Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Bonn

March 15-18

I promised to write a blog entry about my trips, mostly because I know I'll forget about them, but I'm leaving for Berlin tonight, so here is a seriously abbreviated version (for real, guys. I promise).

Cologne - Day 1

• Kölner Dom (cathedral) -- highest cathedral tower in the world (not highest church tower--that's in Ulm)
• Tour of the Roman churches in Köln (btw, Cologne is just the English name for Köln)
• St. Andreas
• St. Mariä Himmelfahrt
• St. Ursula
  
• St. Gereon
  
• St. Aposteln
• Klein St. Martin
  
• Groß St. Martin
• There's 12 Romanesque churches, but I didn't get a chance to see them all.
• In between, I saw
• Remains of the former city wall
• Old Rathaus
• Rhein promenade (really really nice! It was such a nice day)
• Walked across the Hohenzollern Bridge
• Synagogue

Hmm, I feel like I'm writing an outline for a class. It was a really nice day and not cold at all, so I really enjoyed all the walking. Cologne is not really the most beautiful city, but it has a lot of history. It was a Roman city, or colony, or something, so it's really old. Of course, practically everything was destroyed in the bombing after WWII so a lot of it has been rebuilt, but it's still cool. The churches were surprisingly interesting. I expected them all to look the same on the inside, but they all their own unique character and I enjoyed looking around (which is saying something, considering how many churches I've seen by now).

Cologne - Day 2

• Today was rainy, but I had planned for that. I went to several museums:
• Römisch-Germanisches Museum (museum about the Roman and Germanic history of Cologne, actually not that large of a museum, and a little boring, but prob just bc I saw so much old stuff in Italy)
• Käthe Kollwitz Museum, which I had been really looking forward to. A fairly large collection of her work. Also not a huge museum, but I spent quite a bit of time looking around it
• Ludwig Museum, which was some kind of modern art museum. It was interesting, but really really big, and honestly, modern art's not really my thing.

• At the end of the day, I went to a Palm Sunday vesper service in the Cathedral, which was really nice. I thought it would just be ok since it was a youth choir singing, but I guess in the most-visited tourist attraction in Germany they don't do things halfway. Only downside: no heat. FREEZING.

Düsseldorf - Day 3

• I went to Düsseldorf with no map and not a clue what I wanted to do or see. Luckily the tourist information office is near the train station, so I got a free map there. I followed a walking tour it suggested on there.
• St. Andreas Church (nice, but eh. I've seen a ton of churches)
• Jan Wellem Monument in the square by the old Rathaus
• Schlossturm on the Burgplatz. A tower that used to be attached to the castle, except the castle is no longer there. Also saw a statue of a kid turning a cartwheel, and a rather creepy monument to the city history.
• Walked along the river promenade. It was really nice, except it was windy and cold. Needless to say, I hurried.
  
• Anna-Maria-Louisa-Medici Platz and St. Maximilian Church
• Königsallee, the "Champs-Elysees of Germany", or so they claim. Not as nice as I expected it to be--not enough high-end stores. But it had a big mall that I walked around in to get out of the cold, so that was good.
• Rheinturm and the Landestag. The Rheinturm is a 172 m high tower that you can take an elevator to the top of. Really cool. Also, the Landestag is right next to it, so that was cool to see from above.

Bonn - Day 4

• Also did a map-suggested walking tour here. Along the way I saw:
• Bonner Münster
• Rathaus
• Beethoven's birth house (really cool!!! even though Beethoven didn't like Bonn. Had a ton of original stuff)
• Rhein promenade
• Alter Zoll (old toll-collecting station along the river)
• Egyptian Museum at the University of Bonn (not that impressive...only one room of artifacts)
• University of Bonn (amazing. Why didn't I go there?)
• Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany), one of the most interesting museums I've ever been to. I spent 3.5 hours there, and that was with kind of skimming the main exhibit, which was huuuge. It traced the history of Germany from 1945-present. It was really interactive and had lots of stuff to look at, but it was just too much info. There was also a side exhibit about scandals in Germany from 1945 to present, also really cool, but by then I was too tired to look through it in depth.
• Walked past Villa Hammerschmidt and Palais Schaumburg, which were, respectively, the residences of the president and chancellor of West Germany, before unification when Bonn was the capitol

There you go, my 4-day trip written up in less than 4 posts. Impressive. I'm not sure if I'll get around to writing about Copenhagen before I leave tonight, but if I do, consider yourselves lucky!

Trip summary coming soon....

