The End of a Chapter

IT'S MY LAST DAY HERE!

It's hard to even wrap my mind around because this place is what I'm familiar with now. Texas seems like such a long time ago! But at the same time, it's amazing how fast this semester flew by. Life needs to slow down please :)

This past weekend in Bonn was seriously so great. It's like the whole town came alive! Within a week, everything bloomed and I swear the population doubled. It's crazy because this is the first time in my life I've actually witnessed the transition from winter into spring. Texas is definitely lacking in that department...haha. Here's Bonn in all its beauty!

This past weekend, Bonn had a huge festival in celebration of the beginning of May. It was jam packed full of people and had a huge stage with bands performing all day, a carnival, booths, fireworks, everything! It was so much fun. Here's everyone sitting on the lawn listening to music that night.

It was nice to see the younger people in the city in a place other than mcdonalds ;)

Jeff, Saif, & I decided to pay to jump on one of those trampoline things. It was actually a horrible idea because I decided to do it right after I had drank a bunch of liquid. But regardless, i've always wanted to do it! Hahahaa. I can check this off the bucket list. 

The fireworks that night were the best I've ever seen! Sorry Granbury, Bonn's gotcha beat. All the fireworks were in sync with music. I specifically remember one of the songs being Beethoven's Fifth. 

The following day, AIB paid for all of us to take a farewell cruise down the Rhine river. It was neat because all of our host families were invited too, as well as the rest of the AIB students from LMU & Penn State. The cruise was about 6 hours long and they hired this German soap opera star to give a speech. Apparently he's kind of a big deal because my host mom was freaking out, hahah.

&that brings us to today! The final day. I went into town early to just kind of soak the city in one last time. It was a beautiful spring day today! We had one last meeting at AIB at 2 and it was definitely weird saying goodbye. Ariane(our main coordinator) was telling us that it was especially hard to say goodbye to our viz group because we're all so diverse in personalities. It's so true! Whatevaaaa, we're clearly just fun ;) Later that afternoon, Teaghan & I went to this area behind one of the universities.

Everyone was reading a book, sleeping, or just hanging out. It was super relaxed and the perfect way to spend my last afternoon in Europe!

Here's one last picture of the cathedral in Bonn.

When I got home for dinner, my host family ended up giving Erin & I little gifts. They gave us these "wishing rocks" which are popular in Germany and a cutting board(I guess I should start learning to cook now, haha). After dinner, they took us to go get ice cream. It was seriously the coolest ice cream place ever. And by cool, I mean I got spaghetti ice cream. 

Also, here's a picture of my host family(Elizabeth & Samir)! They're pretty wonderful.

Erin & I are lucky to get a host family who is so kind & open. Speaking of them, about an hour ago once I had finished packing, Elizabeth walked in my room and was all like "Wow, Alex. I don't think I've seen this room this clean in months!" Which is pretty sad because if she thinks that was bad, she should see my room back home...hahaha. 

During the walk home, I asked them about these decorations I'd seen hanging in the trees this past week.

Apparently during the month of may, boys will buy a certain tree and tie streamers and the girls name to it and leave it outside her house. The girls will do it for the guys every leap year! Just one of those cool(and somewhat stalkerish) german traditions we got to witness. 

So anyways, I just wanted to say one last time how amazing this trip was & how much of a blessing it was that I got to experience it! I learned so much about myself and saw the world in a way most people never get the opportunity too. My expectations had nothing on reality. I'm going to miss you Europe!

Stuttgart, Cannes, & Everything In Between

The day after we got back from Spain, we headed out to Stuttgart, Germany for a class trip. We went there for 5 days in order to attend the FMX Conference. The FMX Conference is one of the biggest conferences on animation & special effects in the world. It was neat to get to go and see so many important people in the industry. My favorite part about Stuttgart though was getting to see my family! My relatives, Johen, Elke, Timon and Doreen, live there annnd my Aunt Hilde & Uncle Kurt drove in from Geislingen to visit. Hilde & Kurt picked up Teaghan & I from the conference and drove us to Johen's house for dinner. For about an hour, we sat outside in the beautiful weather, talked, and caught up. Eventually, Timon and Doreen taught us Americans how to play a common german game before dinner. I believe it was called "Vikings." It basically involved throwing these sticks and knocking down the other teams bricks. Sounds simple but it was actually really hard and strategic! 

Ps, I sucked at this game. Pps, there's a reason I never did a sport that involved throwing things. Ppps, thanks gymnastics. 

