 words I know in Italian again!
3. This is a little random, but at least where we were over the summer, the conad grocery store sold pasteurized skim milk that tasted like milk tastes in America. If I find it, I will buy it. Because I have been craving milk so badly the past few days and Luxembourg milk is nasty crap.
4. Gelato.
5.Gelato.
6. Gelato. Yes, it needed to be said three times. I have a map saved on Google maps of all the gelateria in Rome I like/want to try.
7. Warmer weather! We've actually been having a nice sort of Indian summer here in Lux (knock on wood, it hasn't rained ALL WEEK. It's like a miracle), but in Italy it's supposed to be high seventies. Unfortunately it might also rain. I'm praying against the rain.
8. The study tour our music teacher planned is probably hands down the best tour. We have huge amounts of free time and we're going to Milan, Pisa, Lake Como, and a few other little random Italian towns.
9. Caffe, cappuccino, cornetto, gnocchi with pesto, pizza margherita, pizza diavola, cacio e pepe. No carb left behind.
10. and most importantly I AM SEEING MY FRIENDS FROM ROMA. I AM SO EXCITED.
But before all that, I have to write this paper… but its okay because it's about US-North Korea relations and that's just really interesting so it's not even a hassle. Heeere we go. :]
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
we are champs at Germany (just not the language).
So the reasoning behind this weekend was to spend the least possibly amount of money while still doing something fun. Success? I think so.
What we did was a Discovery Tour through the school. This meant that we could pay for the trip through our pre-paid account that we used to buy our textbooks, and since my textbooks were so cheap this semester (this is like… the only time I can ever say this) I had some money left over to pay for the trip. So we were traveling with a pretty big group compared to what I have been traveling with - 11 people with the student events coordinator who came with us, Kelley. This was great because I got to meet some people that I haven't really gotten to know yet! But I think my preferred travel group cap size would be like five. Having too many people makes decision-making too hard. But more on that later! haha
We took a train to Cologne Germany first and it was probably my favorite train ride so far because we talked with people almost the entire way and the scenery was gorgeous! When we got to Cologne we popped outside the train station for a few seconds to see the gorgeous cathedral (the Dom) and then went to our hostel to drop off our bags. The hostel was nice and very new so it was clean. I liked that. After that we all wandered out to find dinner. Before we left I had looked up a few places on some travel sites and there was one restaurant close to our hostel that letsgo.com had recommended as a go-to restaurant in Cologne. And it was GOOD. Me and Aunna split two cheap meals so we could try more things, but I tried a little of the more expensive meals my friends got too. There was this marinated beef that I'm a little jealous I didn't get. But saving money was the point of this trip! After that we wandered in a shopping district where most of the stores were already closed and ended up back at the hostel to play cards while we waited for the rain to stop and clubs to open.
:: the massive Dom cathedral ::
It was already pretty late when we decided to leave and we got one of the hostel employees to circle good areas for nightlife on our map and explain the metro to us. One really nice thing about Cologne was that they had 24-hour metros! So we made our way down there, missing two of the trains before we caught one because everyone had to buy tickets (although apparently we could have gotten away without buying them, as evidenced by the fact that our friend Matt didn't buy one and was fine). This is one of the reasons I don't like traveling in big groups; mobilizing large groups of people is so difficult! So we finally got down to the club/bar district and it looked like a really fun place. We walked up and down the street, but unfortunately some of the clubs had dress codes and they wouldn't let some people in because of T-shirts and all that. So that was definitely a bummer… By the time we did find a place without a dress code, a lot of people in our group were tired and just wanted to head back to the hostel. That wouldn't have been a problem, except at this particular hostel after 1am you had to show a key to get back inside… and we only had one key per room. So then we all WALKED back because some people thought the metro was too complicated (it wasn't) slash we were kinda hoping we would see a chill place on the way home that everyone wouldn't mind stopping at. But our hostel was just a little farther away than we thought… so by the time we got home, even I was ready to just crash. It was probably for the best, because we had a LONG, good day ahead of us on Saturday.
Lessons to be learned from Friday night: travel in smaller groups. Bring at least one nice-ish outfit each weekend. Everyone get their own key for the hostel.
On Saturday we woke up early and enjoyed a surprisingly good free hostel breakfast. Usually this means like a slice of bread, but we got rolls with lots of different spread and meat and cheese and coffee. Very nice. I drank my not-so-good coffee for the caffeine, but with the foreknowledge that there was a STARBUCKS WAITING FOR US IN THE TRAIN STATION. That's right. Now, granted, I don't drink a lot of Starbucks in the States because I love the independent coffee shop at my school called Kofenya, but I haven't had any American-style flavored coffee since I got here. And seriously. Chai tea lattes from Starbucks are good. (Random note: There were actually a lot of US restaurants and stores in Germany… not sure why this is, but we kept spotting Pizza Huts and Burger Kings and you name it. Don't worry, we ate German food all weekend haha). So we got Starbucks and greatly enjoyed that little taste of home.
:: supporting American economy while abroad ::
Starbucks in hand, we got on the train to Moselkern. Another good train ride, particularly funny for two reasons: the train was really full so we had to sit next to the bathroom and either watched people go in or go to sit down in the seats directly next to the bathroom and then realize where they were. Also we got into a discussion about phones and in this discussion one of the guys on this trip told us about this RIDICULOUS system he uses for his cell phone. He has a spreadsheet of all his numbers and depending on where he is (school home ect) only puts the relevant numbers in his phone and deletes the others. So he spent a good portion of this trip defending his system while we all laughed about how ridiculous it was.
