Dresden

Hey all! Well it's been a while since my last post...mainly due to the fact that I've been doing a whole lot of nothing here really. Nothing too exciting has happened here in Marburg, unless you count going to class from 9-12:30 then 2-4, and the occasional drinking as fun or out of the ordinary for me.  So last weekend we went to Dresden. And let me start off by saying that I wasn't really expecting a whole lot out of this trip.  I was thinking Dresden was going to be some dull Eastern German city....but boy was I wrong!  Dresden was bombed to hell during WWII and the large majority of the city was destroyed.  However, the people of Dresden and the German government have put a lot of time and money into making it again the beautiful city it once was.

We left Marburg around 9ish on Friday morning, even though we were supposed to leave around 8. This was due to a certain Mexican sleeping in later than we would have liked her too. But to be fair, it wasn't just her (hahahaha I wonder if Christina will read this). The bus ride lasted about 5 hours and we got into Dresden around 4 pm, checked into our hostel really quick, and then went on to meet our tour guides for our city tour.  We went around the city of Dresden which is really cool because everything's close enough where you are able to walk through the city and see everything. First we went and checked out the Frauenkirche (Lady's Church or Church of the Holy Mother). The Frauenkirche is a Protestant Church that is surprisingly built in the Baroque fashion-which is unusual for Protestants who like to keep their churches very simple.  The church was severely destroyed by the Allies during WWII.  The church was left as a pile of rubble while Eastern Germany was under Communist control and wasn't rebuilt until after re-unification in 1993. The church was breath-taking and the interior matched the grandeur of the exterior.

Next we perused around the city a bit more and made our way to another castle/now museum called the Albertinum which was still under reconstruction.  After that we made our way to Dresdener Zwinger which is another palace but is mainly famous for it's open air courtyard and its clock tower with porcelain bells from the famous porcelain manufacturer in nearby Meissen.

Clock with Meissen Porcelain Bells

We wrapped up our tour by walking out of the Zwinger Palace and right in front of the Semperoper-the Opera house of Dresden which was originally opened in 1841 but burned down less than three decades later. It was rebuilt in 1878, but like the rest of Dresden, it was pummelled in WWII and reopened only in 1985 after the communists invested millions in restoring it. We parted ways from our tour guide and headed back to the hostel.  From the hostel my friend Kevin and I decided to walk around nearby our hostel and find somewhere to eat.  After passing many potential bars for the ensuing night, we found a promising sandwich shop.  I managed to pick some gross variant of an Italian sandwich and was not very happy with my decision.  We picked up some booze before heading back to the hostel to meet up with the rest of our friends.  We pregamed at the hostel before heading out to an outdoor patio/bar place where we had a few adult beverages. From there I headed to a hookah bar with my friends Kaleigh and Savino.  It was a pretty cool place and we had just planned on getting hookah, but we were told we had to order drinks as well-so I ordered some drink and we got our hookahs.  I haven't smoked hookah in a long time so the tobacco hit me REALLY hard and I got super buzzed to the point where I couldn't even drink anymore or smoke anymore hookah.  After a while of lounging we figured we should get back to the hostel and get to bed for another early day.  Funny story: the three of us thought that we were the night owls of the IUSP group that night-but boy were we wrong...some people stayed out way later than us...and we got back at 3ish!

The next day we headed first to Pillnitz-a former Saxon palace outside of Dresden.  It was a pretty big castle, but it had even a larger surrounding park/garden where we saw some of the coolest looking ducks that were a present from a Chinese emperor a while back ago and they have managed to survive there and stay there. One really cool thing at Pillnitz was when we walked by the Danube, there was a building that had marks on it where the flood waters had reached it...most recently in 2002 when the river flooded over 9 meters!

Super cool looking Duck at Pillnitz

Wall that marked the river heights of past floods

  After that we headed over to, as our tour guide called it, "Saxon Switzerland". It was an area where there used to be an old snadstone quarray but it was also a rugged mountainy area...however it was also one of my worst nightmares as it included large drops that only prevented my fall due to waist high railings.  I made my way through some of the paths by staying either in the middle of the path, or by pathetically clinging to the sides of the railing with a death grip.  Although I was scared to death, the views were absolutely amazing and we got some great views of the Elbe River.  I only had a few near heart attacks during our stay here...mainly thanks to my buddy Chris who SAT ON THE FUCKING RAILINGS a couple of times. I honestly had to look away until he was off of the ledge. 