The food we had at dinner was delicious! They made my favorite german food, spaetzle and this traditional german pot roast type thing. After dinner, we had dessert. and a little while later, coffee. It's typical of Europeans to have a first course meal, second course meal, dessert, and coffee for dinner every night. How are they so skinny?!

I really enjoyed getting to see them & it was nice reminder that I actually have family over here in Europe! For the past 4 months, I've kind of forgotten that and have been trying to survive over here all on my own!:) Gotta love family. 

The next couple of days were pretty repetitive. The conference allowed you to pick which lectures you wanted to attend based on your personal interests. I went to some of those and also hit up the local Starbucks quite a bit(our hostel, although having an amazing view overlooking Stuttgart....didn't have wifi).

On the night before we left, we all went to the biergarten(beer garden). The weather in Stuttgart was about as perfect as it gets and I loved getting to sit outside with everyone and people watch. Stuttgart is in the lower part of Germany and I'm convinced that if anyone ever wants to go visit this country, to head south! Stuttgart, Munich, Geislingen...they all just seem to be more green and lush compared with the northern part of Germany I've been located at this semester(Bonn, Cologne, Berlin...). Also, the atmosphere seems a lot different. Stuttgart had a huge community lake with a bunch of fountains and green grass surrounding it. SO many people would just lay in the grass, have picnics, walk their dogs, enjoy the outside scenery, etc. Such a stark and relaxed contrast to Bonn, where it hasn't been that sunny and most people stay busy throughout their day! Everyone here lounged around outside and enjoyed the day. Stuttgart is a fantastic city! Not to mention it has a giant outdoor theater screen which is pretty cool. 

We left Stuttgart Friday evening and caught the train back to Bonn. On Saturday & Sunday, Teaghan, Thomas, Ethan, & I starting putting together a video project that was due a week later. We were supposed to have been working on it all semester buuuut you know how that goes. (As I'm typing this, it's actually due tomorrow and it looks great! It's a miracle). Monday, Teaghan and I left for Cannes, France! He decided to take me there for our one year anniversary. How did I get so lucky to find a boyfriend who takes me to the French Riviera for this? Like seriously. I'm super lucky. Thanks Teaghan :)

Anyways, Cannes was stunning! Most of you probably know of it from the Cannes Film Festival, which is actually being held 2 weeks after we went. The first night we got there, it was raining slightly & we just explored the town. Cannes is known for the shopping and the beaches! A lot of people call it the Beverly Hills of Europe. The main street on the beach, La Croissance, was packed full of major fashion house stores so it definitely made sense. A surprising amount of European families vacation there as well so that was pretty neat to witness! There were so many "perfect" looking/wealthy families on the beach with their kids. Kind of reminded me of how the Hamptons would be. 

this is the building where the cannes film festival is held each year!

The following day, we caught a boat from Cannes to a small island about 12 minutes away from it. The island was called Iles Saint-Marguerite and it seriously was like a baby Hawaii. As soon as you stepped off the boat, you were immersed in a tropical jungle with the ocean, a bird sanctuary, palm trees, a lake in the middle of the island, and super old/beautiful old homes that were up on a fort on top of the hill! We hiked around the island for about 3-4 hours and were in awe of it. Who would have known a place like this existed in France! Gorgeous. 

That night, we ate a delicious French dinner and went up to the mountain overlooking the city to watch the sunset. 

Sidenote: French food is THE BEST food in Europe. Seriously. It's so unbelievably good. Paris and Cannes have validated this in my mind now. Howeverrrrr, the people here are SO RUDE! So yes, the stereotype is true. For example, Teaghan asked these native french people to take our picture. The lady laughed, spit at us, and continued walking. Her friend awkwardly took our picture after and we were completely shocked! Also, it was around 6:30pm and we were searching for a place to eat dinner. I saw this cute little cafe that was full of people and stopped to look at the menu. The waiter started rudely saying something to me in French and I looked at him and asked what he was saying since I had no idea. He then proceeded to mimic my voice, make fun of me, and shoo me away. 

So yea.   R U D E   P E O P L E   L I V E   H E R E.

The following day we left Cannes to return to Bonn. It was a short trip but totally worth it! I loved getting to see the French Riviera. As soon as we got back to Bonn, we went straight to AIB to continue working on our project. Talk about a lonnnnnng day. We're actually up in the studio right now completing it and we all present tomorrow for our final show! 

Today marks 5 days until I head back to Texas and 7 days until Hawaii! I can't decide if I'm happy or sad to be leaving. I guess I'm basically a mixed bundle of emotions. I know that I'm going to get to the USA and see our lifestyle in a completely new light. There's definitely going to be things I miss about Europe. I also know that I'm probably going to step off the plane and instantly melt onto the pavement so that's cool too. Regardless, Texas...I'm comin' for ya! (soon).

