vienna, austria

in terms of survivor, it's day 42!
normally i'd be flown off by now but you know. i'm here another what, 2 months and a weeks? crazy stuff. i haven't been pick pocketed, gotten sick, gotten dangerously lost(just normal lost, yes), haven't freaked out, and haven't gotten "taken"(sorry morgan). such accomplishments, i know.

last week, teaghan & i decided that:
1) we needed to use are eurail pass(it basically gives us free train rides for 10 days during a 2 month time period).
2) to go somewhere pretty spontaneous while using it.
after consulting with teaghan's billionaire host father hans, we narrowed it down to copenhagen denmark, vienna austria, or hamburg germany. i decided to let teaghan have full control and pick and what do ya know...vienna, austria it was!

we left friday night around 8pm for vienna from cologne. i had another paris mishap & read the tickets wrong. the whole morning we had assumed the train left at 10pm, not 8 annnnd we basically almost missed it again. one day i'll learn, i promise!
anyways, the train ride was 13 hours long...

thirteen  l o n g  hours.

teaghan & i bought a seat(which is cheapest) and a couchette to sleep on. not really sure why we decided to split up, but we did. however...the boys in his room were smelly and strange haha. anyways who knows teaghan knows that he seriously can't stand anything that smells remotely weird so he ended up in my compartment with the cheap seats. it ended up working out though! it was just us two and a guy named sebastian. sebastian was from cologne, germany and had recently moved to vienna to attend theater school. he was super chill & basically just told us where to go in vienna. also, he laughed everytime i tried to pronounce the name of something...haters gonna hate. ;)
i was super grateful he was in our compartment! this is one of the things i love about getting to travel across europe. you're constantly putting yourself in unique situations and from those, you get to experience things/people you never normally would. it's pretty amazing!
here's a picture of our compartment in the train.

the compartments each seat 6 people but because there was only 3 of us, we got to lay the chairs out and make them into a bed! yay life.

creepin' is a habit.

once we arrived saturday morning, we quickly got lost. (walked an extra two miles in the pouring snow lost). we eventually found our bed and breakfast type place though, no worries! the people who owned the place literally talked nonstop, but they were super nice & the room was defiantly better than a hostel so it was worth it. oh & we only paid 22 euros each for the room! talk about cheap. we then left the room to go explore vienna.

thanks to paris, we're metro pros over hurrr so we easily were able to navigate our way around the city. btw all this traveling makes me feel like by the end of it i should apply for the amazing race because i got it dowwwwwwn. million dollars, here i come ;)
we ended up going to stephensplatz first to see st. stephen's cathedral. it was definitely beautiful but the cathedral in cologne blows it away.

being supz kewl viz majors, we made it a game to guess which style each church we visited was. teaghan won this one, it's a mix of romanesque and gothic.
we then walked around the area/souvenir shopped/i slowly died inside because i keep wanting to buy clothes & can't due to having a weight limit on my luggage on the way back...it's tragic.
eventually, we made our way to my absolute FAVORITE church i've ever been to.
it is called st. peter's church and honestly, i think a bunch of tourists skip over it. it wasn't crowded at all and from the outside, it doesn't stand out. however, when you enter it your eyes seriously can't process everything you're seeing. the pictures simply don't do it justice!

after that, we walked around and eventually caught the metro to the museum district. we looked at the hofburg palace from the exterior but weren't really feeling paying a bunch of money to go look at things we weren't specifically interested in. we eventually made our way to rathausplatz, which was an area of town that had so much happiness to it? not sure if that's the right word. it was calming being over there though! it was basically a giant ice skating rink(on a legitimate pond y'all. crazy, i know) that had an area leading out of it that was almost like a maze on ice skates. here's a picture because i'm probably not doing the best job of describing it.

this place was like a winter wonderland! it was picturesque in a sense. lights everywhere, people skating, fresh snow. being from texas, snow is such a rare thing & seeing how people act in this environment was prettttty cool. 

too perfect.

later that evening, we got dinner at the same cafe that we got breakfast(cause it was that good!) and passed out. it was a longggg day. on sundays, everything is basically closed in austria(as it is in germany too) so we went to the natural history museum! teaghan was kind of sick so i felt bad dragging him through it. honestly though, we went to it for two reasons.