From there we made our way to our last stop-Koenigstein.  Koenigstein was a big fortress built some time ago (don't really remember what the tour guide said), but it was MASSIVE.  The place was built up some height up and completely protected by big walls.  We made our way up to the castle level and saw the remnants of former life there...some old buildings, look out towers, etc.  One of the really cool things/things that also freaked me out was the old well of the castle....that was only about 164 METERS deep (so around 580 feet deep). At one point the guy talking about the well dropped a glass of water and we counted to 11 before the water finally hit the bottom (as we saw on a monitor). 

Koenigstein

 

So let's just say that looking down into this well was a bit frightening for someone like me.  After the castle we all headed back to the hostel....and literally everyone fell asleep on the bus ride back. 

We got back to the hostel, grabbed some dinner at a nearby cafe after wandering aimlessly for a bit, and then went back to the hostel to start our pregame.  Some of us may have pregamed a little too hard and may have puked in the sink before heading out and then passed out in bed for the remainder of the night....thankfully that was not me though.  So a half a bottle of bourbon later (sadly for myself), me and the IUSP group were ready to head out into the night.  We headed to this club place called Downtown, but it wasn't quite my cup of tee (mainly due to the cover charge) so I headed back towards the hostel with a few others to meet up with another group of people who were at the restaurant that was under our hostel.  From there we headed to a wine place that our friend Tom wanted to go to...but it was kinda low key and not really what we were in the mood for so we headed out to meet up with some more of our group who were at a place called Cocktails to Go...which I think you can get the picture of what the place was.  I ordered a Jameson and a Long Island Iced Tea, but the Long Island absolutely sucked so I didn't finish that one.  We walked along the street for a bit and then I ran into a Donner shop to get some food, finished my Donner Box (which is kinda like Gyro meat, with fries, and a garlic sauce....so needless to say it was delicious-especially in my current state).  I was apparently still hungry so I went in and ordered a simple Donner and came outside to find that everyone had left.  So I started to head back to the hostel and ran into some friends along the way and we all headed back together. We got back to the hostel and I caught my second wind so I went back out with some people to meet up with our friends that we got split up from.  We got to the bar which was split up into a bar and then a dance area.  We went into the dance area for a bit, but I was starting to get SUPER tired...seeing that it was no later earlier than 3 at this point.  So I headed back to the hostel with some others and passed the F out....and I was out cold, because I managed to sleep through basically a party in my room that arrived about 45 minutes later. Woke up the next morning feeling a little tired....and a little hungover from the previous night's activities...ate a quick breakfast so I could pack my stuff up before having to check out of the hostel by 10. We threw our stuff onto the buses and then we had until 3 o'clock to do whatever we wanted in Dresden. So Kevin, Bri, Hillary, and myself decided to rent bikes and bike around Dresden for the rest of the time there.  We had a great time biking around seeing everything again in Dresden.  We went and checked out the Volkswagon factory where they build the Phaeton (the top of the line VW) and then we biked along the Elbe until we got to a quaint little outdoor cafe/pizzeria/winery.  So we got two pizzas and a glass of wine and enjoyed a nice little lunch before returning our bikes and then meeting up with the rest of the group to return back to Marburg.

The group of us in front of the Volkswagen Phaeton factory

Karneval and my 21st

So after our first week of classes, a bunch of us in the program decided that we would head to Cologne for Karneval for the weekend.  We figured we would definitely go for the day on Saturday and left it open-ended whether or not we would stay the night and come back on Sunday.  So we left Marburg around 11:30 in the morning on Saturday.  One thing that was really cool is that with the Deutsch Bahn (German Rail) System is that you can buy what is called a Schoenes-Wochenende ticket for which you pay 39 Euro and you are allowed to travel anywhere in Germany for that day for up to 5 people....so if your math is as good as mine, if you have 5 people that means you pay just under 8 Euro a person....quite a bargain when you consider a ticket could have costed us around 50 Euro round trip. After a 3 and a half hour train ride we finally arrived in Cologne.  Upon walking out of the train station my first reaction was something along the lines of "Holy Shit!" As it was hundreds of people wearing costumes and the majority of them all drinking.  From the train station we set off on an adventure to find alcohol so that we could partake in the debauchery that is Karneval.

Side note: Karneval is basically Halloween but then add all the drinking involved with that and add it with the drinking involved with St. Patrick's Day, New Years, and any birthday...oh and throw in a parade with that.

