Adventures in Berlin, London, and Swansea

I am getting to be really bad about keeping up in here! I feel like my weeks go by so quickly with school work and traveling basically every weekend. Ah the torture of being in Europe for a semester...

So not this past weekend but the weekend before, 14 American students took off for Germany. I had originally mentioned going to Berlin one of the first weeks we were here and people were really excited for it! The Festival of Lights was going to be on while we were there so I think that go people excited as well. We left bright and early Thursday morning not so bright eyed and bushy tailed, but we left nonetheless. It is obviously really nice to travel here but for as close as things are it is a good days worth of traveling, generally a ten hour period of travelling: three hour train ride to airport at minimum, then the waiting two hours for the flight, then the two-three hour flight... it definitely adds up. So having 14 of us semi crabby, tired, and hungry was an interesting experience! Adam took care of our hostel which was nice and he navigated us there with no complications. Germany was really interesting right after Rome because as I said everyone spoke English in Rome, and Germany was not so much. They still did but it took longer and they knew fewer words. Of course none of us knew any German so it was an experience, I knew how to say yes, no, thank you very much and excuse me...

Thursday night I found us a beer garden with traditional food which was interesting, it was really beautiful but it was a bit pricier than we thought, not by much but still. I had some sort of potato pasta with cheese and onions which was good but I probably would not get it again. We then wandered our way to what we thought was the Festival of Lights, luckily it wasn't really because it looked like really tacky Christmas decorations. When we asked someone they said we were at the end of it. Three of my friends and I got a private room at the hostel which was really nice, also the beds were super comfy and the pillows were amazing so I had a hard time waking them up in the mornings! My bed at home is nice but some of the girls' are really uncomfortable so I don't blame them!

The next day we all split up based mostly on who was awake and who wanted to do what. A group went to a concentration camp, some slept in for a bit, and three of my other friends and I went to do a bike tour that one of my friends from home had recommended. It was really fun and it was five hours so we covered a lot of ground and saw all the big sights. We saw the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie which was really neat, history that was almost within my life thus far. It was a lot of history but obviously compared to Rome it was a lot of recent history.

Berlin is really beautiful and the weather was lower 50's but it was sunny so it was nearly perfect. Then after that we kind of wandered around until we were to meet up with the rest of the group to go to the Festival of Lights; everything we had seen that day was going to be lit up. Everyone had really nice days so it was good that we were able to split up and do what we wanted to. The Festival was really awesome, there were a ton of people out.

Saturday we went to Museum Island and did a few museums there. They had a lot of beautiful museums and it getting hard to differentiate from the ten other museums I have been to here. One of the museums was dedicated to Egypt which is again fun for me because of my class. Another museum has taken whole parts of buildings and reconstructed them in rooms so that was amazing. The museums took up most of the morning and that afternoon I really wanted to go to Potsdam so everyone met up once again around 2:30 to take the train out there. It was a little ways to get to Potsdam but once we did it was worth it. It was a bit confusing getting to the actual palace and at first we ended up at the guest house, which I would surely be a guest at. When I asked for directions the lady told us that we should stay a bit longer because they were going to be lighting it all up which they only do once a year... I would have to say that we have had the best travel luck, there are always things that are going on that we don't even know about. The Palace was so beautiful and I am so glad we made it out there to see it.

Reichstag

Sunday was a bit of everything... our flight was at 5 pm which was really nice because we had a lot longer to do things. On our bike tour we had stopped at the Memorial for Murdered Jews but we didn't realize there was more underneath it actually. So we decided to check that out... it was very emotional and well done. It was very personal, it had parts of diaries and letters on the floor in the second room, the third room was about specific families and what the Holocaust did to them, and the fourth room was interviews with people who had survived. I eventually want to visit a concentration camp but I am pretty sure I would be even more of a wreck so I would have to be feeling very strong that day.
So after we did that we went back to the central area and people did a bit of souvenir shopping and drinking out of steins.

Sanssouci Palace

Our traveling home was a bit tedious and after our flight we split up... Alison and I have the britrail pass which was worth the price. Two of our other friends came with us as well because we were going to get home a little after 1 am and the rest of the group was not going to be home until 9 am, and had to spend five hour in a train station... needless to say I was very grateful to be warm and sleep in my bed that night.