1) dinosaurs

2)the woman of willendorf!

the woman of willendorf is that statue that we all learned about in art history. it looks absolutely ridiculous but considering its like the oldest human statue to ever be found(25,000 years old) i guess it's kinda cool. but only kinda..

we walked into the room that held it and saw that it was in this tent type thing. the mysterious vibe the room gave only upped the drama of what this statue could possibly look like in real life...

...it was like the size of my palm. hahah such a let down. we both seriously burst out laughing when we saw it. sorry stephen caffey, but it just wasn't that cool!

later that day, we walked around and then caught the train back to bonn! it was another wonderful 13 hour bus ride, you jeal? i let teaghan have the couchette because he was sick and the people in there were normal & i took the cheap seat. it was just me and one other man...who didn't speak english...and he was wearing a suit. why anyone would want to wear a suit and face plant a desk to sleep is beyond me. i should start taking pictures of the weird people i encounter in europe. i could tell you about the guy with the green half mohawk who started making weird noises in german but that's another story...

pros vs cons

as i was walking back to my "home" from the metro today, i started compiling a list in my head of things i appreciate having in germany that i don't have in texas and things that i miss! i felt like it was worthy of a blog post. 
here we go...

PROS OF GERMANY

-it's location:
     being only a couple hours away from all the other countries in europe is pretty awesome. this semester in europe, i have plans to travel to france, other towns in germany, spain, switzerland, ireland, scotland, czech republic, austria, italy, & england. yay europe, woo europe, love you europe. 
here's another way to put it all into perspective: to get to paris, you catch a train that takes about 3 hours. the distance from where i'm living now(bonn, germany) to paris, france is the equivalent distance of my home(granbury, texas) and college station, texas. consider your mind blown. 

-flights are cheap:
     and by cheap, i mean cheap. all of the flights i have booked, with the exception of spain, have cost me around 50ish euros. it's typically more expensive to take the train than to fly somewhere. 

-being a kid and growing up here would be ridiculously awesome:
     example: teaghan's host dad hans has a daughter who is currently on a field trip to iceland for ten days. yep, iceland. oh and ramy(my host brother) just returned from a field trip to another country. i want to say it was austria maybe? um hi. my "field trips" in texas consisted of visiting the local historical jail in granbury and walking aimlessly around the ballpark in arlington. no big. 

-the bus/metro system:
     YOU DON'T NEED A CAR HERE. IT'S AWESOME. (sometimes). i love the metro system here! it's so nice to be able to catch a ride going anywhere you want around the city annnd europe. whether it be a local, regional, or global train...they're all awesome and i desperately wish the united states had a system like this. gas here is more than double than that of the usa sooooo cars just really aren't needed. come on tejas, lezzzzdothis.

-there's no humidity here!(!!!!!!!!!!!):
    the fact that i can wake up, straighten my hair, and have it stay perfect all day long says it all :)<3333

-the fast food:
     it's ironic that i even titled this one that considering their version of it isn't even in the same ballpark as what fast food is in america. how should i put this? america's fast food consists of just awful greasy stuff. sonic, taco bell, schlotzskys, mcdonalds, chicken express, burger king, etc. the list goes on and on. i'll even include chick fil a on it! you know why? because here "fast food" places are these little bakeries where everything's baked daily. (think sandwiches and sweets). the bread here is better, sandwiches are filled with vegetables, and the portions are much smaller. the sweets obviously aren't good for you buuuuuut who cares! everything's fresh, nothing is fried and all around, you just don't feel bad/gross when you grab something to-go here. i honestly don't think i'll be able to eat fast food when i get back. no way joseeeeee!

-elizabeth's cooking:
     erin & i got the traditional living so we have a host mom who cooks for us every day. it's so nice walking home from a long day of school & having a full blown meal waiting for ya. 
it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. and i'll leave it at that.