Not important.
When we got to Moselkern we started our hike! It was about an hour and twenty minutes up and down a small mountain to a castle that was very pretty. We spent the afternoon there and got yet another good meal after the tour. I got potato pancakes with apple sauce and a pretzel with cheese. The potato pancakes were soooo good. Pretzel… eh, I've had better at Steinkellers. Then we hiked back down (I liked this hike better) and headed off to Cochem.
:: finally made it to the castle ::
In Cochem we did a wine-tasting at an award-winning family owned vineyard called Family Winery Rademacher. It was so so good. We learned a little about their whole wine-making process and then tasted four wines. We tried three white wines, because that was their specialty, and then one red wine. I loved the white wine, but I wasn't a huge fan of their red wine. It had a bit of a cherry taste and I'm not really big on cherry. I ended up buying one bottle of my favorite, the Riesling Karat Cochemer Herrenberg. It had a sort of citrus, apple sort of taste. So good.
:: Rademacher wines ::
After that our group split ways and me and Aunna went back to Luxembourg with Kelley because we were saving money! Hoo-rah. The cool thing was that we didn't even have to pay for our ticket home because the German leg of the trip was already covered by a ticket we used earlier in the day and the Luxembourg leg was covered by our handy-dandy Jumbopass that lets us travel anywhere in Luxembourg for free.
But wait, there's still more to this story. We stopped in Trier for a few hours to walk around and get some dinner. Trier was a Roman city back in the day, so there were some old Roman buildings around. That was pretty cool. Dinner was great too! And it was so fun to hang out with Kelley more and get to know her because she's kind of close to our age and is just a fun person in general. I will definitely be going back to Trier because its only a 45 minute, 7 euro train ride and there's some good shopping that was closed when we were there. Sooo yeah.
Today was pretty chill. Me and Aunna explored Luxembourg City for awhile and then randomly ran into Kelley again in the city centre and got kebabs for lunch. Then she offered us a ride home and we got to forego the 40 minute train ride for a 20 minute car ride! The rest of the day we just relaxed at Aunna's house (where I am now) with her internet to upload some pictures and Skype with friends. So it was a nice relaxing weekend in preparation for next weekend and the following week: ROME, MILAN, PISA, AND COMO. :D I'm so so so so so excited. But until then, some highlights to look forward to this week are a symphony tomorrow night with my music class, the return of our amazing Dean LeTerre from his trip to America, the premiere of How I Met Your Mother which time zones and copyrights will not stop me from watching, and writing a paper that I found out about over the weekend. Awesome.
What we did was a Discovery Tour through the school. This meant that we could pay for the trip through our pre-paid account that we used to buy our textbooks, and since my textbooks were so cheap this semester (this is like… the only time I can ever say this) I had some money left over to pay for the trip. So we were traveling with a pretty big group compared to what I have been traveling with - 11 people with the student events coordinator who came with us, Kelley. This was great because I got to meet some people that I haven't really gotten to know yet! But I think my preferred travel group cap size would be like five. Having too many people makes decision-making too hard. But more on that later! haha
We took a train to Cologne Germany first and it was probably my favorite train ride so far because we talked with people almost the entire way and the scenery was gorgeous! When we got to Cologne we popped outside the train station for a few seconds to see the gorgeous cathedral (the Dom) and then went to our hostel to drop off our bags. The hostel was nice and very new so it was clean. I liked that. After that we all wandered out to find dinner. Before we left I had looked up a few places on some travel sites and there was one restaurant close to our hostel that letsgo.com had recommended as a go-to restaurant in Cologne. And it was GOOD. Me and Aunna split two cheap meals so we could try more things, but I tried a little of the more expensive meals my friends got too. There was this marinated beef that I'm a little jealous I didn't get. But saving money was the point of this trip! After that we wandered in a shopping district where most of the stores were already closed and ended up back at the hostel to play cards while we waited for the rain to stop and clubs to open.
:: the massive Dom cathedral ::
It was already pretty late when we decided to leave and we got one of the hostel employees to circle good areas for nightlife on our map and explain the metro to us. One really nice thing about Cologne was that they had 24-hour metros! So we made our way down there, missing two of the trains before we caught one because everyone had to buy tickets (although apparently we could have gotten away without buying them, as evidenced by the fact that our friend Matt didn't buy one and was fine). This is one of the reasons I don't like traveling in big groups; mobilizing large groups of people is so difficult! So we finally got down to the club/bar district and it looked like a really fun place. We walked up and down the street, but unfortunately some of the clubs had dress codes and they wouldn't let some people in because of T-shirts and all that. So that was definitely a bummer… By the time we did find a place without a dress code, a lot of people in our group were tired and just wanted to head back to the hostel. That wouldn't have been a problem, except at this particular hostel after 1am you had to show a key to get back inside… and we only had one key per room. So then we all WALKED back because some people thought the metro was too complicated (it wasn't) slash we were kinda hoping we would see a chill place on the way home that everyone wouldn't mind stopping at. But our hostel was just a little farther away than we thought… so by the time we got home, even I was ready to just crash. It was probably for the best, because we had a LONG, good day ahead of us on Saturday.
Lessons to be learned from Friday night: travel in smaller groups. Bring at least one nice-ish outfit each weekend. Everyone get their own key for the hostel.
