"Words are hard"

The Rhine cruise was absolutely breath taking. We had to wake up super early and go to the train station and then we took a train to Bingen, the place where the Hildegard museum is. Hildegard was in a big family and it was custom in those days to give the tenth child to the church. The church also loved this because they got a dowry when Hildegard "married" the church and became a nun. Pretty soon she became the head nun and eventually started her own abbey. She was an inspiration to many and she knew much about healing, music, and science. She also had visions from God but we found out it may have been caused from sever migraines. We don't really know. After the museum tour we went into a garden outside the museum that had many different types of plants. We had to identify a couple and then Dr. Wasser told us what type of healing that plant was used for. After that we went and got food because we were all starving. I'm pretty sure our whole group is always hungry no matter what. We ate at a pretty place by the river and most of us got schnitzel, because how can you not? After lunch we got on the boat and made our way down the Rhine. It was so so much colder than we thought it would be. Probably because it was so so windy. But a couple of us moved our chairs into the sun and were able to stand the freezing wind. We were only on the boat for a little over an hour but we passed by 12 castles! It was incredible. There were also a lot of vineyards making the countryside truly beautiful. We got off the boat at St. Goar and made our trek up the side of a freaking mountain to get to the famous Rhine castle. We decided to take the stairs instead of the steep incline. But then we decided to take a "shortcut" and ended up going up an incline so steep I was literally on my hands and feet. After that treacherous journey we eventually made it to the top. The castle was huge and really pretty. Most of it was just ruins but you could still see so rooms and tunnels. We got to go through the larger mine tunnel and it was so dark we all had to use candles. We really felt like we were there when the castle was whole. Overall it was an amazing day. The next day we had class and then a pre-departure meeting for Berlin. We also went to an art gallery about the torchbearers from past generations. It included people like Abraham Lincoln, MLK, and some German torchbearers as well. That night we celebrated our last night in Bonn by going to our beloved Rhinelust for the last time. I was feeling a little under the weather, but it was our last night and I had to go.

The next morning we were up bright and early as Rosie drove us to the train station and we said our goodbyes. It was so sad. I'm going to miss Rosie and I'm going to miss Bonn so much. But Rosie says I always have a room at her house. I will most likely take her up on that offer.

The train ride to Berlin didn't feel that long because I slept most of the way. When we got there we had to haul our entire luggage to the hotel and that was real hard. I have way too much stuff, and some people have more than me. We check into the hotel and since I packed a lunch I was able to eat and then take a quick nap before we began our bike tour. Let me just tell you that riding a bike in a city as busy and crowded as Berlin is terrifying. There are so many people everywhere. You have to avoid running into people, into other bikes, buses and cars. It gets real complicated. Our number one rule was to stop when the light was red. It sounds obvious right, but when your following a big group on bikes and the light just turned red your first instinct is to try to hurry and follow the end of the group across before cars start coming. You should not do this though. Cars will go and they will not care if you are in the street. Something else that was new on this bike riding experience was that a lot of bikes ride right next to the cars and sometimes we even rode in the car lines. I was not used to this at all and was terrified most of the time. I feel like I was more concerned with not crashing than I was with the actual tour of Berlin. It was a good thing our tour guide stopped us and let us get off at times because I don’t know what I would’ve done if we didn’t do that. It was a little stressful. After the bike tour we found this really good restaurant called Vapiano. It was Italian style food in a cafeteria style setting but the coolest part was they actually made the food in front of you from scratch. I got ravioli con carne and they started by taking the fresh pasta (that they had apparently made earlier that day) and put it in the boiling water. They then proceeded to make the sauce from scratch right in front of me. The put all the basics in the sauce and asked if I would like anything else like extra cheese, or garlic, or even chilies. It was so cool. It took a really long time to get to the front of the line but I think we would all agree that it was totally worth it. They also bottle their own tea. We discovered really fast that this tea was delicious and I even went back and got a bottle to go. After the delicious meal we stopped at a street fair on the way back to the hotel. This street fair was awesome. They had nutella crepes, sangria, German beer, Russian beer, carnival games, souvenir shops, and much much more. The whole vibe of the fair was just really cool and we couldn’t resist getting a drink and sitting down to enjoy Berlin. We all really like Berlin; we’re also a little surprised since its such a big city and we usually don’t like those as much as our precious Bonn. After spending a good amount of time at the fair we headed back to the hotel because our next morning consisted of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but that’s for another blog.