-the shoes!
     i'm obsessed with the shoe stores over here. 
     o b s e s s e d
they're cuter, the quality is so much better, and everyone here dresses so much nicer than they do in texas! it's nice knowing people know how to dress up outside of my little bubble consisting of granbury/texas a&m. 
ps: i'd take back like 10 pairs of shoes with me if i could. i mean, i've already bought 2 pairs within the first month...maybe i will? oops.


CONS OF GERMANY

-having to pay for water in restaurants:
     to anyone reading this: appreciate getting free water! it's always a sad day when a simple glass of tap water costs you around 3 euros. there's no refills either! in france, a glass of water cost around 5 euros. liquid there was about the same price as half or more of a meal! eeeek.

oh and did i mention there's no ice here? yea.

-having no ceiling fans/fans anywhere:
     i really really really miss my bed back home. the mattresses aren't as thick here, which isn't a bad thing. it's just different. but more than anything, i miss having a ceiling fan! sleeping without air circulation is no fun. 

-the snow:
     snow used to be something that fascinated me. that was until it snowed about maybe 10 days out of the month i've been here! the snow here is pretty...until it turns to slush...and then it becomes really annoying. you have to remember that it takes forever to melt too! it's been a rare day when i've gotten into bonn & not seen snow anywhere. 

-paying for bathrooms:
     just know that in order to use the bathroom, you have to pay up. and if you don't pay up, they have guys down there whose job is to clean the bathroom and they expect you to tip them.

-the gym:
     anyone who knows me knows i'm obsessed with fitness and working out! i've joined the local gym down here called mcfit. it's actually really nice. think 3 stories with weights and cardio machines. however, the cardio machines are really really strange. back home, i typically run for 1-2 hours. howevaaaa, here the machines kind of tip down at a strange angle. my tendon in my right foot is still messed up from gymnastics & it's painful to run! total firstworldprobz.

oh, and the people here working out don't where typical work out clothes! they wear clothes you'd see someone wearing to run errands into town in. and they don't really wear running shoes either! just normal shoes. it's odd. oh and no one speaks at the gym really. which is even odder. 

-lack of a car:
     i miss my car! it's crazy thinking i haven't driven in a month now. i miss the freedom of hopping in my car and going to pick up groceries or simply driving to friend's houses. wah

-dillards
     my happy place. 

-the food:
     back home, i typically eat pretty clean! therefore i miss....
fruit, yogurt, greek yogurt, fish, soup, rice, fruit, fruit, fruit, and chips and salsa...oh and mexican food. AND SUSHI. and avocados. and more fruit. hah, the key word was "pretty"...and now i'm hungry again. that's all for now!

how to be parisian in 3 days or less

i finally have time to blog! a lot has happened since i last updated this thing & i have some catching up to do!

last thursday began karnival. i know i talked about it in my last blog but just as a reminder, karnival is known as the "fifth season" of germany. its 5 solid days of germans dressing up in outfits that don't make sense, parades, candy, and alcohol. in other words, pure chaos! that thursday, we all went into bonn in order to see what karnival was all about. first thing to note: it was FREEZING that day! we were all dressed in ridiculous outfits but it was worth it. we ended up walking across the rhine river to see a parade which was unlike any parade i've seen before. the people here have so much spirit!

(disclaimer: you probably don't see the "spirit" in this photo. just take my word that germans have got this parade thaaaaang down)

after the parade, we walked back across the rhine and went bar hopping of course. all of the bars & streets were pretty packed so it was definitely fun people watching. here's some of us in our costumes.

oh & here's mine in all it's glory.

so hawt, i know.

