Visiting the North

Ok, so the last week has been pretty crazy.

Last weekend I stayed in northern Germany. Went up to Lübeck and Hamburg. Interesting cities, it rained all day on Friday. This was the full day that I had in Lübeck to walk around and see all the sights. That sucked. Lübeck, however, is awesome. I heard a choir rehearsing in the Dom for a concert of Benjamin Brittin’s War Requiem. My guess is that it was to commemorate D-Day. It made me sad, though. As much as choir can be a real pain in the butt sometimes- I miss singing in a big group like that.

Hamburg was interesting. And pretty damned big. I didn’t see too much of the city, and focused on doing what I thought was interesting and leaving everything else for another time. I did a couple of museums: Kunsthalle, a Dali exhibit and the Museum of Erotic Art. That was a trip and a half.

For class we’ve done a little bit of travelling too. Last week we went to Cochem, a cute town on the Mosel. It’s apparently pretty popular with tourists, which was evident by the large groups of seniors taking guided tours of the city. Tuesday we went to Monreal (yes, there’s no “t” and it’s pronounced exactly the same as the French would pronounce the other one). It was fun. We had a city tour and did a wine tasting. Five different wines and we stuffed ourselves silly with all the bread, cheese and prosciutto that we could get our hands on. The town’s only a 15 minute regional train ride away from Mayen, I think I may go back to see the castle ruins and get dinner.

Today is Corpus Christi day, which means that we have no class and were let go a day early. I took a train and arrived in Amsterdam last night. I’m leaving this afternoon to go to Brussels and visit my friend Alice. Amsterdam is exaclty as I left it, it’s funny that I was only here for a day and a half during my last trip…but I can find my way around without any problems.

I walked around in the Red Light District last night- my hostel is in the neighborhood. It’s really interesting at night…so different from during the day time. I felt totally safe, like I did on the Reeperbahn (red-light district and club central in Hamburg). There are lots of people on the street trying to push drugs…it’s crazy. I had people tell me they had: cocaine, extacy, viagra….yeah. It’s such a strange neighborhood, exciting, amusing and sad all at the same time.

Ok, I’m mad hungry, I forgot to brush my teeth before I left my hostel and need to do something productive with my day…so, until later.

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