Switzerland is a great country. I may be over idealizing it, but I absolutely love it every time I go back, so I don't think so. This was my third time in the alpine nation, and, as with the other time, I visited the Hersberger family in Aarau. This was a very low-key visit with no particular plan in mind. Aside from some general hanging out with the family, we made three stops: Freilichtmuseum Ballenberg (an open-air Swiss museum), Aareschluch (Aar Gorge), and the Vindonissa Legionärspfad (legionnaires field) and amphitheater.
Freilichtmuseum Ballenberg
This open-air museum in the Canton of Bern is a cool place in the mountains filled with old buildings from all over the country. Different sections of this 'village' correspond with different regions of Switzerland. All of the buildings are from the the 1700-1800's. How they carted whole buildings into this faux mountain community, I don't know. Some of the museum even had, umm, I guess actors? They weren't really pretending to be the people of the period, but they were doing old-timey stuff. (Note: That link is to a whole episode of South Park, which is not appropriate to or wanted by some viewers. I included it because there's a scene where some bank robbers are at a pioneer village in South Park, and the pioneers won't acknowledge anything they do as they don't want to break character, even after the bank robbers start killing them. That's dedication) Anyway, here are pictures and stuff...
This woman was weaving using some absurdly complicated machine. It really confused me.
This guy was making cheese. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of him taking the cheese out of the water,
which was a pretty cool process.
Lizard! Not part of the actually scenery. He's a pretty cool lizard, so he gets a full-sized picture.
This picture comes with a story. Once my sister asked my Oma to help her learn the German alphabet. However, when she went through it, my sister noticed she had not included J. When she asked about this, my Oma thought about it and eplied, "I guess we just never learned it." Apparently, this is true. Back in the day, they did not learn J as part of the alphabet. How they spelled words with a J, I'm not sure. Perhaps with an I?
Swiss cow!
Heinz trying on his period garb.
Not only was the village itself pretty cool, but it was also in a really pretty area.
Aareschluch (Aar Gorge)
Laziness has driven me to shameless quote Wikipedia for a description:
The Aar Gorge is a section of the river Aar that carves through a limestone ridge near the town of Meiringen. The gorge is an indirect product of glaciation; 10,000 years ago, just as the Ice Age was coming to an end, torrential runoff water from melting glaciers eroded a deep, narrow chasm through the limestone barrier. Although barely one mile long, this passage is bordered by sheer cliffs up to 165 feet (50 m) high on either side. At the bottom of this steep drop the river is only a few metres wide.
The gorge has been opened to the public since 1889, by building walking paths along the Gorge. Before then, the only way was to go through the dangerous river torrent, which provided fables by travellers, who claimed to see large snakes and monsters. Since then, the gorge is a popular tourist attraction for many visitors who like natural beauty and are attracted by the Reichenbach Falls, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle selected as the proper set for Sherlock Holmes' murder by Professor Moriarty.
It was a really cool place. It was so cool, that I decided to make this relatively crummy video for you guys to get a lackluster idea of how great it is! You're welcome. ☺
For those of you wondering what I said, it was superaffenmegaturbogeil, which, no matter what anyone tells you, is standard German slang. Trust me.
Here's a picture for those of you who got sick from my shaky camera skillz.
The beaches of Switzerland!
Hey! How did this hairy cow get into the Aar Gorge section? Silly Scottish Highland cow...
Vindonissa Legionärspfad and Amphitheater
The last stop in Switzerland was at some Roman ruins. To date, I've seen Roman stuff in seven countries: Rome, Greece, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Israel, and England. Man, those guys were busy. At one point, Vindonissa was a bustling fort at the northern frontier of the Roman Empire. However, once the boundaries were pushed north, Vindonissa lost its purpose and it eventually fell into obscurity, remaining little more than a village to this day (and was a great village it is, in case any citizens from there are reading this).
The Legionärspfad (legionnaire path) was pretty cool; it is where the Roman soldiers live while stationed at Vindonissa. There's a large arch erected where the southern gate of the fort used to be. Apparently, the remains of the southern gate are beneath the modern arch. Every time they are excavated, they are covered up again when the archaeologists are done.