On Saturday we woke up early and enjoyed a surprisingly good free hostel breakfast. Usually this means like a slice of bread, but we got rolls with lots of different spread and meat and cheese and coffee. Very nice. I drank my not-so-good coffee for the caffeine, but with the foreknowledge that there was a STARBUCKS WAITING FOR US IN THE TRAIN STATION. That's right. Now, granted, I don't drink a lot of Starbucks in the States because I love the independent coffee shop at my school called Kofenya, but I haven't had any American-style flavored coffee since I got here. And seriously. Chai tea lattes from Starbucks are good. (Random note: There were actually a lot of US restaurants and stores in Germany… not sure why this is, but we kept spotting Pizza Huts and Burger Kings and you name it. Don't worry, we ate German food all weekend haha). So we got Starbucks and greatly enjoyed that little taste of home.
:: supporting American economy while abroad ::
Starbucks in hand, we got on the train to Moselkern. Another good train ride, particularly funny for two reasons: the train was really full so we had to sit next to the bathroom and either watched people go in or go to sit down in the seats directly next to the bathroom and then realize where they were. Also we got into a discussion about phones and in this discussion one of the guys on this trip told us about this RIDICULOUS system he uses for his cell phone. He has a spreadsheet of all his numbers and depending on where he is (school home ect) only puts the relevant numbers in his phone and deletes the others. So he spent a good portion of this trip defending his system while we all laughed about how ridiculous it was.
Not important.
When we got to Moselkern we started our hike! It was about an hour and twenty minutes up and down a small mountain to a castle that was very pretty. We spent the afternoon there and got yet another good meal after the tour. I got potato pancakes with apple sauce and a pretzel with cheese. The potato pancakes were soooo good. Pretzel… eh, I've had better at Steinkellers. Then we hiked back down (I liked this hike better) and headed off to Cochem.
:: finally made it to the castle ::
In Cochem we did a wine-tasting at an award-winning family owned vineyard called Family Winery Rademacher. It was so so good. We learned a little about their whole wine-making process and then tasted four wines. We tried three white wines, because that was their specialty, and then one red wine. I loved the white wine, but I wasn't a huge fan of their red wine. It had a bit of a cherry taste and I'm not really big on cherry. I ended up buying one bottle of my favorite, the Riesling Karat Cochemer Herrenberg. It had a sort of citrus, apple sort of taste. So good.
:: Rademacher wines ::
After that our group split ways and me and Aunna went back to Luxembourg with Kelley because we were saving money! Hoo-rah. The cool thing was that we didn't even have to pay for our ticket home because the German leg of the trip was already covered by a ticket we used earlier in the day and the Luxembourg leg was covered by our handy-dandy Jumbopass that lets us travel anywhere in Luxembourg for free.
But wait, there's still more to this story. We stopped in Trier for a few hours to walk around and get some dinner. Trier was a Roman city back in the day, so there were some old Roman buildings around. That was pretty cool. Dinner was great too! And it was so fun to hang out with Kelley more and get to know her because she's kind of close to our age and is just a fun person in general. I will definitely be going back to Trier because its only a 45 minute, 7 euro train ride and there's some good shopping that was closed when we were there. Sooo yeah.
Today was pretty chill. Me and Aunna explored Luxembourg City for awhile and then randomly ran into Kelley again in the city centre and got kebabs for lunch. Then she offered us a ride home and we got to forego the 40 minute train ride for a 20 minute car ride! The rest of the day we just relaxed at Aunna's house (where I am now) with her internet to upload some pictures and Skype with friends. So it was a nice relaxing weekend in preparation for next weekend and the following week: ROME, MILAN, PISA, AND COMO. :D I'm so so so so so excited. But until then, some highlights to look forward to this week are a symphony tomorrow night with my music class, the return of our amazing Dean LeTerre from his trip to America, the premiere of How I Met Your Mother which time zones and copyrights will not stop me from watching, and writing a paper that I found out about over the weekend. Awesome.
Monday, September 13, 2010
a weekend of much needed vitamin D.
So this weekend I went to Alghero in Sardegna, an island right off the coast of Italy. You've probably already assumed this, but just let me say that oh my goodness, it was beautiful. Weather was in the 80s, not a cloud in the sky, and the water was gorgeous and clear and refreshingly cold (and by cold I mean it took your breath away when you got in… but it was warm enough that it was refreshing-ish!) I can give you a quick run-down of our weekend there, but I'm going to warn you in advance that it's going to be a little boring. We did almost zero tourist stuff, a lot of window shopping, a LOT of eating, and some sleeping.
First of all, I had my first Ryanair experience! It was a bit of a task because we had to first take a train to the Luxembourg Gare (train station) which is about forty minutes from where I live in Differdange. Then we had to take a bus from Luxembourg to a tiny little airport in Germany called Frankfurt-Hahn. For Ryanair you need to get to the gate at least 30 minutes early or they won't let you on, so a lot of people have warned us to get to the airport at least an hour early, if not two hours. Funny story - we booked these tickets for Alghero over the summer and I hadn't quite worked out how long it took to get to Frankfurt-Hahn but I figured, Hey! Get out of class at 11:50, we could probably make a 15:05 flight! Um, no, that is literally impossible. With forty minutes into Lux city plus an hour and forty-five minute bus ride (that for us turned into two hours due to traffic), clearly we wouldn't have made it even if we were allowed to run onto the plane as it took off. All that being said, Mary and I got SO SO LUCKY that our history class on Friday got canceled and we made it to the airport with time to spare. Anyways, a roughly two hour flight got turned into a five hour travel experience during which we were pretty much running blind. Good news is that my backpack is definitely carry-on compliant if I can keep it under 10 kg… Score.