For real, I promise. I know I said I'd write about Cologne last week, but I only had one free afternoon before I went to Copenhagen, and that was spent packing and trying to stay awake (stupid night trains). I got back from Copenhagen this morning and I'm trying to sort through all my pictures from both trips, but I promise promise I'll write something soon. I better, because I'm going to Berlin on Wednesday!

Wegetable?

I really need to get back into the posting groove. I feel like I have a ton of stuff to say! Not too much has happened, but I have a bunch of cool stuff coming up!

I'm really that I've been able to meet all these other aupairs. I don't see them that often, because obviously none of us have cars and we are all slaves to the loser bus schedules in Heidenheim, but it's definitely nice to have people to do stuff with, especially people like me who WANT to do stuff. I met up with Carole and Milka on Saturday and we took the train to Ulm, where we met up with an aupair Milka knows through her agency, Vianca. Later on, Dianny (my aupair friend from my German class) joined us too, so there were 5 of us all together. Raffaella, the Italian one, couldn't come because she was in Italy taking a test (I don't know, that's just what Carole said). The weather was kind of gross naturally, since every other day that week had been beautiful. It was cold and overcast so there wasn't much to do besides just look in stores, but it was still nice to do something, and with other people!

After getting back from Ulm, I met up with Tabea and Judith so that we could eat a quick dinner before going to Gegenwind. Milka came with to eat, and ended up coming to Gegenwind as well (she didn't seem to like it very much though...). Weirdly enough, it turns out that the aupair who worked for Milka's family before her not only went to Gegenwind a few times, but was friends with Vivien, one of the Eders' old aupairs. I'm pretty sure Vivien and Olga (Olla? no one seemed to know) knew each other through their German class. And also weirdly, my German teacher gave me the name and phone number of a former aupair who she said still lived in Heidenheim...and turns out it was Olga/Olla (I never did call her). It's so weird how meeting an aupair completely randomly leads me to meeting another aupair who, if anyone had been paying attention, I could have known way before now. But after all this run-around and realizing that there are a lot more aupairs in Heidenheim than anyone realizes, I've decided I'm going to collect phone numbers and addresses of these aupairs' families so that the aupair after me will have some contacts as soon as she gets here. I definitely know how hard it is to meet people!

OK, here's the big news. Dominik has two weeks off for Easter vacation and Johanna has one week off, and in that time they're going to Oma and Opa's next Monday and Tuesday, then Dominik is going to the other set of grandparents for a week, and Johanna will be at Oma and Opa (here) for 2 days. Soo that's two extra weekends I have to travel! The family doesn't want me to go anywhere "just in case anything happens" and the kids can't go to Oma and Opa's, but I think that's kind of mean of them to ask me to stay on the off chance something happens. I don't have much time to travel, so I want to take advantage of every opportunity I have. Anyway, I'm going to Cologne this weekend, with side trips to Bonn and Düsseldorf (I hope), then the weekend after that, over Easter, I'm going to Copenhagen, where I'll be meeting up with Jonathan for two days. The weekend after that I'm going to Berlin for 3 days with Vianca and Carole. Thennn the weekend after that I'm going to Amsterdam to meet up with my parents. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks, and I already know I'll be exhausted from taking so many night trains, but I think it'll be worth it. I've already been to Berlin twice, but there's soo much stuff I didn't get to see. I saw a lot of stuff from the outside, but I didn't go in any of the major stuff, like Checkpoint Charlie, Fernsehturm, Gedächtniskirche, Reichstag, Deutsches Museum. Man, I'm so used to getting to travel on any weekend I have off, I don't think I'm gonna be able to get used to having a normal life when I get back to the US! Thank goodness my boyfriend is a pilot and I'll be able to go somewhere on a weekend if I feel like it.

Hmm, I think those are all my big updates. Now for the weird thing. Judith and Tabea came over last night and we watched "Freedom Writers" (ended up being better than I thought it woudl be). But afterwards, I don't know how, but we got to talking about weird accents and stuff, and I asked them why so many German people confuse the "W" and "V" sounds in English. For example, I've heard soo many Germans pronounce "vegetable" like "wegetable". Both Tabea and Judith said they had no idea what I was talking about. It turns out...neither of them could hear a difference! I said "vegetable" the right way and the German way, and both of them thought I was saying the same word. They both tried saying it, but neither of them could get it consistently right, and they didn't know when they were saying it right or wrong. I thought about it a little, and I realized that there is no "w" sound in German. "W" in German is pronounced like "V" in English, and "V" in German is pronounced like either "V" or "F" in English. But the "W" is a sound that is never at the beginning of words (although it's often in the middle of words, like "raue"). I guess it's one of those things that if you don't grow up hearing it, you can't distinguish the difference between the two sounds. It's like me with "R" in German. I'm better with it now, but I still can't hear it all the time in words, and I know I can't pronounce it the way a native speaker can, although I can fake a pretty good approximation.