There is also an amphitheater, which was obviously not covered up. Did you know the Romans once crowned a kiwi bird emperor?
A special thanks to the Hersberger family, who have welcomed me into their home three times now, I'm sure against their better judgement. Vielen dank!
As always, more photos are posted on Facebook. (For those of you without a Facebook, you can still see the photos. That is a public link that everyone should be able to see. The same goes for every other post I've made. Let me know if that's not the case.) As my time here in Germany winds down, I'm going to try to post in this blog more often, reflecting on what I've learned and experienced both in Germany and Europe as a whole. That was the original purpose of this blog, so here's hoping I can squeeze out a few good posts between now and August 2. Until next week!
From 16. May to 20. May, I visited what once was for decades one of the most heavily defended/guarded/militarized cities in the world: Berlin. The capital of Germany, it was the headquarters of Central and Axis powers during World War I and World War II, respectively. During the Cold War, it was the only place where American and Soviet troops actually stood face-to-face, despite the proxy wars all over the globe. Since Germany's (and Berlin's) reunification, it is once again the capital of Germany, which is yet again proving itself to be very powerful (although now Germany is taking the more peaceful route of just being better than everyone else economically). Basically what I'm getting at is that it was really cool to visit.
Obviously, I needed to get there first. Totally by coincidence, I was going to Berlin the same weekend as another American studying at Eichstätt. We decided to head up together Wednesday night, and we got in a little after midnight. This is where th fun began. Due to some confusion regarding dates, the friend I was visiting in Berlin thought I was coming the next day and, as such, was a bit surprised when I called him to tell him I had arrived at the Berlin train station. Then, as I tried to make my way to a station a bit closer to where he was, his phone decided to turn off and I was unable to contact him for about 30 minutes. Ultimately, we were able to meet up, but basically this is just another example of how I am so bad at travelling, but not necessarily because of anything I do.
First off, part of my reason for going was to visit friends I had met in Israel. This came with the added advantage of having someone who knows the city. One of the first things we did was visit an adandoned U.S. military radio installation 15 minutes or so outside of Berlin.
An abandoned U.S. military radio installation. Out of use since the mid-90's, it was official abandoned in the early 2000's.
Out of use by the mid-nineties and formally abandoned in the early 2000s, it strangely enough has security patrolling it at random times. Sometimes you can explore it to your heart's content, and other times you get thrown out. Unfortunately, visit number one resulted in our getting thrown out. We did leave as per his instructions, but we took the scenic route, allowing us to see a bit more of the compound as we made our way to a hole in the fence.
After getting thrown out, we took a long way out through the
overgrown grounds of the station.
After getting thrown out, we took a long way out through the
overgrown grounds of the station.
I was very surprised as to how green Berlin was. The radio installation was on a hill in a forest a little bit away from the city.
A view of the station from a nearby hill. The taller tower is the highest point in the vicinity of Berlin.
Following our abortive attempt to tour the city, Joram gave me a tour of the more touristy parts of the more touristy parts of the city. But hey, touristy parts are touristy for a reason: there's usually something pretty interesting about them. The Reichstag, home of the German legislature, was a pretty nice building. It did not house the legislature for the duration of the Cold War.
Supposedly, the glass dome that makes the roof of the main room is open to tourists. It's purpose is if the legislators ever
forget who they are working for, they can simply look and and be reminded - that American tourists dicate what they do.
Brandenburger Tor was also a pretty impressive structure. It's interesting to think that the Berlin Wall was only several feet away from it during the Cold War. The New York Times did a very cool interactive feature about the wall on their website. Check it out. Anway, it was apparently very easy to go back and forth between East and West Berlin prior to the Berlin Wall's erection. In fact, many East Germans did exactly that: they casually walked across the street into West Berlin, went to a government building, and asked for West German citizenship (according to the West Germany constitution, all Germans were citizens of West Germany). After a few days, they had all of their papers and didn't have to go back. This resulted in a massive outpouring of the intellectuals, businessmen, and skilled workers from East Germany, as well as average people who didn't like where things were going.