anyways, the very next day a small group of us went to paris! the group consisted of teaghan, jeff, alli, chelsey & i. we woke up at THE crack of down to catch a train to cologne and then another train from cologne to paris on the thaylls. by crack of dawn i mean we woke up at 430am. you jeally? i slept the entire train ride so i can't really tell you much about it. i do happen to know that the train was delayed an hour because someone committed suicide on the train tracks. eeeehk :(

anyways, as soon as we got there, i quickly realized i hadn't planned what to do once we finally got there. getting there was enough of a task as it was! like seriously, it was frantic. once we rolled up in paris, we decided to take a taxis to our hostel. worked like a charm. we checked into the nasty, gross, disgusting, i'mneverstayingthereagainbecausetheshowerswereterrifying hostel & decided to go grab lunch and walk around! and walk around we did...8 solid miles of walking around. after all that, we quickly decided that we were figuring out the metro the following day. but yea, we ate at this delicious french restaurant! having lived in germany almost a month, you get really really sick of bratwurst and bread. my tastebuds didn't know what to do when i ordered duck. i think they cried of happiness. here's the before and after shot of the meal. 

***breaking news! we were supposed to book tickets with our eurorail pass from florence to munich over easter break today. my lovely boyf lost his pass so we couldn't..

as of 5 seconds ago, he found it!

in the trash can.

i can't even. okay i'll continue now.

after that meal, we walked to the eiffel tower. it was sunny when we got there so i was extremely happy. here's my observations on the eiffel tower:

1)it really isn't that pretty

2) it doesn't matter because it's the eiffel tower

3) there was lots of asians there taking selfies of themselves with the tower

4) i wanted to climb it

after that, we continued to walk/take way too many pictures of the eiffel tower. like now that i think about it, its embarrassing. my phone has at least 50 photos of it. it was one of those days where i really need an off button. we walked 23947 miles then to the arc de triomphe! it's huuuuuge. we had learned about it in art history but i honestly never realized how massive it truly was. 

it sits in the middle of a giant traffic circle, which is kind of odd now that i think about it. all bunch of famous streets are connected to it, such as champs-elysees. speaking of traffic in paris, it makes dallas traffic look calm. people here literally don't follow any rules. it seems like there's no distinct lanes and motorcycles and cars just zoom in and out of whatever they please. talk about stressful. we walked down champs-elysees, shopped a little, watched some cops and street dancers get in a fight, and made our way back to our hostel. later that night we grabbed dinner & walked back to the eiffel tower. every night on the hour, it lights up and sparkles. like seriously, it's so cool. everyone go.

the next day teaghan, chelsey, and i woke up/figured out the metro(shoutout to chelsey for being our navigator the whole trip)/and went to visit notre dame cathedral! it's in a pretty touristy part of town but it was still really neat to see it. all i really knew about it was that the whole hunchback of notre dame stuff and that it involved gargoyles. 

hi gargoyles. 

notre dame is absolutely beautiful! i'm so glad we came to see it. i could talk about it, but it won't really do it justice so here's another picture!

after notre dame, we went to visit sainte-chapelle cathedral because it was close by. this is one of the oldest buildings in europe that was directly involved with parisian royalty. it also houses the oldest painting in paris!

it's a horrible picture, but the paintings are on the wall! if i remember correctly, they were painted there in the late 1100's. the upstairs portion of the cathedral is even more stunning. its filled with stained glass windows that literally are from floor to ceiling.

gorgeous, right? architecture from history fascinates me. it's hard to believe that people back then had none of the tools that we do now but still made more beautiful & ornate things. can we make it come back in style? :)

later that night, we all met up to go see a comedy show. it was called "how to be parisian in one hour." it was funny! (obviously). the guy basically made fun of americans the entire time which was pretty entertaining. we then went to the moulin rouge, which was pretty cool. also that night, the guys got tired of paying for the metro so they concocted this plan that chelsey & i would buy tickets and they would just follow us through the gates. nothing went according to plan and somehow they got through with the tickets and chelsey & i were stuck inside. needless to say, i ended up climbing all the way up and over the gate while chelsey literally hurled herself through it on the floor. and then we ran away. fast. because we didn't want a fine. haha. so rebellious, this group. the following day alli&jeff left to go back to germany to finish up karnival. chelsey, teaghan, & i went to the louvre. that place is like a maze! there's three different sections to it, all with different levels. it's unlike any museum i've ever been in before as well. it was in a building that looked like it was once was a palace of some sort. (maybe it was? no idea).