Anyways! When we got to Alghero we were tired but raring to go. Since we couldn't figure out the bus system - aka where it even picked people up - we got an overpriced cab to the hostel. I was really pleasantly surprised by the hostel. It had big rooms with normal beds instead of bunk beds, free internet, free breakfast, sold bus tickets, and even though our check out on Sunday was at 10am, they let us keep our bags in the luggage room and use their showers after we went to the beach in the morning. The only slight downside was that the hostel was in a small town called Fertilia, about three miles away from Alghero. It was a nice little town, but it made getting into and out of the city where everything was kind of difficult since the bus only came every hour and we never did really figure out when the last bus ran from Alghero. I heard 10:30, 11:30, and midnight, so who knows.
Back to Friday. We dropped off our stuff and caught the bus into the city and at this point we just wandered. I saw this great pair of boots in the first store we walked into marked half off for 24 euro. But obviously I couldn't buy something in the first store we checked out, so I figured we could just go back later since it was right next to the bus stop. Sadly when we went back they were closed! I actually ended up not buying anything but food all weekend, but I do kind of regret not getting those boots. We spent a while just looking at stores - I was looking for a fall jacket and Mary was looking for boots - until we started getting really hungry. By then we were in the old town city center, which was a little more touristy, and so restaurants were all more expensive. We stopped and got drinks and appetizers at a restaurant overlooking the harbor, but we were still famished when we left so we went on a search for cheaper restaurants. It's my personal opinion that run-of-the-mill restaurants in tourist areas are never worth their prices and the best places are tucked away in hole-in-the-wall areas like back streets. Unfortunately that principle kind of failed us the first night. We had done a loop of the restaurants in the old town without much luck and I was so hungry I just insisted we eat somewhere and we stopped at a restaurant on a back street. Not good. I got ravioli that tasted alright but it was obviously no homemade ravioli (a la my certain favorite restaurant in San Lorenzo). The worst though was that we got a bottle of dessert wine to share because the owner of the restaurant said it would be cheaper than getting glasses of white or red wine (not sure how that works… I think we were all collectively confused about the whole question-answer process). It was awful! It seriously tasted like honey perfume flavored cough syrup… needless to say we didn't even get close to finishing it and had to get a bottle of water to share. Don't worry though; we got gelato afterward so it wasn't a total food flop for the night.
On Saturday we were really excited to get into the city again because we had this grand plan to rent mopeds and then find a nice beach someplace we couldn't reach by bus. This plan got derailed by the fact that you had to be 21 to drive - so I couldn't get my own, but Mary could and we could switch off secretly - but more specifically by the fact that they wanted to freeze 500 euro in our bank accounts while we had the scooter out, I guess as collateral in case something happened. So then we had the terrible alternative of just going to the beach instead. Life is tough.
:: we were ok with going to the beach if we had to ::
When we got hungry we left the beach in search of a restaurant I had found through an online tourist guide. I was determined to find this place because the guide claimed it was inexpensive and good. Unfortunately, it was closed, but on the way there we had passed a cute little terrace restaurant tucked away in the corner of a street. This time, the stumbling-upon-it method worked like a charm. I got very tasty gnocchi sardi, or gnocchi with traditional sardinian sausage and cheese. Buonissimo! This was definitely my favorite meal of the weekend. I was so stuffed I almost felt sick, but that was fine because after a little more wandering and gelato, we went home to take a nap.
:: we met this really friendly cat and named him Ferdinand ::
At night we met some new friends from our hostel on the way back into Alghero and spent the evening with them. They were Juan and a woman who's name started with 'M' though I never quite got the pronunciation. They were both from Spain and traveling alone at the moment, so it was fun to get to know them and learn more about their culture. The only thing really to mention about Saturday night is again food related - I tried a traditional Sardinian dessert called seadas that was very good, but it sounds weird. It was cheese inside a fried shell covered with a honey sauce. Strange but good. The night was just really relaxing because Alghero wasn't really a going-out sort of town. People were out on Saturday night, but they were more just walking around the town outside. I liked it... but since we thought the last bus went back at 10:30, we went back to Fertilia and hung out there for awhile.
Sunday morning we just went to the beach in Fertilia and I actually enjoyed it more. It was a smaller, but a little cleaner, had clearer water, and was more private. Very nice beach… Juan showed up a little later in the day so we hung out with him some more and got lunch and gelato before Mary and I had to catch our bus to the airport around three. Shout out to Melanie - I had diavola pizza for lunch and it was delicious!
Altogether, it was a really nice, relaxing weekend. One thing that I really liked about Sardegna was that it was a tourist place - people from all over were definitely vacationing there - but it didn't feel touristy. I have no idea how that works, but it was nice! Another thing I liked was that it was Italian! Ahhh I've missed Italian culture. Obviously it was a little different than Rome, but it felt so right to be saying scuzi and grazie and ciao again! In some ways, I feel more comfortable in Italian culture than in Luxembourgish culture, but that could be for any number of reasons… I should probably give Lux a little more time. Regardless, had a great weekend. Now back to fall...
Feel free to comment! :]
First of all, I had my first Ryanair experience! It was a bit of a task because we had to first take a train to the Luxembourg Gare (train station) which is about forty minutes from where I live in Differdange. Then we had to take a bus from Luxembourg to a tiny little airport in Germany called Frankfurt-Hahn. For Ryanair you need to get to the gate at least 30 minutes early or they won't let you on, so a lot of people have warned us to get to the airport at least an hour early, if not two hours. Funny story - we booked these tickets for Alghero over the summer and I hadn't quite worked out how long it took to get to Frankfurt-Hahn but I figured, Hey! Get out of class at 11:50, we could probably make a 15:05 flight! Um, no, that is literally impossible. With forty minutes into Lux city plus an hour and forty-five minute bus ride (that for us turned into two hours due to traffic), clearly we wouldn't have made it even if we were allowed to run onto the plane as it took off. All that being said, Mary and I got SO SO LUCKY that our history class on Friday got canceled and we made it to the airport with time to spare. Anyways, a roughly two hour flight got turned into a five hour travel experience during which we were pretty much running blind. Good news is that my backpack is definitely carry-on compliant if I can keep it under 10 kg… Score.