Oh yeah, another cool thing about my German (this blog is called "Laura Learns German", so I feel like it's a good idea to write about stuff like that). First off, my reading skills have gotten much better. And even cooler, so have my skimming skills! Every since I got here I've realized that there are so many things in reading and writing that native speakers take for granted, and one of those is skimming. You have to have a really thorough, in-depth knowledge of a language to be able to skim stuff in that language. Well, I can finally skim stuff! Definitely not well, and I don't usually pick up extra stuff like I can when skimming in English, but I can do it! I don't have to read an entire page of German text where there's one specific thing I'm looking for. I can skim!!! And, I can understand when the kids yell stuff across the house, and TV shows that are playing on the TV upstairs (I never realized how hard it is to understand something when it's echoey and spreading until I tried to understand echoey and spreading stuff in German). I really really really really really x 10 hope that I can keep up my German skills when I get back to the US. I'm already realizing how fast it's gonna go downhill. I guess I'll have to find a group of native German speakers to hang out with or something...

So, that's my big update. Check back next week for a short run-down of my adventures in Cologne!

Barcelona, I'll miss you

Short summaries, lots of pictures

Day 2

• Attempted to go the Picasso museum. Line was way too long. Instead, we walked around the Gothic Quarter for a while just looking at stuff. It was at this point that we discovered Placa Sant Jaume, which we got pretty sick of because every time we tried to get anywhere in the Gothic Quarter we ended up back there. In our wanderings we saw the Barcelona cathedral and some odd stores.

• Walked to Parc de la Ciutadella, a huge and really nice park. Canoed on the man-made lake there for only 2€! and had tons of fun.
  

• Walked back towards Las Ramblas along the water, looked at the boats, and searched through a tiny flea market where I bought an incredibly tacky model of what Sagrada Familia will look like when it's done. Tried to eat lunch at the market on Las Ramblas, but it was closed!
• After lunch, took the bus up to Parc Güell, a park designed by Gaudi. Walked up to see something Joy called the three crosses, basically three crosses on the top of a hill (Parc Güell is already on a hill, so there was a great view). Wandered around the park and went in the very small Gaudi museum in the park, housed in Gaudi's former residence.

• Went back to the Gothic Quarter and finally were able to go to the Picasso museum. The main exhibit traced his evolution from "normal" painting to cubism. Definitely one of the highlights of my trip. Unfortunately we were only able to spend about an hour in the museum.
• After the museum, we ate delicious paella! It was a little expensive for budget travelling, but worth it.

Day 3

• Started our day off by going to Casa Mila, one of the two more famous Gaudi-designed houses in Barcelona (the other one cost 16.50€ to go in, so we opted for the one that was onlz 8€). Spent the whole morning in there. Really awesome house, plus an interesting exhibit about Gaudi's designs and methods.

• Spent most of the afternoon wandering around the Gothic Quarter looking in the weird and funky stores, and searching for some of the Gaudi buildings scattered around that area. Finally ate lunch at the market since it was open--the cheapest meal I had on the entire trip. 2 euros total for watermelon and bread, which we split.
  

• Walked down to the beach so that I could see it and say I'd been to the beach. I managed to stick my hand in the Mediterranean! And get some Mediterranean sand in my shoes.

• Went with Joy to pick up her girls from kindergarten and school, and then said goodbye. Afterward I went to see a few more Gaudi houses and the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. Tried to visit the Palau Reial, but the grounds were closed by the time I got there.
  

The end!

To sum up, Barcelona is amazing. And so are student discounts. If you go to USC, use that sucker anywhere you go! Since it has no date on it, I'm gonna use that thing until someone turns it down.

If you want to look at all of my pictures, click on my Picasa link to the right. I just spent an enjoyable afternoon looking through a bunch of my old pictures. All of my pictures from my trips are posted on there.

Before I continue with Barcelona....