When asked how they were going to deal with the situation, a high ranking East German official said, "We're not going to build a wall." Um, who said anything about a wall? Very discreet, East Germany, very discreet... Literally overnight, policemen from the east surrounded West Berlin and erected a fence around the entire city. This was eventually expanded into the hugely fortified wall we all know today (officially an anti-fasisct barrier to defend East Germany from all of the Nazis hiding in West Germany).
Brandenburger Tor was built to commerate one of the German victories over the French. If you follow the statue's line
of sight, you'll find that she's looking at the French embassy, keeping an eye on them just in case.
Right near the Tor is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This is a very large (ariel view, courtesy of Google Maps) and rather odd monument built in 2003-2004. Accoding to the artist, there is no intended meaning, and everyone can take from it whatever they want.
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Beaky's photo-op for Berlin was at the Jewish Victims of the Holocaust memorial.
Hitler's Bunker was actually a two minute walk from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It's actually a rather unassuming place, because...
A piece of the Berlin Wall was moved to the site of Hitler's bunker, which
was a pretty impressive building to behold...
...except for the fact that all traces of Hitler's bunker were removed by the Soviet Union following World War II.
That's right. All there is to look at is a packing lot. After the war, the Societs demolished any above-ground parts of the bunker, filled in the below-ground parts with sand, and paved over it. They did this to prevent it from becoming some kind of pillgramige site for any remaining Nazis, similar to the U.S. military's defacement of the Nazi rally grounds in Nuremburg.
The church you see below has some kind of cool story behind it, and once I remember the details, I will relay it to you. Basically, the church in the vertically-oriented picture was built by [ruler] for [people] fleeing persecution in [place]. [People 2] then complained that they didn't have a cool building dedicated to them, so [ruler] built them an identical building across the street from the first (only a tiny built taller) as a show of fairness.
The Deutsches Historisches Museum was pretty cool, and had a well-made self-guided tour through the history of Germany, going allll the way back. I want talk about it too much, but one interesting exhibit dealt with German inflation between the world wars. I'll let the picture below tell you the rest.
Just so you know, there's a really big stack of money just outside the fram of this picture.
Remember the abandoned radio installation from earlier? Well, we went back to check it out, and this time no one threw us out. There were tons people people there, and, as you'll see in the upcoming pictures, a lot of them seemed to be there for some kind of official purpose. They had driven cars onto the property and several were cleaning up a roof.
I would like to point out that this well lit room of which I am taking a picture
is only so well lit due to my use of flash. It was rather scary to walk around.
Mysterious people doing mysterious things.
Trespassing: it's fun for the whole family! These guys were actually Swiss. How they just drove their car in here, I have
no idea. It was all very strange.
Berlin had a lot of cool graffiti, much of it relevant to the United States, Nazism, and/or the Cold War.
As I found out before I left for Berling, FC Bayern was playing in the final match of the Champion's League while I was in Berlin. Fortunately, Joram, Joram's friends, and I still went out to a bar to watch the game. It was probably much more exciting to watch in Bavaria (Eichstätt was apparently nuts; I can only imagine Munich). Joram's friends were a pretty cool group. They all spoke English, making it very strange to be with a bunch of Germans who could all easily go back and forth between the two languages. And they weren't just doing it for my benefit. Joram said they do that all them time, speaking both languages whenver they hang out. It's a very interesting contrast to the (predominately) monolingual American society.
That's about all for Berlin. No clubbing or bar hopping, like I had done in London and Dublin. Just a lot of hanging out and touring, which is fine by me. One major highlight was the dner. Have I spoken about döner yet in this blog? It's so good. It's a Turkish-style dish originating in Berlin, which obviously meant that I needed to, as Mike Vitiello would say, "EAT ALL THE DÖNER!" I ate at Istanbul Imbiss (Eichstätt's döner place, and my favorite thus far) so that I could make an informed decision as to which was better. I proceeded to have döner every day I was there. Was this a good decision? No. It was a great decision! Joram's favorite place was as good as Istanbul Imbiss, but I wouldn't say better. They were equally good in different ways.