as soon as i saw the huge glass pyramid out back, i immediately freaked out and wanted my life to go all da vinci code on me. (annnnd nobody in my group has read the books and didn't really care. tragic)

anyways, we toured the louvre, which took about half a day. it was actually snowing that day and being able to look at all the amazing art and glance out the windows to see snow swirling around made it an amazing experience. i felt like i was in a different time period! actually, i felt like i was at hogwarts. and i didn't want to leave. later that day, we went to a bookstore for chelsey and eventually made our way to a cafe to escape the snow. teaghan & i tried escargots! it was funny because he was freaaaaaking out. escargots are delicious though! to everyone back home in tejas; go fry up some snails & lemme know whatcha think. we also got crepes that night which is basically a pancake filled with whatever you want. i prefer nutella & bananas. heaven. later that night, we went back to our hostel. we stayed in paris a later day than planned so we ended up going to a new hostel. it was SO NICE. private bathrooms, a hairdryer, free sheets, cheap towels. it made me appreciate the little things. not all hostels are bad, people! the following morning, we woke up to catch our train back to cologne from paris. we assumed the train left at 844am so of course we were just eating breakfast at 7am, chilling, taking our time, etc. luckily, chelsey told me to check the tickets & i quickly noticed that our train left at 8:01am. enter panic mode. we all FREAKED out because we lived on the opposite side of town from gare du nord, the main train station. the metro was no longer an option & missing the train meant that we would have to spend probably about 150 us dollars to get another train ride back. we decided to call a taxi. luckily, it only took 5 minutes to get to us & we made it to the train station with ten minutes to spare(the taxi driver drove so fast and did a bunch of illegal stuff that i was convinced we wouldn't live). we caught the train & headed back to bonn! it was a whirlwind of a weekend but i'm so glad i got the opportunity to go. living in europe for such a long time makes you forget that you're in EUROPE. you get used to it. traveling to another country was a huge wake up call that life is pretty awesome right now. i'm so grateful! 

berlin adventure time

sorry for the lack of blog posts! it's hard to find time to sit down & write these things! i've got a lot of catching up to do, clearly.

let's see. about a week and half ago, we each had appointments to get our visa's. (these made us official residents of bonn, which is pretty cool if ya ask me). everyone, i mean EVERYONE'S appointments were on thursday after class. no big deal, but mine and like 4 other people's were on friday...at 8am. welcome to my luck. so not only did I have to wake up super early to catch the subway into town(to get into town from erin & i's area, tannenbusch mitte, we have to walk 0.68 miles to the subway stop, wait and catch a subway, and then walk another 10 minutes to where we need to be. it's def a process) but once i got there, we quickly found out that the person in charge of my visa appointment randomly quit his job the day before & i was rescheduled without them telling me. it was pretty glorious.

so yea, i ended up waiting till 10:30 to get my visa. my grumpy face was present. 

that weekend we went to cologne, and it was very cologne-ish so i'm skipping to berlin because that's more interesting. 

we went to berlin for 4 days! it was a pretty neat city. we left on tuesday and caught a 5+ hour long bus ride. it got me thinking that getting from granbury to lubbock takes that long...how do you people do it? torture. it was torture. anyways, once we got to berlin, we were taken on a tour by the most precious welsh man. he looked like he came straight from the hobbit & he had such a fantastic accent. &i realize i probably sound really creepy by saying all that^ he took us around the town on a bus(i was excited to not be walking much). we went to some cool places like brandenburg gate & the column of victory buuuut i was obviously most excited to see the place where michael jackson famously held his child outside the window. 

waddup hotel adlon. 

after that, we went to the holocaust memorial. i loved it. you look at it and it doesn't make any sense but once you interact with it on a personal level, you truly understand it. basically it looks like hundreds of these cement rectangles of varying heights. however once you walk into it, you feel claustrophobic in a sense. the floor gets more and more uneven the deeper you get. it's all about how it makes you feel; uncomfortable and uneasy. 

here's how it feels once you walk thru it. 

