Lubeck and Marburg

Yeah, Yeah... I've been slacking in the blog department. I would like to attribute this to all the hard work I’ve been busy with, but that may not be entirely true. Although I have been quite busy with school work, I just haven’t gotten around to posting one. I’m going to have to use the pictures I have in order to work through this blog. If your lucky I might even include a picture of me with my ever so impressive mustache.


We went to Lubeck two weeks ago. It’s a smaller city in the North of Germany by the North Sea. It had a central “island” with all the main attractions (old city with all the churches and other historical buildings). The tour of the city we had planned on the last day fell through… I guess the guide just didn’t feel like showing up and decided against informing us of this. So the only planned activity we really had was a boat tour through all the canals and rivers of the city. Which turned out to be awesome, everyone was still a little hung-over from the night before, so we could all at least sit down and see some of the city rather then have to walk.


One church we went into seemed to be turned into an art gallery, where it was full of plants with IV bags filled with green liquid hooked up to them. Although I’m aware I lack any artistic sense, I thought it was pretty cool.







During the nights, we typically went down by the ports and sat by the water with a couple drinks when the sun went down. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip, just to hang out and see the sun fall down behind the boats and port buildings. We just went out to a couple bars the first night along the river. The second night we went to a club that was a huge boat docked on the side of the river. It didn’t seem too large from the outside, but after you went in and walked downstairs, it was a lot bigger, with two separate dance floors with different music and a nice patio on the top to cool off on. We ended up having an awesome time then and finally walking back.
Waking up the next day on less then three hours of sleep, which seems to becoming the norm in these situations, we left to go to the beach for the day. Although the beach was real pretty and pretty much empty… it was that way for a reason. It was sunny out, but the strong wind coming off the cold North Sea made it so that even I was forced to keep my shirt on for the most of the time. Nevertheless, some of the other students decided to jump in the water, what I wasn’t nearly ready to do with the cold temperature mixed with the effects I was still feeling from the last night. I know I might have not lived up to some of the expectations, seeing how I’m Canadian, and live in a igloo year round, most people thought I would jump right in. The bus ride home was pretty uneventful, really just one giant sleep-fest, as everyone was trying to catch up on the sleep lost.


Now on some random things I’ve done or noticed in the past couple weeks

-As far as schoolwork goes, each class has a 10-15 page paper and a presentation/project. Both of these things aren’t exactly easy, but the odd thing is that there is no final exam. So as soon as you finish the 2 components of the class, there isn’t much left for you to do, I really don’t even think the prof would notice if you weren’t there. All us international students have a supplemental 3 hours of tutorial each week for each class to get our credit hours up, as we leave before the official semester is over. These tutorials can help discuss certain topics the prof only covered in German, but most of the time it’s the tutor watching you read or teaching you random things just to pass the time. My one tutor just lets us watch some movies that are related to scientific images for half the sessions, so it’s not all bad… From what I have seen here (not saying it is all this way) but I am much happier with the smaller workload/class then back home.

- I have recently finished a month without meat. I didn’t really think I would be able to do it, as the last attempt ended after three days at a buffet at the Calgary Stampede. I think I ended up eating more meat at that buffet then I would’ve with just my normal eating for three days. Needless to say, this attempt went much better. I was pretty curious to see how I would feel health wise, but I don’t really too much happened. I probably lost about 5 pounds, but I’ve also been running a ton as well so that could be the reason. Not sure if it is because of the lack of meat, but I notice I was getting tired a lot easier and earlier at night, something that I didn’t exactly enjoy. It was easier then I thought here, as I normally don’t eat anything meaty for breakfast, the Mensa (student subsidized cafeteria) has a vegetarian meal everyday, and for supper I usually cook with some friends and flatmates who are vegetarian or eat mostly vegetarian. The hardest part is when your traveling or out on the town and all the convenient food has meat in it. But overall, I’m happy I tried it and now have a little idea of what it’s like to be a vegetarian.
-I was lucky enough to meet up with some people I worked with last summer. This was the internship I had with Mike (or I could say Dr. Mike now… as he got his Ph.D when I was there last summer) in a animal physiology lab. We meet up for a BBQ at his lab in Giessen (which is only about 30 min away by train from Marburg), and I got to see some other familiar faces from there. It was awesome to see them all again.

