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