Wisconsin- Hessen Trip

This past weekend the new students from Wisconsin and Massachusetts (took me awhile to find out how to spell that) were cordially invited to a all expenses paid trip to a quaint city on the Rhein River. Now you're probably asking what that city was called and I it pains me to say that I literally have no idea where I was I just know that there was a city near it called Ponyland and that I had a lot of fun.....sort of. Now I checked the weather prior to leaving and it said a nice balmy 54 degrees and I'm like alright I'm feeling nice athletic pants and a sweatshirt will be just enough for today's events...boy was I wrong, so very wrong. We had to take a train to Geissen to meet with the two organizers of the whole trip and while we were walking it was slightly raining and not slightly gusting. Oh and a little insight in my health at this point is that I had a cold, and acute bronchitis, and I had also hurt my ankle playing basketball the day before so you can guess how i felt about being pushed around by wind while I couldnt breath out of my nose, while simultaneously coughing up a lung haha. Now dont get me wrong I survived just fine and the trip was great, so dont think that it was a bad trip. But I digress. So here were only 14 people on the trip. We had 5 people from Wisconsin who are in Marburg along with 2 people from Massachusetts that also go to Marburg. We had 3 people from Kassel, one being a Senior who goes to Whitewater, who I only know a little bit, but it was nice to see a face from home, and we also had 2 people from Queensland, Australia who also have a Hessen- Queensland exchange. Now to the trip, we started by piling in a van and driving about an hour and a half to our destination on which I peacefully passed out on my backpack and woke up when we got there. Then we got on a sky lift up the mountain which was I'd like to say delightful, but there again was even more hurricane force winds while on this lift, and my face was being pelted with high velocity rain drops. Once at the top it was alot better because it stopped raining and since we were in a pretty dense forest there wasn't any wind. We walked to all of the sightseeing spots on the trail and took great pictures, but pictures really couldnt capture just how majestic not only the Rhein is, but also the town around it and the massive mountains surrounding it. While we were walking we came across a rain deer farm and we got some of them to come over with the russelling of bags full of food. Then we took a sky lift down, which was much much better cause the sun was out and there wasnt any wind or rain. When at the bottom we got on this huge boat that took us up river to where we started. And the boat was like a smaller luxury cruise/ touring boat that tourists go down the Rhein in and stop at different destinations on the Rhein. And a little taste of home that I saw was this little old man that was all Green Bay Packered up! He had the championship hat one and had a big Packer letter jacket on which a big green and gold G on the back of it, so I went up to him and asked where he was from and we talked for a bit, which was really nice. Then we had an hour before we left to do some shopping which at this point I just wanted somewhere to sit and rest, because i was pretty spent, and to make it better was it started to rain almost as soon as we started so we just took shelter in one of the many weird souvenir shops they had there. I guess its a big tourist town cause the amount of stores and the amount of very just simply odd things they sold were peculiarly odd. Then finally we all got back on the van and drove back to Geissen where we just caught a train going to Marburg so we didnt have to wait, and I took a very healthy nap the whole way home. Oh also if you've been following at home 3 days ago marked the 2 month mark since I've been here which is just simply amazing to thinking about how long I've been here and now how I only have 7 weeks left till I come home. Classes are going great and this weekend we are taking another group trip, but this time were going to Dresden which I cant wait for. The weekend after that I'm going to Munich to visit a friend who's from Wisconsin. The weekend after that my mom finally gets here!!! I hopefully plan on taking her to both Berlin and Munich so lets hope all those plans become reality with as little stressful planning as possible. She's here for 2 weeks until the 23rd then the weekend after that I have nothing planned, but hopefully fill that with either a trip to Amsterdam or maybe even a trip to London. Then the weekend after that we have the last group trip to Hamburg the first weekend of June and then after that will be our very last week of school and of the program, but I leave the next week, so I hope to take one last trip with from friends to Budapest, so after thinking about all that, it really seems like time is just gonna fly by. I hope everything is going great back at home with all of you. For everyone in school I hope your semester is coming to a peaceful close and that the summer heat is waiting for all of you when you get home. Till next time!

"Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to face the day and put one foot in front of the other. Take heart, for even hard times have an end."

Bodacious Berlin!