After wandering around for about a half hour we finally found a grocery store where we could buy booze...and boy did we buy booze.  Three people bought a mini keg to split. I bought about 6 bottles of beer and a bottle of vodka to split with another friend. The others bought their fair share as well.  We then assembled back outside and started our day long bender.  We wandered through the streets of Cologne drinks in hand and then we decided to meet up with one of our program's tutors, Raphael, who was also in Cologne.  After about an hour and a half we finally found him and then we proceeded to go with him to his sister's apartment. From his sister's apartment we went out to where the parade was going through.  And this is about where the height of our inebriation began to kick in as well. We, along with many other people joined in the parade and proceeded to dance, march, and drink even more through the streets of Cologne.  The amount of people in the parade was amazing, it almost seemed as though the whole city had come out to this parade. Some interesting bits from the parade: a lady handing us sparklers and us going crazy with them, a man peeing through the parade (yes for real), oh and more drinking!

We finally exited the parade and decided to get something to eat for the first time that day at this quaint little German restaurant called McDonald's.  After McDonald's we were all pretty worn out and pretty inebriated and thought we could try to catch the last train our of Cologne.  So Kevin, Bri, Hillary, Chris, and I headed back to the train station to see if we could make it out. Alas! to our dismay we had missed the last train out and had to wait until morning.  We figured we would try to see if we could find a cheap hotel or hostel but we were pretty much laughed at when we asked if anything was available or cheap for that matter. So we decided that we would just crash at the train station and catch the first train in the morning at 7:30.  So we found an open spot to crash and I quickly passed out for a brief period of time.  In my slumber I managed to miss a few exciting events: Bri singing for money (she got 6 Euro!) and then Bri being solicited for sex (not good).  We then moved into a 24 hour bakery where the 5 of us took up an entire bench and each of us drifted in and out of sleep.  In the bakery we were not the only Karneval-goers crashing for the night.  If I could describe what the scene looked like, I would probably describe it as one huge walk of shame, with the majority of people wearing costumes ranging from pirates, nurses, Buzz Lightyear, Mexicans, and many, many others. Finally 7:30 rolled around and we made our way home.  We arrived back in Marburg precisely 24 hours after we had left it.  We all went home to our respective dorms and proceeded to sleep the rest of the day and night away.

Alright fast-forward to Tuesday night-my 21st birthday celebration.  I met up with all my other IUSPers at the 2-minute-walk-from-my-dorm bar known as Schwartz-Weiss.  I was immediately given a beer from my buddy Kevin and then sat down with other friends.  Then my friends Bri and Christina walked in with a scrumptious cake and everyone proceeded to sing me happy birthday.  I was given a lovely hat, a large shot glass, and a single shot bottle of absinthe (77.7% alc. absinthe).  Throughout the proceeding hours I was given numerous shots and many beers.  I'm not exactly sure how much I had to drink that night but from what I was told and what I remember I had a great time.  At midnight I had the absinthe shot which was one of the most disgusting things I think I've ever had.  I almost threw up after that one! I don't really recall the end of my night but some of the things that I've been told are that I went to leave, but I only made it as far as grabbing my jacket before walking back into the bar to do another shot with everyone. Apparently I thought that was a great idea. I then apparently proceeded to sing the "So Long, Farewell" song from The Sound of Music to everyone as I left the bar.  All I know though is that I made it home safely and that I brushed my teeth and took my contacts out. Huzzah for good hygiene! The next morning was a bit rough as I slept through all of my alarms and then had to find my way to a fitness studio where our class was meeting for the day.  I'm also pretty sure that I was still drunk when I woke up which probably didn't help me find my way.  About 45 minutes later I found my way to the fitness studio where my class applauded for me and my teacher gave me a gift (a healthy snack smorgasbord that went along with the day's theme of being healthy....something that I ironically was not doing)  After a days class I enjoyed a great lunch of currywurst and french fries and then went back to my room for a two hour nap.  I then had to go back into town so that I could use the internet and was able to call my mom, dad, and sister all for free via google phone...which is awesome! I went home, finally got my internet set up for my room and then enjoyed a great night's sleep.

That's all for now. I'm gonna stay in Marburg this weekend and relax and work on a presentation for Monday (thankfully in English!). Not sure where my adventures will take me next, so until then...

