Hurray for having a friend with an internet connection kind enough to let me use it. I hope you have lots of time, or can read fast because this is like a weeks worth of posts here. At some later date i may post new info for some of these days because these are short in some cases as for what really took place. Have fun!


Friday 26th September (70, sunny)

Today I embarked on a walking tour of Vienna. Vienna is a beautiful city that tries to maintain their history as best they can, and it shows. The city is amazingly clean with everything well maintained. I started from our hotel located on the southwesterly portion of the original fortification wall. My dad and I walked a few streets to St. Stephen’s church, the largest church in Austria and the heart of the city. The church is well known throughout Europe because many countries donated to the rebuilding fund after WWII. The outside and inside of the church have detailed architecture and decorations unrivaled by anything I’ve ever seen. I tried my best to capture their beauty so you guys can see for yourselves. Most of the exterior is black from smog, but they are currently in the process of cleaning it off to reveal the white stone underneath. After taking 50 some pics of the church, I went in search of a nearby church that was rather plain in comparison. From there I thought I would head off to the town hall and other government buildings. Instead I managed to get horribly lost and went the other direction. You may find that funny, but none of the roads go straight or go through. I’ll post a picture of the map so you can see. Anyways, I eventually asked for directions and made it where I wanted to go. One of the current government buildings was originally the imperial summer palace. I wanted to visit the National library build in the early 1700’s, but they wanted to E 3. I was amazed at how large the parks are in the city. The one between the government buildings was about the size of all of G South’s property/ the quad including the buildings and this is in the middle of the tightly packed capital.

Around 2:30 I took the subway to Schönbrunn Palace, built as an imitation of Versailles in France. From the outside I’d have to say they did a pretty bad job, and if I manage to download the camera software that I left at home, I’ll post a 360 panorama from the center of the courtyard. Since I saved the E 3 from the library I splurged and spent E 10.50 for an audio tour of the palace that was extremely informative. The tour also changed my opinion of the palaces’ ability to imitate Versailles for splendor. I would have loved to take some pictures, but pictures were verboten. I bought a book containing pictures that I’ll photograph and post at some point.

That evening my dad and I went to see the Vienna Philharmonic, known for their New Years Eve concert. They put on an amazing concert with a selection of Mozart Symphonies and Operas. By far the best performance I’ve ever heard and seen. The Chicago Symph is up there too, but it has been too long since I’ve heard them perform in person.

Monday 29th September (60, cloudy, windy)
We started the day with the Cologne Cathedral, which is the third largest in the world behind the Vatican (largest) and some church in Russia (we’re guessing because it’s not in Europe). I was impressed by the size of St. Stephan’s in Vienna, but this is unbelievable. For comparison, it’s about the size of UIUC’s football stadium (or equivalent) (144m long X 70m wide? X 157.3m high X 17m high stain glass). The outside decorations easily compete if not surpass St. Stephan’s and make you stop and think about the sheer manual labor and art work put into these churches. We spent a good hour walking around the inside reading a little tour pamphlet and taking pictures of the main attractions. After that we just walked around the old city district. We found a little glassed covered Roman bath that was partially excavated in the 50’s, and a couple other interesting buildings. And the evening has been relaxing and organizing my 560 some pictures (my god I’ve only been here a week).

Side note: there are 141 Roman Catholic (40 more protestant) churches in Cologne, which means that if you went to a different mass every Sunday it would take over 3 years to go to them all, and then if you aim for different pastors you’ll never see the same priest the rest of your life.

Tomorrow is out in the country side around Cologne.

Tuesday 30th September (70, sunny)
The day started out in Aachen at the Cathedral (900 AD), the oldest standing cathedral in Germany. For the most part it is relatively plain on the inside and outside. The arched walk ways are painted in an Arabic mosaic style while the few simple wall frescos use the typical Roman Catholic style of the time period. The most impressive aspect was the gold tabernacle behind the alter, which had detailed inlaid scenes and figures.
From Aachen we drove to Manschau, a beautiful, little, traditional German town in a valley. The town is what Heidelberg claims to be, but Heidelberg has far too many tourists. It seemed like a very peaceful area with thick woodlands on all sides with a fresh mountain breeze. The town is the perfect place to escape urban life.
On our way north to Düsseldorf we stopped in a little town on the Rhein that still has its original fortification wall standing from 2000 years ago. Even more surprisingly, the town has stayed within the walls instead of expanding outside of the walls. In Düsseldorf we had dinner at a traditional German restaurant and then headed back to our hotel in Cologne.

Wednesday 1st October (65, cloudy)
I arrived in Darmstadt, and meet a Canadian student, Chris, studying for the winter and summer semesters here. After dropping off our luggage in our rooms we headed to dinner with my dad. On returning to my room I finally meet one of my roommates, Malte, and some of the neighbors. While we were chatting another roommate, Nazik, arrived. I knew Europe was less prude then the U.S., and from passing some of the other rooms I kind of suspected it, but I was still surprised that guys and girls are sharing an apartment. Everyone has there own room, and I have no problem living together it’s just unusually surprising. (5 people in the apartment, 3 guys, 2 girls, haven’t met everyone at this point seeing as that today is Friday) Giovanni is an Italian guy 2 doors down finishing his last year of college. Good appreciation of excellent wines and Italian food. We sat around chatting for a while, and then I unpacked and went to sleep.

