Another Erasmus Excursion

Spaβ und nass.

Those words pretty much sum up the weekend I spent in Chiemsee and Salzburg - fun and wet. It was a grand old time, but I haven't been that wet for such an extended period of time since... well probably since the last canoe trip I went on!

The bus came by bright and early on Friday morning and off we headed to Chiemsee. It was a long 5 hour bus ride (made much longer by the guy sitting next to me who thought it would be a fantastic idea to sit on half of my seat!) but the scenery more than made up for it. The further south we went the more mountains we saw, and the further into Bavaria we went. And Bavaria means a few things: flowers draping off the balconies, people wearing Dirndls and Lederhosen as their everyday clothing, and a very sing-songy dialect that's super hard to understand. By the time we arrived at our Gasthof (a little custy hotel) we were surrounded by mountains - which looked even cooler in the rain because there were all these low-hanging clouds. It reminded me of the rainforest actually. I kept expecting to hear Tarzan call :)

This is the Gasthof we stayed in for the weekend. My room is on the right-hand side of the top balcony.

We had the most beautiful view over Chiemsee. Much better than the random flatscreen tv we had in the room...
Looking out over the lake you can see land on the left - that's Fraueninsel. We didn't end up going there because it was pouring rain and all the sights are outside. But we did go to Herrenchiemsee to check out one of King Ludwig II's castles. It's modelled after Versailles, but never got completed. It's a beautiful castle - although you've got to shake your head at some of the things inside. The tapestries surrounding Ludwig's bed took 20 women 7 years to finish sewing!

It was quite nice to get inside - as you can see in the picture below it was raining. Now I'm sure we all look quite happy (you know, smiling for the picture and all) but that's not entirely true. You see, I decided that if it was going to rain all weekend, it was going to be humid. Wrong! But I left my jacket back in Bamberg. So I was cold. And my shoes proceeded to dye my feet purple for the whole weekend. But even when you're wet, cold, and have purple feet you can't help but enjoy yourself in a castle.

Here everyone's much happier - we're on the heated boat ride back to our hotel where dry clothes and hot showers await! Yipee!

Day 2 took place in Austria - in the wonderful city of Salzburg. Even on another rainy, gloomy day it was a beautiful city. We did a city walking tour and got to see most of the famous sites. Unfortunately it was a little hard to hear the tour guide - but that's what happens when you have 50 people with umbrellas trying to crowd around one person!

One of the stops on the tour is the Salzburg Cathedral. It's beautiful inside, but our group got a pleasant surprise when a choir walked up to the front and started to sing. I have never heard anything like it. The acoustics were phenomenal.

The picture below is of Mirabellgarten. And above in the distance you can faintly see the fortress that sits up on the hill. A lot of the movie "The Sound of Music" was filmed in Salzburg - I think some of it in the garden here as well.

Salzburg is also famous for being the city in which Mozart was born. We passed by Mozarts Geburtshaus (the house Mozart was born in), ate a Mozart pretzel (wasn't really all that good), and learned a little about the famous Mozart candies. Turns out the red and gold Mozart candies are not the originals. There is a blue and silver candy that is the original, but the red and gold brand had better marketing, and became the world-famous brand. You learn something new every day.

This is the smallest house in Salzburg. Looks rather squishy...

We wandered through the streets in the old city - it's quite dangerous when all the umbrella's are up!

Day 3 took us over to Berchtesgaden. First stop: the Salt Mines. Boy had it changed since the last time I was there 10 years ago. The uniforms have improved greatly!

We travelled some 650 meters into the hill and heard all about how they mine the salt. Interesting, but the best part is the slides you use to get to the lower levels!

After that, it was over to Konigsee for the rest of the afternoon. It actually stopped raining for most of the afternoon! Konigsee is a beautiful lake that lies between a bunch of mountain. So you sit on the lake and feel very small. It's quite the feeling.

We didn't take the actual boat tour, but we did rent rowboats. It sure felt great to get out on the water. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I for one love wearing flourescent orange. It just sets off the colour of my eyes so nicely...

Yep, you can see our PFD's glowing in the distance.

We only had an hour on the water, which wasn't such a bad thing. When we turned around to come home, there were some heavy rainclouds waiting for us. Although that certainly doesn't hamper the quaintness of the village.