Barcelona, Spain!

For our “long” weekend, a big group of us decided to go to Barcelona, Spain. It was seriously the best decision we’ve made this entire semester-Spain was beyond what I even imagined! It kind of reminded me of a European Miami/California...but with amazing architecture, interesting people, and all the history Europe tends to offer. Not to mention that in Germany we’ve barely been seeing the sun and in Spain, we got to wear shorts and tank tops everyday. Hallelujahhhhhhhhhh(insert emoji praise hands here). Ps: the font keeps changing sizes on this blog post & i'm too lazy to figure out why. So...yea.

palm trees errrrrwhere!

 We booked Spain literally the FIRST week of school. We’re talking the flights were booked by January 21st people. It’s crazy because these flight tickets were the most expensive for us buuuut they were also the earliest booked. Can you imagine how expensive it would’ve been if we had waited? Yea. Just yea. Worth every penny though! Alli, Jeff, Martin, Chelsey, Teaghan, & I left for Barcelona on Wednesday after class. I don’t think any of us really knew what to expect for this trip so when we stepped off the plane and immediately saw palm trees, we were stoked. (Or at least I was!). We caught the Aerobus from the airport into downtown Barcelona and pretty quickly found our hostel. It’s amazing how easily we adapt to huge cities now- between the metro system, buses, hostels, airports, train stations...everything is so simple now. Once checking into our hostel, we went to go eat at a traditional spanish restaurant. Just keeping it real, but it wasn’t that great. Didn’t matter though cause we were starving and anything and everything tastes good when your stomach hates you. 

That night, we went on a pub crawl with our hostel. We ended up going to this bar with 600 different shots! It was crazy because you would pick a random shot, such as the “Harry Potter” and they’d do crazy stuff to it. For example, the Harry Potter involved lighting the shot on fire and then exploding these sparks out of it. 

Morgan Willett, this would be your happy place. (Sorry, Mom). The nightlife in Spain is awesome. All the clubs stay open until 6am, a lot of things are on the beach,and you end up meeting so many people from different countries. I <3 Europe.

The next day, we woke up and submitted some finalized things for our comic book project. We had to leave the day before our main project for studio was due(unfortunately when we booked these flights, we had not even been assigned a studio project yet!), so we all went through a couple of hours of panic when we realized the wifi in spain is pretty terrible. Eventually some of us made our way to Starbucks and we (slowly) got everything submitted. After that....it was a beach dayyyyyyy! We caught the closest metro to Barceloneta Beach and headed that way. The beaches in Barcelona are gorgeous! The Mediterranean Sea is this deep turquoise color and the sand is super soft and light brown. When you walk up to the beach, there is a giant street right by it where everyone is long boarding/roller skating/bike riding down it. It reminded me so much of Venice Beach in California! It was super chill- we all luuuurved it. It was so refreshing to just go lay on the beach and hang out instead of walking around and trying to sightsee. Barcelona, you da shiiiiiz. 

On Friday, we all caught the train to Montserrat! For those who have never heard of it, Montserrat is about an hour away from Barcelona. It’s a convent that is situated on top of these huge cliffs overlooking Spain. The views here almost rivaled Switzerland. It was truly so so gorgeous. 

The best thing about Spain is that EVERYTHING is green! It kind of has this beach meets vintage meets western desert meets green blooming gorgeous vibe....which probably makes no sense to anyone reading this. If I had to describe this country in 3 words though, I’d say: color, life, fajitas...hahah. 

When we got to Montserrat, we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain. There were a bunch of trails you could hike up, and we ended up choosing one that lead us to this giant cross on top of the mountain. I can’t verbally describe the experience of being there- it was just stunning. That’s all I can really say. Pure beauty. 

It ended up getting pretty cold around the middle of the afternoon, so we all caught the train heading back to Barcelona. For dinner that night, we wandered around Catalunya Plaza until we found a restaurant that offered fajitaaaaaas. I was so happy!:)<33333

That night, we stayed in our hostel and all just played cards and hung out. Our hostel was pretty cool- they had two rooms full of bean bags so it made it easy to just lounge around and meet new people. They had one room with a tv in it and it was packed full of travelers watching the news of what was happening in Boston. It’s crazy how out of touch we are from whats happening in America. I was grateful to be able to catch up that day!