Anyways! When we got to Alghero we were tired but raring to go. Since we couldn't figure out the bus system - aka where it even picked people up - we got an overpriced cab to the hostel. I was really pleasantly surprised by the hostel. It had big rooms with normal beds instead of bunk beds, free internet, free breakfast, sold bus tickets, and even though our check out on Sunday was at 10am, they let us keep our bags in the luggage room and use their showers after we went to the beach in the morning. The only slight downside was that the hostel was in a small town called Fertilia, about three miles away from Alghero. It was a nice little town, but it made getting into and out of the city where everything was kind of difficult since the bus only came every hour and we never did really figure out when the last bus ran from Alghero. I heard 10:30, 11:30, and midnight, so who knows.
Back to Friday. We dropped off our stuff and caught the bus into the city and at this point we just wandered. I saw this great pair of boots in the first store we walked into marked half off for 24 euro. But obviously I couldn't buy something in the first store we checked out, so I figured we could just go back later since it was right next to the bus stop. Sadly when we went back they were closed! I actually ended up not buying anything but food all weekend, but I do kind of regret not getting those boots. We spent a while just looking at stores - I was looking for a fall jacket and Mary was looking for boots - until we started getting really hungry. By then we were in the old town city center, which was a little more touristy, and so restaurants were all more expensive. We stopped and got drinks and appetizers at a restaurant overlooking the harbor, but we were still famished when we left so we went on a search for cheaper restaurants. It's my personal opinion that run-of-the-mill restaurants in tourist areas are never worth their prices and the best places are tucked away in hole-in-the-wall areas like back streets. Unfortunately that principle kind of failed us the first night. We had done a loop of the restaurants in the old town without much luck and I was so hungry I just insisted we eat somewhere and we stopped at a restaurant on a back street. Not good. I got ravioli that tasted alright but it was obviously no homemade ravioli (a la my certain favorite restaurant in San Lorenzo). The worst though was that we got a bottle of dessert wine to share because the owner of the restaurant said it would be cheaper than getting glasses of white or red wine (not sure how that works… I think we were all collectively confused about the whole question-answer process). It was awful! It seriously tasted like honey perfume flavored cough syrup… needless to say we didn't even get close to finishing it and had to get a bottle of water to share. Don't worry though; we got gelato afterward so it wasn't a total food flop for the night.
On Saturday we were really excited to get into the city again because we had this grand plan to rent mopeds and then find a nice beach someplace we couldn't reach by bus. This plan got derailed by the fact that you had to be 21 to drive - so I couldn't get my own, but Mary could and we could switch off secretly - but more specifically by the fact that they wanted to freeze 500 euro in our bank accounts while we had the scooter out, I guess as collateral in case something happened. So then we had the terrible alternative of just going to the beach instead. Life is tough.
:: we were ok with going to the beach if we had to ::
When we got hungry we left the beach in search of a restaurant I had found through an online tourist guide. I was determined to find this place because the guide claimed it was inexpensive and good. Unfortunately, it was closed, but on the way there we had passed a cute little terrace restaurant tucked away in the corner of a street. This time, the stumbling-upon-it method worked like a charm. I got very tasty gnocchi sardi, or gnocchi with traditional sardinian sausage and cheese. Buonissimo! This was definitely my favorite meal of the weekend. I was so stuffed I almost felt sick, but that was fine because after a little more wandering and gelato, we went home to take a nap.
:: we met this really friendly cat and named him Ferdinand ::
At night we met some new friends from our hostel on the way back into Alghero and spent the evening with them. They were Juan and a woman who's name started with 'M' though I never quite got the pronunciation. They were both from Spain and traveling alone at the moment, so it was fun to get to know them and learn more about their culture. The only thing really to mention about Saturday night is again food related - I tried a traditional Sardinian dessert called seadas that was very good, but it sounds weird. It was cheese inside a fried shell covered with a honey sauce. Strange but good. The night was just really relaxing because Alghero wasn't really a going-out sort of town. People were out on Saturday night, but they were more just walking around the town outside. I liked it... but since we thought the last bus went back at 10:30, we went back to Fertilia and hung out there for awhile.
Sunday morning we just went to the beach in Fertilia and I actually enjoyed it more. It was a smaller, but a little cleaner, had clearer water, and was more private. Very nice beach… Juan showed up a little later in the day so we hung out with him some more and got lunch and gelato before Mary and I had to catch our bus to the airport around three. Shout out to Melanie - I had diavola pizza for lunch and it was delicious!
:: the beach we went to on Sunday - Punta Negra ::
Altogether, it was a really nice, relaxing weekend. One thing that I really liked about Sardegna was that it was a tourist place - people from all over were definitely vacationing there - but it didn't feel touristy. I have no idea how that works, but it was nice! Another thing I liked was that it was Italian! Ahhh I've missed Italian culture. Obviously it was a little different than Rome, but it felt so right to be saying scuzi and grazie and ciao again! In some ways, I feel more comfortable in Italian culture than in Luxembourgish culture, but that could be for any number of reasons… I should probably give Lux a little more time. Regardless, had a great weekend. Now back to fall...
