Traveling about

Hello All!

It's hard to believe that I am already over half way done with my semester in Germany.  So far it has been a blast and I am incredibly thankful for all the new experiences I am having.  Traveling around Europe is something I'm especially thankful for.  Obviously, visiting a new place is always fun, but I have also been able to compare them and how they are similar and different to Mannheim.  Below, I'm going to sum up my different visits briefly:

Paris France:

Paris is an incredible city.  It's also an enormous city.  The first day I was there I decided to walk into the city center from my friends dorm (where I was staying).  Other friends from Mannheim were arriving later in the day so I really just wanted to walk around and see the different sites, and get a sense of the city.  It was a doable walk, but it definitely added to what I can best describe as a day spent walking.  The city is centered around the Seine river for the most part, so many of the major sights can be visited by following the river once you are in the city center.

There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Paris is a beautiful city.  Especially the old part of the city, whose streets are so narrow I can't imagine driving a car around them (props to the chauffeur who was driving the brand new Rolls Royce I saw).  The view from the Sacré-Cœur was spectacular, though and you get a much better sense of how vast the city truly it.  It seems to just stretch for miles, but there aren't sky scrappers the same way there are in the United States.  In fact, the financial quarter (the only area with sky scrappers) was quite small.  

Paris was also expensive.  No doubt because it is a famous city famous for its tourism industry, but it was still  a financially painful difference from Mannheim.

Amsterdam, Netherlands:

Set right on the water, Amsterdam is like no where else.  Many things that are much more private or illegal in other places take center stage in Amsterdam. The city is famous for its red light district and “coffee shops”, and for good reason. Those aspects are nearly unavoidable when visiting, so I wouldn't recommend people with traditional values to visit the city. If you go in with an open mind, however, the city proved to be very interesting. Perhaps you could call it a sort of social science experiment, but it was very amusing to watch.

Less amusing was the hostel my friends and I stayed at. There were 18 people in the room we bunked in, which was fine, but it definitely keeps you on your guard the entire time.

Like I said, the city was on the water, which was a pleasant change from where I am in Germany. Amsterdam, however, was built on marshland so the building have settled a bit over the year. The tended to tip inwards toward the street a little bit. Couple that with the fact that the streets were narrow, and the city had a sort of claustrophobic feel to it. I found it kind of charming, but I could see how others might not.

Freiburg and the Black Forest

This trip was a mandatory trip for all Umass students studying in the Baden-Württemberg system, so part of the trip dealt with paper work and what not to ensure we were all off to a successful start in Germany. For the six of us who are studying in Mannheim, we were already in pretty good shape. We have been in Germany longer than anyone else (partly because of the Summer Academy and partly because our school starts earlier than the other), so we were already pretty adjusted to living in Germany, and we had a pretty good grip over our academic plans. The trip was still a great experience, and we had a chance to visit a old farm house where we got a tour and learned about the way of life for the original farmers in the Black Forest. The landscape was also very breathtaking. This area is the setting for many fairy tales and it was very apparent after walking around for a while.

We also had a chance to stop at Freiberg on our trip home, which was a fun place to visit. The city is a little more touristy than Mannheim, but that certainly didn't take away from it in any way. What I found most interesting was the Freiburg Bächle. This is the water system that runs through the streets of the city. They are small water filled runnels that border the sides of the streets. They were once used to provide people in the city with fresh water, but now they are just there for aesthetics. The reason they are not more present in more cities is because they were often boarded up after they were made obsolete by indoor plumbing.

Munich and Oktoberfest

I consider myself particularly lucky because I won a ticket in a lottery with my schools “Visum” club (international student organization). Since I won one of the coveted spots, I had the chance to join a group of about 50 people on a two day excursion to Munich during Oktoberfest.

I have never been to a festival quite like Oktoberfest. Thousands of people, livestock, rides, tents, and exhibits set in the city along with what felt like enough beer to drown the city. It seemed that people of all ages and backgrounds took part in an event that felt very German. Nearly Everyone had on Lederhosen (for men) and dirndls (for women), and it was definitely a day filled with drinking, chanting, and general merriment. This, no doubt, was fueled by the fact that the serving of beer came in a Maß which is a 1 liter mug. To put that into perspective, that's about 3 American Beers per serving.

The second day we spent there, we had the opportunity to tour the city and the Olympic stadium where the games took place in 1972. No doubt it's a city filled with history, much of which centers around the breweries in the town. On the final day, we visited the BMW museum, which I found incredibly thrilling.

Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona is an incredible city, and it also shares little in common with Mannheim. I had the opportunity to visit this city because it was where I met my parents during their visit to Europe. From Barcelona we embarked on a 7 day cruise through the Mediterranean.

I'm so glad we arrived in Barcelona 2 nights ahead of leaving on the cruise, however because the city is an exciting place to be. For one thing the weather was amazing. I left on a bus at 2:45 am in Germany and I was shivering through my coat I was so cold, but once I was in Barcelona, it was back to t-shirts and shorts weather! The city is also architecturally beautiful with buildings designed by Gaudi and others that line the blue green waters of the Mediterranean. The crowds are fairly spectacular too. Our hotel was on the main street, La Rambla, and this definitely helped us to get a better sense of just how crowded the city is. I guess the same could be said about any large city in Europe, however, my father kept commenting on it so I remember the crowds here most vividly.

...ok I'm all out of time now, but more to come soon, I promise.