Berlin was a great city; so much better than I had originally thought it would be. It turns out it's a city I could actually live in. This seems to be the running theme of cities I visitin in Europe. I would never want to live in the majority of American cities. Very rarely have I ever thought, "I could live here." I have, however, thought that about a lot of European cities, particuarly those in Germany and Switzerland. I look forward to one day returning to Berlin, at the very least so I can continue trying out the döner places. For, you know, science.
This wall in one of the main Berlin train stations (not Berlin Hauptbahnhof) was covered in foliage. There's no story here;
It's just a pretty cool wall.
So waaaay back in the day, from 10. May to 13. May, I went on a weekend-long backpacking trip with Robert Steinhauser. It was awesome. We hiked from Robert's hometown of Saal an der Donau to Parsberg, a trip that covered about 34 miles and took from Friday morning until early Sunday afternoon. There's not a whole lot to say about it, aside from the fact that it was awesome. We went from expecting crappy weather the entire weekend to, as you can see in the pictures below, predominately nice weather for the whole time. Saturday had a bit of rain, but all-in-all, the weather for it was great. Because it would have required taking off my relatively heavy backpack, my camera didn't make many appearances, so my pictures for this trip are limited. I got some fun ones, though. Enjoy!
The view from our first rest stop.
Our first rest stop.
I picked up a hitchhiker at one point.
We made pizza the first night. Attempt #2 (above) came out pretty well. Both attempts were tasty, nonetheless.
A phone booth in the middle of a field, because why not?
A nice little bridge at our rest stop on the last day.
Dubh Linn and Londinium
Dublin (Gaelic) and London (Latin)
An old Irish saying, written in Irish Gaelic and English.
Day 1: Arrival Woohoo for getting up early. Day one of our trip to the British isles involved getting up super early to head out to Memmingen Airport. Don't let the 'woohoo' fool you; it wasn't actually that much fun. Memmingen Airport is a tiny, tiny airport (unless you count the 'airport' at Elfin Cove, which was landing a plane in the water by a dock). There were four or five flights leaving that day from this airport. It was adorable.
After a brief wait to get through, during which Beaky and Cody bonded, we boarded our little RyanAir plane bound for Dublin. RyanAir is not comfortable to fly with. It's relatively inexpensive, yes, but it's not the most enjoyable flying experience, by any means. It was, however, the most friendly, most talkative flight I've ever been on. A while back, I chatted with an Irish girl, who told me that the Irish are some of the friendliest people you'll meet. If you walk into a pub, within 30 minutes you're friends with everyone there. This plane was filled with Irish, and they were all chatting with one another and with us. While I doubt this plane was chartered by some big group of friends, it could certainly seem as though that was the case.
Not much went down once we got to Dublin. We did some touring of the city, visiting the Temple Bar area specifically. I got some beef and Guiness stew, which was delicious, albeit a tad overpriced. (Dublin was very expensive, unfortunately.) We walked around the city for a while. Lena was already beginning to realize that dealing with Cody and me for an entire week might be more than she could handle.
This is basically what Lena thinks of her time with
Cody and me. (Hint: Lena is not Amir.)
We went out again and visited some bars, one of which had live Irish music. One song was particularly funny; the general story of the song is as follows:
A girl is trying to find love, but every time she meets a new guy, her father informs her that she cannot marry him, because he has been unfaithful to his wife and slept with the mother of the boy she is currently dating, meaning he is her half brother. This happens with guy after guy after guy, until finally there are no more men for the girl to date. She goes to her mother to complain, asking how her mother could have let her father do this. The mother explains there was nothing she could have done about it, but that the daughter shouldn't worry; the mother wasn't all that faithful herself, and that while her husband may have fathered all of these sons, none of them were the daughter's brother.
It was pretty funny to listen to in song.
