Field Trip #2: Brussels

I had heard mixed things about Brussels. Some people think it's lame, others awesome. Some think it's ugly, others pretty. I didn't know what to expect. In the end however I really enjoyed Brussels and had a great time there, and you could tell it was a very international city. Brussels is home to the most important institutions of the European Union, so that was our main reason for the visit, but aside from important EU things Brussels also offers many delicious, delicious things. Beer, chocolate, waffles, fries, mussels... what more could anyone want?! Unfortunately the mussels were out of my price range, but the rest of it wasn't! Mmmm...

Enough about food though. Our hotel was right by the famous Grand Place, which is a beautiful square in the middle of town that lots of people hang out in at any time of the day. We arrived at night and I must say seeing the square all lit up was very impressive. Our favorite hangout came to be a bar called Delirium, which maybe some of you know about because they sell some beer in the US. This place was awesome. Really big, always crowded, upstairs lots of yummy flavored and non flavored beers on tap, downstairs almost 2,000 types of bottled beer for sale. It also happened to be right near our hotel.

One afternoon a couple friends and I did a little walking tour of the area. We saw the Grand Palais and the park, a cathedral, an old city tower remnant, and the famous Manneken Pis statue (I don't know the legend, something about saving the city at one point maybe). They dress up this little guy in costumes every now and then, but he wasn't dressed up at the time of our visit sadly. After that we ate a nice big waffle! See picture. And the next day I was sure to buy some authentic Belgian chocolate, which is truly as good as its name.

One of the best parts about the trip to Brussels however... Mini Europe! Mini Europe is basically just miniatures of EU member state's landmarks at a scale of 1:25. Each member country has at least one landmark, some more obviously. You go from country to country and can read about their landmarks in a brochure. They are super detailed and adorable, and you can press the button and hear the country's national anthem play. It was awesome! I realize some people might find this boring, but I don't care, my friend Lindsay and I loved it. And it is right by the famous Atomium monument which was built for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. We didn't go in that though, because it cost 9 Euro and I heard it wasn't that cool.

So all in all Brussels gets a thumbs up from me!

Field Trip #2: St. Avold and Luxembourg

To start of the second field trip we were taken to the US military cemetery in St. Avold, France. It is the largest US WWII cemetery in Europe, and over 10,000 US soldiers are buried there. The visit to the cemetery was supposed to represent that Europe was built on blood, and the recent European integration marks a new age of peace. It was a very beautiful cemetery and impressive in the fact that these 10,000 dead are from only one war, but I still couldn't help but compare it to Arlington cemetery, which is an extremely impressive site.

After the cemetery we continued on to Luxembourg City, where we were scheduled to go to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Luxembourg really doesn't have much going on, which is probably why we only stayed there for an afternoon and not any longer. We arrived around lunch time so they let us loose in the old town/down town area. Food prices were very expensive and we were really hungry so we ended up at Quick Burger, the Belgian alternative to McDonald's or Burger King. I don't recommend it. After that we toured around the city a bit. It is a very cute old town. We passed by the palace of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, went into the Notre Dame church of Luxembourg, but the best part was the view from some old rampart type thing along the river valley that runs through the city. See picture included.

After walking around the city a bit we went to our meeting at the ECJ. My first impression was that the building was hideous. It was tall and imposing and trying to be modern design, but what was worse is that it was an ugly yellow color. Yikes. See picture, but the picture even gives it too much credit, it's uglier in person. A little background info on the ECJ: it is widely known as the most trustworthy EU institution. It's judges are regarded as highly independent and not influenced by any national agendas. Given this information, I was really hoping for a more beautiful and dignified building... Oh well. Aside from the ugliness of the building, it was still really cool to go to the court. We actually got to go inside the big courtroom where the magic happens.

In class we learned that Luxembourg would pretty much refuse to give up having the ECJ in their country if the EU ever wanted to move it. Now I know why, it needs something to represent their power in the EU. Luxembourg was one of the original six member countries of the European Coal and Steel Community, the harbinger of the European Community (now the EU). So my advice to Luxembourg: hang in there little guy!