-I might have talked about this a little before, but I’m really enjoying the location of where I’m living. It’s on the edge of town, so if I decide to go running, it takes me only a few minutes and I’m on a trail running through the woods. There is also a medieval tower that you can run up to, and see over the city. My place is still close enough from the city so that I can walk home if I don’t feel like waiting for a bus or they have stopped running. And it’s also cool that the majority of my friends live in buildings no more then 5 min away as it’s a pretty huge residence complex. One funny thing is that it’s not in the nicest area of town, so you can watch all the young degenerates (aka bonehead) get up to no good. You get to know which ones are getting up to what.

-Talking about German people. I’ve spoke a little about this on my blog last year, but I’ll touch on it again. Some people might get the impression that Germans are all business, without much emotion. Some people get this impression at first, almost feeling brushed off, but I think it’s too easy to take it the wrong way. It’s not that they want to be rude, they just aren’t there to be overly superficially nice to you, they won’t try covering up how they feel. That being said, once you make a friends with a German, they can be some of the nicest people in the world. I’ve noticed they really mean what they say. At supper a couple weeks ago, I was telling two of my flatmates how Berlin is my favorite city in the world. Turns out one of them, Patrick, grew up in East Germany until age 7 or 8 when the wall fell. He stayed there for 2 hours telling me absolutely unbelievable stories about his time there, and stories of his family. I can’t remember the last time I was so interested or enthralled by a conversation. I could listen to these stories for ever. Another flatmate, Michaela, was with us, and the next day, she gives me her memory stick with a whole bunch of information and reading about Berlin she had. Another day I was practicing my German with her, and stated how I’d like to practice more. She comes back with a couple movies in German and gives them to me so I can watch them when I get back and practice. I could give plenty more example of this, with them and other Germans I’ve befriended (both this year and last), how they insist on making sure your having a good time. I describe them as having a much more truthful dialogue and friendship. If they invite you for supper or to hang out, they truly want to, they aren’t just inviting as a formality or to be nice.

-Going biking soon! My parents are coming to visit on Friday. So after meeting them at the airport, heading back to Marburg, we’ll have the weekend to visit. There is a festival in town, and it’ll be nice to show them where I live, the old part of the city, the castle and churches and whatever else in town. After the weekend, they’re gonna head off on the bike trip, I’ll finish my last couple days of school, then take the train to meet up with them with my bike. I’m pretty excited to see them and have a nice break from school, as I’ve been writing papers and working on projects for a lot of my last couple weeks.

One of my favorite places to hang out in Marburg is near the river that runs right by the University cafeteria. There are a bunch of benches on one side, and a bunch of grass and green space on the other side. After lunch, we'll usually go lay on the grass for a while. We go there to BBQ on the weekends sometimes, but it's literally packed with other students doing the same. It a real relaxed and fun place.









I probably forgot plenty of things.. and probably will forget to write them on here once I do remember. Sorry...?






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Prague- Stop... Brother Time

My latest travels. Prague. I went last weekend to meet up with Dirty D (my younger brother David) and his friend Chris. It was an awesome weekend, but definitely had rough patches throughout.



It started with me packing everything the night before. Which entails 10 minutes of throwing things I think I may need into my backpack. Then after a few hours of sleep, I had to get up at around 430am and walk to the train station. This wasn’t too bad in itself, but the blisters it caused made for the abundance of walking throughout Prague fairly painful. After catching the train and arriving in Frankfurt, I had the task of finding out where my bus would arrive by asking people who solely speak German. Keep in mind, my German is much worse then my French or Spanish. I eventually got it figured out, and sat by my bus stop. As Germans are quite diligent about staying on time and keeping a tight schedule, I became somewhat concerned after the bus had still not arrived a half-hour after it should’ve. Then it was round 2 of German conversation. I figured out (or I think I figured out) that the bus was delayed due to construction and would be later. I ended up getting on the bus over an hour late. The worst part about it was not the waiting, but I figured I had either missed it, or booked the wrong bus, as I’ve never had one of my buses or trains be more then 10 minutes late here. I had begun thinking about catching a train back to Marburg. The bus finally arrived and the ride was fairy pleasant as I met some girls from Australia and other from France to talk to (I also got to practice my French). It also included eating copious amounts of granola bars, as I did not feel like spending all my money at the roadside rest stops, which are notoriously overpriced in Germany.



Finally upon arriving in Prague, I realized this may have been one of the most unorganized trips I’ve got myself into. I had barely packed, forgot they don’t use the Euro, only had the name of my hostel, and not able to meet up with the other two, ect… I almost decided not to go on the trip because it was nearly impossible to find a way there, and our hostels got canceled a few times. But it all worked out. I sorted things out, and finally just walked through the city to my hostel to take a shower, which was needed after 8 hours in a sweaty bus.