the next day, i woke up allergic to berlin. it was probably a cold but it's more fun to blame it on allergies, so yea. we got split into groups & my group went to the transmedial festival. this exhibit was just weird. i'm all for a good art museum but sending paper thru tubes, staring at art made from a xerox machine and watching a creepy movie made me sad that i was awake and not sleeping in my super comfortable hotel bed. the food there was on point though! after that pointless exhibit, we went to tour the parliament. it was cool getting to be there! there were these fierce german shepards guarding it which made it seem even more german than i thought was possible. they looked like they could eat me. 

here's the parliament.

once inside, we got another tour. this time it was with the most unenthusiastic women i've ever met so needless to say, it was really enjoyable. she talked forever and then we went to the dome at the top. by the time we reached the dome, it was night time so we got to see all of berlin lit up. it was pretttttty!

that night, we went to an irish pub to hang out and met a guy from a&m! he was kind of a giant douchebag(him and his friends both), but i'll let that slide because the fact that we met him on opposite sides of the planet from texas was pretty cool. 

the next day was my favorite in berlin. we started off by getting to see a concentration camp. it was named sachsenhausen and once housed 30,000-50,000 prisoners. this was the entrance to the camp. "albeit macht frei" means "work will set you free." The only way one would be freed was through death. very morbid & sad. 

we then walked the grounds. they took us to the barracks and gave us a tour of everything else on the  grounds. after that, they took us into a museum which showed actual pictures of thousands of prisoners standing on the very same grounds i had just walked. talk about surreal. 

(i stole the picture above from erin bc i didn't get a good one. hope you don't mind!)

here's the same building as above, minus the newly added balcony. this picture was in the museum. 

after our tour, we went back to berlin & had the day to ourselves. you know what that means...shoppinggggggggg! kathy & i dragged teaghan & saif around. and eventually i ended up dragging all three of them around...for 6 hours. can't stop, won't stop. we ended up at this super expensive restaurant that we would've regretted(had it not been funny!) we walked in there wearing layers that we had been wearing since early that morning. don't worry, the waiter was in a tux. and everyone else was dressed really nicely. not only that, but everything we ordered was over the top expensive & what we got back in return was not what we expected! teaghan & i split a pasta dish that came with 3 big noodles. kathy paid 10 euros(12 us dollars? something like that) for literally a bowl of water & two tortellini's. our faces were priceless when the waiter came. haahah.

needless to say, we asked for refills on our free bread 3 times bc we're starving college students, obvi. anyways, later that night we were determined to experience the nightlife in berlin. chelsey did research and found this underground club. 

it was awesome.

think of your average club in the usa. then think about this. to get to this club, we had to meet up with these sketchy bodyguards outside a store. they ushered us inside, took our coats, and led us to an elevator. (the whole time this was going down, i was convinced Taken 3 was about to occur). Once we got out of the elevator, we were underground beneath the store annnnd there was a club down there. it was seriously like something from a movie. it blew my mind that it actually existed! i can't even describe it, so i'm not gonna try. just if anyones wondering, yes berlin's reputation for underground clubs does indeed hold up. 

the next(last) day in berlin we went to visit rise, which is an amazing company that has done special effects for harry potter, cloud atlas, etc. gimme a job. 

after that, we went and toured the east side gallery which is a section of the berlin wall that the government lets artists paint. it was easily one of my favorite things in berlin. here's a couple of pictures!

it was so cool. everyone fly to germany right now and go see it. 
after that, we took another waytoolong bus right back. we didn't end up getting back to our host family's homes until midnight. 

between then & now, i've basically been in classes(i tend to forget i'm actually in school) and just hanging out with everyone. it's pretty unbelievable that i'm living in europe with 28 of my favorite people & my preshyyyy boyf. i'm a lucky girl!

until next time y'all. but until then, here's a picture to leave you with.

(it's karneval season in germany! it's known as the fifth season here & it's a week where everyone gets shwastyyy and wears costumes in the street. picture the chaos of spring break in 20 degree weather with europeans. for my costume, i got a pancho and a giant sombrero. 

may the odds be ever in our favor!)