On Saturday, we woke up early and went to see the Sagrada Familia. This is a “modern” cathedral designed by Gaudi. Gaudi was a prominent architect in Barcelona- he also designed some crazy looking apartments that I’ll post a picture of in a bit. This cathedral was started in the early 1900’s and is still being built today! I plan on coming back to Spain when I’m way older to see the finished product(if it’s even completed by then!). The best way to describe this building is quirky. Like, it straight up looks like something about of a Dr. Suess book. The exterior has snake carvings on it and weird pink bulbs. When you walk inside, you see that Gaudi designed this entire cathedral around the concept of light. The ceilings are insane and the stained glass windows cast light onto the pillars in a really unusual way. The Sagrada Familia even had some modern day graphic design going on in it! Also, the stone carving of Jesus was really abstract looking. All around, this was THE coolest cathedral I’ve been in. It’s unlike anything else. Gaudi had an amazing mind. 

We ended up walking down the main shopping street in Barcelona and went and got tapas for lunch. Tapas are extremely small portions of meals that typically cost between 1.95-3 euros each. You ended up needed to eat about 5 different types of tapas to get full though! It was fun picking different things to try-chalking it up to experiencing spain in its fullest. After that, we ended up splitting up for a bit. Some of us went back to the hostel and some of us walked down La Rambla(the most famous street in Barcelona). La Rambla is jam packed full of tourist shops, restaurants, flea markets, and street performers. I loved walking around and seeing everything! Barcelona has such a fun vibe. We all eventually met up at the beach and chilled there until heading back to the hostel. There was a supermarket right across the street so we decided to all cook dinner for ourselves that night. Guess what we had? Fajitaaaaas! I was, once again, extremely happy. 

Here's some more of Gaudi's architecture!

pretty crazy apartments, right?

Sunday was our last day in Spain :( I had to go to Starbucks that morning and submit some last minute internship things and then we all went back to the beach! As if you couldn’t tell, we went there a lot. Blame it on surviving in 30 degree weather for 3 months up to this! We only got to lay out for an hour or two, but it was still nice. You always hear how pickpocketing is prominent in Spain, right? I have always known it but never really felt threatened by it. However, we were laying on the beach and the lady right next to us had fallen asleep. A guy had been walking all over the beach since we had gotten there and he ended up sneaking up to the sleeping women, stealing her iphone from her purse and running off. (Why anyone would fall asleep on the beach with a purse right beside them is besides me...) But anyways, Jeff saw and got up and chases the man down. The man whole stole it tried to pretend that he just “found it.” His story eventually changed to how he was so poor and really needed the money. The lady got her iphone back, thanks to jeff! Hero of the day. 

Here's some more pictures of Barcelona!

We caught the metro back to the hostel, grabbed our luggage, and caught the aerobus back to the airport. We got to Cologne, Germany around 1030 that night and made it back to Bonn around midnight. It was one of my favorite trips this semester! Oh & I've realized that on every blog post I say something like "I love this place so much!" So for clarification, I<3everything. No but seriously, top 3 places I've been(in my opinion) are:

1) Edinburgh, Scotland

2) Barcelona, Spain

3) Switzerland in general(although I love Italy as well!)

annnnd my least favorite places I've been are:

1) Paris, France

2) Vienna, Austria

3) Prague, Czech Republic

kkkk that's all. goodnight!

edit: just teaghan needed to go to starbucks and we all went to a lightshow. happy now?:)

Easter Break(Firenze&Roma):Part 2

The following morning, we caught an early train heading from Venice to Florence. We got lucky though because we didn't reserve train seats ahead of time for our eurail. When we went to get the tickets the morning of the lady at the desk informed us that they were sold out! I think she saw the panic in our eyes(we had already booked our hostel in Florence and couldn't afford to stay in Venice an extra day) and she gave us another route to catch to get to Florence. We ended up switching regional trains twice but we got there eventually! Crisis adverted. When we arrived in Florence, we checked in to our hostel and immediately headed to the Galleria del' Accademia. For those who don't know, this is one of the most famous art museums in the city and the line outside is typically around 3 hours long. It houses the famous statue David. Being the overly organized(note: only organized when it comes to traveling) girl that I am, I managed to book reservation tickets for this museum a couple of days before by finding the phone number on trip advisor and then miraculously getting someone on the phone to book them. We managed to get inside the museum within 20 minutes! Yea, I felt awesome. When we got inside, we walked around and ran into the statue of David. The security there was pretty tight but I managed to sneak a picture...

It's hard to tell in this picture, but this statue has such a powerful presence! I wish I could just stand alone in the room, look at it, and take it all in.

We then ended up walking over to see the Duomo. It is MASSIVE. It (almost) puts the Cologne cathedral to shame. 