Bis spaeter!


ps. I will add some photos later when I get on my other computer

A Long Overdue Post

Since my arrival in Frankfurt over a week ago, this is the first time that I’ve actually been able to sit down and get all of my thoughts down.  After arriving in Frankfurt I then had to make my way to Marburg by means of getting on a train.  At first I tried to manage on my own by using a kiosk, but I wanted to make sure that I did everything right first so I went in to the Deutsch Bahn office and managed to purchase a ticket to Marburg.  I made my way down to where the first train took me from the airport to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main train station). Once I got to the Hauptbahnhof I was pretty lost.  I wandered around briefly and then kind of started to panic because my layover was pretty short and I didn’t want to miss my next train. A kind old German man noticed me looking a bit flustered and pointed out where I needed to go.  I made my way up to the tracks and got on my next train that would take me to Gießen where I would then transfer (again) and finally get to Marburg.  On a side note, they weren’t kidding when they said that German trains are punctual. The clock stroke 12:22 and we left at that moment.  When I got to Gießen I had to carry all of my stuff down two flights of stairs and then up two more, which is a pain in the ass when you have two bags nearly 50 pounds each. Finally I made it on to my final train and arrived in Marburg about 20 minutes later.  I arrived at the train station and was met by two of the exchange program ambassadors who brought me to the youth hostel in Marburg, where we would be staying for a few days before we could move into our dorms.  After that I was allowed to relax and explore the city a bit on my own before we all met for dinner.  I grabbed lunch with two girls that arrived around the same day that I did (both from Wisconsin actually) at a bistro and ate a sandwich that had probably sat out a little too long and was a bit stale.  At the bistro we were met by a few other IUSP students who had been here since last semester and we talked for a while before heading back to the hostel.  Back at the hostel I met the rest of the students in my program.  There are quite a bit of people from Wisconsin surprisingly.  Two others from Tennessee, two from New Jersey, two from Pennsylvania, a couple from Washington, a guy from Alabama, a girl from New Orleans, three Canadians, and five Mexicans.  For dinner we had a “scrumptious” selection of bread, cold cuts, cheese, and salad (a typical German breakfast and dinner).  Then after dinner we all headed to the bar for a few drinks.  One thing about Germany that’s awesome is the beer.  Beer is not only delicious here, but it’s also pretty cheap for the amount that you get.  The next couple days consisted of getting to know people better, other formalities such as applying for our student visas, getting set up with the university’s internet, and on Friday we took our language placement test.  On Saturday we woke up around 8, ate breakfast, and then departed on a roughly 7 hour bus ride to Berlin for 4 days.

BERLIN WAS AWESOME!!!!!!!! Honestly one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to.  We got to our hostel around 5 or 6 and after getting settled we ventured around the city a bit and got our first glimpses of Fehrnserturm and Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral).  Also, I have never seen so much grafitti before, and it's EVERYWHERE!! Some of it is cool, but most of it sucks.  Here's one of my favorites that I saw though.

Fernsehturm

Berliner Dom

  We all tried going out to dinner together as a large group and all managed to get into a restaurant, however the waitress we had initially seemed pretty bitchy to most people so a lot of people decided to leave.  Me and three other guys Kevin, from Canada, Joe, from New Zealand, and Brandon, from Wisconsin decided to stay and actually enjoyed a pretty good meal.  We got back to the youth hostel and started making our plans for the rest of the evening.  I decided to go with the group to a techno/house music club called Tresor.  I had always heard about the crazy clubs in Berlin so I figured what better way to start of my weekend in Berlin.  We left around 11 and got there by cab around 11:15, however the club didn’t open until 12 so we stopped by a bar and had a beer before it opened.  When we got there it was pretty empty as we quickly found out that most people don’t show up until around 2ish for the clubs.  We had a great time at the upstairs part and a group of people decided to leave around 2:30, but Kevin, Joe, Christina (who’s from Mexico), and I decided to stay later.  We ventured to the downstairs part where we found a room labeled as I recall “Hell” where it was intense bass beats and super intense strobe lights that made it very hard for you to see. My first thought down there was “This is definitely not the place for an epileptic…….” We stuck around down there for a bit then “ascended from hell”, if you will, and went back upstairs where we danced the rest of the night/day away.  We finally left around 4ish (I think) and got a free cab ride back from some Canadian guy who was staying in the same hostel as us! The cab ride back was hilarious as Kevin (who doesn’t speak German) tried speaking to the driver (who didn’t speak any English) and I had to serve as the interpreter, all while Christina started to remember some basic German and asked the cab driver if he had a dog…..he did not.  We made it back to the hostel around 4:30ish and managed to get about 4 hours of sleep before having to wake up at 9 so that we could leave for a day trip to Potsdam.  In Potsdam we saw two famous former Prussian castles: Cecilianhof and Sans Souci.  I was really excited to see Sans Souci because I had studied it in my AP European History class back in high school.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, it is the Rococo style castle built by Frederick the Great.  We only toured the outside of it unfortunately, but it was still really awesome to see it even though it would be much prettier in the spring. 

