Weihnacten und Silvester

So here it is: a post in my blog.  While I was in Switzerland a week or so ago, I glanced at this thing and noticed how long it had been since I last posted anything (over a month as of this writing).  Sorry about that. I've obviously been up to some stuff since the last post, but I'll get to that later.  First, I'll fill you in on what I did during my two-week break from classes here in Eichstätt: Christmas in Switzerland, New Year's in Rome, and a brief stay in Milan.

die Schweiz (23. Dec - 30. Dec)

For the first part of the Christmas break, I headed over to Aarau, Switzerland for another visit to the Hersberger family, who were nice enough to welcome into their home for a second time.  This is good for me, because I love Switzerland, and any chance to go back is awesome.

Roxi Hersberger

  The first Christmas was with Verena's family on 24. December.

The second Christmas was with Heinz's family on 25. December.  (Note: The pictures on Facebook are of Heinz's family.)

Both were a lot of fun and, perhaps of equal, if not greater, importance, the food was so good.  The first night we had broth fondue, which I had never had/seen before and found to be delicious.  Then I had some ice cream that they added some alcoholic drink to - and then subsequently set on fire.  That was pretty cool.

L-R: Jeff, Friede Hersberger, Heinz H., Ernst H.

The second Christmas was with the Hersberger family.  Geurts Christmas was happening at the same time, so we had a Hersberger-Geurts Skype Christmas call.  That was pretty cool.  The food was great this time around as well.  (There seems to be a trend when it comes to food in Europe: it all seems to be really good.)  As a nice little addition to Christmas, my family sent me wrapped pictures of my gifts back home.


Later, we did a hike up a nearby mountain and, thanks in no small part to the beautiful weather, were able to see mountains all the way in Germany, France, and Austria.

The other major event of the trip was a trip to Bern, the capital of Switzerland.  Despite the sub-par, cloudy weather, it was still a pretty city.  The Christmas markets go longer outside of Germany, apparently, and we were able to visit Bern's.

cathedral in Bern

Bern decorated for Christmas

Eventually my week in Switzerland came to an end, and it was time for me to head off to Rome.  My plane left from Geneva, so I hopped a train Friday morning (30. December) and headed off.  Along the way, I discovered Lake Geneva (Genfersee), which I would totally enjoy living on.  Unfortunately, it's in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, so I'm either going to have to learn French (German is giving me enough trouble...) or settled for one of the other beautiful parts of Switzerland.

Some city on Lake Geneva (Geneva, perhaps?).

You can check out more pictures on Facebook.

Rome and Vatican City (30. Dec - 2. Jan)

After an easy flight from Geneva to Rome, the festivities began.  Cody wasn't going to arrived for two hours or so after me, so I went off and found our hostel, got us checked in, and headed back to pick up Cody.  After getting Cody settled, we decided to walk around the city for a while.  Little did we know that 'for a while' would end up keeping us out until 2:00 AM.  It's amazing the number of people who remain out in the centers of Rome until such a late hour.  And I'm not just talking about people my age.  I saw grade-school aged kids out with their parents walking around until past midnight.

This isn't a picture of mine, but check our the
number of people.  It was almost the same
for us, except at midnight.

We didn't realize it until later, but we actually saw quite a bit of the city during this ridiculous walk about.  We saw the Trevi Fountain, Rome's Christmas markets, the Spanish Steps, plenty of monuments and statues, and even a few ruins.  Rome definitely gave Vienna a run for its money in regards to its decorations for the holiday season: it seemed as though every street (or at least those connected to the main ones) was lit up.  My favorite was probably the Italian flag lights.

Much to Cody's chagrin, our late night did little to change our early start the next morning.  We only had two full days in Rome, and we needed to make the most of it.  Day two was spent at the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and more general walking around.  The Colosseum, although smaller than I imagined, was an awesome sight nonetheless.  Based on the decrepit condition of virtually every other ruin in the city, it's surprising (to me) the Colosseum has survived so well.

Me in the Colosseum.  It was pretty cool.

Spanish Steps by night

(NOTE: If you're going to run for three or more days, grab a Roma Pass.  It's valid for three days and gives you unlimited use of the City's public transportation, free entry to two museums (the Colosseum is counted among these), and discounted entry to subsequent museums.  What's really awesome though, is that your Roma Pass counts as your ticket, so you skip the ridiculously long line to buy tickets to get into the Colosseum or the Palantine Hill.  We probably shaved anywhere from one to two hours of our wait with this thing.)

Back at our hostel, we met Alyssa and Nathan, Americans living in Spain and visiting Rome.  They slept most of the day, but dragged their butts our of bed for New Year's Eve, which was awesome.  After cramming our way onto a packed subway car and taking it to the Colosseum, we got to watch the moderately enthralling spectacle of fireworks being shot over the Colosseum.  LOL, it was actually really cool.  It probably takes the cake as best New Year's celebration, but I will admit that I missed watching SyFy's New Year's Eve Twilight Zone marathon for several hours both before and after the Times Square ball drop (which, I will admit, I also missed a bit).  After that there were far too many people in the streets of Rome to do much else, so we wandered around until 3:00 or so and called it a night.

