"Let It Snow"

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"

Forewarning: I haven't blogged at all yet so this is a week and a half of catching up, therefor this Blog may be a little long. Sorry about that!

 And snow it has!  Almost every day since we got here! Germany has been GREAT!!! The snow has made it incredible, peaceful, beautiful, and... COLD!This past week has been a lot of adjusting to everything German including the freezing cold and very cloudy weather. It's barely gotten above freezing with conistent "feels like" temperature around 15 degrees and I have seen the sun 3 times (we've been counting! ha). As a Texas girl it's been really hard to adjust to, but good news! Next week lists the temperature as high as 50 degrees!!! 

Park at the University of Bonn

Bonn has been incredible! My host family is awesome and really knows how to cook! I have one other American student living with me, a psychology major from LMU who is really sweet. I can't forget to mention the other member of the family, somewhere between Garfield and Puss in Boots he is quite the entertainment!

Our Schedule has been jam packed since day one, and didn't start to slow down until today. Besides school, here's some of the things it has included:

1: Tours of Bonn

A London phone booth brought to Bonn and filled with books for anyone to read

A look over the rheine at the "funf gerburges" (five mountains) on the other side

Beautiful view of one of the plaza's

Roman foundational ruins underneath the current seminary building

The central cathedral of Bonn

The post office: Still need to figure out how it works, but it is beautiul! I don't understand why are can't be more like this!

2. A meeting with the mayor of Bonn. We were even put in the local newspaper the next day!

The whole group after listening to an address by the mayor at city hall

3. AIB welcome party: All of the AIB students and host families were invited and each group had to create and perform a skit. Our group  did a Fightin' Texas Aggie line dance and a BTHO yell for the other school. Not sure how well the yell went over though, apparently not everyone understand the tradition, oops!

4.Ahrtal Wine Vineyard Tour and Tasting: AKA 2 hour long snowball fight through the vineyards. There wasn't a whole lot to see since the vineyards were dormant and covered in snow, but that didn't stop us from having a good time.The dinner and tasting were great ( it was my first traditional meat and potatoes meal of the trip) and I found out that not all wine tastes horrible!

A look through the vineyard at the town where the Ahrtal co-op is located

The wine cellar and restaurante

The cask the have in their cellar. It was created for their 100th anniversary and was beautfully engraved. On the  anniversary it was brought into the center of the village and everyone drank out of it.

 

My giant snowball: I was pretty proud :)

5.  Bonn House of Postwar History: The museum was really interesting and I learned a ton of stuff about Germany that I didn't know. For example, the rebuilding of most of the German cities was actually done by woman. They went around, collected bricks, cleaned them, organized them, and then eventually started rebuilding.

Famous picture of an on duty East German guard jumping of the Berlin wall to escape to West Germany

Original Piece of the Berlin Wall

6. Excursion to Cologne: By far the funnest thing we've done yet. Cologne is fun, beautiful, slightly quirky, and full of history! This was the trip where I started to love Germany, despite its cold weather! The day was full so bear with me through the photos:

Cologne Cathdral: This is the first thing you see when you step of the train and is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. The depth and amount of the detail was unbelievable. It was built (starting in medieval time) as an upgrade to an old church when the bodies of the 3 wise men were brought to Cologne to be housed as relics there. The bodies themselves are now in a gold & jewel encrusted house  inside the cathedral note: sorry for the distortion, I tried to do a panoramic because it was so massive that no matter how far you backed up you couldn't get it all in one shot, but the shot was kind of a fail.

Three houses in cologne: As seen on pinterest!

Jail cells in the Gestapo Headquarters that we toured in Cologne. Over 200 people (Gypsies, Jew, Communists, and homosexuals) were hung here and many more died from interragtion/torture and from the cramped and unsanitary conditions of the cells. One of the eeriest things was that the building was in the middle of a neighborhood. It was reported that people used to be able to hear some of the prisoners screaming from the road and 6 or 7 buildings overlooked the yards where the hangings occured. Definitely a humbling tour.

Inscriptions and drawings on one of the cell walls. One of my favorite inscriptions was from one of the youngest prisoners that went through there who wrote, "If no one else is thinking of you, your mother is"

The Lindt chocolate museum: Which included a gold chocolate fountain! I felt like is was inside Willy Wonka's factory!

Spiral Staircase leading to the top of the cathedral: The sketchiest moment of the trip so far was definitely during the cathedral was getting to this. This staircase on a level ABOVE the extremelly high vaulted ceiling. To get here we had to take an elevator, only the elevator was a GLASS elevator on the OUTSIDE of the cathedral attached to SCAFFOLDING..... I think I almost had a panic attack. haha

A view from the top of the cathedral. I'm pretty sure the temperature that high up and that late with the windchill was somewhere around -10 degrees. Needless to say, I saw what I needed to see (5 minutes top) and got my butt back inside!

Another view of cologne, the rheine, and one of their famous bridges

We also got to do some shopping in Cologne and I bought my first European thing! It seems like all the girls here wear these so I was pretty obligated to buy them!

Other things going on:

1. Me and some of my friends have found a church that we love, the American Protestant Church (The only (i think) english speacking prostestant church in Bonn) and are going to look into a young adults bible study this week
2. I have found out that all milk chocolates are not created equal. I've always said that I don't like milk chocolate, but this finding has changed my mind. 39 cents at our local supermarket and it tastes like the middle of a ferrero rocher, truly heavenly!

3. I've learned what Donner is, and it has become a staple lunch of the group. You can find donner shops EVERYWHERE in this area and each one is about the same. They have 2 huge spickets of meat (one chicken, one a beef mix) and when you order they shave meat fresh of them.  Combine it with bread, tsaziki, and a salad mix and, voila!, a donner sandwhich.

4. Carnival (German version of Mardi Gras) is coming up which the cities have been constatnly preparing for since NOVEMBER 11. Yes, thats right, almost 3 months! Every week there are parties to prepare for it and people dressed up in costume. Next week, the town will be shutting down (all shops closed, besides bars I think) from Thursday until Tuesday for the 5 day long occasion. I'm not exactly sure how it all works but apparently there 3 armies (not real ones, just people who dress up) who protect the figures of carnival (they have princes and princesses) and it's not uncommon to see them walking around. Specimen A:

5. As much as I'd love to spend 5 days celebrating carnival, I'm not sure if I have the stamina. Instead, me and a couple of my friends are planning a real adventure! There's a service called blind booking where you pay $75 or so and you get tickets to a random city out of a list of major cities in Europe. We're looking at doing that for a couple of days out of the carnival break, which i am SOOO excited about! I'll let you know which city we get next blog!

Well that's it for now. Again sorry for it being so long, I'll try to keep it shorter next time! Thanks for hanging in there until the end, you're a trooper! :)