Feel free to comment! :]
Thursday, September 9, 2010
legit.
Sometimes I just need to reflect on how kinda crazy it is that I’m in another country. And usually while I’m doing that, I end up reflecting on how crazy some of the professors here at MUDEC are. For example, my political science class this morning is taught by Guy de Muyser. He was the Luxembourg ambassador to the Soviet Union, the Lord Chamberlin of Luxembourg for a while (a secretary of state type person, I believe), and the Luxembourg delegate in NATO. The guy has his own Wikipedia page. In a few weeks he’s having our class over to his house in Luxembourg City to have dinner. With the ambassador from Great Britain. No big deal. The other political science teacher has a pretty similar background and I don’t have any business classes, but apparently at least one is taught by the CEO of Luxembourg’s equivalent to AAA. My French teacher speaks like 5 or more languages fluently and her English is so good no one can guess what her real nationality is. My music teacher has sung all over the world and when he pops in produced DVDs of concerts for us to watch, sometimes he says things like “Oh such-and-such, he’s such a good conductor. Very nice man to work with.”
It’s honestly so cool to be taught by so many extremely qualified people. I’m really enjoying this semester off from my major to just learn about a few subjects I’m just interested in like music and political science. For now anyways… we’ll see if it gets any harder! For now the only class I don’t like is my introduction to the European Union political science class. The professor seems like a nice guy, but we only have class for an hour a week and he expects us to remember a lot out of our reading. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but he asks really generalized, open-ended questions that could be answered any number of ways while expecting a very specific answer or wording that he already has in mind. And since I know next to nothing about the EU, I’d rather get just a little bit of lecture in there or even a chance for us to ask questions over the reading, which isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Rumor has it that like… all but two people have dropped from the class. So class on Monday will be interesting!
This weekend I’m going to Alghero, Italy with my friend Mary! Alghero is a city on an island off of Italy called Sardegna. We booked these plane tickets over the summer because they were fairly cheap for an island getaway. After being thrown roughly into fall, I am so excited for sunny weather, 80s, and the beach! And, of course, some cafe and gelato! Time to brush up on my Italian… un cappuccino e un cornetto per favore?
It’s honestly so cool to be taught by so many extremely qualified people. I’m really enjoying this semester off from my major to just learn about a few subjects I’m just interested in like music and political science. For now anyways… we’ll see if it gets any harder! For now the only class I don’t like is my introduction to the European Union political science class. The professor seems like a nice guy, but we only have class for an hour a week and he expects us to remember a lot out of our reading. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but he asks really generalized, open-ended questions that could be answered any number of ways while expecting a very specific answer or wording that he already has in mind. And since I know next to nothing about the EU, I’d rather get just a little bit of lecture in there or even a chance for us to ask questions over the reading, which isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Rumor has it that like… all but two people have dropped from the class. So class on Monday will be interesting!
This weekend I’m going to Alghero, Italy with my friend Mary! Alghero is a city on an island off of Italy called Sardegna. We booked these plane tickets over the summer because they were fairly cheap for an island getaway. After being thrown roughly into fall, I am so excited for sunny weather, 80s, and the beach! And, of course, some cafe and gelato! Time to brush up on my Italian… un cappuccino e un cornetto per favore?
Monday, September 6, 2010
In Bruges
So, I watched a movie over the summer during one of those long shifts at the library when no one walked in called “In Bruges” and I had never really heard of Bruges before that, but it looked beautiful in the movie. We spent our first weekend traveling there… and the movie did not exaggerate.
But let’s start back at the beginning. So on Friday afternoon Aunna, Brad, and I got out of class around noon and took a train into Lux City. We hadn’t bought our tickets to Bruge yet, so it was a pleasant surprise that the tickets cost only 18 euro round trip! Just as we walked out of the ticket office, we noticed that the next train leaving for Brussels, where we would have to catch a connection to Bruges, left in five minutes! So we hurried and ran on the train literally as the doors were closing. We felt pretty good about ourselves because that shaved an hour of waiting off our travel time! The train to Brussels took about three hours, and after another clutch train catching – this time involving quickly checking the train schedule to find the next train to Bruges, running to the platform, and then realizing the platform changed to one platform over – it was only an hour to Bruges. Not much worth mentioning about the train ride except we saw some live action role play people. They sat down right next to us with their huge painted foam swords and spears and shields and belts of daggers and gauntlets and all that stuff. They were in fantasy-like period dress and one of the girls was even wearing cat ears. It was real strange. Brad loved them and got a picture with two of the guys and kept asking to hold their weapons. Anyways.
Bruges is a beautiful, medieval city, so even our first views of the city as we walked to the hostel were great. Our hostel, Passage, was only a ten minute walk from the train station, so we were happy to get there and drop off our giant bags before grabbing a very handy map and heading off into the city to explore. We hit the two big tourist areas before dinner, the Markt and the Burg, and admired the beautiful architecture there. In the Markt was the Belfry, a giant old watchtower… but more on that later. We got dinner at this great, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served cheap homemade food and I really liked it. I tried fish there because even though fish isn’t my favorite, it’s kind of a specialty of Bruges. I enjoyed it, but next time I think I’ll just go with chicken. After that we found an ice cream place that our map suggested called “Da Vinci.” I think it was supposed to be like gelato and it was good… but I can’t wait to get back to real gelato. After that we did some people watching in the Markt. Brad had bought two ice cream cones because he thought it was more economical than buying one cone with two scoops, and when we were sitting down he dropped one of them in the dirt. And then still ate it. Oh dear… After that we wandered a little bit longer and then turned in for the night so that we would be well-rested to explore the next day.
