June 18, 2008
Today was everything Berlin. We started the morning off with a bus tour led by none other than Freddie himself. He drove us through a lot of East Berlin (the Communist side) and we got to see the Berlin wall, which was absolutely fascinating. It’s neat to think that a lot of the changes that have happened in the country have been in my lifetime. We also drove out Checkpoint Charlie, which was the only gateway between East and West when the city was divided. We drove out to the Olympic Stadium, a palace in the city, and the Brandenberg Gates and the Reichstag building. Our tour ended at the Hamburger Bahnhof museum, which is a very modern art gallery. We saw lots of really “out there” pieces, including a large gallery room full of nothing but huge chunks of tallow and a felt suit hanging on the well. It was amusing to watch everyone’s reaction. Combine our feelings for the art with Medina’s appreciation for it and we had some interesting discussions in that museum for sure. I can’t say it was my favorite, but it is definitely one that I will remember for a long time!
After the museum some of us headed to the Reichstag building to climb the dome. (Its what we do when we get somewhere; we have to climb something!). The Reichstag building was fascinating to me because of how recent a large portion of its history is. The dome, completed in 1990 after major damage throughout the course of WWII, is made completely of glass and sits directly over the meeting place of the German parliament. It is suppose to symbolize the fact that the German people will always be “above” their government. To get up we didn’t actually have to climb anything, which was nice. Just a quick elevator ride up and then you had an incredibly view of the city.
We took the train home, and grabbed some dinner at the train station on our way back. We had about an hour to get ready for our final concert of the summer, which no one was very excited about. There is a pretty nasty flu virus going around, and about half of us feel nauseous and feverish. So far I haven’t been to sick, but I think its probably just a matter of time….
The concert ended up being pretty good. A little on the longer side, but it was still neat. The concert venue was some sort of very old city hall building, and the actual room it was in gave it a very “chamber orchestra” feeling. Afterwards, pretty much everyone went back to the hotel to pack and sleep. We are all pretty tired now and a good night’s sleep seems very appealing!
June 19, 2008
Another glorious driving day! When we started this trip it was almost impossible for me to fall asleep on the bus unless I was curled up in a strange position that left me sore with various limbs completely asleep. Now, however, I am fully capable of getting a nice nap in a completely upright position, regardless of the quality of the road or what is going on around me. This makes bus day a great day just to nap and do school work, with today being no exception. The fight for seats has gotten even more ferocious…but Molly and I managed to get a decent seats.
We only made one long stop during the trip, which was to visit the rocks of Extenstein. One of the kids in our group had seen something written about them a few years back, and decided that if he was ever in Germany that he would want to stop and see them. They are kind of a Stonehenge type attraction: large stones with stairs carved into the sides for people to climb up. The rocks just happened to be between Berlin and Beilfield, so we stopped. It was great to be outdoors for a few hours, and it just so happens that there is always a big festival at the rocks for the summer solstice, which is just two days from now. There were already lots of crazies camped out, beating drums, and playing fifes. It was quite a strange environment, but a lot of fun all the same.
We got to our hotel in Beilfield and all got together for Bible study. We have about 13 people coming now! Afterwards we went in search of food, which was much more difficult than we expected. We wanted to go to the grocery store, and we could see one about a block away from our hotel. As we approached we realized that the whole shopping center was fenced in, so we had to walk an addition 2-3 blocks just to get to the store. On the way out we walked a different direction towards McDonalds (the only restaurant anywhere close) and ended up an Audi dealership, trapped once again by the fence. At the point to walk to the gate would have been 3-4 blocks, and we were really hungry, so we decided to jump the fence. I’m sure we looked like stupid Americas, but at this point it was raining and we didn’t really care what anybody thought.
At McDonalds we found almost everyone in our group, and once again had hamburgers and salads for dinner. I’ve eaten more McDonalds in Europe than I have in the past five years in the US. Its good, its cheap, its reliable…what can I say?
After dinner we borrowed Mary’s laptop and watched the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy….SO GOOD. It was like spending the evening was good friends. Most of the guys watched the soccer game, and we knew exactly when the game was over because the whole world went crazy. Not only did we hear yelling in the hotel, cars outside honked for hours after the game ended. It was neat to be in a country when their soccer team won; I wish the US had that kind of spirit about a particular sport. That was about the extent of our excitement of the evening, for the rest of the night we hung out with our usual crowd.