Heidelberg and Stuttgart's Volksfest

One weekend Lindsay, Drew and I went up to the town of Heidelberg, which is in the northern part of Freiburg's region (Baden-Wurttemberg). We left on a Friday morning, spent that night, and then took a train down to the Volksfest in Stuttgart for the afternoon and evening. Drew has a friend studying abroad there so we had her to show us around town, which was really nice.

Heidelberg was a really adorable city. Our hostel was in Old Town so we were right in all the action. You could tell that Heidelberg is much more touristy than Freiburg. There were souvenir shops all over the place in Old Town, whereas I haven't seen any in Freiburg, save the exceptional postcard stand. One of the main attractions of Heidelberg is the Heidelberger Schloss (castle), which lays in partial ruins on the hilltop above the town. It's first construction dates back to 1214! I believe it's current state of ruin happened in the 17th century (don't quote me on that though). It is quite an impressive sight. Check my shutterfly page for pictures of us at the castle. The fact that it was in partial ruins made it cooler than if it were in full construction, in my opinion. Inside the castle is the world's largest wine cask. It is not currently in use, but it can hold almost 60,ooo gallons of wine!

In Heidelberg we also hung out on the famous bridge there that crosses the Nekar river. Across that bridge from Old Town is the Philosopher's Walk (philosophenweg), which is a picturesque amble up the hill. It provides amazing views of the city and the schloss. Overall, Heidelberg was really charming and fun to walk down the old streets (there is a more modern part of town, but we didn't spend much time there). We also ate some traditional German food at our hostel's restaurant. Schnitzel mit Kartoffeln! 'Twas delicious!

On Saturday afternoon we made our way back south to Stuttgart to meet up with more people on our program at the annual Volksfest. This was our version of Oktoberfest, because we couldn't make the real thing in Munich (too expensive and too far). Volksfest was a giant carnival/beer festival. There were a few large beer tents and a bunch of rides, carnival games, and food stands. We happened to be there on German Unification Day, so a ton of people had the day off and it was crazy crowded. We waited in line for a beer tent for 40 minutes when we finally decided to just forget about a tent and instead buy beer at one of the food stalls. And of course I ate more currywurst. I had it twice that day actually! Mmmmm... Anyways, we spent hours there just bumming around and having fun. The train ride home turned out to be a party too. It was insanely crowded, we had to stand in the aisles, and everyone was borderline drunk or drunk, so there was a lot of singing and loud talking going on. We met some Germans about our age and they started spewing off all the random things they knew about US culture, like Monica Lewinsky and the baseball. They were crazy. It was a lot of fun though, and we made it back safely (don't worry, mom :) ).

Riga, Latvia!

Ok, so I am really really behind in updating this blog, so I will make this post short and to the point. After Berlin we flew to Riga, which by the way, we almost missed our flight to... Very stressful. Anyways, going to Riga was an awesome opportunity. I had never really given the Baltic states much thought, or learned anything about their histories, so being required to go to Latvia was a blessing in disguise. We talked to a professor at the University there, as well as an economists at the Stockholm School of Economics there and learned a lot about Latvian history and it's current issues regarding Russia and the affects of the global financial crisis. We also went to the Latvian occupation museum, which I found disturbing and fascinating. Latvia was first occupies by Russia, then the Nazis, then by the Soviet Union again. It was interesting to see that most Latvian's greeted the Nazis as liberators from the Russians and some even participated in Nazi dealings and such. But both the Nazis and the Soviets were horrible. They used crazy forms of propaganda to pray on the people. And the soviets shipped about a third of the Latvian population of labor camps and/or forced them to emigrate.

