Paris, Bonn, and Cologne

I have been overseas for 10 days now and the time has flown by. From watching Germany play in the World Cup, to roaming the streets of Paris, this trip has been full of surprises and excitement. There are differences in daily life here and I am adjusting to most of them. The hardest thing to get used to is that people walk everywhere here, which left me with exhausted legs and feet for most of the week. I have seen the Eiffel Tower, the view from the top of the Cologne Cathedral, and spent time getting to know my host family here in Bonn during my time here so far. We leave for Vienna monday morning and I cannot wait to see what is in store for me there!

Paris is a city full of history and I was excited to be able to spend last weekend there. I went with three other members of the group; Angela, Edward, and Sean. We  left saturday morning after watching Germany defeat the French in the World Cup. There is so much to see and do in the city that it was hard to choose what to do first. We decided to buy two day transportation tickets so that we could take the metro, bus, or tram to wherever we wanted to go. Notre Dame was first up on our list, followed by the Sacré-Cœur, Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel tower. We walked a lot that day but it was worth it to see so much of the city. One of my sorority sisters has spent all summer in Paris, and she showed us around where she lived and we had some of the best gelato of the trip! The next day we went to the Louvre as well as the Luxembourg palace, and ended the day with a picnic by the Eiffel Tower at night. Overall, Paris was a fantastic city to visit, although the French are not the most welcoming of Americans.

After waking up at 4:30 and leaving Paris monday morning at 6 am we had our first full day of class in Bonn. The rest of the week was spent having History of Medicine class, German class, and visiting Cologne and various museums. The history of Germany museum and the anesthesia museum in Bonn were both very interesting to go to. In both places, our tour guides were what made the museums really special. They both had lived through the times described in the museum. It is one thing to walk through a museum and read the signs and its another when you have someone who told you what they were doing during that event. While in Cologne we took a city tour, a tour of a gestapo prison, and took a private tour up the second tallest Cathedral in the world. I have had a wonderful time so far traveling, and I hope it only continues to get better!

What better way to end the first week of class than with a trip to the Haribo outlet store in Bonn! I was able to buy a lot of candy for only 4 Euros, what a deal!

The group at the Haribo Factory Store!

Tschüss, 

Morgan Schultz