June 20, 2008
Day two of driving to Brussels. The seating situation on the bus has gotten pretty out of control…yesterday they told us that bus doors wouldn’t open until 8am, and if we wanted good seats we had to be lined up outside the bus when they opened. The four of up hoped that people would try to be rational and not show up super early to the bus. We were wrong. When we walked out to the bus at 7:50 (ten minutes before we could get on) we were the last people in line. Apparently the line had started to form around 7, and people had developed a complicated set of rules about who was able to save seats for who and how many seats could be saved. Leave it to Tech students to make everything way more complicated than necessary. An IE behind me kept complaining the whole time about how inefficient the system was. I ended up getting a seat in the very back corner, but it wasn’t all that bad. This drive was the shortest so far anyways.
We didn’t have any big stops along the way, which was good. We got to Brussels very early, so they decided to take us directly to a music museum instead of checking into the hotel. Of course everyone was upset about it…at this point museums are equitable to legalized torture. It was a music museum, different than so many of the art museums we’ve been to, and I thought it was pretty interesting. We all wore huge headsets that activated when you got close to a particular instrument display, which was cool unless to got too close to a group of displays, because then you’d hear several music pieces at once…it was a little overwhelming! We were all suppose to meet at the top floor of the museum to hear some jazz students from the local university play their final exams. Dr. Haydn really talked up the performance, so were expecting some pretty talented musicians. He was way off…the students, particularly the marimba player, were not very good but thought they were awesome…a dangerous combination. After two pieces, Dr. Haydn signaled us and we all got up and left. A little rude maybe, but I don’t think I could have kept a straight face through the whole thing…
Our hotel here is awesome, probably my favorite so far. The rooms are very nice and some of the larger rooms that we’ve stayed in, which is good since we have a lot of studying to do for finals. We are right in the middle of the city, which is also a good thing. We had time before our welcome dinner to go use the gym, take a shower, and even do a little laundry. We also wrote our last music paper, which felt really good to finish up!
The dinner was way too sophisticated for a simple girl like me. I’m sure a classier person would have enjoyed it, but salmon pate just isn’t my thing. We ate on the 9th floor of the hotel, which gave us a great view of the city. After dinner we went out exploring the area a little, but everything closes early here, so we weren’t able to find much. We are in the shopping district of Brussels, so there are stores and malls everywhere! We are also just south of a long line of strip clubs….I guess we wont be going much north of the hotel. We did find a good place for internet, so tomorrow we will be able to check email!
June 21, 2008
Today we went to class and studied. The End.
Just kidding! We did have both classes, which was a lot of review for finals tomorrow. Afterward we headed to the Victor Horta museum, which was really cool! It was actually his home, which he built in the Art Nuveou style. It was a nice change from the normal art gallery type of museum, and a good museum to end on. We rode the metro there and back, which was a strange hybrid of subway and tram. There were some strange people on the tram, that’s for sure…
When we got back to the hotel we picked up our computers and went to use free internet a restaurant close to the hotel. Our intention was to study, but internet is such a luxury that I ended up sending emails the whole time. We had to go back to the hotel and do some intense studying, and then for dinner we took a study break and went to a place called Cheese Cake Café. It was probably the most American restaurant we’ve been to so far; there was lots of food and it came pretty quickly.
After dinner it was more studying. We had about 10 people in our room and we were blasting the classical music. I tried to call and get a different pillow from the reception (a special service that the hotel offers) but due to a slight miscommunication, they brought us a large stack of towels. Three separate times. The fourth try was the charm, I finally got an awesome “firm” pillow. We decided to go to bed and wake up early in the morning to finish studying.
June 22, 2008
Finals day! Molly and I got up at 5:30 to finish up studying, and then we opened up breakfast at the hotel at 6:30. Have a mentioned how awesome breakfast has been so far? Belgian waffles and everything! We studied with other people at breakfast, and then headed to class. The final ended up being alright…it wasn’t too easy but we all think we did pretty well. We had a little time to kill between art and music, so I went back to the hotel and ate more breakfast…don’t judge! The music final went well too. It feels so good to be done with class for a while!
We all came back to the hotel and got ready to explore Brussels. Hank and I asked the reception if there were any protestant churches around; since it was Sunday we thought it would be cool to go to a service. They responded by handing a list of every catholic mass in the city…oh well! We found that most of the city is closed on Sunday, especially in the shopping district, but we still saw some of the most popular tourist spots, including the main square and the statue of the boy peeing. Everyone had talked about how famous the statue was, and when we finally found it I was so disappointed with it. Its just a little brass fountain about a foot and a half tall, peeing into a little basin. At least I can say that I’ve seen it…
We ate Belgian waffles from a small stand…twice. Once again, don’t judge me! We also hiked to a park on the edge of the city. It was a strange place, there was a lot of garbage everywhere and not a lot of green space. Walking to the park was a lot of fun though, we came across a market selling a lot of jewelry that was fun to look at. We came back to the hotel and chilled for a little while, and then Freddy took us to his favorite place in Brussels…called Brue Park. It was a strange combination of a water park, themed restaurants, and a gigantic molecule structure from the World’s Fair in the 1950’s. It wasn’t what any of us were expecting, but Freddy loved it so we had fun as well. The bus ride back into town was the best of the trip…we all sang Cher and Freddie blinked the isle lights the whole way. There was also some dancing in the isles…what can I say, we know how to party!