But enough about history. While there we also did little city tours and my group got to go around and find examples of art nouveau in Riga. It is called jugendstil there. Apparently around the turn of the 20th century Riga had a big jugendstil building boom. We went to a little museum about it, which was basically just a few restored rooms in this old house that a famous architect once lived in. The interior with all the art nouveau motifs was really cool, and there was an amazingly decorated staircase (see picture). The jugendstil buildings were very elaborate. The building that housed the Stockholm School of Economics was one of them. It was beautiful.

Old town was where our hotel was and it was the classic winding narrow streets marked here and there with squares. Very cute. It was really hard to capture with a camera though, sorry about that. There was also this big, beautiful park that ran through Riga and separated old town from the other parts. One evening we went to the tallest building, which is a hotel that has a bar at the top, and we had cocktails at sunset. My cocktail had the traditional Latvian alcohol in it, called Black Balsam. It was pretty tasty. We also went to a Latvian discotheque, which was crazy fun. It have five different rooms playing different music. The Europeans really do know how to make a dance club ;). One evening we went to a traditional Latvian food restaurant and I had the cold beet soup that Justin made for us last Christmas break. I liked it but my friends called it bubble gum soup because of the color.

Basically it was a really interesting trip with new cultural experiences and a lot of learning! I won't overlook the Baltics so quickly next time...

Freiburg in the News

Check out this article from the New York Times about a neighborhood in Freiburg, some of the people in my program actually live in this neighborhood. I told you the city was obsessed with bikes and being green!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/science/earth/12suburb.html?_r=2

Berlin

A few weeks ago we went on our first big IES field trip. It lasted 6 days and we traveled to Berlin and then to Riga, which is the capital city of Latvia (this post is only about the Berlin leg). We arrived in Berlin by train and once we had checked into our hotel we immediately had some free time. There was a really yummy Thai place next to the hotel so we ate lunch there. After that we met up with a girl who was a friend of the two GW students in my program who was studying in Berlin for the semester who was fluent in German. We all met up with her and we walked around a bit while trying find a boat tour that left at a good time and that was still open. Eventually we did and took a lovely one hour boat tour down the river Spree. The tour took us past modern looking government buildings and past Museum Island where the river splits and a whole bunch of museums are located (hence the name). I never got to go into any of those museums unfortunately. There simply wasn't enough time. After the boat tour I went with some of my German classmates to try and start our Berlin Project, which was to go to this outdoor exhibit called the Topography of Terror. The Topography of Terror chronicles the work of the SS and Gestapo during the Nazi regime, and it sits on the actually site of where there headquarters and other main buildings were. Right now the exhibit is only an outdoor walkway with informational panels, but there are currently constructing a whole museum about it. I felt very strange seeing that exhibit. It made everything you had learned in history class about the Nazi come to life because you were actually standing on the site of all the terror and control. And a few steps away from this exhibit was remnants of the Berlin wall, so it was even more powerful. It made me realize that Berlin had seen A LOT of history in the past century, and it was cool to see the relics of it in person. That night a few friends and strolled down some of the main streets in Berlin and made it to the Brandenburg Gate and ate some döner and currywurst (mmm...). The gate was very impressive at night. Then we went back towards the area of our hotel and had a beer at a really lame bar in Alexanderplatz.

The next day was super busy. We had three scheduled speakers to go to. The first one was at the BDI which is some company that works in the interests of German business and industry. I didn't really learn anything new there, but the building was really cool because it had this glass enclosed indoor courtyard thing that had a giant bamboo plant in it. After that we were off to the Ministry of the Exterior to hear from a German diplomat who had worked in embassies all over the world. She was very interesting, but some of the people in my program started to ask accusatory questions (like about Turkey, the war in Afghanistan, and the UNSC) so she started to get a bit pissy and defensive after a while. After lunch and meeting at the Brandenburg gate we all walked over to our next stop, a committee building of the Bundestag (parliament) where we heard from a speaker in the Free Democratic Party (FDP). What's cool is that the FDP did really well in the elections last Sunday night, and they'll be part of the new coalition with the CDU (Merkel's party), so I bet that guy we heard from is pretty darn happy right now. He actually said in the talk that he didn't want any more Grand Coalition (CDU and SPD), so I guess he got his wish! After that talk we got a tour of the Reichstag building, which is really awesome! Architecture in Berlin is a lot of old mixed with new and the Reichstage does this perfectly. It has all the old structure but has modern rooms and a beautiful glass dome above the parliament chamber. On some of the walls is remnants of Soviet graffiti from the last day of the war when Soviet troops finally captured the Reichstag building from the Nazis. They left it up as a reminder of Germany's sordid past. Luckily we had enough time to go up into the glass dome, which has a mirrored pillar in the middle of it, a winding path up to the top, and amazing views of Berlin.

