On December 30, we took a train to Cologne to visit the city and cathedral. As soon as we walked out of the train station, the cathedral dominated the view of the skyline. It was so humongous and gorgeous that it resembled a fake background in a movie. We spend the morning and afternoon walking through the city, exploring the cathedral, and visiting a museum. Afterwards, David and I hopped on a train back to Bonn and ate dinner with my friend Finn, a native German. I know Finn from elementary school and was his first friend in America. After 6th grade, he moved back to Germany and I had not seen him since, so it was really great to see him and catch up on the long years we have been apart.
The next day was New Years Eve and we traveled to Berlin to celebrate at the Brandenburg Gate. After a few long hours on the train and a quick tram ride, we arrived at Hotel Alex, where we would be calling home for the next week. As the evening began, we met up with Dr. Wasser to travel to the Bradenburg Gate. When we first arrived, I could tell everyone was a little anxious, yet awe-strucked. I mean, we were celebrating New Years Eve with people whom we had not known long in a foreign country on the opposite side of the world. Oh, and on top of that, Dr. Wasser left us to fend for ourselves. Watching him walk off into the darkness made me feel like a kindergartner all over again – my parents leave me in a strange place with strange people and all I can seem to do is cry. Of course, everyone felt like this and being in a group really seemed to alleviate this fact. Soon after, we began to explore the area, which reminded me of a carnival. There are places to buy food and drinks, a ferris wheel, and even a petting zoo. Okay there was no petting zoo, but there was a ferris wheel. I had never been on a ferris wheel so I jumped at the opportunity to ride one. In all honesty, it was nothing special – it was just really high in the sky and I was freezing my butt off. After all the cokes and Shirley Temples I had, I made my way to the area with the porta-potties. Well turns out, the people in charge decided to profit off the human tendency to expel fluids to compensate for above-normal fluid intake. There were several people at the entrance who collected the entry fee of 50 cents to use the porta-potties. Real classy. I was quite enraged, but the copious of amounts of soda soon made me forget. As midnight approached, we decided to gather in front of one of the big TV screens, because it was so crowded at the front of Brandenburg gate. We soon befriended some Polish people whose English was equivalent to that of a pre-schooler. Quickly overcoming this barrier, we began laughing and dancing with them and all was well with the world. At midnight, we busted out the sparkling apple juice with our new friends and kisses on the cheek went around to celebrate the new year. And to top it all off, we did the most memorable thing I will never forget: singing the Aggie War Hymn. We gathered around in a circle and began the song, with our new Polish friends joining in. Despite the fact they obviously did not know the lyrics, they followed our lead and even sawed varsity’s horns off with us. It was AMAZING. There were even other people taking pictures in awe at our little chant. We hung out there a little longer, played in the snow, and befriend some more people. What can I say, foreigners love Americans (for the most part). Deciding to opt out of sleeping, me, David, and Katie stayed up throughout the night and went back to the hotel around 4:30 AM to begin packing for our 6:30 AM train ride to Prague. At this point, you think I would be dead, but a nice, hot shower did the trick of waking me up.
The train ride to Prague is about 5 hours long, and after a long, long night, I was hoping to take advantage of this. Well I napped for 2 hours and hung out with everyone the rest of the trip. We arrived around 11:30 AM and walked to the old town square, where we checked into our hostel. My first hostel experience… let’s just say its quite different than the traditional hotel. Anyways, we decided to split into a couple different groups. Some went to the Prague Castle and other decided to explore the city, which I opted for. We had been walking around for a bit when the lack of sleep really hit me. I made my way back to the hostel for a quick nap before dinner. Then, the evening consisted of pizza for dinner and some more sleeping.
As I write this blog, I am sitting on a train headed from Prague to Berlin. Katie, David, and I went to visit the Prague Castle today because we opted to walk around the city yesterday. Upon our arrival at the castle, we were “greeted” by a couple of guards who stand at attention during their watch. Talk about a hard job. They do not move whatsoever unless it is to make a guard shift. And keeping a straight face while hundreds of tourist take pictures with them making funny faces. Well at least I was making funny faces. We walked around for the castle for a couple hours and eventually headed back to the train station. Okay let’s now back up to yesterday. We had spent 5 Euros to reserve our seats on the train ride to Prague and it turns out that we were the only ones in our train cart. Because of this, we decided not to reserve our seats for the ride back to Berlin. Big mistake. Just a couple of hours ago, we had to fight to find seats for ourselves, although we eventually found some not too far apart from each other. And now, after a long blog post, I am going to take a nap because my body is telling me the 10 hours I slept last night was not enough.
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