I’ve officially been in Bonn for 1 week, the time has flown
by!
After traveling all day Thursday, I met my host family. They
are really awesome and put to rest all my anxiety about meeting and living with
strangers. They cook amazing food and love music just about as much as I do.
They also have a cat named Julchen. My host sister, Emily is really sweet too,
she is a Fulbright student from Orlando.
Our first full day in Bonn we went to the oldest winery in
Germany, the Mayschoss Coop and went on a tour where we learned about the
history of the winery and their wine growing and making process. I learned
enough to write 3 full pages about it, but I’ll just tell you what I thought was
most interesting.
1. The oldest
Bottle of wine Mayschoss has is from 1952, because during WWII French soldiers
found the winery and drank through the stores.
2. It is illegal to plant native
German grape plants, instead the German grapes have to be grafted to American
grape roots because they are resistant to a certain wine pest in Germany.
3. Maychoss is also one of the only
wineries in Germany to be Bio (the German word for organic) and they use
pheromones to cut down on insects instead of insecticides.
Saturday, we had a scavenger hunt along the Rhine river and
I made friends with a baby nutria, which kind of looks like a cross between a
capybara and a beaver with a rat tail. It was adorable and came right up to my
feet! Saturday night I hung out with my host family, we played card games and the
most intense Jenga game I have ever played.
Sunday, we had the entire day free, so I went to a climbing
gym and sent a few routes. I have 10 different gyms just around Bonn and Cologne
that I can check out. This one was only bouldering so I may try and find a
German climbing group to go top rope climbing with and maybe climb some outdoor
crags! I also went to the Kunstmuseum, one of the art Museums in Bonn, I can’t
say I’m much of a modern art fan but it was interesting.
We’ve wandered around Bonn quite a bit and I tried
currywurst and doner for the first time, they were amazing! We went to Aachen
to have a meeting with Enmodes and get our device project for the semester. Aachen
is a beautiful city and the Cathedral was amazing. We learned about its
construction and history, including some interesting things about Charlemagne. Wednesday,
I had my first classes, history of medicine and pharmacology. We had our first
German class, I’m really excited to learn more. I knew most of the
pronunciations from studying Gabriel Wyner’s method and recognized some more vocab.
My host family has been helping me with my German as well, and I’m picking up
more and more words when I listen to their conversations! We also had physiology, which I’m really
looking forward too!
Auf Wiedersehen!
I named him Harry.
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