GERMANY!

Once again, I do apologize for the delay in writing this blog! It’s been what, five days? Well, regardless, I believe I left the last blog with the promise that I would write about my trip to Germany next. So, here I am, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, sat at my computer, ready to tell you the story. Here’s hoping you enjoy it!

Right, so Wednesday night (Nov 7) found me up late finishing the two essays that were to be handed in the next morning. I finally went to sleep at about 3 am, knowing full well that I was supposed to be up about 4 hours later to take a shower, wash & dry my bath towel, turn in my essays, catch the bus, and make it to the train station in order to catch my train at 1045am. That night I had an extremely restless night, and was actually glad to wake up at about 715 am just so that I could get out of my bed! Everything went well, I finished packing, left on time, walked into campus with Emma, turned in the essays, and hopped on the bus. I ended up getting to the train station about an hour early, which was alright, because I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going as this was the first time I had ridden the train all by my lonely self.

Fortunately, the train ride was rather painless and quite a bit easier than I thought it would be and I arrived at Stansted Airport (which is in the middle of nowhere, 2 hours away from Norwich) about 2 hours before my flight. This was good because Ryanair, the budget airline I was flying with, had suggested that I arrive early in order to check in and go through passport control and all that fun stuff, b/c this is technically an “international” flight. So I get there, and I have my one carryon item that I am allowed, and I checked the suitcase before I left to make sure it was the right size, but I didn’t bother checking the weight. Well, it turns out the carryon item can only be 10 kg, and mine was 11.7 kg. So the lady looks at me and says, “Well, you’re going to have to take some stuff out”. I just looked at here. Where in the WORLD was I supposed to move the stuff to? They only allow you ONE carryon item, and that was the only bag I’d brought. So I had to check it. Now my frustration with Ryanair was growing. Being a budget airline, to keep the cost of the flight down, you have to pay for EVERYTHING else. So I paid £10 to check my ONE bag that was just BARELY too heavy.

So I get my bag checked, go through security, and think, “Well, I’ve got two hours to kill. Now what am I gonna do?” So I wandered the airport, and read the plays I had brought with me. Chekhov really isn’t the most interesting thing to read in the airport, but beggars can’t be choosers. Two hours later, I’m standing in line waiting to get on to my plane which is across the runway. They finally let us board, but we’ve got to walk across the runway in freezing cold weather to get on the plane. The flight was pretty good, only about 1 hr 45 min, and they, again in the name of budget flights, charged me for my water! Now I’m getting fed up. Well, I arrive in Frankfurt-Hahn airport which is ALSO in the middle of nowhere (because Ryanair cant fly into big airports… oh no, that’d be too hard!) and so I have to take a bus from there to Heidelberg which was my ultimate destination. Fortunately, they had a bus that went straight to Heidelberg. The problem was that it only leaves once every 3 hours. So the closest departure time was 5 minutes after my plane touched down, but now that I had checked my bag and had absolutely NO idea where this bus stop was, I inevitably missed the bus and had to wait an extra 3 hours for the next one. At about 8:45pm, I get on the bus, after waiting at the bus stop and chatting with this German guy for a few minutes. (I spent 2 of my hours waiting in the airport reading Catcher in the Rye because it was warmer.) I read and slept on the bus for 2 hours, and finally made it into Heidelberg at 11pm where Jimmy was waiting for me at the bus stop. All in all, I was traveling, from the time I caught the bus at UEA to the time I got off the bus in Heidelberg, for 12 FULL hours. It was a long day.

So, naturally, as soon as I met up with Jimmy, we went to a pub! Why not, right? I was in Germany, and Jimmy said I *needed* to get my first German beer. So we went to an Irish pub! I laughed. It was fun though, and we stayed there for a while and then went back to his dorm where we attempted to watch a movie but ended up falling asleep instead.

The next morning, I woke up rather refreshed, at about noon. Wondering what we were going to do with our day, Jimmy and I caught the bus into the center of Heidelberg and walked around for a bit. Finally we decided to go on the Bergbahn, a little train that takes you up the mountain where you could, while you were colder than you’d ever been before, see the entire city!

It was gorgeous! On the way down, we stopped at the Heidelberg castle and walked around that. It was also pretty cool. Makes me wish we had castles in America! After that, Jimmy and I went shopping. Haha, yes, Jimmy and I went shopping! He bought a beanie and I bought one of those great European pea coats that I’d seen everyone wearing. Its great, and I love it! That night, Jimmy insisted that I try real German Schnitzel so we went to the Schnitzel House with some other Americans that he knew. We then met up with some of his other friends at this other pub, watched a movie, and called it a night.

Saturday we had fun sleeping in again, and didn’t really do much, but on Sunday I got to go to church in Germany! Jimmy goes to a Calvary Chapel out here which has its service mostly in English, and then translated to Germany which was really interesting to hear. It was again really neat to see other Christians worshiping in a different part of the world in a completely different language.

That night, we went to this tiny little bar called the Cave that has an underground part to it where they have live jazz music every Sunday night. So all these people crowd into this tiny little room and watch really really good jazz music! It was one of the coolest little pub/bar/clubs that I have been to since I got to Europe. Now I just have to find something like that in Norwich! (But I have since had no luck…) Oh, and the best part about going to the jazz club is that Jimmy and I rode bikes there! I don’t think that I had ridden a bike in probably 5 or 6 years, and I was a big shaky, especially because I was using his roommates bike, which was a bit big for me. But I felt like a kid again. :)

So on Monday, Jimmy had class, which ended up getting cancelled, so we decided to make the best of the afternoon and catch the train to somewhere close. We ended up going to Worms, which was about an hour away. Now, you may ask, “Why Worms?” Well, it was in Worms that Martin Luther was tried for heresy in the early 1500’s. Unfortunately the church that he was tried in has long since been demolished but there’s a memorial/statue thing in a park there where the church originally stood.

The statue was cool to see, but it was under construction. :( Other than that, we were able to go into a big dome church, which was really pretty, but Worms really didn’t have much more to offer besides that. So we headed back to Heidelberg, and on the way back, we stopped in Manheim, in hopes that we could salvage a big of our lost day, but to no avail. Manheim at 6pm was just as boring. So we made it back to Heidelberg, and watched yet another movie!

And with Tuesday my trip was concluded. And I got to do the exact same day of travel as I had done on Thursday except backwards this time. The three hour bus, the checking of the bag, the middle of nowhere airports, and the train rides. BUT, my train had gotten cancelled, so I had to take a few different trains, ultimately arriving in Norwich much later than I had intended. I caught the bus back home, stopping to get a bit of food so I could make dinner, and finally made it home about 5pm.

All in all, the trip to Germany was both fun and a success. It was really cool to see Jimmy, but surreal to know that we were bumming around Germany, without parents or any of our friends, knowing that he lived there and I was going to go back “home” to England. Being in Germany was pretty cool too and I was reminded forcibly of my dad’s family, eating bratwurst and “toasting” by smashing beer mugs together yelling, “PROST!” I also have found my new favorite food: the “donner”. Its basically a pita with lamb meat that they shave off this big spit of meat; apparently it’s a Mediterranean thing, but they are beyond amazing, and apparently I CAN get those in Norwich.

Anyway, that was my trip to Germany. Once again, here’s the link to ALL the pictures:

http://unm.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19191&l=fcaf1&id=545464971

I apologize that this was so long! But hopefully it was entertaining, and now I can get a bit more caught up on these blogs! I hope life in the States is going awesome. I miss you all, and I can honestly say that while living here continues to feel more and more like home, I miss ABQ and UNM and everyone there more and more each day. Right, done being sappy, hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!