That night we were craving American food so we went to a 1960s themed diner and I had the best burger ever. It had bacon and bbq sauce on it, and the patty was really tender and delicious (sorry I'm getting a bit carried away, but it was delicious, haha). And we tried this beer that they put flavored syrup in, called a Berliner Kindl Weisse. It was interesting... it didn't taste like beer at all. After that we roamed around trying to figure out something to do or which club to go to. When we finally meet up with some other people who are going to a club, a few of us decide to bail and just go home and sleep. Unfortunately, the train we hoped on that normally takes us right back to the are we needed to go turned into another train partway through the ride, so it changed directions on us, and not even the German's on the train with us were aware that the train was doing this. So we ended up way out in a place we'd never been before and we had to firgure out how to get back. In the end it took us about 2 hours I think. We were alternating between laughing because of the sheer ridiculousness of it, and getting angry about it. Good times, good times.

The next day we only had one speaker at the Defense Ministry. I enjoyed this speaker the most because he was very frank and engaging and I learned a lot about the German and EU defense forces and the situation in Afghanistan (which is was far from optimistic about). It was really interesting, to say the least. After that we had free time so Lindsay, Lucas, and I wandered around to Potsdamer platz and had lunch. While we were there we saw famous remnants of the Wall, and an old watch tower from the wall, which was cool. I had more currywurst for lunch (soooo good). Then we made our way to the holocaust memorial. It was amazing! For some reason even though it was just a bunch of stone rectangular pillars I really enjoyed it. It was just awesome to walk through and it really got the message of like "lost" and "oppression" across. After that we basically just walked back to our hotel, grabbed some ice cream with the 10 euros we found of the ground, and enjoyed the beautiful day in Berlin. Even though there was nowhere near enough time for us to really explore the city and go to museums and such, I had a really good time, and I would like to go back one day.

Meersburg and Konstanz

Hello again! A few weeks ago we took a field trip to the towns of Meersburg and Konstanz on Lake Bondesee (or Lake Constance). It was a beautiful day and the towns were adorable and very old. Switzerland, Austria, and Germany all border Lake Bondesee. I would have really enjoyed the field, however, most of us were utterly exhausted that day so it was hard to really get into the things they had us doing. In Meersburg we first had to tour the old castle that was there. This sounds glamorous, but it really wasn't. Plus our tour guide's English wasn't great, so she took an extremely long time giving the tour and we were all getting impatient and hungry. Luckily after that we got to go to the wine festival that was going on in town. There were multiple stalls to taste wine and some live music. It was very nice. I tried curry wurst there for the first time too. For those of you who don't know, curry wurst is a very special, yummy dish that I believe originated in Berlin. It is my new favorite food. Period. Well, behind poutine at that Hawthorne food cart...

Anyways, after that we took the ferry over to Konstanz where they had us do a self-guided tour of the city. We were all pretty anxious to get it over with though. But the town was great despite our moods, especially the giant münster (cathedral) and the waterfront area, complete with a giant rotating statue of "Imperia". It commemorates the Council of Constance (1414-1418) and she hold in her hands Pope Martin V and Emperor Sigismund. Don't ask me any more details than that.

Soon to come will be my tales of Berlin and Riga!
Tschüs!