München

Munich, as they say, is the capital of Bavaria, and it was there we went last weekend. It was my second weekend traveling with a completely different group than I normally do (excluding the first weekend) and that, with a combination of the city we were in, led to a completely different experience, something I was hoping to get when I came here - different experiences with different people (not that I don't like the group I normally travel with; in fact, we have other trips coming up - see previous post - it's just cool to try different things). The school planned a trip to Starkbierfest, which basically meant we got entry into a beer hall celebrating Starkbierfest for free and we got discounted stay at a hostel. Starkbierfest, by the way, translates to English as 'strong beer festival' (Germans do this weird thing where they combine lots of words and make a huge word out of it, remember that car dealership sign from the Berlin post?). Apparently the festival originated back in the day when monks were fasting and needed a way to stay healthy (well, 'healthy') and get enough energy for the day. Each liter of beer (that's how they're served) contains over 700 calories. I had about 8 over the weekend, along with lots of really good Bavarian food. Needless to say, I probably consumed way too much while I was there.

There are also 6 beers brewed in München, all of which have multiple beer halls all over the city - here was a subway advertisement displaying them all. I got to 'try' (my friends defined try as drinking at least 1 liter) three of them.

Anyway, we took a night train there and arrived at like 7 AM. We walked around for a while, found out hostel, and by 9 AM we tried our first beer (really bad, I know). We also went on the free walking tour around the city.

The next day, we went to Dachau concentration camp, which was the first concentration camp set up in Germany, and lasted pretty much the entire duration of the Third Reich.

Later that day was the actual Starkbierfest. The festival was really cool at the beer hall we were at; this was all in German so here's my interpretation: there was a beauty pageant and a strongest man competition, as well as live music and dancing performances throughout the night.

The last day in München was kind of rainy, and we spent most of the day just walking around exploring various parts of the city. The coolest part was the site of the 1972 Summer Olympics, where they still maintain the park and the stadium.

We also had 'Mexican food,' which I'm pretty sure was made by Indian people. This is what my chicken fajitas looked like.

Also, I'm like 80% sure I heard an Indian song played at the restaurant.

Discovery: There's a funny phenomenon that happens when you're traveling and it's cold outside all the time - it looks like in all your pictures you're a bum wearing the same clothes. I mean for me, it's pretty true, but it's still really funny to see.

Paddy's Day and (the rest of) SB '11 Part Two

Sorry I'm a little behind on updating, a lot of things have been going on and I've also been really lazy lately; that means this post is going to have a lot of random stuff in it.

After my last post, I was headed to Dublin, Ireland (more like Metz -> Paris -> Cherbourg -> Rosslare -> Dublin) for St. Patrick's Day, or as the Irish people call it, Paddy's Day. There were a few things that happened once I got to Ireland:
a) Information overload. What do I mean by that? Well, being in a country that doesn't speak English, you generally start to tune everyone out unless they're speaking English, and if they are, you assume they're talking to you. In Ireland, they speak English, which really took a second to get used to.
b) English is awesome. I miss not having to think about what I'm going to say before I'm going to say it.
c) Irish people are really, really nice. And they have cool accents.

But first, the way over there was pretty cool. Our ferry was named the Oscar Wilde (the guy who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray). We also got to watch the sun rise over the English Channel.

We ended up getting to Dublin at like 4 PM on Wednesday and spent a little while walking around and stuff, as well as meeting the people in the place we were staying at (friend's friend's place who's studying abroad at the University of Dublin). Thursday, St. Patrick's Day, was pretty entertaining. There was a huge parade (which was kind of annoying to see because it was extremely crowded) and the city was completely packed. We explored the city for a while and found out that most Dublin's old city (castle, old city gate, etc.) don't actually exist, even though they mark them on the map. And at night, the city was even more packed.

green beer - this was disgusting

The next day we woke up and took the train to Kerry, Ireland (that's where our flights left from). On the train there, I talked with a random Irish dude for like an hour, which was really cool. Anyway, we arrived there at around 1 PM and ate and stuff, then explored the city. We walked to a castle there called Ross castle, which is like two miles outside the city, took pictures and stuff over there, then came back. The others had a plane that left earlier to Amsterdam, but my plane to London didn't leave for a little while later, so I went back and explored the huge park they have. After exploring the park (which was really pretty), I was walking past the shops and... I ran into 3 people from GTL there! (Note: If this doesn't sound that cool, let me explain why it was. We ran into each other in a random shop - not at a tourist destination. Also, it was in a relatively small city, in a different country, where neither of us knew each other was going. If it still doesn't sound cool, I hate you.)

After that cool coincidence, I got on my (first) RyanAir flight to London (got there Friday night). One thing I can say about London is that it helped me understand where we got a lot of our mentality from. They do a lot of things differently than mainland Europe. I wish I could give an example but I kinda forgot why since I took too long to write this post. Anyway, since I've been there before, I wasn't really worried about doing that many touristy things (although I still did a few). It was mostly to visit people there since I was already so close by. While I was there, I visited Vinesh, a family friend from Atlanta who currently works in London, Sarung, who came to visit at the same time, and a relative, who lives in London. Here are a few cool pictures I did take while I was there though.

