My host family:
I love my host family, it's just my host mom and I most of the time because her children have grown up and moved away. She makes really amazing food, it reminds me of home where Mom makes amazing food without a recipe and just by looking at what's in her cupboard. At meals is when my host mom and I socialize the most, she teaches German to international students at the University, so I'm learning a little German too, although not much.
Class Activities:
Already we've done so much in just a week or so. We've visited Köln twice already, the first time we had a tour of the medical school's anatomy collection as well as a tour of the city and a special rooftop tour of the Cathedral. It was absolutely amazing. I'm one of those people who tends to actually like visiting Cathedrals, even when you've already seen a ton, and the Köln Cathedral is definitely one of my favorite experiences for a couple of reasons:
1) It's gothic, but so towering and impressive in its appearance that it really epitomizes what I imagine all Gothic architecture is meant to look like, you feel the power and strength and magnificence of it.
2) We got a rooftop tour, which was an amazing experience. We got to go into the eaves and learn about how it was built, both in the middle ages and the 19th century, and we took an elevator ride and then some stairs up to 70m and were able to go out and see an amazing view of the city.
3) I really feel like to the umm... Köln-ers (people who live in Köln) the Cathedral is theirs and they love it and cherish it. Some other Cathedrals I've been in have really felt like the people who live in the city have basically abandoned it to the tourists and really feel no attachment to it, but the Kölner Dom (sp?) felt like the people of Köln were really proud of it and loved it and actively used it, kind of like the church in Assisi.
Our second time in Köln we went an old SS headquarters that has been turned into a museum. There are some amazing messages prisoners scratched in to the walls of the cells that have been translated for visitors, but there was also a wonderful museum showing what life in Köln and the surrounding area was like during the Nazi regime and how life changed and didn't for the people living there.
After our very busy week, Nicole, Stephanie, Brittany, Coral, and I went to Switzerland for the weekend. My brother's friend had recommended a hostel for us to stay in and said of all the places that she'd been in Europe, Switzerland was the absolute best, so we had very high hopes.
The train ride to Switzerland from Bonn is not direct, we had to take a tram to Siegburg, then catch an ICE train to Mannheim where we got on our final ICE to Interlaken Ost. For pretty much first time train travelers (I'd only ridden in groups before) we did very well, mainly because of the kindness of strangers. We had reserved seats on both of our ICE trains, but the first train we got on there were people in our seats already so we were confused as to wether or not we'd actually reserved specific seats or if we just had space in the compartment. We turned to a kind looking woman and asked if she spoke English, she referred us to I think her son sitting next to her who was probably in high school, we could tell he was a little annoyed, but he didn't show it in his mannerisms to us and answered all of our questions politely. He was such a Godsend because from then on we were pros at finding our place on the trains we rode. On the next train, on which we had a 4 hour ride, we were in a little compartment for 6, our extra member of the compartment was first an very nice Swiss man, and next a kind rock climber, both of them we were blessed to have.
Anyway this is getting a bit long and so I'll be brief in the next bits. My traveling companions have already described our wonderful experience canyoning anyway.
We arrived at our hostel as it was getting dark but this didn't stop us from enjoying the absolutely beautiful view. We took a cable car into the mountains where the hostel was nestled in an adorable Swiss community highly recommended by Rick Steves (who is the favorite travel guide of PBS, my mother, and our neighbor Marsha.) I don't think there are words to describe how beautiful the mountains were, but I can say this: I have been to Alaska and Colorado and sat wondering why my mother made such a big deal of the mountains and why we needed to take so many pictures of them, but that time I spent nestled in snug among them in Switzerland I think is the closest I will ever come to understanding Mom's and Laura Davis' love of mountains.
I'm going to end here, but I'll try to go further into detail about a few of these things on my livejournal for my friends back home, so if you have a great desire to hear more you can find in here: http://lalaith7.livejournal.com/ . I cannot guarantee that the posts will always be unlocked, but generally on the whole most of what I write is open to the public. That's all for now.
Ciao!
Caitlin Vanasse
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