Deutschland!

So our German intensive courses ended the last week in January, and we had a break last week, before regular semester courses started. IES sponsored a trip to Germany, so early morning on the 1st (and by early I mean 7:45, ouch), me and 44 other students and 3 staff member from the program hopped onboard a bus. Now let me just say, traveling is quite a strange experience, especially when doing so on very little sleep. Once the bus left Vienna, I promptly fell asleep, only to wake up two hours later at the border of Austria and the Czech Republic at a rest stop resembling a mid-evil castle, complete with dragons. Probably the best part about this rest stop was the duty-free shop, complete with every flavor Milka I could ever imagine. And Milka is delicious, I'm not sure if you knew. But anyways, after leaving this fairy-tale castle, I once again fall asleep, and again, wake up completely disoriented. I feel the bus stop and hear everyone getting off--we are stopping in Prague for two hours to have lunch! Still half asleep, I stumble off the bus and start to wonder, feeling slightly like a deer in headlights. From what I saw of Prague, I liked! There were castles and cool bridges and clocks that made funny sounds at the top of the hour. This is a picture of me in the main square. Me and a few others wandered off down a series of narrow alleyways, looking for a restaurant. Now because none of us were up for experimenting with Czech food (I'll be sure to do that once I return), we settled on Italian, which was cheap and fantastic. By the time we'd finished, it was back to the bus to travel several more hours to Dresden. And of course, I fell asleep.

We arrived in Dresden around 6 o'clock that night, ate dinner in the hostel (which oddly reminded me of some sort of prison), and then me and a couple of friends located ourselves on a map, and made way on foot towards the Altstadt--the "old" part of town. I say "old" because it 80-90% of the inner-city of Dresden was destroyed in 1945, and still in the process of being rebuilt. I've decided that I really like nighttime sight-seeing, everything just looks different, and in some ways more beautiful at night. 

The next day, we had a bus tour of Dresden, and went all over the city, seeing summer palaces, chasing ducks, and stopping in world famous cheese shops (AMAZING!). That was also the night of the Super Bowl, so IES took over a pub in the new section of town and started the show at midnight. Unwilling to stay up until 4am, I apparently missed an exciting ending! 

Monday, we left Dresden for Berlin, stopping for a few hours in Leipzig, getting to see the burial place of Bach and a series of different churches whose names I can't quite remember. Then we had lunch in the restaurant where "Faust" is based off of...which was mildly exciting.

 Leaving Leipzig, we were in Berlin after about 2 hours. First thing we did was check into our

 hostel, which was SO much better compared to the last one. This hostel had the theme of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" I was told, and there was a huge lobby to hang out in on the main floor, complete with bar, free Wi-Fi, and pool table. I was in an apartment with 6 other girls, meaning we had the luxury of having two bathrooms in our room, as opposed to in the hallway. Tuesday was the day of our Berlin bus tour, where we drove past all the landma

rks I've seen and read about in my textbooks. I think my favorite part was a stop at the Berlin Wall--some of graffiti was so impressive, and there were just layers and layers of paint. In some places where chips had fallen away, you could look close and see at least 10 layers of old 

paintings. We also went to a Holocaust memorial towards the

 center of town. It was a series of tall, gray, concrete boxes, some 

2,000 of them, in rows on uneven ground. Walking through the memorial, the designer wanted to create the illusion of losing the ground beneath you, which I found to be the feeling I got when we were in there.  After the bus tour was over, a small group of us went on a little walking tour and saw the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, and went up in the dome of the Parliament building, getting an aerial view of all of Berlin. 

The next few days were filled with classical music concerts, international film festivals, fruit-infused vodka tasting (who knew they made ginger?), sight-seeing and more sight-seeing. However much I enjoyed Berlin, I was very glad when we got back to Vienna on Sunday (after a grueling 10-hour bus ride). It's funny, but it feels a little bit like home!