I met some new people at the hostel and decided to go for a beer with one of them when I finally got in contact with Chris. So we all went to this really local restaurant/pub located way out of the city center that Chris had been to with a local the day before. I believe it may have been called the “Original Budvar” or something of the sort. Although I’m quite confident that we were the only tourists/non-check speakers in the place, it was an awesome place to be. A 0.5L of beer was actually cheaper then 0.25L of water. The cheapest thing on the menu. I then had a rack of ribs. By a rack, I mean the many ribs where actually placed upon a rack in front of me, for which I presumed was so I could inhale them faster. They were awesome, and for 5 Euros, it was the first time here I could legitimately order whatever I wanted on the menu.



Somehow, David made his way over to the middle of nowhere and met up with us. After that pub we walked to a hill overlooking the city with “the metronome” structure. The metronome is there to signify that the periods of suffering they went through, like all other periods, will pass. Or at least that was the meaning I was told. We spent the rest of the night going into all types of bars and what not. Everything from the small little “24hr sports bar” to a place that gave you a beer tap at your table and it registered how many beers you poured yourself. Overall it was a fun night and we stayed out of too much trouble.





We reconvened the next day (as we 3 were all staying a different hostels… very organized trip) and took the “Free Tour” of the city. Prague was a city that, for me, got more and more interesting the longer you were there. We learned all about the Jewish quarter, which has one cemetery, which is extremely small, but holds over 100,000 bodies. How? Well they are buried up to 13 bodies deep. Probably a fact you did not want to know.



We continued our walk around, speaking a lot about the period from the start of WWII until the fall of the Soviet Union. History I won’t even try to explain, but will say it is a very extensive and interesting stage of that country in such a “short” period of time. We saw/learned about many other things… but I’m sure if your interested, the internet can tell you much more then I.








After, we walked about to the Prague “Castle”. I use the term castle lightly because it is more like a walled city/fortress containing an entire “small city”. The church that it posses, like all other in Europe, is very impressive. One cool thing here was with the time of day we went, the sun shone through the stain glass windows so that much of the interior was light up by all these bright colors. The rest of the “castle” included many buildings (old I presume), open squares, and gardens.








Then it was time to make our way back to a hostel, which we were now all staying at. The plan for the night was to go on a pub-crawl. For around 20 Euros, you get an hour of free drinks, entrance to 5 different clubs, and a shot at each club. We started at the one bar, which pretty much just had rows of beers and shots of Vodka/Absinth lined up on the bar for you to take. As responsible young adults, you can image we responsibly enjoyed a few of these beverages in the allotted time frame. The rest of the night was an awesome time, meeting a ton of other people and ending up at the “biggest club in central Europe”. It had 5 different floors with different themes. Everything from a rave-like scene to a floor with quiet enough music so you could lounge/talk. Pub-crawl=Success




This left us with a late start the next day. When David and I finally rose from the dead, we headed into town to “get our tourism on”. We rented a paddleboat and just sat on the river for a good hour. Possibly not the most exciting thing we did, but probably the most relaxing. Just “bro-ing” out.







Later on we took a tour of a “communism and the nuclear bunker”. The communism part was pretty informative but the nuclear bunker part of the tour was much more appealing to me. It was an actually bunker which is still able to operate correctly today. It has been semi-transformed into a museum and small night club (they don’t get any noise complaints there… ). First off, the doors to get in are over two tons of solid lead. They were thicker then our shoulder widths and take a good push to even budge. After walking down around 20 meters we got to the bunker. They had displays of gas masks/suits, pictures of historical events, among other things. They also had an area where you could try on the gas masks, old soldier uniforms and hold some of the guns from that period. It felt like the inside of a large ship or submarine, with many sealable compartments/rooms, air purification systems and very small spaces. You weren’t allowed to take pictures of the air/water purification rooms as they are still fully functional.









Later on, Dirty D and Chris decided to go to a concert, while I felt like doing the exact opposite… So that’s what we did. I got to nap, wander, see some churches and go to a mini farmers-market. Meeting up later for supper they told me they really enjoyed it. We ate at the “café Louvre” which has been frequented by people such as Albert Einstein… I don’t know how we managed to get in, but I did enjoy some good Goulash there, which is typical Czech food.


We initially planned on having an easy night, but as the theme for the weekend was, that organizing feel through and next thing you know we were out on the city being led by some locals we met from one different pub or club to another. It ended up being a pretty fun but late night to say the least.



David and Chris must’ve been too “tired” from the night before and ended up missing their bus to Dresden. After I breached the difficult task of waking David up/explaining to him the situation, they managed to grab the next bus for a decent fare.