The following week was pretty uneventful... School work and just hanging out which was nice. Alison and I didn't really have anything planned for the weekend so my friend Hannah who is studying in London offered her place to let us stay. We left Friday morning and got in early afternoon. I have been to  London, thanks to my wonderful parents, when I was a sophomore in high school so I remember most of the big touristy stuff and Alison is coming back with her family in December. So basically all we wanted to do was have a chill weekend wandering markets, doing a Harry Potter tour, and seeing a play. Well, we got to do two markets, but we were too late for the Harry Potter tour, and ticket prices were not cheap enough for two girls traveling on a budget! It was a fun weekend though and we accidently wandered into the changing of the horseman and then the changing of the guard... which really is not worth it. We got stuck in a mass of tourists and we couldn't get out for a good half an hour. We also had perfect sunny weather... everywhere we go the sun seems to follow so I take that as a good sign! We don't have anything going on the first weekend of November and all of our other friends are going to Amsterdam that weekend so we are going to go into London for the day and hopefully see Les Mis then!

Today we are leaving for Scotland! I am really excited for this trip! All we have to do is sit on a train for seven hours, no flights or anything! Alison has her last class at 2 pm so we are leaving after that. We are going to Glasgow tonight and will have the day there tomorrow and are also spending the night there tomorrow night. Friday we are doing a day tour to Loch Ness, Glencoe, and Inverness which I am really looking forward to. It should be beautiful. Friday night we will take the 50 minute train from Glasgow to Edinburgh where we will spend the remainder of our time!

So I will write more about that soon!
One day, I will write a nice short blog.

Ta! Julia

Roaming Roma!!!

Buena Sera! I am back in sunny Swansea (not) after a wonderful whirlwind of a weekend in Roma. (Let's see how many alliterations I can use throughout this blog...) To say the least, Rome was amazing.

To say more...

Thursday morning Alison and I caught a taxi at 5 am to the train station. Our train was to Reading and from Reading we took another train to Gatwick Airport. This went smoothly and we made the trains on time. We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, both of us were pretty nervous about flying on the budget airlines because there are plenty of unpleasantries that can be associated with flying on them. We flew out on Easyjet with zero hiccups and made really good timing into Fiumicino. From the airport we had a car service from our hostel pick us up which was super convenient and made for quite a lovely ride into Rome. The car dropped us off on some side alley road and my immediate thought was that this guy was just going to leave us in the middle of some random Rome neighborhood and we were going to be wandering around for an hour trying to figure out where to go. However, it turns out he dropped us off perfectly the hostel was just not labeled the best and the name was not really visible and also the Italian version of the name. We stayed at Orsa Maggiore which I would highly reccommend. We had a private room overlooking a courtyard and we were perfectly located. Everything was about a 15 minute walk, except for the Colleseo which was just a little further. We walked everywhere so I came home with new blisters, but it was good to walk off the gelato, pizza and pasta!

Thursday Night
We just looked around our area and ate some gelato, of course. Our area was really nice, in Trastevere, and was a perfect starting place for exploring Rome. We had dinner at Dar Poeta which was delicious. It was really close to our hostel and almost all of the other patrons had their guidebooks, like me. We went early enough that it wasn't busy and we each got a pizza (we had leftovers for lunch the next day.) We also had a nutella and ricotta calzone which was like eating heaven in a pocket. Nutella is delicious and all of us Americans are going to come home obsessed. After our lovely meal we were pretty exhausted, having been up for over 18 hours and traveling for nine so we decided to go to bed semi-early after walking along the river and seeing the buildings and castles lit up. As I am writing this I am remembering also that we went to Piazza Navona where there are two huge fountains by Bernini and it was really amazing to see those. There were lots of little paintings and people selling things in the piazza too and we saw this almost everywhere we went.

Looking good after a long day, Dar Poeta!

Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi

Walking under the moon, very close to our hostel!

Friday
We got up and had a little quaint breakfast in our hostel, toast with cheese and jam is very big here and it is slowly growing on me. After this we planned to go to the TI (Tourist Information) to get our Roma Passes and then go to the Vatican. Our walk was along the river once again, Rome is quite beautiful. The walk up to St Peters Basilica is beautiful and lined with columns. In case you visit... there are people who constantly come up to you while you wait in line to get in (to get in is free) trying to get you to join their tours and tell you that the line takes two hours... the line to get in took at most 15 minutes so they try to catch you right away. That was interesting to see but made us feel well traveled to know better. Anyway, the inside was so beautiful and overwhelming.