The Millennium Tower in Dublin. I don't remember if that's the actual name, but it was something like that.
Yay! for not checking the settings on the camera before taking pictures.
Day 2: The City of Dublin Always, always, always do the New Europe tours. This was my second tour, and it was a lot of fun. The tour guides are always very knowledgeable and very funny. These tours are a lot of fun and I will always recommend them. They also seem like something I would really enjoy doing with my summers. During the year, I would teach, and during the summer, I could go somewhere and give tours for three months. That sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
We saw a lot of cool stuff on the tour. I also got to eat some horse meat. It was delicious. Check out these pictures
Cody meets up with the Dublin Fire Brigade.
I've said it before: if you have the chance to take a New Europe Tour, go for it.
The oldest building in the Dublin, this was built...um...back in the day and at once point housed the crown jewels of
Ireland. The tower, I believe is the oldest part in this picture, though the stuff around the top is not original. Someone
didn't think it looked 'old enough', so they added that stereotypical castle topping to the tower. Rampart? I think that's
the word for it. Whatever. By the way, the crown jewels of Ireland were stolen back in the day when two guards
decided they were too lazy to lug a huge chest up to the tower, and instead locked the crown jewels in a desk drawer.
Ultimately not the best place to keep priceless royal heirlooms, they were done the next morning.
This is across from where the queen would stay when she would visit Dublin. (She would be staying in the really old building previously discussed.) One of the rulers got there and didn't enjoy looking at the poor that were situated outside her window. However, instead of spending money on public works which would improve the lives of the poor, they build this carriage house which would block the queen's view of said poor people. Touché, my queen, touché.
How stupid does this building look? It's apparently nicknamed the 'LEGO building', due to the ridiculous coloring
scheme the architect picked out.
Cool story about this hotel. Apparently, a musician and his band got a small record deal, and went to celebrate at the
bar in this hotel. However, as they were not dressed appropriately, the host asked them to leave. While he offered to
make a reservation for them at a nearby bar, the aforementioned musician, having imbibed a little bit of alcohol,
drunkenly refused to leave the bar. Eventually getting thrown out, he promised that once he hit it big, he would come
back, buy the bar, and fire the host. Well, a while later, this musician, now calling himself Bono, had, in fact, hit it big,
and, while walking the Temple Bar area, remembered getting thrown out of a certain hotel bar. He returned to visit, and,
low-and-behold, the host was still working there. While he recognized Bono as a famous musician, he did not recognize
him as the drunk he had thrown out of his bar years before. Initially deeply embarrassed when Bono reminded him of
this story, they ultimately had a good laugh about it. Then Bono said, "You know, if I remember correctly, I
promised to buy this bar once I hit it big. Well, I'm a man of my word." He then pulled out his check book and bought
the hotel, and he has co-owned it ever since.
Horse, beef, and venison. Horse is delicious.
This is an arch on the Trinity College campus. If you walk under this arch and
you're a virgin, the bell will ring. Our guide asked for a volunteer to walk under.
As I walked under the arch, the group, as previously instructed by the tour
guide, yelled 'dong!' as I walked under. It was pretty amusing.
After the tour, we went with the guide back to a pub and got food, which was delicious. I don't remember exactly what I got, but it was really, really good. And it was a lot. Not enough to fill me, of course, but certainly a relatively good deal as far as super expensive Dublin is concerned. After dinner, we did some more touring of the city on our own. Then, that night, we did a pub crawl, run by the same company as New Europe Tours, and this was a lot of fun too. We ended up with a fantastic group and good fun was had by all.
Day 3: The City of Dublin: The Sequel The next day in Dublin wasn't nearly as eventful as the previous. Exhausted after a night of frivolity, we got a somewhat late start. We ended up visiting the other side of Dublin, and visited some awesome parks, including one with a massive monument to the Duke of Wellington, celebrating his victories in Europe and India. I also got really creepy and took pictures of people with my awesome telephoto lens. Good times... We also had some Iranian food, which was delicious.
