This was a very stressful week. I had the German final, physiology exam, and our first enmodes presentation. On Monday, I was pretty tired from traveling in Berlin the past weekend, so I just went to class and went home and slept. Tuesday I spend studying for the German exam. I'm really sad we aren't continuing our German lessons. I still don't know much German; I'd like to be able to have a conversation or at least know more than how to order food. Anyways, on Wednesday I had the German test, and went home after school to study for the physiology exam. There was a lot of material we learned for this exam, so it was stressful trying to be prepared for physiology in addition to German and enmodes lab. The physiology exam was alright; I think it was just good to get it overwith so that I know how to prepare next time. I spent some time Thursday afternoon with Ibk and Vijay finalizing our slides for the enmodes presentation. On Friday, everyone presented their ideas for the project. There were some interesting methods presented, and it was interesting to see what my peers had come up with. I think all of us were nervous to pitch our ideas to the leaders of enmodes. Despite this, I'd say our presentation went well. I could not wait for the weekend by the end of Friday.
I live for the weekends...After the enomodes presentations, Madeline and I were joking around saying we should go to Amsterdam for the weekend. At first it was funny, then we started looking into transportation and lodging. Within 20 minutes of bringing up the idea, we had booked our journey.
By 3:45 Maddie and I were on a train departing for
Amsterdam! Little did we know when booking the journey through go euro that we
would actually be taking 5 trains to Amsterdam, with connection times ranging
from 2 to a whole 5 minutes! We were so excited for our spontaneous adventure
that the impossible connection times didn't phase us. Every connection, Maddie
and I learned the train number, departure time, and platform so that we could
sprint to the next as soon as the doors opened! For being planned a few hours
before departing, we planned Amsterdam dam well! Once we arrived, we dropped
our things off at our hotel and headed out for dinner. Luckily we found a place
that let us order burgers even though their kitchen had closed. The waiter
asked us our plan for the night, which we told him was to finish up 211
homework. He called us boring nerds and paid for our coffee.  |
| Dam Square |
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| Bagpiper |
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| Rembrandt Square |
After a boring
night of 211, we woke up the next morning for a walking tour of Amsterdam. Our
guide, Nick, was great and shared a lot of historical and personal stories
about the city. We walked by the Old Church, Red Light district, a nunnery,
Chinese district, a coffee shop which used to be an observation site for
medical dissections, the Jewish quarter, and finally the royal palace. While we
were at the Jewish quarter, a bagpipe street performer began playing during Nick's serious speech about what had happened to the Jews and their homes during
the Second World War. Needless to say, no one, not even our tour guide, could
keep a straight face with the off tune bagpipes blaring across the square. We
ended up walking a few minutes to escape the awful/hilarious sounds that some
consider music, so we could finish the discussion. At the square outside the royal palace, there were hundreds of
pigeons. A father and son would throw seeds to the hoard of birds, then walk to
another corner of the square and toss more feed. The pigeons would follow the
food, creating what seemed like a planned attack as they flew low to the ground
and straight at you. We ate lunch with some other college students we'd met on
our tour from Canada and Pennsylvania. Maddie and I walked around the canals
for some time and then visited the Anne Frank house. It's difficult to imagine
going into hiding, living in constant fear of being discovered. For such a
young girl, Anne Frank had extremely deep and profound thoughts. In addition to
her diary, Anne wrote fairy-tales and began compiling her diary into a novel. It was sad to see how Anne, her sister, and mother all died a few
years before the concentration camps were liberated.
After walking through the
house, Maddie and I met up with Lauren and her dad for dinner. I'm not a huge
fan of ribs, but I'd have to say this restaurant makes the best ribs I've ever
eaten. We had a nice evening talking about our travels and experiences abroad.
Lauren, Maddie and I walked through the Red Light district that night. Frankly,
the kind of men hanging out it that area were disgusting. 
On Sunday, we left
our luggage at the hotel and headed out to see the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh
museum. Both were incredible. The Rijksmuseum was massive, and contained all
types of art. The museum had the painting of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and
many other beautiful works. My favorite museum was the Van Gogh museum. I love
the pointilism and shorter, bold brush strokes he used; the museum also had
photographs of some of the scenes he painted, it was really neat to see his
interpretation of these places. 
We sat in the plaza where the "i amsterdam" sign is, enjoying the lovely weather and people watching. Overall, Amsterdam is a very
tolerant place, and the people there are super friendly. Lauren, Maddie and I
made one last stop for Dutch savory pancakes and beer before picking up our
luggage and heading to the train station to return to Bonn. We had four
connections back to Bonn, and everything was running smoothly until the last
train from Cologne. We hopped on the train which was supposed to make it back to
Bonn Hbf by 01:00, but about 7 minutes after departing, the train stopped
and everyone got off the train. We were all confused and irritated since none
of us had began packing for Paris and spring break. We followed the crowd out
to a road near where the train had stopped. After about 30 minutes of waiting a
bus showed up and drove everyone to another train. I had absolutely no idea
where we were or what was going on. We shuffled on board and waited...and
waited some more. I was beginning to think we'd miss the bus to Paris. Finally,
the train began moving and dropped us off at Bonn Hbf at 03:00. I made it
back to my home at 03:45 and began the difficult process of cramming
two weeks worth of clothing into a small duffel bag. I failed, and decided to
bring what I couldn't fit in a plastic bag, since all my flights for spring
break only allowed one hand bag. I showered quickly, and realized I was going
to miss my bus if I didn't hurry. I ended up sprinting for 5 minutes from my
house to the bus stop to catch the only bus early enough to be at the bus to
Paris on time. I was so thankful to be able to sit and relax when I finally
reached the bus. I had been going nonstop since Friday when Maddie and I had
the crazy idea to go to Amsterdam. It was an incredible weekend, and I wouldn't have done it any other way.
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