Thursday 2nd October (60, cloudy, windy)
I had the wonderful pleasure of finally having to take a test since summer school ended, and I know most of you have had around a dozen or more by now. Anyways took the test to see how good my German is, personally I think its pretty bad compared to the other exchange students. Most of them are 21+, studied 6+ real years of German, and are 3rd year students or later (Giovanni’s 24th bday). So, I’m quite the youngster from the international group. The one girl I meet tomorrow, Valantia, comes from one of the former Soviet Union countries and has had 5 years of college already and like 12 years of German.
Around 3:30 my dad and I headed south to the Rheingau region in search of a wine festival. We ended up taking little country roads to avoid the traffic jam on the Autobahn, and we were rewarded for doing it. The country side was beautiful, and smelled of grapes for a good deal of the trip. We took a further detour and headed west into the mountains on the French boarder, what we wouldn’t have given to have something nicer then the crappy Opal minivan for the drive. Once we reached Landou, our destination, we discovered that the festivals are only on the weekends. So we wandered looking for an Italian restraint that some townie gave me directions to and ended up heading to a winery instead. The guys there were extremely friendly and we tasted a number of good wines and schnapps. We left with a bottle of white Riesling and desert wine for each of us, and a 2 liter bottle of new wine (Sturm in Austria) for me at a fraction of the normal cost. The new wine is like a cloudy white grape juice about 4-6 % alcohol, very tasty but difficult to transport because it is still fermenting and producing gas. We asked the guys at the winery where we could find a good Italian restaurant, and actually managed to find this one. We where the only ones there at 7:30, every one likes eating at 8:30 around here, and had wonderful service by a friendly Italian speaking waiter. The dinner was amazing. My dad and I spent 2hrs in the restaurant casually eating and drinking Italian wine, and topped it off with a good piece of Tiramisu and some chocolate fudge ice cream desert.

Friday 3rd October (65, sunny)
This morning the international students met for breakfast. Personally I found it to be a great way to meet other people speaking German as a 2nd language. I ran into Giovanni there and we spent the morning and early afternoon with Raphaĕlle (Brittany or Jenny if you could let me know if that mark is correct or what I should change it to I would appreciate it. I’m not quite sure if it is one mark or 2 separate ones), a girl from France, and Frida, a girl from Sweden. After breakfast we signed up for some blind dinner event next weekend and a weekend outing on the 17th. Then we joined a small group and went on a historical tour of the city to get acquainted with it. A ceremonial wedding tour build for the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig offered a great view of Frankfurt to the north along with all of Darmstadt and the surrounding area.
One of my other roommates finally arrived, Kraska from Poland. She’s been busy moving in and unpacking so I haven’t had a chance to talk to her yet.
Now I’m just chilling in my room till around 8pm to grab a pizza, and then the some people are coming over around 9 to drink some wine and head out to the pubs.
Bis Morgan!

Saturday 4th October (65, cloudy, rainy)
I had a relatively good day today. I finally caught up on some of my sleep and managed to get online at the internet café. It would have been better if I could have transferred my journals to the web, but I can’t have everything. It was really nice being able to go to the store today and by a bottle of wine without being asked for an ID. I’m going to miss that when I come home, but I can’t say the same about the number of people that smoke over here.

I cooked up some frozen pizzas form some friends and I, and then we headed out to a bar to meet up with the other exchange students. The scheduled events have been a great way to meet new people. I managed to get the name and address for three different girls in the first hour along with getting to know several others that came back to my place for some wine after the bar closed at 11pm. After we left the bar and arrived at a noisy German punk concert, I invited some people to my place. I felt a little like Roger there for a moment, I invited like 5 people, and when we started walking there was like 15. Luckily some of them stopped off at a bar on the way back to the dorms. In the end there were only 9 of us with me, and we had enough wine with the bottle that one of the other girls brought. It was much easier getting to know people here where it was quieter. The evening turned out to be a great cultural experience because we had such a diverse group at my place: French, Italian, Canadian, North Irish, Welsh, Swiss, Sweden, and me. We spent time talking about everyone’s home country and some of our traditions. People where amused that I could drink so much since I’m not old enought to legally drink in the states. On that note, people are curious about how difficult it is to come by alcohol when your under age. To them the whole idea is silly beause they can at least drink starting at 18 for the oldest requirement of the other countries. The only exception was Norway where you have to be 21 to by hard liquor. We stayed here till about 1am, and then everyone headed back to their places and I cleaned up. To top it off I was lucky enough to have the place to myself for the evening, so it didn’t matter that we were making noise.

Sunday 5th October (55, cloudy, rainy)
I’ve spent all day indoors today. I went out for like 5min and it was wonderfully cold and windy. The most productive thing I’ve done is play my clarinet for an hour. It was good to practice for real for the first time in a while because I was getting rusty around the edges. Practicing today made me thing of the good old days of driving DeWald crazy by challenging Brian. Maybe when I get back will end up in the same band Brian and can drive a new director crazy. Besides that I’ve read a little in a book, and I’m going to head out in search of someone to eat dinner with.
I didn’t find anyone for dinner so I just hung around my place with my roommate and here friends.

Monday 6th October (45, sunny; 55, rainy)
Today was the first day of our language class. Things went pretty well. My vocab needs the most work, and i know as much or more then most of the people in our study group. After class I met up with some other people and had lunch for like 2 hrs. Wonderfully relaxing and entertaining. We spent most of the time talking in english becuase we had a canadian, new yorker, North Ireland and myself. Listening to the accents and talking about regional slang and what not was quite amusing. Tonight we’re skipping the planned meeting in favor of getting together later for dinner and then heading to a bar. The planned event was a bar crawl starting at 6:30pm. Now don’t get me wrong, i’d totally be up for my first bar crawl, but 6:30 is waaayyyy to early to start drinking on a bar crawl.