As I typically really enjoy doing, I spent the rest of the day walking and biking around. I went up the to mini Eiffel-Tower they have and looked over the city. Also, I was able to go around some of the less touristy areas and see some typical “block-buildings” of the communist era and some of the shadier parts of town. The day ended on more of a negative note, but I got past it and finally hoped on the night-bus back home. The 12 hour Journey landed me back in Marburg and very happy to sleep in my “own bed” for more then three consecutive days for once.









Although my experience in Prague may have been hindered due to a couple negative incidents, I still think the city is absolutely remarkable with a ton to do at both night and during the day. It was awesome to see, and spend some time with, my brother David and Chris. It was also a new experience due to the fact that in this weekend, I was placed in situations or interactions where I was “forced” to speak with someone in German, Spanish or French, as they did not speak English.










Now, I’m not planning on traveling anywhere soon. Just want to settle back in here, and get some of the schoolwork I have done. I will be traveling briefly to Frankfurt a couple times this weekend to meet my younger brother and my Dad. And next weekend, I will be going to Lubeck with my program. Other then that, I would like to go to Munich at sometime, but am happy to stay around here for the rest of the time until my parents arrive in early June, at which time we will be biking throughout Germany for a week or two.



Maybe I’ll edit this later if I have forgotten later. If not, then I’m probably busy doing less productive things.

Ciao.

Wien=Vienna

Alright, I’m going to try and write this blog before I’m off again for the weekend and I forget all about Vienna. I’m going to have to use my pictures as a reference. Here we go:

A couple weeks ago, some friends (Alex, Mel, Hillary and Bri) and I decided we would try this service called “Blind Booking”. This is where you get to chose pre-set list of 5 or 6 cities, you pay (for us it was around 60 euro each) and then they send you a confirmation email with which destination you will be going to.

We ended up getting Vienna. It was something we were happy with, but to tell you the truth, it was the one which I wanted the least (mostly due to the fact that is was the only destination to which I had been before). I just figured I might as well make the most of it and not to complain. It was only sixty euros.

A small wrench that was thrown into our plans was the time the flights would be leaving and returning… which “allowed” us to make the airport our home for two nights. Due to train times and what not, this was the only way about it. It wasn’t too bad except the fact that there was a very odd security guard going around making sure no one was sleeping or laying down. The reason I say odd is that all other security guards and the police officers we talked to saw anything wrong with it. Also it was a bit odd when he threatened to call the police on us when we had just been talking with them and they were fine with it. But enough of that. Short summary- it sucked sleeping in the airport but was over soon enough and worth it in the long run.





Getting there, we found our hostel, dropped off our stuff, and set off to see the city (with no sleep). The weather wasn’t all that great the first day, so after getting a coffee (which is a very popular pastime in Vienna… simply “getting a coffee”) we decided to get out of the rain and go into the museum “Albertina”. This was pretty interesting because we had just written our test on German culture recently and we saw some of the actual artwork of those artists that we studied, as well as some Picasso guy…

I have to say the metro system was really useful (as it is in most European cities). Coming from Amsterdam, where we found it much more intricate, as different forms of transport are ran by different companies.

We also went to Schoenbrunn Palace. This was one of the places that I have been before (last summer in July), but I hadn’t gone inside last time. Going inside reminded me of Versailles in France. An absolutely overly opulent design/palace. Going down to every last detail, it seems everything is covered in gold, has wall to wall paintings, mirrors or whatever else would reflect affluence. Reminding me of all the amazing churches in Europe, how it’s difficult to appreciate each one for what it’s worth because of the sheer number of them and astonishment they cause, each room in this palace seemed to be equally striking as the last. But enough of that…








We walked around the gardens, up the “hill” and sat down, where we could see over most of Vienna. Since it is nearing Easter time, they had a mini farmers-market out front, where we got some “Austrian food” then set off.
Later on, Alex and I went to a church while the girls had to get some very important things done. Mainly shopping. Actually, only shopping. I found this church very unique in not only the “semi mosque-like” appearance on the outside (spiraling poles), but it had scaffolding set up on the inside due to reparations, but you were able to climb it to the top. Having been to many of the biggest churches in the world, it is interesting to looks up to the top of the domes to squint and see the paintings/symbols/windows up there. With the scaffolding, you get near enough to touch the roof, look out over the city from the top, and look down to the church and see some of the parts that have not been restored yet. This church will definitely stay in my memory. My friend Alex is somewhat “timid” with heights, so it was an extra to see him climb the whole thing and then feel it shake when you were at the top.