I had a great weekend! I met up with three other aupairs on Saturday for a day in Heidenheim (I know, super duper fun). One of them, Carole, I met for the first time about two weeks ago. She had posted a little ad on the bulletin board in the library saying that she was an aupair and was looking for other aupairs to hang out with, so I called her up and we met. We hit it off right away and made plans to meet up again (Saturday). She invited Raffaella, an aupair she knows from her German class, and Milka, an aupair their German teacher said was also looking for people to hang out with. Here's the rundown of countries: Carole=France, Raffaella=Italy, Milka=Namibia. And yes, Milka's name is really spelled that way, like the chocolate. I was surprised that we all hit it off so well! It ended up being a great day, and we're gonna try to meet up again soon.

Obligatory cute friendship pic:

I feel like that's straight out of the Babysitters' Club. Man, I wish the Babysitters' Club was my life. Mostly I wish I could date Logan.

Also, we saw "27 Dresses". I gotta admit, I was disappointed. I mean, obviously I knew going in that it would be a chick-flick, but from the premise and the trailer it looked like it would be at least an exceptionally fun chick-flick. Wrong. It didn't deviate one iota from the chick-flick movie formula. It was moderately entertaining, but it's nowhere near as good as, say, "Something's Gotta Give", which is probably my second-favorite movie ever (yes, I know, that makes me about 45). If you know me, you already know my favorite movie.

Get ready for more Barcelona!

Spain, the second-greatest country in Europe

February 16-19

At least, that's my opinion so far. If you can't tell, I LOVED Barcelona! While I was there I met up with Joy, who was the aupair before me for my family. She's working as an aupair again, for a family that lives right outside Barcelona and she's been there about three weeks. It was actually a huge coincidence how we even ended up talking. I only met her once, when she was here for a day before she went back home, right after I got here. I never talked to her after that, but then she called about a month ago while I was here alone, and I saw the 001 country code so I assumed that someone was calling for me (I usually only answer the phone while upstairs when I know who's calling, like Stefan or Stephanie), so I picked up. It turned out it was her calling to talk to the fam but they weren't there, so we chatted a little bit. She asked where I'd traveled, and I told her what I'd done and that I was going to Barcelona soon. I knew that she was going to be an aupair again in Spain, but I had no idea that she would be in the city I was going to! We ended up spending all three days that I was there together, and it was a lot of fun. I definitely don't mind traveling alone, but it was a nice change to have someone to tour around with.

Anyway, I'll try to keep this fairly short and chock full of pictures.

Day 1
I had stayed overnight in Stuttgart, where I was flying out of, because my flight left at 7 AM. That meant that my day started at 4 AM. I got to the train station around 4:45, planning to take an S-Bahn to the airport that left about 5. Well, it turns out I looked at the M-F schedule and not the weekend one, so I had to wait until 5:25. This kind of ruined my plan of being to the airport of 5:30, but luckily getting there around 6 still turned out to be plenty of time. But umm there's not really much to do in a train station at 5 AM, so after wandering around and looking at all of the closed stores that I had already seen the night before, I went and sat in the waiting room which was full of three kinds of people: people starting their day early, people just finishing their night, and bums. Most of the people in there were harmless, but at one point one creepy dude started talking to me about his beer and cigars, and then farted while standing right next to me. I decided that was an excellent time to leave.

Once I got to Barcelona, I made it to my hostel with no problems (although the metro took twice as long as they said it would!). Joy met me there around 11 and we set off for Sagrada Família, a church designed by Gaudí. Well, at least at first. He started working on it in 1883, but then like all big projects it was delayed--a lot. It still wasn't finished by the time of his death in 1926, and then of course the plans mysteriously disappeared and there was no way to finish it the right way. So, they just kind of sat around for a couple decades, and now they're working on it again semi-based on Gaudí's plans, but largely not. One side of the church is clearly designed by Gaudí, and the other side is in a completely different style. It's expected to be finished in 2021 or something like that. Unfortunately we wasted 8 euros paying to go inside. Biggest rip-off of the trip. It would have been worth it if there had been anything at all to see. As it was, we saw a couple nice stained glass windows, and a ton of construction equipment. Oh yes, and an exhibit on what kind of stones are being used to build the church. That's right. Stones. I don't think it gets more boring than that. The plus side was that you could go up to the top of one of the towers--if you were willing to pay another 2 euros. We were willing, but it was an hour long wait, so we skipped it. Long story short: if you ever go to Barcelona, don't pay to go in the church (unless you really love stones).


Once we left the church, we ate lunch and then walked down Avenue Diagonal, a loooong diagonal (duh) street that runs pretty much through the entire city. We looked at a couple of the cool houses there, and then from there walked down Passeig de Gràcia, where a couple Gaudí houses are.