Walking up to the Piazza and Basilica 

Michelangelo's dome, top of Bernini's baldichin

Beautiful

Things were not labeled very well and I didn't get an audio guide which I really enjoy doing because otherwise I am completely clueless. So all I can really tell you is that is was amazing and huge and beautiful.

At this point we got some sustenance before joining the next line on the other side to get into the Vatican Museums. There are about 15 museums... give or take. Each equally impressive and containing a multitude of paintings and artifacts. I am taking a Egyptian Art and Architecture course here so I am really loving getting to see all of the things we are talking about in class and the Egypt museum here was really amazing. Also, every ceiling was painted and it was just so much to take in. I got an audio guide here, Alison didn't, so I told her some of the things. I am really glad I got that because otherwise I would not have appreciated it as much. We went into the Sistene Chapel of course, but, I hate to say that after seeing pretty much everything else in the museums (this was our second to last stop in the museums) I was not as impressed. Everything else seemed to me just as spectacular but it was of course amazing as well. We saw The Tranfiguration, Raphael's last painting before he died, which was really neat. There was just so many things to see it was nearly impossible to gather the importance and significance behind everything. That being said, the museums were one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Michelangelo's inspiration

Also, I can't seem to find my pictures of the rest of the museums but more photos from the trip are on my facebook album! So after the Vatican we went back to our hostel mid afternoon to refuel and give our feet a quick break before heading back out. This afternoon we went to Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps which are probably in the top 5 of things that we saw. It was just pure Rome, minus the millions of tourists.

My favorite fountain! I threw in two coins... one to return to Rome, the second to fall in love with an Italian man, the third was to marry the Italian but I was feeling stingy.

Spanish Steps!

Also, it is really funny because in Rome pedestrians just did whatever they wanted and didn't have a care in the world. In Swansea cars definitely have the right away but in Rome people just walked in streets and the vespas and cars had to navigate around them. It was pretty nice, also we got to use our normal driving on the right side so that was convenient for us to not get hit. Another thing that was semi disappointing was the amount of English used... everyone spoke english. Alison and I had been practicing our Italian for weeks (we had a vocabulary of about ten words: grazie, scusi, pizza, pasta, delicioso, preggo, buena sera, gelato...). We did get asked things in Italian a few times which we were excited about because we have also been practicing blending in, which mainly means not talking so loud and wearing lots of layers and scarves. Everyone looks so put together, children here dress better than me on my best day. Anyway, making progress. Back to the day, sorry for the sidetracking! I am pretty sure we then just explored some more and found a place to eat dinner and fell asleep.

Saturday
Today was our tour of Ancient Rome! I love love loved this day. We had perfect weather, dress and jacket. After a pastry at a little bakery in the Jewish Ghetto we continued on to the Roman Forums. We wandered the grounds with all of the ruins which was both magical and eerie; a whole other world before ours. The amount of buildings still standing is impressive and it was just an experience that can't be replicated. It was also a huge area that Ancient Rome stood on.

One of my favorite buildings, Il Vittoriano in Piazza Venezia

Remains of the Forums 

Of course we made our way to the Colosseo, I am running out of adjectives here so sorry for repetition. The colosseum is just so crazy because it is so huge and beautiful. It was fun to see the typical shot of it on the postcards but going inside was also really neat. I am sure people have heard but Emperor Trajan supposedly brought in 11,000 animals to be slaughtered and 10,000 gladiators for one celebration... nice memories. It can hold in between 50,000-70,000 people, it was built so long ago without all of our modern technology.

Inside of the Colleseo

We humans can be pretty creative... So after the tour of Ancient Rome, I had made reservations for Museo Berghese so we made it over to Villa Berghese which was the farthest away from us and also situated at the top of a huge hill. Of course I read the reservation wrong so we arrived very early but it turned out to be okay because we had a nice lunch with a very flirty old Italian man who wooed us and then charged us for the bread which we didn't eat! Reminder: They charge you for bread (ridiculous) and they add things to your bills so if you don't look carefully you will end up paying for things you did not eat! Very irritating but part of being a tourist unfortunately. The Berghese Gallery was very pretty but once again they did not have an audio tour so I am not even sure of all that we saw, lots of works by Carvaggio, Bernini, Botticelli, and Raphael. I wish I had taken an art appreciation course before this because I am sure it would have been very beneficial.