Everyone in our group is getting very concerned with the idea of adding 100 more people to our social circle. We’ve decided that Group 2 is clearly the best and we really don’t need anyone else. It really has been a blast getting to know everyone. There are certainly a lot of people that I would never have met in Atlanta that I am so close with now. We all decided to go out together for our last night traveling, and we ended up leaving just as the Spain/Italy soccer game. Spain won, and it was crazy throughout the city. People were cheering and waving flags and running around and honking…pure insanity. We cheered with the best of them, though, despite the fact that none of us really had any loyalty to Spain. It was a cool environment to experience. We all went to a pub and enjoyed each other’s company for one more night. We left really late, and people were still out cheering and celebrating the game as we walked home. It was a perfect end to an amazing European trip.
We had an exciting scene waiting for us at the hotel when we returned. We saw lots of police in the lobby, and one of our professors. We couldn’t really figure out what was going on until Molly saw two kids from our group in handcuffs. You can imagine the rumors that started flying! We came up with some pretty crazy stories, but we couldn’t get any firm answers on what was going on. News travels fast, and by the time we were walking into our room we could hear lots of people speculating about what had actually happened.
June 23, 2008
Our very last bus day! Despite all the drama of the last couple of rides, everyone got decent seats for the last leg of the trip. There wasn’t even a long line thirty minutes before the doors opened! It was good to pack everything up and know that we wouldn’t have to do it again for six weeks. We were pressured to leave right at 8:00am in order to make our Chunnel appointment, and we left pretty close to it, which is saying a lot for our group. The two kids we had seen in handcuffs the night before were on the bus, which we took to be a good sign. It didn’t help our curiosity, though. Someone talked to a bellhop who said that they had thrown a glass bottle out of their window and hit someone on the sidewalk…but no one knows for sure.
Everyone was anxious on the bus and it was much more difficult to sleep than usual. We made it to the chunnel with plenty of time to spare, and when we loaded our train car we ended up being on the same car as both other Tech groups headed to Oxford, so we got to say hi to people we hadn’t seen in weeks and compare stories. Our story about getting arrested definitely trumped any other groups, even the group who had someone projectile vomit in the middle of class. We are awesome.
We had another couple hours to drive after we arrived in England, so all the Tech kids got back on their groups’ busses. Everyone’s thoughts about group two being better than the others were confirmed, and we decided we really didn’t need to go to Oxford with them after all. Its going to be difficult adjusting to having so many more people to talk to every day!
Arriving at Oxford was such a unique, special experience. We pulled in front of the college and a security guard with a beautiful English accent got on the bus to give us instructions about checking in. It was so exciting! We all got our rooms, and then proceeded to run around the campus and look at everone’s. There are quite a few different types of rooms in the college. I am in a dorm that is probably older than the United States, and it is the coolest place I’ve ever been in. There is a small parlor room when you first walk in, and then a tiny bedroom/sink in an adjoining room. I am on the top floor of “staircase 11,” which means I have to walk up three levels of winding staircase to get to my room. I absolutely adore it!
Most of our group is across campus (only a 5 minute walk) in much newer dorms with their own bathrooms. Everyone is really excited about where they are, and we are all wondering why Georgia Tech housing can’t be like this. Hmmmm….
Dinner was perfect. They served us family style, and it was so refreshing not to have chosen from a menu what we wanted to eat. The food was delicious, we ate butternut squash soup, and salmon, roasted potatoes, broccoli, and an excellent cake/berry dessert Molly described as “communion food.” Afterwards we went to a short orientation about the campus, and they told us what grass we couldn’t walk on and a lot of other rules we have to follow.
We explored the campus a little afterwards. It’s difficult to describe how beautiful it is here…it doesn’t even seem real. We also went into the town, which is just as charming and picturesque as you could ever imagine. Now I am sitting at my desk, looking out my window, talking to my mom, and having some alone time for the first time in four weeks. It doesn’t get much more peaceful than this.
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