Cecilienhof

Sans Souci

From Potsdam we headed back to Berlin and when we got back we stopped at a huge outdoor flea market for about two hours.  It was really crowded and there was a lot of really cool stuff, however it appealed more to a female crowd with lots of jewelry, clothes, and scarves.  From there we took an S-Bahn bus back to the hostel.  That night we decided to try to find somewhere to go out again.  In Germany, however, pretty much everything closes on Sundays so we didn’t really find anywhere to go that could accommodate a large group of people so we headed back to the hostel.  On the way back we picked up some beers at a, for lack of a better term, outdoor convenience store and went along our way.  Another awesome thing about Germany, and I’m pretty sure most of Europe too, is that you can drink while you’re out on the street, which we took full advantage of multiple times.  We drank in the hostel lobby/hangout area and then IO made my way to bed fairly early since we had to be up early again for our walking tour through Berlin.  The walking tour was pretty neat.  We started off in Alexanderplatz where the famous Fehrnsehturm is and then continued on to see Berliner Dom, Humboldt Univeristy, the location of Hitler’s bunker (which is now just a parking lot), the Holocaust Memorial, the Brandenburg Gate, and finally the Reichstag.  At the end of the tour we went back to the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag to snag a few more pictures and then we headed back to the hostel to rendezvous with our group again.

Holocaust Memorial

Brandenburger Tor

The Reichstag

I went with a group to Kreuzberg which is a highly student-age populated area that had a lot of cool shops and cafes and I grabbed lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant with my friend Lauren.  We headed back to the hostel around 5:30 and then around 8 we took off for an awesome wine bar that I had heard about.  At this wine bar, you paid 2 Euro for a glass and then you could sample all the wine that you wanted and then when you left you paid what you thought you owed.  I had about 8 glasses of wine and paid 10 Euro….which is pretty fair compared to other places.  I had a few more drinks at the hostel bar with my new friends and then went to bed.  In the morning it was a clusterfuck getting all of our stuff together so that we could be on the bus and ready to go around 10.  From the hostel we left and went to a former KGB/Stasi (East German government police) prison/museum.  It was definitely very interesting, yet very horrific to hear of the isolation and psychological terror that these political prisoners went through in this prison.  It made me realize why you hear about so many European government protests. In recent history, there have been so many people who haven’t had the freedoms that I have experienced my whole life in the US, and I now understand why these people begin to get upset when they feel that their freedoms are being taken away.  We got back into Marburg around 8 o’clock and we finally “moved” into our dorms.  I say “moved” because we only had our bags that we took with us to Berlin, while the rest of our luggage was still at the youth hostel waiting to be picked up.  The walk up to my dorm is a serious hike! It’s all up hill and it was much worse the next day when I had to lug all of my stuff all the way back up to my dorm.  The next morning we started class.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had placed into the highest level German course and we had class until 1:00.  The next couple of days weren’t too eventful…just getting settled in and buying essentials for our rooms.  Still on my list of things to do are: meet some of the people who live on my floor, go grocery shopping, and get the internet set up in my room!

Well I think that covers about everything.  I’m looking forward to actually being able to sleep in tomorrow for the first time in over a week.  A group of us are going to hopefully make it to Cologne for the weekend for Karneval, which is supposed to be AWESOME.  From what I’ve been told it’s like a mix between Halloween and Mardi Gras, so I’m really looking forward to it!!!!

Peace out homies!

First Post-A Tester If You May

Welp...only 56 more days until I leave for Germany! It seems like a while, but I'm sure the time will fly by. A couple of people had asked me if I was going to do a blog while I was away next semester in Germany, and after thinking about it, I figured why not?  For those of you who may not be as aware as others, I will be studying abroad in Marburg, Germany from February 24th through sometime in June.  Now when I tell people that I'm studying in Marburg...the usual reply is "Where is that?" Well just look up for a little help.  It's a college town home to the Philipps-Universität (which is where I'll be going to school). So until I take off from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on February 22nd, I'll be staying at home in scenic Strongsville, Ohio working for my dad in an attempt to make as much money as I can before I leave. But don't worry my dear Marquette friends, I'll be visiting a couple of weekends before I take off for good!

Until then....

A-Rob