We ended up at Plaça Catalunya, a big square in the center of town. We then walked down Las Ramblas, which I'm not sure how to describe. It's pretty much one big tourist trap. There are a couple of restaurants there selling over-priced paella and a bunch of kitschy souvenir stands. There are also a TON of "performance artists" who stand there dressed up until you give them some money, then they do something either stupid or really really creepy. I took a picture of some of the stupid ones, but the creepy ones were seriously too creepy to stop and hover by. From there we walked down to the port and looked at the boats and stuff, and saw the huge floating mall (apparently called Maremagnum). It was a really nice day, so it was nice to walk by the water.


After that we took the funicular up to Parc Montjuïc, a park on a mountain on top of the city.


We mostly wanted to see the castle, and we thought we were going to the right place--but apparently we were the only people who couldn't figure out the short way to get there. The funicular dropped us at almost the opposite end of the park from the castle, so we had another loong walk to it. We did get to see some nice gardens though. We had aimed to get to the castle by 7 PM to see the fountain and light show, but we were early, so we walked to the Olympic park. At 7 the light/fountain show started, and it was really cool! But...it only lasted 15 minutes (which was fine with me, because really, how long can you watch water and lights?).


Joy's host family had told her that you could easily sit there watching it for an hour. Well, 15 minutes was enough for us. Joy tried calling her family to tell them that she wasn't going to ride back home with them (they were in the city for a birthday party), but of course her phone was dead. So...we ended up having to walk to where the party was. And then we couldn't find it. By this point I was ready to lay down on the pavement and sleep. Eventually we found the family, and on their way home they dropped us off at a restaurant. By the time we actually sat down with our food, it was 10 PM. We might have been fitting right into the Spanish culture, but I was tired. I didn't end up getting back to my hostel until 11:30.

Hmm, it isn't working to keep it short, so I'll have to write this in sections. I know you people read my blog, so you better be grateful. And you better read every word I've written (that means you, Jonathan).

Johanna can ride a bike now!!

Some pictures, for you entertainment:

Johanna riding her bike!!! Seriously, adorable. Take notice of my bike in the background, with the huge red backpack filled with diaper, wipes, food, and drink that we have to take anywhere if we plan to be gone for more than 15 minutes. Parenthood=that giant red backpack

Johannski riding her bike!! She can start, stop, and ride without any help. We rode really far (for a 3-year-old) that day with a pretty strong wind, and she only fell off once.

Hahahah I love this picture because it looks like Johanna is the one doing the self-photo thing.

Eating her "picnic" snack of raisin bread. Not pictured: gummi bears



Johanna is really proud of that raisin bread! (She claimed she was using it to block the sun...? I guess when you're 3, that makes sense.)

So, Johanna can ride her bike now! She pretty much learned this weekend, and then on Sunday they all went on a "Fahrradtour" where she did really well, so me and Johanna did the same thing Monday afternoon. She even remembered the way! We packed a little "picnic snack" as Johanna called it, and I let her pick out two gummi bears to include. There is really nothing more adorable than a 3-year-old riding a tiny two-wheel bike.

On Tuesday I actually woke up early and went into Heidenheim to meet up with Carole, an aupair who posted a little advertisement in the library looking for other aupairs. I'd never met her before so I was a little worried how it would go, but it turned out she's really nice! We hit it off right away and we've already made plans to meet up again. She's from France and (claims) she speaks no English (I say "claims" because everyone I've met who says they speak no English really knows practically half the language, just isn't fluent), so we talked in German, which was fine with me. We're both on about the same German level, so it was good. I had a lot of fun with her, and I'm really glad to have met another aupair.

Tuesday afternoon ended up being another really good day with the kids. We've had a string of good days lately. They both behaved really well and we had a great time together. It was just the three of us for dinner, and they were being so silly and laughing a lot. It always makes me so happy when they behave! The only bad thing about that is that it makes me unhappy when they're bad. I hate that my perception of how good or bad a day I've had is based on their whims of if they'll talk back or not and if they'll behave well. Usually they behave well with me and we rarely have any real problems, but sometimes they are exceptionally good, like the past couple days.

Highlight of my day: I got a package from home containing..................potato chips!!!!!!!! There were only three small bags, but it's better than the none that I usually have. Not gonna lie, I already ate a bag of them. I couldn't resist. Man, has it really been 6 months since I've had regular chips? Ahh I miss the potato chip aisles in the grocery store. Those and Little Debbie brownies. Mmm. Chocolate here sure is good, but I really miss potato chips and brownies.