It was also cool that in Dublin and in London, on the streets, it told you which way to look for oncoming traffic.

Metz
So it's definitely a new era in Metz, and I guess I understand why people like Metz in the summer. It's warm all the time and the sun actually comes out! In fact, inside downtown, there are fountains turned on, flowers blooming, etc. so it isn't as depressing as during the winter. Also, it's kind of weird to me that they have a different daylight savings time here (we didn't hit it until March 27).

Updated Tentative Schedule:

March 31 - Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam

April 7 - Interlaken

April 14 - Croatia

April 21 - Rome, Cinque Terre, Zurich

April 28 - Amsterdam

May 4 - Paris

May 5 - Atlanta

Next post: Munich

So I know I'm a little behind and I will catch up once I get back from Munich this weekend.

Praha

So this past weekend, I went to Praha (Prague) in the Czech Republic, and like most people that go there, I really enjoyed it. It is an old city that is well preserved, so it's visually appealing, it's pretty cheap, and it's fun. To get there, we took a night train to Stuttgart, took a train to Nurmberg, and took a bus to Praha. It's pretty far away (14ish hours by train), which is unfortunate because I would've liked to have spent another day or two there.

Since I went on this trip with different (and fewer) people, this trip was different than the others. Of course, we saw all the normal sites - the castle (which isn't actually a castle, kind of a let down), the astronomical clock, old town, Charles Bridge, etc. But, a little differently from normal, I also got to try lots of beer. One of the people I went with loves beer, so he wrote down some good places in Praha to try beer. The first place (Pivovarsky Klub) had the largest selection of beer in the Czech and the second place (Klasterni Pivovar) was a monastery that brewed their own beer (and it was really good - coming from a person who doesn't really care for beer all that much). Both of these places also had excellent food.

The second place was also really cool for another reason. As I mentioned a few posts ago, in Europe, they'll seat you randomly with other people. Well, at the monastery, we got seated with a British guy in his 70s and we talked to him for literally like an hour and a half about random things - he was basically traveling the world (it seemed like he'd been everywhere) and told us about how he used to work at a brewery, places he'd been, showed us pictures, etc. He was really soft spoken and had a really strong accent (he was from Newcastle). It was really weird having a conversation like that and saying bye, knowing that you'll most likely never see the person again (he said bye in the following way: "Have a nice life," which I think is what got me/us thinking about that). It was nice traveling in a smaller group because I feel like this would never have happened had it been than the two of us at the restaurant.

Anyways, it was also really fun because one of our friends knew some cool people studying abroad there, so we went and hung out with them both nights we were there.

I also came up with an idea that may or may not work well. I'm going to try and get a nice map from each city I've been to and make something with them when I get my own place - like on a wall or something.

On the way home, we stopped in Berlin for a couple hours and I took a few pictures of the city at night, but that was about it.

Astronomical clock

Views from city

Franz Kafka, who I apparently really need to learn about.

Learned about this guy last semester!

Another discovery:

Every famous European city has a river and like 4 famous churches.

And an aside:

I successfully got train tickets to Praha by myself in (mostly) French. I felt very accomplished. And that has renewed my interest in learning the language (a little bit).

Paris, Part Deux

This post is going to be short because I've had a lot to write about lately, and this weekend wasn't all that interesting. I went to Paris and met up with one of my friends that's studying abroad there now. I decided that I think Paris is a little overrated. I mean, it's definitely still a cool city, but not nearly as cool as people say it is - I always build up really high expectations for big cities, and the cities I am most impressed with are ones I didn't even expect to be going to (i.e. Lisboa, Berlin). Anyway, I got to see a lot of the things I missed last time such as Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomph, the catacombs of Paris, Champs Elysees, Napoleon's tomb and the army museum, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Pantheon, and a random bird/flower market. I still didn't go to Versailles, but I think I'm going to save that for another time; I'd rather go in warm weather than cold. Also, we tried to go to Sainte Chapelle, a church with supposedly amazing stained glass windows and such, but got rejected twice because of closing times. Finally, we walked around a lot, which is really fun to do in Paris because there's always something cool to see around every corner - a statue, a monument, a fountain, or something.

I also went to Pierre Herme, a world renown patisserie to get their world renown macarons. They were delicious. I also got three bloody noses, which was fun. I think it's because the room I was staying in was really stuffy and I just kept irritating it in random ways.

One thing that was interesting to me that has never happened in any city before was the following: We got seated at a table of four with two people... with two other random people. It made for an interesting dining experience (especially when I got my second bloody nose of the weekend, but I don't think they noticed). This happened twice.

Okay, picture time:

Notre Dame

Me outside some random gate thing (Palais de Justice)

Jardin du Luxembourg

The Pantheon, it was really cool and a bunch of famous people (mathematicians, scientists, etc.) were buried here. I like architecture a lot I've realized, and this was definitely a cool building.

A church after Saint Sulpice, the patron of Paris or something.

Arc de Trimoph

This is how big it is...

This thing is outside the Eiffel Tower, and it says peace in a bunch of different languages (I think). It does not have any Indian language, I don't think.

The catacombs

and finally, the sun rising in Paris.

Now that I'm caught up, it's time for me to fall behind again! Prague, Dublin, London coming up!