Week 3

Monday July 18th
Today we had a lecture from Dr. Wasser first thing in the morning. Everyone who decided to go to paris for the weekend had gotten in about 4 hours before lecture. They looked so incredibly tired. For lunch I tried to find a new place to get food but I ended up getting lost for about 30 minutes. I finally decided to eat Mcdonalds for lunch because I ran out of time and this seemed to be the best option. When we returned to AIB Niles taught us about the German political system. It is interesting to me how their system works. They are able to have 5 large parties function compared to only 2 in the US. They have to form an alliance with 2 or more parties in order to accomplish anything in government. After this we had some free time to go to Harribo gummy bear outlet. This was basically a giant candy store that only sold gummies. I deiced to get some funny stuff for abby and the family. They had some 4kg boxes of chocolate/bears that you could buy. Some people purchased these but are going to have a hard time figuring out how to get them back into the states. On the way back from Haribo we saw a liquor store called trinken gut. (good drinks) Once we walked in the entire group looked like the little kids going to haribo factory. We spent a good 45 minutes trying to decide which beer to get. I ended up getting some Paulaner and a .3L of Jagermeister. I found some cool Jager glasses as well which I decided to buy. I still don’t know if I want them or will gift them. On the way back to AIB we enjoyed our beers. Once at AIB we watched a movie about east and west berlin. It was in all german so we had to read subtitles. I enjoyed the movie although it was a little weird.
Wednesday July 19th
Today we went on a rhinecruise. It was the best weather the trip has had for one of these cruises. We went to a little german town which had the stereotypical archetechture. Wooden houses with flowers etc. it is a great region for growing grapes for wine. On the cruise we sat in the sun and had a weizenbier. After the cruise we went to a wine cellar and took a tour. We learned all of the ins and outs of making wine. We got to see the large barrels which could hold up to 9000L of wine. After the wine tour we got to taste five wines. We had 1 white reisling, 1 blanc de noir, and three reds. The last two were the best. One nice saffenburg red and a desert red which was sweet
Wednesday july 20th
Today we talked about what we are doing in Vienna and berlin nothing super exciting. After lecture and lunch we went to the museum in bonn called the haus der geschichte (house of history). It was interesting. Most of it was about east and west germany. It was interesting to see how germany came to be today because of this troubled past. From our tour we could see how the NSDAP (nazi) caused lots of problems leading into the GDR days in germany. I expected more from WWII in the museum. I also got yelled at because I leaned on a piece of the Berlin wall in the museum. I thought that this was ridiculous because it is a giant cement wall that isn’t going to be hurt by me touching it. I figured that people in berlin get to touch the wall all they want. Oh, well. After the tour we went to a temp exhibit which featured sex and german youth history. It had a place to practice putting on condoms. It was very humorous