We stopped for a brief cup of coffee - it was cold on the lake and I couldn't feel my hands anymore! Before it was once again time to hop on the bus and head home. It was perfect timing actually, it poured most of the way home.

I do love the rain - and dancing in it is super fun - but it sure was nice to crawl into a warm dry bed at the end of the trip.

Sandy and Erin take on Scotland!

Well folks, it's time for another update. This time it's all about Scotland!! I have always wanted to travel to this country, and this year my dream became a reality. My friend Erin and I went to school together at the University of Ottawa. We always had a grand old time wandering around Parliament and the Byward Market. So when I found out that she was doing her Teacher Training at the University of Edinburgh I realized we just had to get together. So I hopped on a plane and took off for a visit.

Now I don't know about all the rest of you, but when I think of the north I think Northern Canada and Russia. Oh ya, and Alaska too. But I certainly don't think of Edinburgh. But turns out it's much further north than I thought. Toronto sits on the 43rd parallel. Edinburgh on the 56th. That's the same latitude as Moscow! Which meant that even though it's far into spring, the air still had a wonderful crisp feeling to it. And that the sun got up every day around 4:30 and set around 11:00.

The other thing I had heard, was that Scotland was a fairly wet country. So it came as no surprise when I checked the weather forecast and saw that it was supposed to be rainy and fairly chilly all weekend long. So imagine my astonishment when the day turned out like this:

We just had a beautiful time frolicking about in the Royal Botanic Gardens all afternoon. And eventually we stumbled across the Giant Hedge That Tried To Eat The World! See it's huge, and I'm very little (for once!)

Now if there's one thing that is associated with Scotland, it's Haggis. Minced lamb meat boiled in a sheep stomach. How's that for appetizing? Anyone? But it was Scotland, and I could just picture the looks of horror on everyone's faces when I came back and said that I hadn't tried it. So we headed up the Royal Mile to the Royal McGregor and ordered some traditional "Haggis, neeps and tatties".

Here's the before picture - "Look ma, it's Haggis!" And surprisingly enough I look fairly excited. (That could be because it smelled absolutely delicious!)

As you can also see it's piled nicely (possibly to look more appetizing?) - the haggis meat on the bottom, then the mashed potatoes (that's the tatties) and mashed turnip on top (neeps).

So I took a deep breath, grabbed a forkful, and...

Well you can see the results.

It was one of the best things I've ever eaten! So flavourful, with a bit of a kick at the end... Mmmm...

That was just day 1. On Saturday we decided to take a Scotline Bus tour so that I could see the Highlands. It's a 600 km, 12 hour journey from Edinburgh up to Inverness and back - with several stops along the way. Like Loch Ness! That's right folks - I have officially boated on the famous Loch Ness. But even though I searched and searched, I didn't see Nessie. Shucks...

The day started out pretty gloomy - it was a sky just waiting to rain on all the tourists. But once again, the weather turned out lovely. It only rained while we were on the bus, and it actually got so hot on the lake, we had to take off all our layers.

Yep. That's Erin and me sitting on the front of the boat as we approach Urquhart Castle (a famous ruin of a castle that sits on the shores of Loch Ness). It was so beautiful with all the craggs surrounding us. And the gorse bushes were in bloom, so there were lovely spots of yellow dotting the hills. Unfortunately, the heather doesn't bloom until later in the summer, so we didn't get to see any of that.

We had about 45 minutes to wander among the ruins of Urquhart Castle - again, so beautiful. I just loved the highlands - it's such a stark, wild beauty. And windy as anything!

Now when you get into the Highlands, everything goes biliungual. English and Gaelic. Very neat sounding language, but super hard to learn. I read once that it's a language with "slippery vowels" and it's so true! The yellow on the road signs is Gaelic.




On the way back we stopped for a couple photo opportunities. The one below is by Ben Nevis - the tallest mountain in Scotland.

We also passed through Glencoe - which has a very neat story of treason and murder and escape to go with it. Finally, dinner in Stirling, and then back to the capital.