My first hostel experience was pretty good. I had a comfy blanket and it wasn’t loud at all. Our roommates the first night were two girls from Australia who are studying in Europe also. Since they spoke English it was fun to get to know them a little before we went to sleep. They left in the morning and we got new roommates Saturday night, but they were already asleep when we got in and spoke French anyways.
On Saturday we started off the day with Belgium waffles! I just got your basic waffle with powdered sugar, but don’t worry; I got more interesting waffles as the trip continued. After that we worked off our waffles by climbing 366 winding steps to the top of the aforementioned Belfry tower. It was a gorgeous view, but I was a little disappointed to find that the top of the tower was in the middle of reconstruction so we could only look out of two of the sides. Nonetheless, the pictures are beautiful and it was worth the climb.
After that we met up with some other Miami students and explored for awhile. I spent a little time at a fish market from the 1800s that is now used as a sort of flea market place on Saturdays. I bought a little sketch of Bruges and if it doesn’t get too expensive I might try to find something similar in every city I got to. But we’ll see. During our wandering we proceeded to see Michelangelo’s “Madonna with Child,” see lollipops being made, buy some delicious Belgian chocolates, and lose half of our group. Good thing we agreed on a meeting place!
After wandering, we took a thirty-minute boat tour. Because of its canals, Bruges is sometimes called the Venice of the North. The tour was really fun, firstly because of the beautiful views from the canals that you can’t always see from the streets and secondly because our tour guide was hilarious. He gave commentary in like five different languages and kept making sarcastic comments about the other boat drivers we passed. I wanted to be like best friends with him, but alas we never really got to meet him. Haha. Some more wandering and souvenir buying later, we all met up again for dinner outside by a canal. I didn’t like the food as much, but there were many more people and that lent to some good conversation. After dinner our large group split up again, some people going back to hostels for a quick nap, and I got more waffles with Aunna, Brad, Lindsay, and Zach. This time we got ice cream and chocolate on them. Awesome. I had a lot of fun getting to know Lindsay and Zach better since I didn’t really know them before this trip. We hung out at the bar underneath Zach and Lindsay’s hostel for awhile that night and attempted to find a place to go dancing, but that epically failed. Instead we ended up back at our hostel playing a weird card game called Indian that involved putting cards on our forehead and Zach probably making up all the rules as we went along.
Sunday morning was pretty uneventful since most stores are either closed or open later. We found more waffles in the morning – this time with strawberries! – and these were probably my favorite of the whole weekend. We met up with the larger group for a little while but ultimately decided to leave Bruges a little bit earlier to have some time to unwind at home. So we caught a train home, once again making very successful train connections despite our train arriving late in Brussels, and relaxed the rest of the day.
I’m really glad we went to Bruges on the first weekend because it was such an easy tourist city. It was entirely a walking city so there was no need to figure out buses or a metro system and it was so cheap to get there! So I made it through my first weekend travel experience without any bad experiences… Hopefully this trend will continue. Now its back to classes…
Just a random little thing. I spent about fifteen minutes listening to Christmas music while I was writing this before I realized I was listening to Christmas music. Weird.
But let’s start back at the beginning. So on Friday afternoon Aunna, Brad, and I got out of class around noon and took a train into Lux City. We hadn’t bought our tickets to Bruge yet, so it was a pleasant surprise that the tickets cost only 18 euro round trip! Just as we walked out of the ticket office, we noticed that the next train leaving for Brussels, where we would have to catch a connection to Bruges, left in five minutes! So we hurried and ran on the train literally as the doors were closing. We felt pretty good about ourselves because that shaved an hour of waiting off our travel time! The train to Brussels took about three hours, and after another clutch train catching – this time involving quickly checking the train schedule to find the next train to Bruges, running to the platform, and then realizing the platform changed to one platform over – it was only an hour to Bruges. Not much worth mentioning about the train ride except we saw some live action role play people. They sat down right next to us with their huge painted foam swords and spears and shields and belts of daggers and gauntlets and all that stuff. They were in fantasy-like period dress and one of the girls was even wearing cat ears. It was real strange. Brad loved them and got a picture with two of the guys and kept asking to hold their weapons. Anyways.
Bruges is a beautiful, medieval city, so even our first views of the city as we walked to the hostel were great. Our hostel, Passage, was only a ten minute walk from the train station, so we were happy to get there and drop off our giant bags before grabbing a very handy map and heading off into the city to explore. We hit the two big tourist areas before dinner, the Markt and the Burg, and admired the beautiful architecture there. In the Markt was the Belfry, a giant old watchtower… but more on that later. We got dinner at this great, hole-in-the-wall restaurant that served cheap homemade food and I really liked it. I tried fish there because even though fish isn’t my favorite, it’s kind of a specialty of Bruges. I enjoyed it, but next time I think I’ll just go with chicken. After that we found an ice cream place that our map suggested called “Da Vinci.” I think it was supposed to be like gelato and it was good… but I can’t wait to get back to real gelato. After that we did some people watching in the Markt. Brad had bought two ice cream cones because he thought it was more economical than buying one cone with two scoops, and when we were sitting down he dropped one of them in the dirt. And then still ate it. Oh dear… After that we wandered a little bit longer and then turned in for the night so that we would be well-rested to explore the next day.
