A Great First Week

Today marks one week since our arrival to Germany. It definitely felt much longer than that, mostly because of how much I've been able to do during my time here. The first few days were really exciting, I was able to explore some of Bonn's stores and restaurants as well as the Hofgarten located outside the University of Bonn which was very enjoyable. By now I've managed to become fairly familiar with the central area of Bonn as well as the bus and tram systems. I also traveled by train for the first time and have learned how that system works as well. For my first free weekend here I traveled to Brussels, Belgium on Friday and then Amsterdam in the Netherlands on Saturday and returned to Bonn on Sunday night. Traveling between countries is surprisingly cheap and simple although train delays and transitions can be a bit stressful. Both Brussels and Amsterdam had so much to offer and I wish I would've had more time to explore the two cities.

We arrived to Brussels at around 6pm and headed to the Grand Place/Grot Markt shortly after checking in to our hotel. I was truly amazed by the architecture and culture diversity at the Grand Place. There were street performers, concerts, tons of shops and restaurants, and people from many different backgrounds that we got to meet. At night the buildings light up very beautifully which was quite an amazing sight. We had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant and and then spent the remainder of the night walking around the Grand Place, exploring various bars and finishing up at a festival which we unfortunately had to leave since it was getting pretty late and we had to be up early the next day for our train to Amsterdam.

At Amsterdam we stayed at a hostel, which was a new experience for me and we even made a friend there that joined us later that night when we went out to the downtown area of the city. We also went on a cruise around the canals during the day and got to visit the Rijksmuseum the following morning which was amazing, although a bit too large for the time we had available so we were unable to fully get through it all.

We're now back in Bonn and oddly enough it feels like I've come back "home" just because of how quickly I've managed to familiarize myself with the city. The few lectures we've had on the Neurophysiology of Music, History of Medicine, and German language have been quite enjoyable. Dr. Wasser has done a great job picking these specific classes for the program as they all relate to each other and make the content easier to understand for us. Although I can't say I speak any significant amount of German, I've been able to pick up a few phrases to help me get through shops and restaurants which has been very rewarding. I look forward to our upcoming excursions in Vienna, Austria where we'll be visiting several museums and other sites, including the Sigmund Freud Museum which I'm particularly excited for.