Sunday was a nice lazy day. We slept in a little - the Highland air plain tuckered us out! But after lunch we decided to go climb Arthur's Seat. It doesn't actually have anything to do with King Arthur, it's more likely a corruption of the gaelic word for archer. In any case it was a nicely strenuous climb. That's Erin and a couple of her friend standing below the cragg that Arthur's Seat lies on.

There's a path most of the way up, but to actually get to the monument at the top, anything goes. You could climb up everyday for a month and never take quite the same route. Yay climbing. Now for all you LDPer's out there - we certainly should have been clipped into something!

This is a view up the Royal Mile. We took a free walking tour around Edinburgh on Monday. It was a fabulous, informative, funny 3 hour tour. Which, by the way, also got me a free upgrade on my Starbucks before it started!

One of the things that I learned on the tour was about this seemingly random heart located on the sidewalk. There used to be a tax booth here, and they decorated it with a heart (who knows why, possibly to try and make people enjoy paying their taxes?). People used to spit on the booth as they passed by. When the booth was eventually taken down, they left a tribute to it, in the shape of a heart in the cobblestones. It is the only place in Edinburgh where it's legal to spit on the ground. So Erin did. Or at least pretended to :)

All in all it was a fabulous trip. We didn't do too much on Tuesday either - Erin had an end of year barbeque to go to, so I wandered around the city myself. I checked out the Tartan weaving museum, the National Museum of Scotland and had Haggis one more time before I left the country. But, I think my favourite part, was that I got to have a cup of coffee in the Elephant House Cafe. Yep, that's the cafe in which J.K. Rowling wrote most of the first Harry Potter. It was so cool!!!

Now, I know this picture seems a little random, but I just couldn't leave it out. Because, if you look closely (and I apologize for the angle, it was way above my head), you will see a figure of an angel playing the bagpipes. Only in a church in Scotland would you find this. I got quite the chuckle out of it. Hope you do too :)






Well lads and lassies, bye for now.

I'm baaack! Boy oh boy the last couple of weeks have been super exciting - in other words, I've been travelling up a storm. But one thing I learn over and over and over, no matter how great your trip is, it sure feels good to come home.

So a few weeks ago I found out that another exchange student (a girl I'd only met once or twice) was heading off to Trier. It's the oldest city in Germany, and my very first German teacher told me that I should visit if I ever got the chance. So I decided there was no harm in asking to join her. I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

But the worst certainly didn't happen and Maria told me that I was more than welcome to come along. I was given only one warning - Maria (who's from Finland) was going to visit her Finnish friend Anu, so there was a high probability that I would hear a whole heck of a lot of Finnish. No problemo! I was perfectly content to sit there and listen (to what seemed to me to be gobbledegook), fascinated by the fact that it was a real language. And in the process I discovered that I could never learn Finnish, because I can't roll my r's worth beans!

After a 6 hour train ride through some simply gorgeous countryside, Maria and I arrived in Trier. First item on the menu - wandering around the city and seeing the sights. Below, I'm standing in front of the Porta Nigra - a gate left over from when the Romans occupied the city.

After that we saw lots of other historical buildings - churches, a palace, the roman baths, fountains... It put a smile on my face for the whole day :)

That's Maria and I sitting outside the palace ejoying the sunshine and the greenery.

After marvelling over the Roman baths (and taking some very silly pictures) we stumbled across this statue of a giant foot. Now, I thought it'd be quite fun to try and take a picture where the foot appeared to be stepping on me. However (and this will be a surprise to everyone...), I fell over. So instead we got a fun picture of Sandy after she fell off the giant foot. Boo hoo

(if you look really closely you can see that someone decided to paint it's baby toe red)

Here's a beautiful picture of Maria and Anu outside the Catholic cathedral in town. We could not have asked for nicer weather the whole time we were there. It was hot and sunny without a cloud in the sky.

Later on we walked beside the river and stopped at one of the many restaurants to enjoy a glass of wine in the late afternoon warmth. It was actually quite bizarre - Trier sits in the wine region of Germany. So not only had Maria and I left the south (and with that the southern accent), but we'd also left beer country. And, to top it all off, I don't think I saw a single person wearing a Dirndle or Leiderhosen all weekend. It's funny the things you miss... :)

Well, since we were on the western side of the country (and we weren't sure when we were going to be back there) we decided to do a day trip up to Colonge. And you can't go to Colonge and not climb up to the top of the Cathedral tower. Or at least that's what we told Maria. Clearly she's super pleased at the thought...