My first hostel experience was pretty good. I had a comfy blanket and it wasn’t loud at all. Our roommates the first night were two girls from Australia who are studying in Europe also. Since they spoke English it was fun to get to know them a little before we went to sleep. They left in the morning and we got new roommates Saturday night, but they were already asleep when we got in and spoke French anyways.
On Saturday we started off the day with Belgium waffles! I just got your basic waffle with powdered sugar, but don’t worry; I got more interesting waffles as the trip continued. After that we worked off our waffles by climbing 366 winding steps to the top of the aforementioned Belfry tower. It was a gorgeous view, but I was a little disappointed to find that the top of the tower was in the middle of reconstruction so we could only look out of two of the sides. Nonetheless, the pictures are beautiful and it was worth the climb.
After that we met up with some other Miami students and explored for awhile. I spent a little time at a fish market from the 1800s that is now used as a sort of flea market place on Saturdays. I bought a little sketch of Bruges and if it doesn’t get too expensive I might try to find something similar in every city I got to. But we’ll see. During our wandering we proceeded to see Michelangelo’s “Madonna with Child,” see lollipops being made, buy some delicious Belgian chocolates, and lose half of our group. Good thing we agreed on a meeting place!
After wandering, we took a thirty-minute boat tour. Because of its canals, Bruges is sometimes called the Venice of the North. The tour was really fun, firstly because of the beautiful views from the canals that you can’t always see from the streets and secondly because our tour guide was hilarious. He gave commentary in like five different languages and kept making sarcastic comments about the other boat drivers we passed. I wanted to be like best friends with him, but alas we never really got to meet him. Haha. Some more wandering and souvenir buying later, we all met up again for dinner outside by a canal. I didn’t like the food as much, but there were many more people and that lent to some good conversation. After dinner our large group split up again, some people going back to hostels for a quick nap, and I got more waffles with Aunna, Brad, Lindsay, and Zach. This time we got ice cream and chocolate on them. Awesome. I had a lot of fun getting to know Lindsay and Zach better since I didn’t really know them before this trip. We hung out at the bar underneath Zach and Lindsay’s hostel for awhile that night and attempted to find a place to go dancing, but that epically failed. Instead we ended up back at our hostel playing a weird card game called Indian that involved putting cards on our forehead and Zach probably making up all the rules as we went along.
Sunday morning was pretty uneventful since most stores are either closed or open later. We found more waffles in the morning – this time with strawberries! – and these were probably my favorite of the whole weekend. We met up with the larger group for a little while but ultimately decided to leave Bruges a little bit earlier to have some time to unwind at home. So we caught a train home, once again making very successful train connections despite our train arriving late in Brussels, and relaxed the rest of the day.
I’m really glad we went to Bruges on the first weekend because it was such an easy tourist city. It was entirely a walking city so there was no need to figure out buses or a metro system and it was so cheap to get there! So I made it through my first weekend travel experience without any bad experiences… Hopefully this trend will continue. Now its back to classes…
Just a random little thing. I spent about fifteen minutes listening to Christmas music while I was writing this before I realized I was listening to Christmas music. Weird.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
la di da.
So. I don't feel like I have anything super exciting to report. Yesterday was crazy class-wise. It was finally nice outside and I didn't leave the chateau all day because I had class until 8:30! Today is very nice also, which is such a blessing because the rain was really getting me down.
I should be reading for my history class right now but I got a little tired of that. We have plenty of time to do work here, which is a nice break from Miami. I feel like at Miami I have so much planned in the evenings that I always end up reading or writing papers at 2 in the morning (which is fine with me, but still...). I don't think I'll have to do that at all here. I can already tell I'm going to like this history class. It's about the rise and fall of Hitler, and the professor and the books we're reading are very interesting.
We've also been busy planning our trips. We are officially going to Bruges this weekend! It looks like a beautiful city and we got a hostel near the train station in the center of the city. So far our plans for the weekend might include visiting a Belgium chocolate museum, eating Belgium waffles, climbing to the top of a belfry tower, and a boat tour in the city that has been called the Venice of the north. It's really all up in the air until we get there I guess! Except the waffles. Those are already a guarantee.
I've almost gotten everything squared away to get my official student visa here... everything except my doctors visits. They want to check us for TB for some reason, so I have to do a general exam and then go into Lux city to do a TB test. Originally we only had to get an xray, but legislation passed today that now requires us to get an xray and a TB injection test. So that's great... I guess in a few days I'll FOR SURE know that I don't have TB.
I should be reading for my history class right now but I got a little tired of that. We have plenty of time to do work here, which is a nice break from Miami. I feel like at Miami I have so much planned in the evenings that I always end up reading or writing papers at 2 in the morning (which is fine with me, but still...). I don't think I'll have to do that at all here. I can already tell I'm going to like this history class. It's about the rise and fall of Hitler, and the professor and the books we're reading are very interesting.
We've also been busy planning our trips. We are officially going to Bruges this weekend! It looks like a beautiful city and we got a hostel near the train station in the center of the city. So far our plans for the weekend might include visiting a Belgium chocolate museum, eating Belgium waffles, climbing to the top of a belfry tower, and a boat tour in the city that has been called the Venice of the north. It's really all up in the air until we get there I guess! Except the waffles. Those are already a guarantee.
I've almost gotten everything squared away to get my official student visa here... everything except my doctors visits. They want to check us for TB for some reason, so I have to do a general exam and then go into Lux city to do a TB test. Originally we only had to get an xray, but legislation passed today that now requires us to get an xray and a TB injection test. So that's great... I guess in a few days I'll FOR SURE know that I don't have TB.
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