For New Year's Day we headed on over to the Vatican for the Pope's blessing of the new year.  When we got there, they were televising the Pope leading a religious ceremony.  This confused us, since we arrived an hour early for the noon blessing.  It didn't dawn on me me until the next day that it was Sunday mass.  At noon, the Pope came to his window and blessed the New Year in Latin, English, Italian, German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.  It was pretty impressive.  St. Peter's was pretty impressive, too.

We then proceeded to do more of the same: a generally walking about the Vatican and Rome.  Castel Sant'Angelo was particularly cool, which started out as a tomb to the Roman Emperor Hadrian (as well as several subsequent emperors), was turned into a military fortress in 401, only to be sacked by the Visigoths in nine years later (it must have been pretty secure).  When the (regular) Goths laid siege in 537, items in the military-mausoleum-whatever were thrown at the invaders, destroying most of them.  By the beginning of the 14th century, the popes turned it into a castle.  Subsequently added were chapels, lavish papal residences, and finally a museum (and public bathrooms, much to my relief at the time).  It's also the secret lair for the Hassassin and contained a secret Illuminati church.

member of the Vatican's Swiss Gaurd

Our last day in Rome, we checked out the Pantheon and the Vatican Museums.  The Pantheon is an old Roman temple that has since been turned into a Catholic Church.  The best-preserved Roman building, it was huge.  I'm amazed the Romans were able to build the dome which forms the roof, without the help of modern machinery and techniques.

an emasculated Hercules/Heracles
(I'm still not messing with him.)

Finally, we've got the Vatican Museums.  Having bought out tickets beforehand, we skipped to the front of the arguably two-hour line (NOTE: Buy tickets for stuff in Rome beforehand!) and got in at about 11:30 AM.  Our train to Milan left at 5:00 PM, so we didn't have a lot of time for the museum, which was unfortunate.  Nonetheless, it was pretty awesome.  In now way limited to Christian/Church artifacts, the Vatican Museums had an awesome collection of Roman, Greek, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian artwork (with an emphasis on Greco-Roman).  It's unfortunate we had so little time.  Fun fact about many of the statues: some pope back in the day decided it was inappropriate to have naked men all over the Vatican, so he sent his people out to castrate all of the statues, many of which received a leaf in the penises' place.  The best part of this story is that they supposedly saved all of the penises in a box somewhere in a back room.  I've also heard that it's someone's job to go through this big box of penises and figure out who they belong to.  Sounds like fun.  The Sistine Chapel was included in the Vatican Museums, and it was just ridiculous.  The thought of painting all of that (by yourself?) is just crazy.  (By the way, the genitalia Michelangelo included in his famous ceiling mural were painted over during the same anti-penis popes.)

Sistine Chapel

You can check out more pictures on Facebook.

Ye Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch

Milan (2. Dec - 4. Jan)

Milan Cathedral

While we had run into some other issues over the course of this trip, Milan is where things got interesting.  As it turns out, a large number of the Eichstätt’s Italian exchange students are from the Milan area.  So, Cody and I figured we would round off our trip to Italy with a visit to our friends in Milan.  Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication between the two groups, and when Cody and I arrived in Milan, no one was there to meet us.  Unable to get in touch with our friends via phone or Facebook, we decided to just take the next train home.  Unfortunately, the next available train wasn’t until the following day.  Our first thought was to just hang out in the train station that night, but we quickly realized how stupid that plan was and got a hotel room across the street from the train station.

Milan Cathedral statue overlooking city

Now with a roof over our heads and a quality internet connection, we got in touch with our friends and came to find that they weren’t expecting us for another few days.  Whoops.  Ultimately, we were able to meet up, but Cody and I decided to just exchange our tickets for new ones and head back to Eichstätt a bit early.

While in Milan, we checked out the Milan Cathedral (which was a pretty awesome structure), walk through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, and spin around on a bull for good luck.  It did the latter a few times to save up for the last month of the semester.

spinning on a bull for luck

After a brief tour of the city, we headed to Elisa’s house for some awesome Italian food.  It was so good…  I’m so glad I’ve reduced the degree of my pickiness when it comes to food.  After dinner, Elisa's sister went to get a game - and came back with Risk.  What a great family...

You can check out more pictures on Facebook.

Eichstätt (4. Dec)

Finally, there was Eichstätt.  After a ten-hour or so train ride, we were back.  Not much to say, other then the fact that my room was covered in ponies Doro and Dan made for me.  (They apparently bought a coloring book and relived kindergarten for the sake of my room's interior design - and my happiness.)

Switzerland and Italy were great, but it's good to be back in Eichstätt.  I was exhausted after all of the travelling, late nights, and early mornings of the previous 11 days.  I can't wait to get back to Switzerland, though I'm not sure if I that will happen before the summer (though skiing there would be awesome).

We've only got a month left in this semester, the end of which I am not looking particularly looking forward to.  So many of my new friends are only here for a single semester.  While I hope next semester's group will be as good as this one, I highly doubt that will be the case.  Just have to make the most of their company while I've still got them around.

I suppose that's all for now.  Once again, you can see more pictures on Facebook and Google+ (latter coming soon).  Tschüss!

awesome postcard