I believe this is a protestant cathedral in Dublin, which is weird; I haven't seen many protestant cathedrals.
This is a monument to the Duke of Wellington in a park in Dublin.
While at the aforementioned Duke of Wellington monument, I did some creepy people watching with my telephoto lens. This one ended up pretty funny. Since his legs disappear behind a hill, and his shadow is also hidden, it looks like
I just Photoshopped him in there. That's quite the pose he's striking. He must be really enjoying being able to see the
Duke of Wellington monument.
Day 4: A Visit to Reading, England Our travel day between Dublin and London was uneventful and quite long. Lena made sure to get us to the airport as early as humanly possible; by the time we got through security, we had almost four hours to kill, which we utilized for deep philosophical conversations, and to take pictures of this guy:
This guy came and visited the Dublin Airport tarmac.
Aww...
He's pretty cute.
Once we got to England, we transferred to a bus, and then to another bus, and then to another bus, and finally, after a bajillion hours (plus a lovely run-in with a couple who spoke Japanese and were moving to South Africa where the husband would be doing cancer research) we arrived in Reading, England. We were doing this because Erika, my friend from Wyoming who is also studying at Eichstätt, was visiting a friend for her birthday in Reading, and we were invited to the party, since we were going to be in the London area anyway. What we didn't realize was just how much time we would need to get to Reading, and all we were able to do was go to the club, since we were too late to attend the actual birthday party. It was a fun group at least.
Day 5: Not Much to Tell We didn't do a whole lot on Day 5, since we were exhausted from the club the previous night. We slept in a bit, and then we had brunch with Erika's friends before heading back into London on a later bus. Once back in London, we had loads of fun. By that, I mean our hostel had lost our reservation. Earlier, I called to cancel our first night at the hostel since we were staying with Erika's friends. They decided to cancel the entire thing. Awesome. We wandered around for a bit, and we eventually did find a hostel, which ended up being pretty good. Lena, Cody, and I spent the evening hanging out in the hostel bar, which was a pretty cool spot to hang out. That's really all there is to say about it...
Day 6: Finally, London It was finally time to tour London, England. The first thing we did was hook up with the local New Europe Tour and off we were. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put a battery in my camera, so there are no pictures from this tour. Anyway, the quality of this tour was par for the course for a New Europe Tour. Our guide was a lot of fun. She was an actress from Wales, and she had a really cool/funny accent, which she did not use when she gave the tour. Too bad. She was great nonetheless.
Apparently, the British Flag is a combination of the English, Scottish, and Irish flags. Wait? That's three parts of the United Kingdom. Where's Wales? According to our Welsh guide, it goes as such: Back in the day, as England was running all over the place and planting their flag, shouting mine, they came across the Scots. When they announced, "Mine!" the Scots didn't take too kindly to this and fought back. While it was eventually added to the British holdings, the Scots were represented in the flag, apparently in recognition of their resilience. The same happened when the English got to Ireland. When they planted their flag and shouted, "Mine!" the Irish didn't take to kindly to this and fought back. Most of the country was eventually granted independence, while Protestant Northern Ireland remained with the United Kingdom, and the Irish were represented in the Union Jack. As for Wales, when they English arrived, planted a flag, and shouted, "Mine!" the Welsh said, "Oh, really? We're sorry. We had no idea we were on your land. Here, have our sheep as an apology. Thanks for letting us know, and sorry for the confusion."
Yay! for being super touristy.
We saw a lot of cool stuff, but I can't recall too many specifics, seeing as how I don't have any pictures. We met some Germans on the tour, who were fun to talk to, including a girl from Eichstätt. That was pretty cool. If I remember any cool stories, I'll update this post accordingly. After the tour, we did some general walking around the city. We swung by Platform 9 3/4 for some super touristy photos at the Harry Potter landmark.
Day 7: The London Museum: My Soul Mate When we woke up on Day 7, we rushed over to see the changing of the guard. It was a ridiculously over-the-top event, and it's amazing that they do this every other day or whatever. I think it's every other day in the winter and every day in the summer. Regardless, it's an absurd number of times.
