Thursday, April 19, 2018

Week... Eiffel? No... Eifel


With the Paris excursion soon to come, Mitchell and I decided that a full trip the weekend before would be a little bit too much. We instead decided to settle for a day trip to Eifel National Park. Class got out on Friday and with no long-distance plans, it was the perfect night to go out. The fun part about this night is that Alwin’s birthday was near, and since we did not really celebrate Mitchell’s birthday, we decided that we should celebrate them both that night. We went out into town, but then eventually decided that because there were so many of us, that we should go somewhere private so we ended up going to someone’s house. We all got there and drank and talked and laughed and sang. With our day trip the next morning, Mitchell and I decided that we should get some rest.

The next day, we got up and started our day adventure to Eifel. Which, started off rocky as we missed our first tram, which caused us to miss the second tram, and from that we missed the train to Duren. After some time has passed we made it to the train station and got on our way. We both were tired from the night before so we fell asleep on our train. Suddenly I heard, Duren, the station we were supposed to get off at, so I woke Mitchell up and we hopped off the train. Unknowingly, we weren’t at Duren yet, we were at Buir, which to me sounded like Duren. Mitchell convinced me that we were at the wrong place and we hopped back on the train. I however, was not convinced. I hopped back out and dragged Mitchell with me. He then pointed out a sign and we hurried back on to the train, effectively keeping the door open for about a minute straight. Then after another thirty minutes, we arrived at the real Duren. At Duren, we had to wait an hour before taking the train to Eifel, so we relaxed and I finished my BMEN 211 homework. Then it was finally time for our train to leave. The train wasn’t really a train. It looked like a tram. On train tracks. From the 1800’s. We skeptically boarded the time machine, and after ten minutes or so, and with a loud screech, it started moving. I am almost positive that this thing was going to derail at any moment. Every turn was met with a screech and a tilt to match. Our fears soon dissipated as we entered the area and were blissfully entranced by nature.

Our train arrived…somehow, and we got off and talked to a guide. She gave us some information on some hikes and a map, and we were on our way. The weird thing about these national parks is that people live there. As we started our hike, we were hiking past houses and shops. The national park was established after the city was, so all of the building were already up and going. We hiked and we came across a castle and a really large frozen lake. We messed around and talked while hiking. Then we followed the trail and got to a cemetery. The trail went through a cemetery which we found very strange. Finally, we were on the latter half of the trail and there were some pretty steep downhill sections. Take in mind, it snowed recently, so naturally we decided to slide our way down the steep parts. We almost died. But, we didn’t. So everything was okay. We made our way back, and climbed to the top of the castle that was at the beginning of the trail. They view was awesome, almost as awesome as our dinner. We had Jägerschnitzel which is schnitzel with cream of mushroom sauce and mushrooms on top. We ate our hefty meal and got back on our sketchy tram to the Duran train station. Mitchell slept the entire ride home through both sketchy tram and train. We got back home and slept the night away.
 Sunday was pretty simple. We just hung around the house and Bonn waiting for our Paris excursion to begin!

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