THE mermaid statue

Week 11—Easter

If there was one thing I could change out of the entire program, it would be procrastinating planning for all our trips. Lauren, Emily and I were horrible at waiting until the last minute to plan things, and so we would either miss important details, or have to pay a fortune to get around. 

Easter was no different. I’m pretty sure we planned Easter the day before. Originally, we had really wanted to go to Ireland, but at that point it just wasn’t feasible. Katie then discovered that she could rent a car, so we randomly picked Copenhagen and decided to drive. We planned a night in Hamburg, Germany as well, just to cross another city off of our list. It was weird being in a car again—trains and buses had become the new norm. But it was so fun to road trip in Europe. And it was nice not having to worry about how much baggage we were bringing. 

We spent most of the car ride either singing or sleeping, and arrived in Hamburg late in the afternoon. We checked into our hotel and headed out. We found this incredible brewery that had a super nice restaurant adjacent to it. It had the weirdest decorations—it sort of reminded me of Austin, Texas. We had to wait for a while for a seat, so we sat at the bar and hung out for a while. After dinner, we went out. Except in Hamburg, people don’t start going out until about 2 in the morning, so we were a bit too early. We ended up meeting these two German girls, who pointed us in the right direction, and ended up hanging out with us. We went to a bunch of different types of bars, including a Karneval themed one and a karaoke one. Hamburg seemed super weird and super fun, but we didn’t stay out super late because we had a long drive to Copenhagen the next day. 

Our drive to Copenhagen was similar to our drive to Hamburg—lots of singing and sleeping. We crossed a beautiful bridge to get over to Copenhagen. Denmark was filled with super healthy people and super healthy stores. Even their gas stations had paleo food, which is something you would never see in the states. It was weird but also kind of nice. We also soon found out how expensive Denmark is. Once we made it to Copenhagen and our hotel, we took a nap then went sightseeing—which turned into dinner. The next day we woke up early and actually went sightseeing, but because parking was so difficult and gas was so expensive, we had to walk everywhere. No one really wanted to pay the prices to go into any of the museums or castles, so it was literally just sightseeing. But it was beautiful. We also saw this famous mermaid statue, which was sort of a joke because it was really tiny and had graffiti on it. But hey—we saw it! 

We decided to cut our trip a little short and go ahead and go back to Bonn—Copenhagen was super expensive, and the car rental turned out to be more expensive than we thought. So we drove back on Easter Sunday. I was pretty homesick that day because it was the first Easter I wasn’t with my family or that I didn’t go to church. 

Our drive back was also kind of interesting because once we entered Germany, the air smelled like smoke. Like the whole country was on fire. But we didn’t see any fires for the longest time. Then, all of sudden, a huge bonfire appeared next to the road. And then another. And another. And then we started seeing them everywhere. We were super freaked out at first, but then found out that it was a German tradition to burn a large bonfire on Easter Sunday. It literally made the whole country smell like smoke, and put a large smoke cloud in the air. Once we neared the Rhine region the smoke thinned. We made it to Bonn early Monday morning, where Lauren’s mom was waiting for us. 

Easter break was probably my least favorite trip (if there has to be a least favorite). The cities are beautiful, but I wish I had spent the money going somewhere I really wanted to go—like to Ireland. All in all, we saw some pretty cool stuff and learned a little about German culture.