After that, did more general touring the city. We saw the Tower Bridge (often mistakenly called London Bridge, which is another bridge in the city), the Tower of London, and some other general sites in the city. We saw replicas of the crown jewels, and Beaky got some good photo ops.
The Tower of London, where bad stuff happens to people.
Beaky hanging out with the Tower Bridge on the right and the Tower of London in the back.
Beaky hanging out in front of the Tower Bridge.
After that, we split up to see some different things. I ended up at the British Museum, and, yeah, it was spectacular. At first it was nothing sensational, aside from having several well-known artefacts (I'm spelling it the British English way), such as the Rosetta Stone, which was pretty cool to see in person.
The Rosetta Stone, discovered 1799, was the key to deciphering Egyptian
hieroglyphics. The stone, created in 196 BC, has the same message written in
hieroglyphics, ancient Greek, and Demotic script (another ancient Egyptian language,
which used letters instead of pictographs).
There were also lots of old carvings from the Middle East, and statues from Greece and Rome.
Really cool Mesopotamian relief sculptures.
All-in-all, awesome stuff. And then I reached the library of King George III...
This room was amazing. It's the library of King George III, donated by his son in 1823. It is so cool. I love libraries, and
this was an absolutely beautiful one. I can't wait until I have a library of my own. I hope it looks like this one, since, you
know, I'm going to make tons of money as a teacher.
I don't really know why, but I lost it. It was about the nerdiest thing I've ever done in my life, and I've done some pretty weird, nerdy stuff. I love books and libraries. Honestly, when I see disaster movies, this is what I'm concerned about, ranked from more to less important:
deaths of of a character which has been developed over the course of the film and have effected from me an emotional investment in their well-being (see
► SPOILERS
◄ the death of Agent Phil Coulson in The Avengers
► SPOILERS ◄
information stored in books, documents, computers, etc
the on-screen deaths of any animals (see I Am Legend for a gut-wrenching example)
the dozens/hundreds/thousands/millions of people who are killed when the aliens/terrorists/natural distaster/monster starts destroying everything
the fact that the post-apocalyptic world likely lacks Cluck-U Chicken and Döner.
It's awful, but it's unfortunately true. In the movie National Treasure 2, the bad guy burns a letter sent from, um, I want to say the Queen of England to...someone else important. I audibly protested this action while watching a movie. The destruction of this fake document evokes a greater response from me than watching New York City blow up in Independence Day/The Avengers/etc.
Anyway, now that we've established how much I like information (and what an awful person I am), here's how I reacted to see the beautiful library of King George III: I literally started freaking out. It was so cool, that I literally lost track of what I was doing, started breathing heaving, and just started rushing around the museum trying to see everything without actually registering what I was seeing. This lasted for probably about 10 minutes or so, and it's pretty funny in retrospect.
I don't remember what this is, but it's really old and therefore really cool. Oh wait, I know what this is. This is a tile
from the Parthenon. A few weeks prior, I visited Greece, and our tour guide explained how, while Greece was under
Ottoman rule, a Brit showed up, bribed a bunch of officials, chiseled the panels off, and shipped them back to England.
They eventually ended up in the possession of the British Museum. Despite requests by the Greek government and
other groups for the pieces to be returned, they remain at the British Museum. It was kind of cool to here about items
being lost (taken), and then subsequently getting to see them.
Mummies are cool!
There was also a pub crawl, but it wasn't that great.
Day 8: Zurück Nach Eichstätt The return to Germany was uneventful. We were tired from the pub crawl the previous night, so not a lot went on en route. All said, it was a fun trip. Both cities were very interesting, but I don't think I could every spend more than a small period of time in either of them. They're too expensive and too city-ish for my liking. I will admit, however, that British accents, Irish accents, and the British Museum make living there almost worth it.
For more pictures, check out Facebook and Google+. At least I think I put something on Google+. Maybe not...it takes way too much time to upload pictures to that website. Whatever. You should be able to access Facebook no problem. Bis später!