Right after walking around this, we realized that the famous baptistry doors were right beside us! Everyone who has taken art history at A&M will know what these are! Caffey loves them & I'm pretty sure they've been covered on two different tests now, hahah. Here they are!

Later that day, we just walked around, explored the town, and popped in different stores. The following  morning was Easter! We discovered that the Scoppio del Carro takes place here; this is a 450 year old tradition in Florence! It basically involved the parading of super old flint around town for a couple of hours. Eventually the flints make their way to the Duomo where a cart is waiting for them. The cart is rigged with explosives and the flints then light the cart on fire. If the cart explodes properly, everyone witnessing will be blessed with a good year! It was really cool to take part in such a tradition.

It was packed! A parade followed after this. 

Later that afternoon, we hiked up to Michelangelosplatz because it has a gorgeous view overlooking the town. It was stunning!

We ended up walking up to this creepy cathedral that was perched on the very top of the hill. I don't think it was meant to be creepy but I seriously have never felt chills when walking into one before! This one was super old, smelt like it was decaying and had these eery paintings on the wall that were about 1000 years old. It was dark and there were carvings on the walls from the 1800's! 

Here it is in all it's creepy glory.

Crazy!

The following morning, we woke up at the crack of dawn to catch a train to Rome for the day! In all the guidebooks, they say Rome can't be done, let alone walked, in a day. 

Challenge accepted & defeated. 

On the train ride over there, we met a man from Romania who had just moved to Italy. He was a professional fighter. We all started talking and learned that he left his family because he had no possibility of moving up in the world or making a life for himself. Romania still exists as a caste system in a sense. His goals are to stay in Italy for awhile until he earns enough money to move to Amsterdam. Eventually he wants to move to America because the economy is so bad in Europe(Germany is one of the few stable places). It was very eye opening to talk so freely with someone who lives a life so opposite of most people I know. 

One quote that stands out to me was when I asked him about Italy:

"Do you like it?"

"I need it."

It really put everything into perspective for me then. 

We got to Rome and decided to go to the Colosseum, Forum, Pantheon, Vatican, and the Trevi Fountain in a day. All by walking! Call us crazy, but we did it. My favorite was the Forum. For those who don't know, the Forum is the ancient city of Rome. It is literally in the center of modern day Rome and is surprisingly well preserved for being 2000 years old(think the time of Jesus!). Getting to walk thru this ancient city and see still standing structures, ornamental carvings, a 2000 year old church, and buildings upon buildings upon buildings was SO COOL. It was one of my favorite things I've done in all of Europe. I loved getting to sit there and try to picture in my mind what this once thriving city looked like. Truly amazing. 

We kept walking thru the city and eventually made our way to the Vatican! It was cool because the chairs were still in place from when the Pope was elected a week ago. The line to tour St. Peters was extremely long but we kind of slipped in and got to see everything. And by slipped in, I mean Teaghan stood beside old people and snuck in. Gotta do what ya gotta do. After touring the cathedral, we wanted to see if we could get into Vatican City. Unfortunately there were guards everywhere surrounding it, letting only the actual residents in. Teaghan went up to the guard to ask him a question and I'm pretty sure everyone watching thought he was trying to break in, haha.

Anyways, after that it started raining. Whoop, spontaneous european weather. We went and saw the Trevi Fountain and then headed back to the train station. We managed to do everything we wanted and got back to Florence around 10 that night! Ah yea, beat the system. 

The following day was spent just wandering around Florence before our train that evening. We had tickets to catch an overnight train which would take us to Munich at 5 in the morning. Once we got to Munich, we caught a train going to the airport and then an airplane going from Munich to Cologne. After that, we caught a bus going from Cologne to Bonn and went straight to class. Why did we put ourselves through that torture? To save money? Never again. We were so out of it at the airport that we were sitting in Starbucks for a couple of hours waiting for the flight until we realized that our flight was set to leave in 30 minutes and we hadn't gone thru security yet. We ended up running full sprint through the airport. Luck was on our side that day because we somehow made the flight! However, when we finally found the gate number that was on our ticket, we sat there until the last minute, confused as to why it said Paris on the board. We thought our flight was late and eventually went and asked the lady working the desk. She was all like "Oh, you should never trust your boarding ticket!" Apparently what's printed on a piece of paper besides your name isn't real y'all. So we frantically ran to the other gate that was giving the call for last board...and barely made our flight. Keep in mind that nothing is in english here so when they make announcements, you have no idea what they're saying! 

But yea, made the flight. Made it to class. Italy was awesome.