Museo e Galleria Berghese

It was a lot of information and visuals during this day. We ended up back in a popular piazza where we had pizza bianca (basically like a thinner focaccia) and sat in the middle of the square, just fitting right in with the locals. We also had a drink at a cute little wine bar and sat and people watched. A very enjoyable evening to a very lovely day. At this point both of us were getting quite sad to leave and also stressing out about our journey back... We got take out from Dar Poetta and ate our half of the calzone in our hostel overlooking the courtyard and listening to italian live music. This was one of my favorite parts and made me so thankful to be able to have the opportunity to do this and to travel. I cannot imagine having a better semester abroad and it still just the beginning. I am loving each and every single day of this time here.

Sunday
Entirely devoted to travel so I won't go over too many details, only minor hiccups, but it did take us over twelve hours to get back to Swansea. Long day but worth the days in Rome undoubtedly.

And so the whirlwind weekend ended and we went back to life in Swansea, which while a bit sad about leaving Rome, I love Swansea and being here. Last night a group of us went to the Black Boy, a local not-so-politically-correct, pub. It was so fun to just sit around and hang out. I am looking forward to many more nights of this. We have a super group and we are slowly adding more locals, mostly our flatmates who are so much fun.

Tomorrow twelve of us are headed to Berlin! There have been some travel alerts... ie they have found two bomb-y things on the rail tracks and the air control personnel are threatening to walkout... so fingers crossed that all goes well! We are going to the Light Festival which looks amazing! Pictures to come and more writing!

Once again, I apologize for the length of this blog! Feel free to read and skip around or just look at the photos!

Cheers! Julia

One long week!

Good morning! I am so glad it is Sunday... we have had quite a long and exhausting week. We finished up with our class last Thursday and we have an eight page paper due tomorrow morning. It has proven to be quite a task for our class to get the paper done considering we have not really been in school for a good four months. So everyone has been stressing about that because they also do papers a bit differently here so it will be nice to get a grade back in this class to know what to improve on and what not.

This week was devoted to Freshers events... aka big parties every night sponsored by the school which is really weird and a bit hard to get used to. When we picked up our packets the girl told us to be sure and start drinking by 5:30 because it was best to be drunk by the time you actually got to the event... very interesting haha. I went to one of the events and it was pretty fun, if you didn't think about the fact that you were drenched in other peoples sweat and drinks, nice visualization there for you. So besides those events we also had to register for classes, coming in to this I already knew this would be a task because the people who studied abroad last year said it was by far their worst experience here. I would have to agree.

First of all, at Iowa I just log onto ISIS and choose the classes I want while looking at the days and times. Here... we have no idea what times or what days classes are until we get approved by each department. Even then professors didn't know what time their lectures were going to be or have any clue what day they were going to have seminars on. Very frustrating to say the least. I finally found three classes that I thought would work after much trial and tribulation. Only yesterday though I woke up to read an email from my adviser apologizing because one of my classes was no longer going to be offered. So currently I am short a class and have very few options. I am not getting what I was told I was going to get so it will be a fun next semester at home. They are verrrrrry unorganized here which we have known from the beginning but doesn't become any less aggravating.

Anyway... I am sure it will all work out. On top of all this there is some sort of stomach flu/cold going around amongst our group... Everyone but like five people have been sick with it so I am pretty sure that has only made us all the more pleasant to be around... Keeping that in mind... yesterday Alison, Adam and I took a train to Oxford at 7! I think I really would have loved Oxford and it was really pretty but like I said we were all sick and exhausted. We did go to a few museums that were really neat for me, three anthropology/archaeology museums with mass amounts of items. We really wanted to go on the Harry Potter Tour but it was sold out that was kind of a bummer. The one really fun thing that we did was meet up with other friends from school who also had a friend who went to Oxford. He got us punt boats, like gondolas, so we did that for a couple hours yesterday afternoon up and down the canals. It was perfect weather, almost 80 which is a huge huge heat wave here.

Radcliffe Camera

View from punt

Ashmolean Museum

I then tried to leave early because one of my friends at Uni needed my books for a paper and of course my train was delayed so Alison and Adam caught up to me anyway... Today we are headed to a coffee shop to finish our paper and then I am making pancakes and the like for dinner tonight with our flatmates. One of my roommates doesn't like anything with sauces so it is kind of hard to please him... I am looking forward to baking though! Earlier this week I hosted Fiesta Noche and made tacos and all the fixings for thirteen of us because we have all been craving mexican food. I also made brownies which turned out surprisingly well considering they don't believe in measuring cups here.

Alison and I are leaving bright and early on Thursday for Rome! We are both looking forward to that and I cannot imagine that it will be anything but wonderful.

That is all for now!
Julia