We then needed to get in line for the standing tickets for the Opera. You really need to go early for this because you can get standing tickets for around 5 euro. That becomes much more appealing when you realize the sitting tickets will cost 100,200 euros or more.

I’ll say the Opera was exactly what I expected… but more exaggerated. Most of the people going made it seem like it was something to do if you want to reflect a certain lifestyle. It looked like most people were wearing one of their nicest suit, and most ladies with really formal outfits. Some of the older ladies I saw reminded me of some royalty…. long white gloves, royal colors, and some sort of cape thing. This is all while we (the standing room peasants) walk through the same lobby in a bright T-shirt and jeans. Sure… we might have been a little underdressed. The Opera, as usual, was in Italian, but you had a small screen in front of you scrolling it in English. It was a different experience now that you know what is actually happening with the storyline. I almost preferred not knowing… seemed so much more sophisticated then. It was really neat to hear the voices of the actors/singers(?) fill the entire Opera house, which was quite large. The stage setup was quite impressive as well, and those playing the music. The 5 euro seats weren’t all rainbows and butterflies though… after a good half an hour in, it started to feel like they sold 2x as much tickets as there was room in this area, and they probably opted to put air conditioners in the seating sections rather then the place where all us peasant gather.






Overall, I was really glad with the decision to Opera and experience a little bit of huge cultural aspect of music in Vienna. A little bit of a surprise, I ran into a girl I knew from the University of Alberta in the Opera house. I know that the UofA and Vienna have a strong exchange program (as my brother Vincent partook in it), but it was still quite a surprise to see a face I recognized over here.

During the nights, we would usually take a quick nap to recover from everything we did that day, then hang out at the bar in the hostel (which was usually pretty busy) or go around to some of the bars or pubs in the area. All which provided some pretty entertaining times.

Seeing how Bratislava (Slovakia) and Vienna (Austria) are some of the, if not the most, closely situated capitals cities in Europe, we took the bus there for the day for a 12 euro round trip! Cheap enough for me… I had a real positive impression of the city. Although there was only enough “tourist things” to do to keep you busy for a day or so, I could see studying in a place like this being an awesome experience. The people were really friendly, had almost a small town feel, and it was relatively inexpensive there. I’m pretty sure we saw all the major landmarks… the castle, churches, government building and the bridge. It may be worthy to note that had we been 30 seconds later, I’m convinced we would’ve missed the bus there. We were running late as it was, and didn’t know which way to get out of the metro station until I realized. I’ve been to this bus station before! So off I went running, and was able to convince the driver to wait an extra minute to let us buy our tickets. This definitely was not the only, or closest, “close call” on this trip. Alex didn’t end up joining us for this trip due to his plans to use his euro pass for the trains falling through. That meant it was just the three girls and me for the day. It worked out pretty well, but when the shopping spree started, we parted ways until it was time to bus back. It seemed like it worked out for everyone and we were back in Vienna for the night. One last thing to mention of Bratislava was the overwhelming abundance and proximity of those “factory-made” buildings that characterized most countries behind the Iron Curtain. My description= they pretty much all look the same and are just big blocks of cement with holes in them. Easy enough.










We were also able to watch the marathon in Vienna on Sunday. It was a pretty large event and cool to see all the participants. I still don’t think I could complete a marathon, but I’m pretty set on trying a half-marathon in the next year or so. If some of the people I saw can do a full marathon, I’m convinced I can pull my lazy self together to do a half.

We then headed down to the “prater” and the surrounding amusement park. The prater is pretty much a huge Ferris wheel with “tram-cars” going around rather then little seats. It seems to be a pretty big landmark representing Vienna.

After visiting my own kryptonite… a buffet, we somehow made our way to the river and just hung out on the beach and “got our burn on” as I like to call it. It was a pretty cool atmosphere on the side of the Danube, with bars, ice cream shops, tons of people walking/sunbathing and even a floating platform with trampolines on it for kids to play on.

Now I’m back in Marburg for classes. It’s really hot here (above 20 degrees).My two classes are “Arts-based”… which doesn’t exactly interest me, but maybe it will open up my eyes to other areas… or will just give me an excuse to be over here.
This weekend I am meeting up with Dirty D in Prague. His friend Chris and him will be traveling some of Europe in his time off and I’m pretty excited to see the bonehead. Also I will be seeing my father in the next couple weeks, so that’s another thing to look forward to. It seems with all these people coming over here, and my short trip back to Canada for my interview, I’m not all that disconnected from the family.

Now off to do some reading before class. Ciao!