A Few of my Favorite Things (finally...)

WELL... unfortunately I have been away from keeping up the blog posts due to the fact that when I returned from my Western European International Institutions Trip my computer crashed and I was unable to drop it off at the apple store until after the following weekend trip and then couldn't pick it up until right before this last weekend's trip-thus here I am sitting with my bad memory trying to recall what exactly I've been up to.

Since it was a while ago I'll try to recall the most important highlights-Thursday after the Western Trip we visited the US mission to the Geneva UN-We were able to receive a presentation from the US ambassador to the UN (I was sitting right next to her) That was pretty cool-the presentation about world economics on the other hand was a little less exciting. That presentation went longer than expected though so class was cancelled for the afternoon allowing us to get a move on toward our weekend plans.

Our first stop for our last 4 day weekend was supposed to be Copenhagen. This meant a night train to Hamburg. Our "beds" were chairs that looked like they came off of some sort of space ship and thus we called them "pod seats," but they reclined and came with blankets so they were adequate, I slept far better than I anticipated aside from when the conductor came to check our tickets at 12:50 am (pain in my @$$). Then we woke up around the time our train was supposed to arrive in Hamburg but we were stopped due to some technical problem explained to us in our native German-meaning we have no idea why but we were delayed by about 30 minutes. So we arrived in Hamburg after our connecting train to Copenhagen had already departed. This meant we got a couple hours to unexpectedly explore the city of Hamburg (SURPRISE!). We got a quick breakfast (pretzel croissant and a coffee-but this was a REAL coffee, not those sissy espresso "coffees" from France and Italy-this was a giant and that's European giant-American normal sized cup of coffee). Then we walked through the city hall and on to this tower. This tower was actually formerly a church but it was completely bombed in 1943 (guess why) so we visited a little WWII museum and then went up the tower. Hamburg is NOT one of the prettiest cities in Europe, I assume mostly due to the fact that it was almost completely bombed during 1943. Then we slowly walked back toward the train station grabbing a quick cup of our beloved Starbucks and made our connection to Copenhagen. The train to Copenhagen was going fairly smoothly, we had lovely seats in the "children's car" which meant the floor was a carpet with roads on it to play with cars, and other kinds of toys and games. Then the train stopped something was said in German and all the lights turned off-we were moderately worried and asked the conductor and he told us that we needed to leave our stuff and get of the train as it wasn't safe. Turns out it wasn't safe because the train was now in fact on a boat. Our train was on a GIANT ferry complete with restaurants and duty free shopping. The ferry lasted about 20 minutes or so (during which I was singing "I'm on a Boat" the WHOLE time) and then we got back on the train for the last leg to Copenhagen.

When we got to Copenhagen, Melissa's friend Jo met us at the train station. And told us how to get to our hostel and then we exchanged information to meet up later. Our hostel was a little bit out of the way but very nice. After we showered and dropped our stuff off we went back into the city center for dinner. We ate at a Mediterranean Buffet and it was AMAZING, falafel, hummus, all kinds of salad and pita it was amazing. Then we went to meet Jo at a bar called the Laughing Pig-where they of course made us check our coats (I got out of it as I was wearing my sleeveless jacket aka vest) We hung out at the bar for a while but we were all pretty tired so we called it an early night and went back to the hostel.

The next day we woke up and went to get breakfast at some little cafe type place-yogurt and coffee. The weather was really rainy so we took the bus to the Danish Resistance Museum which was FO FREEEEEEE and really cool. Then we walked over to see the famous statue of "The Little Mermaid" and took the train back into the city center. We were hungry so we got some lunch-it might have been at Riz Raz again-still just as good if not better. Then we sauntered slowly back to the train station to catch our train to Stockholm.

We got to Stockholm and walked to our hostel, this was the first time we had to share a room but it was fine. The hostel was pretty clean. Then we went to walk around a little bit. We looked for a bar but there weren't very many good options-they were all to crowded or expensive so we got a Kebab and called it a night. The next morning we took the TBahna (since we heard it was an artistic attraction) to Old Town where we met up with another Colgate Student on the Stockholm program while we got "brunch"-coffee some sort of sandwich or salad and an AMAZING cinnamon bun. Then we went to what we call the "Ship" museum but it's really called the Vasa or something. This was really amazing, it was a ship from the 1600s that had sunk and then rediscovered sometime in the 60's brought back up and fully preserved so you can see the whole ship. After spending quite a bit of time there we walked back (in the snow) to some cafeteria place that was highly recommended, unfortunately it was closed. So we went to look at a highly recommended bakery-also closed. At that point we just found a cafe and got some lunch and sat for a while since the weather was so bad and it was free and then all the museums closed. We slowly walked (From lunch) to where we were getting dinner, by way of the palace. The place we got dinner (with the other Colgate student) was pretty cool, you got a card that looked like a hotel key and then went to these sort of counter booth thing where you swiped your card and ordered and then at the end gave your card to the cashier and paid. Then we headed back to the hostel because we had an early morning the next day.

