When we left off our heroine was just leaving Mayen after five beautiful weeks there. Here’s what’s happened since then…
Last week of the program: I said goodbye to my host family, my host parents leavign Thursday morning for Mallorca and me cooking dinner for my host sisters on Thursday night. Friday morning, bright and early we all took a bus to Colone and a train from there to Berlin. We started out our afternoon meeting one of Dr. Wolf’s friends who is a film maker. He took us around the city a bit and we were left to our own devices for the rest of the night. There ended up being major drama between some of the girls in my room…which made for some oh-so-needed tension for everyone else. Saturday I went to Potsdam and saw Schloss Sanssouci…which was kinda disappointing compared to Schoenbrunn in Vienna. Saturday night I went out dancing with a few of my classmates and we
came home as the sun came up, it was really fun. Sunday and Monday were rather uneventful, mostly museums in the morning and free time for museums in the afternoon.
Tuesday we left for Jena, a university town not too far away, where MSU has a study program. I ran into Kenton, a former classmate and German TA there. We took day trips to Ehrfurt and Weimar (& Buchenwald) on Wednesday and Thursday. They were really beautiful towns to see. We mostly walked around and enjoyed taking it all in. Buchenwald was very similar to Dachau, both were work camps and stop off points for people on their way to Auschwitz.
On Friday, we were officially free and I left for Dresden. It’s a really cool town, I spent most of my time there walking around and getting a feel for the city. I visited the German Hygene Museum…not at all what I expected, it was really quite cool. I also learned some new card games from a couple of kids in my room…though I didn’t manage to explain euchre to
them.
On Sunday I went back to Berlin for another five days. I spent alot of time walking around and saw alot of museums. The GErman Film Museum was really cool and had alot of stuff about early silent movies as well as rooms of Marlene Dietrich’s costumes. Went out to a
little bar for live jazz and met three other people from Michigan, two of whom are from Ann Arbor. The band was great, it was real Louisiana style hot jazz…none of that german polka-swing stuff I normally hear. Tried to go to a movie at the Sony center and it turned out to the be night of the european premier for Spiderman…there was lots of red carpet, bright lights and teenagers hoping for a glance at the movie stars. Needless to say, I didn’t
stick around.
Friday morning I took a train out to WArsaw to visit Laura. I bummed around town for a bit and tried to check my bag at the luggage storage where the people working ther kept speaking to me in Polish even though I couldn’t understand a word they were saying.
Eventually, two nice girls came along and helped me out. I got a tour of the embassy (normally civillians aren’t allowed inside, you go somewhere else for visas and stuff) and bought fresh raspberries on the street at about $1 per pound. Went out to eat with Laura
and the housemates at a nice restaurant, it was less than $25 for all five of us to eat. Those are my kind of prices!
Saturday we bummed around town with a rather intersting acquaintance of Laura’s…who was driving us all up the wall. It went well though, and we ate more raspberries. Sunday Laura and I did more sightseeign, saw a Chopin concert in the park, ate more raspberries and (after several unsucessful attempts) got some potato pancakes.
Got to Prague on Monday morning and spent most of my time wandering about. This city is truly amazing, it was barely damaged in the war and looks amazing. I got up early today and went out picture taking at 5:30 am…and went back to bed at 8 am. Spent the day walking around with two kids from my hostel: got chinese food, played with animals at a pet store, went to a middle eastern restaurant and tried to see a sold-out Farenheight 9/11. Back at the hostel now, and trying to decide what to do tomorrow…probably a walking tour and then its’s a night train to Budapest.
So that’s it for the last few weeks…not too much to
catch up on. ;)
(I don’t know how to say goodbye in Czech),
Vanessa