Meine Damen und Herren! I hope everyone had a happy and chocolate filled easter this season. Also I hope your easter was alot warmer than mine was, because believe it or not here in the wonderful world of Germany it was much colder for easter than it was for Christmas!!! How Neat is That!!! But before any of that happened we all had to bunch together in a big coach bus and take the long 7 hour hall to berlin which actually didn't seem like that long. Mostly because I was knitting, reading, sleeping, and zoning outside the whole time. Now at this point a lot of you I'm sure are going, "What on earth could Neal be knitting this time?" and to answer your question I decided that since my language teacher that we've had for the past six weeks was such an amazing teacher, and I couldnt thank her enough with words I figured I wanted to thank her instead by knitting her a pink scarf that she can have even after I'm gone. But I digress, Once we got there we all piled out and got to our hostel pleasantly named The Three Little Pigs Hostel. We wasted no time dropping off our stuff and began just hiking all around Berlin and saw all the major and world renown statues, and buildings, and landmarks all around Berlin. If i were to guess a mileage I'd have to say that we walked around 5 miles just that one day. And the problem was that the day before either my camera or my battery for my camera decided it didn't want to work anymore, but luckily I just used my IPod to take all 294 pictures of all of Berlin. The second day was bitterly cold around 40 degrees and luckily for the first half of the day we had a bus tour, but for the second half it was all walking which wasnt so much fun. And on this said bus tour our tour guide explained that Berlin was the sunniest city in Germany and as he is saying this it was snowing outside with no a crack of sunshine poking through the crowds. And so for the second part of our tour as we walked around Berlin basically we all huddled together like this. Then on the last full day there we were going to take a 9 hour excursion through the Berlin forests and what have you, but since it was so bitterly cold, they had the heart just to let us go to whatever museum we choose and bring back the ticket as proof that we went. But the other obstacle with that was that Berlin has around 170 museums ranging from History of course all the way to abstract art, and every decade in between. The other option was to go to some of the surrounding flea markets around Berlin, and being that it was a better than expected day out, and wasnt in the mood for museum searching, they  got a good group together and we took trains around the city going to various flea markets which turned out to be really interesting. I did'nt buy anything, but some of the stuff they were selling was very bizarre, and some very questionable. After that we all came back and crashed for a couple hours with a nice mid day nap because the night ahead of us was pretty eventful. For the night life, we walked around a lot of Berlin going in and out of bars and ended up posting up in a bar that had a tab in the middle of the table and everyone would just pick a number on the screen above it, and take as much as they wanted and when someone else wanted to fill up they would click their number and it would monitor how much that person poured. After a long, fun filled night we all made it back home safely to our beds, and in the morning we all hopped on the bus for our journey back home that was much worse than the trip there. I had finished my knitting so all I had left to do was read and sleep, which both were impossible because of all the yelling and seat kicking that happend on the entire ride home. Luckily instead of dropping us all in town and having to take buses back to our places, they drove us all to our dorms. Ours being the first was the best, because after 7 hours on a loud, hot, and smelly bus, I just wanted to crash in my room and just sleep off the rest of the day. Plus our first day of classes started the next day, so I ended up calling it an early night so that I would be dozing off in class. I actually really love my classes too. I have one called Globalizing Capitalism, which is mostly filled with discussion about what our views on globalization, is and if its achievable or not. It's just a lot of brain storming and idea forming which I love to do so I wasnt bored at all in the classroom. And for my second class its called Intercultural Competance, where it's also mainly coming up with definitions of what culture is, and how does one define it, and what goes hand in hand with culture. But just yesterday I was thinking to myself I got my first round of classes left and thought about how I only have 8 more weeks and 8 more classes until I'm back home, which was a bit of a surprise, mostly because when I think of the first day of classes I am used to thinking I have a whole semester ahead of me, but I guess not. But thats all the news for today folks I hope summer is staying more prevalent instead of sporadic warm and cold days like we are having here. Bis spater!

"Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power."

Henry George

Week Full of Reisen

Hello everyone! Let me just say this week is only half way over and I've travelled more in these past three days then I have in my life! It all started out with this weekend. We had originally planned on going to Heidelburg on Saturday and then Frankfurt on sunday, but because of some complications we weren't able to go to Heidelburg. But it was just a sunday morning and I had figured we wouldnt go to Frankfurt, but then my Ukrainian friend up and said hey lets go to Frankfurt for the day, so I called up a couple more people and we caught the train to Frankfurt for free since we have student passes that allows us to travel on any public transportation in the state of Hessen for free. We didnt stay long, but it was such an amazing city! It is the main hub for alot of the Banks not only in Germany but some in the EU as well. It's the only city with a skyline filled with skyscrapers and looked alot like a smaller version of Chicago. After about a 3 hour walk around the city, we hopped back on the train for home, but little did I know that there was more travelling this week then I had thought. Now Monday came around, and when we got to class our teacher had suggested that we learn today's lesson, and then we will go out for breakfast which I was beyond excited about! While we were eating someone had suggested that they really wanted to see the teachers home town which is a little village right outside the city of Bonn and she agreed that that would be alot of fun, and then one of us goes "So lets do it!" and we all slowly agreed we should and she asks when and we all go "Tomorrow!" and she was besides herself trying to contemplate this potential trip, but after a couple emails and some green lights she rented two cars for all 10 of us to pack into and we were Bonn bound the next day. The city of Bonn is such a beautiful city and if i were to ever live in Germany in my upcoming years, I would like to live in Bonn. It's big but not to big and it also has literally 8 or 9 cities not 60 min away from it. Cologne is probably only a 30 min train ride away. She took us first to a German Geschichte (History) Museum which was very interesting, but more than half of the plaques with information were in german. I could understand some of what it was saying, but there were plenty to just see and understand instead of read. After the museum she took us downtown which is the most beautiful Innenstadt i've seen in Germany, and since it was about lunch time by then we of course went to get some Brats and Brotchen! But just before I was satisfied with just a Brat she took us to a frozen yogurt place where you pour your own frozen yogurt, and then they have tons of toppings to put on it. I ended up getting a layer of vanilla, a layer of double chocolate, strawberries on top, and chocolate chips. (Picture on Facebook) It was mind melting or should i say...freezing.. and i know what youre all saying after that clever turn in this blog. Something like this? Then after our inner city excursion she took us all the way to her hometown to her house to meet her family which when we got there we normally are a very talkative bunch, but when we got there none of us really talked that much, but after some pieces of cake that her mom made, and some introductions, we all headed out to a local restaurant where we filled up one last time and headed home. Now today was our last language class day, and also we will be getting our next schedule of classes for the next 9 weeks I'm in school, which I am going to right now so I hope all of you have a splendid Morning and afternoon, and I will be going to Berlin for 4 days this weekend so you can bet there will be stories and pictures coming in the near future!

"If I try my best and fail, well, I've tried my best" Steve Jobs