We woke up about 3:00 am, to catch our bus to the airport which was an hour away, we had bought what we thought were our bus tickets the night before, but we got there and realized we had bought them for the wrong line-luckily the bus driver was really nice about it and let us use them anyway. After our hour bus ride to the airport we went to check the 1 bag we had been using for all 5 us. Unfortunately it was overweight so we had to figure out how to take a bunch of stuff out of it. Our final solution was that everybody really layered up on the clothes-I literally had on everything I had brought with me-jeans, sweats, tee shirt, 3 sweaters, vest, and raincoat, plus a shirt in my pocket and a hat. We eventually got our bag underweight and with our pockets full we went through security-but we made it with no extra charges. We landed in Brussels and had to take a bus to the train station and then an hour train to actually get into Brussels. We arrived in Brussels and had about half an hour before our train to Paris. We were a little bit late getting into Paris and had to change train stations so we went running through the train station to try and make the train we wanted. Unfortunately we didn't make it and to add salt to injury there weren't anymore eurail pass seats on the train so we had to buy full price TGV tickets to Geneva and wait about 2 hours for our train. Then we got on the train and somebody was sitting in my seat. I politely asked her to move (in french) because my friends were sitting close to that seat but she said no and the man across from her said when she was done eating-so I slid in away from my companions. When she got up to return to her seat (which was very close) the man that had been sitting across from her took her seat (the one next to me) and pulled out some food-I assumed now he wanted to eat and I would have to wait longer. Then when the man came to check tickets another passenger told the conductor I was trying to sit in MY seat next to my friends so then the Conductor and this man got into a fight-in which I tried to speak and neither party would let me say anything, but it was eventually decided (without any word from me) that I would sit in the seat that the man had been originally sitting in. It was all very odd. But we finally made it back to Geneva. Safe and sound.

That night I had to prepare for a presentation the following day for which I needed a powerpoint (but my computer was still broken) fortunately Grace needed somebody to take her computer away so she could focus on her reading and I was able to get my presentation done. Wednesday our professor realized how much work and travel we actually all do and lessened our assignments so Matt got up and gave her a big hug and she went a spiel about how "overly friendly" Americans were compared to Europeans and how none of her students at University of Geneva would do anything like that. Thursday we had a quiz in Shain's class and then Grace, Melissa and I set out for our weekend in Salzburg (Sound of Music Land)

When we were looking at trains to Salzburg we wanted to take a night train, but because it's so "close" the night trains got in at 4:20 am we tried to find other options as the hours from 4-8 are generally pretty slow for tourism. We found a night train to Munich which we thought was PERFECT, and it got into Salzburg around 8 am. When we investigated further we realized the train actually went through Salzburg-but we figured what the hell. So we arrived in Salzburg-late almost missing our connection to Munich-but we made it and got some extra sleep, plus for a special bonus there's a Starbucks in the Munich train station , so really what we did was commute an hour and a half (each way) to Starbucks. We got back to Salzburg about 8:30 am or so and went to drop our stuff off at our hostel which was pretty nice basically a hotel with shared bathrooms and a lot of beds in very small rooms. Then we went out to make our pilgrimage to all the Sound of Music sights. We started in Mirabel Gardens where much of the doe a dear song was preformed-when they run through the tunnel and use the steps for notes and dance around the fountain. Then we got some lunch-mediocre but we passed through University Platz (where Gretl drops the tomato) and then we walked for a long, long, long time to see the 16 going on 17 gazebo where we sat and stared as 3 groups came and went, we were AMAZED. As we walked back toward the hostel we walked down Hellbrun Allee where Maria walks on her way to the house for the first time and we actually passed the front facade of the house in the movie. Then we got back to the hostel where we waited for everyone else to arrive. However our co-travelers arrived 2 less than we anticipated. It turned out 1 had overslept and one who had had an interview missed her train as she had gotten on put all of her stuff down and realized she needed a spoon-so leaving all of her stuff (including passport and railpass and wallet) to get a spoon and only returned after the train was pulling away. So we checked in and got ready for dinner. We ended up at this restaurant and had a relaxing dinner-pork cutlet and "bread dumplings" with the regional chocolate cake for dessert. Then we went back to the Hostel to watch the Sound of Music, but the TV was broken so we watched it on Zunaira's computer until people got too loud for us to hear. So we went to bed.

The next morning Grace, Melissa and I set out to see the back of the house where they drink "pink lemonade" and the children and Maria fall of the boat into the water. It was beautiful. Then we walked to see if we could see the amphitheater they preform in at the end of the movie-we could but it was a tour that didn't depart until 2. So we walked around, somebody gave us an amazing free chocolate bar, we saw the fountain from "I have Confidence" and got some lunch-I had some sort of dessert dumpling it was really funny looking. Then went on our tour. The tour was all of the Salzburg stages so we also got to go behind the set of Don Giovanni which was really really cool. As was of course, the Sound of Music stage. There's also a fortress in Salzburg that is in a lot of the background shots during the movie so we went to go tour that, inside were a couple museums (including a creepy marionette museum), then headed back to the hostel to meet up for dinner. We got a recommendation for what we were told was a beer hall but it was much closer to a restaurant that served beer-but it was good. I got dumplings that were very similar to pot stickers followed by this Salzburg dessert that was a GIANT GIANT thing-3 of us split it and couldn't even finish it but it was really good-kind of eggy. So dinner was pretty good except for the really drunk man that kept coming up to us-3 times he came up and we told him to go away every time. Eventually the waitress pulled him away. Then we went back to finish the second half of the movie and go to bed.

We woke up the next morning and visited Nonnberg Abbey where the children try to visit Maria and the Nazis pull up to at the end and then went to catch our train back. Our train back to Geneva was thankfully uneventful and we arrived safe and sound!

Well hopefully I remembered as much as I could...

Low Lights: not having a computer, wearing all of my clothes onto a flight, seat stealing french men

High Lights: Riz Raz, Accidentally seeing Hamburg, Pilgrimage to the Sound of Music