Thursday, April 21, 2016

From Paris ( and Rothenburg) with Love

Let me tell ya a little bit about my week in Paris and weekend in Rothenburg

Monday we were at the bus stop by 7 to head on out to Colmar: the first destination of our Germany. We were already to go except Caleb forgot his passport so we ended up getting delayed by about an hour. Our bus ride was 6 hours and the bus driver stopped every two hours for about 20 minutes and it really felt like a never ending journey. We made it to Colmar and went to take a tour of the Isenheim altar. The altar depicted Jesus in a psychedelic way. He was floating on fluorescent colors but it also showed sick people with Saint Anthony's fire. Our tour guide wasn't very good though. It seemed like that might have been her first english tour ever. Dr. Wasser did a lot of the explaining in the museum.  It was pretty fascinating. But then we had to go on the bus for another 3 hours to get to Beaune where we stayed for the night. We ate dinner at a fancy Burgundy restaurant and we all thought the small appetizer was our dinner. When we found out it wasn't our dinner everyone cheered.

In Beaune we went to go see a really old hospital which was actually really interesting! Our tour guide was this little old German woman who was pretty fun to listen to. She snuck around ropes to go grab items in the exhibits to show us them closer up. After the tour of the hospital, we spent another 5-6 hours in the bus to go to our final destination, Paris.

The whole bus ride in general was pretty upsetting. The driver always had the heat on so it was very uncomfortable, and considering that I had ran a marathon on Sunday, any position I was in for longer than 20 seconds took me about 30 minutes to be able to walk at a reasonable pace anywhere I went.

The first night in Paris, we were smacked in the face with just so much information. We got off the bus and found out where Earnest Hemmingway lived, Renes DesCarte was born, the Paris Pantheon, and then went to a Creperie to eat. Our tour guide in Paris did not mess around. He was ready to move around and move quickly and didn't wait for stranglers.

Wednesday we went on a bike tour and it actually helped get rid of all the pain I had in my legs for the marathon. We went to see the Eiffel tower. Later that night, we went back to see it in all its glory. But that night, I witnessed something all by my self.

I was standing on one side of the tower and this Nigerian man and woman dressed in a suit and dress and being followed by a photographer. The man then got down on one knee while she wasn't looking and pulled out a ring. I thought "oh this is obviously staged because they're being followed by a photographer." But then she turned around with her mouth open, looked at me, looked back at him, looked back at me, it was all very awkward. I wasn't sure what to do so I just stood there and watched. She eventually said yes and in the movies usually like the whole audience applauses and cheers but it was just me so I went "Woo-hoo" and clapped my hands. Now they are going to remember that some slanky white kid from Cleveland was the only one who witnessed their proposal on the tower.

That night Shawn Elaine and I were going to take a walk down to the river but it was way too far away. So we decided to sit on a bench and drink some adult juice. We really didn't know what the rule was on drinking so we were trying to do it discretely until a bunch of police cars showed up. It turns out, the bench we were sitting on was in front of a police station. They didn't say anything to us so we figured it must of been okay but we still left anyways.

The next two days we saw the other stereotypical Paris thing. Then we went to Rothenburg! By car... which means we couldn't sleep during the night traveling.

When we rented the car, the car man asked if we wanted to put insurance on the car to be covered by everything that could possibly happen to it. Our driver said that he didn't not feel the need too. I was pretty reluctant about that but it comes up later in the story.

In Rothenburg, we went to the place where it was always Christmas, we went to the criminal torture medieval museum, we went on a night watchman tour, it was all pretty interesting and chill.

On our way back to Bonn, we got in the car and it stated that all of our tires were low. We stopped at a gas station and it turned out that we had ran over a nail. So there was a constant leak in one of our tires now. So we drove as fast as we could to return the car and nobody has said anything about it since!

I only have about one more of these left while I'm in Germany. It's crazy to me that my time here is coming to an end so quickly


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