"I ain't climbin nuttin'"

Well she climbed it all right. We all did. All 600 steps. Up the small spiral staircase (picture a staircase from a medival castle). Around and around and around and around. And the best part was, it was the same staircase for people coming back down. That was a heck of a lot of fun when we had to pass the guy who decided to wear his hiking backpack... Very squishy. The view from the top was lovely.

And once we'd walked back down (which I actually found worse - it was totally hypnotizing) it was clearly time for an ice cream break. Mmmm ice cream.

The ice cream here in Germany is fabulous. There are a lot of Italian ice cream cafes, where they make the ice cream from scratch. And the have hundreds of flavours - vanilla, chocolate, tiramisu, mango, pistacchio, raspberry... It's brilliant!

Just thought I'd throw in my "artsy" shot of the cathedral. There was so much detail to the masonry!

Monday we headed out on another day trip. This time we left the country and went to... Luxembourg!! How cool is that?! It's a beautiful, small, rich country - the valley below was my favourite part. The bridge you can see in the bottom right was built in the 1400's or so. Again the weather was amazing!

We walked past the ducal residence - not the prettiest building I've seen in my travels, but so far the only one with a guard marching out front.

While we were walking along we found an outdoor New Orleans Jazz festival, so we decided to stop and listen for a while. And to try the local beer 'Bofferding'. How's that for a funny name?

Our last morning we decided to start the journey home early. That way we could stop in the tiny riverside village of Cochem. The route back to Bamberg travels along the river Mosel, and Maria had heard that this town in particular was a great place to stop. Plus, it had a castle. On a hill. More climbing... hooray!

Halfway up Maria and I found a Bamberg sign. Woohoo a little piece of home :)

And here you can see the view from the castle. It really was a cute little town.

Well, after a tour through the castle and a light lunch on the river it was time to catch our train and head back home. We almost missed our last connection because the train was late, but luckily it was just a close call.

And like I said at the beginning, coming home is always a great feeling (especially when the vegetable you accidentally left in your fridge didn't go bad!). But it was only for a short while, because 2 days after I got home I took off for Scotland! Wooohooo

Just you wait - it was a faboulous trip!

Regensburg for Christi Himmelfahrt

Hi again! So living in Bamberg means I'm living in a very very catholic city. And that has one brilliant benefit - Catholic holidays! So Thursday the 21 of May was Christi Himmelfahrt - a celebration of Jesus' ascension to heaven. And as a result all the stores were closed and classes were cancelled. So my friends and I decided to take of for the lovely town of Regensburg for the day.

Aleksandra's boyfriend was there with his car, so we hopped onto the Autobahn (very quickly hitting the lovely cruising speed of 160 km/h) and drove to Regensburg. It was a beautiful day - overcast and chilly, with the threat of rain hanging over our heads. But that didn't stop us from finding a pretty church and taking a picture. (left to right: Zach, Aleksandra, me and Rebecca). Clearly I'm not tall enough already, so I jumped up onto the podium.

Eventually, the threat of rain turned into real rain. But who's complaining about that when you have an umbrella on hand? Not Rebecca and I!

(and I would just like to mention, behind us was an open air concert celebrating Christi Himmelfahrt - where we did see a bunch of priests, white collars and all, rocking out at one point in time)

But the rain didn't last all day - after lunch in a really cute italian restaurant (where I did manage to order a pizza without cheese. Mmm diced garlic and tomato sauce...) it cleared right up and we had a beautiful sunny afternoon. Which made the old bridge over the river that much nicer. You can see below the building at the start of the bridge. Unfortunately the traffic lights weren't as cool as they were in Berlin. *sigh*

From the far side of the river we were able to take a picture with the whole cathedral in the background. I tried from closer up... but unfortunately the building was just too darn big. (left to right: Rebecca, Zach, me, Aleksandra, Matthiau)

And then just because...

Yep. Europe and I are getting along just dandily.

Weekend in Berlin

Hey look at me! I'm in Berlin! Peace...

Yep, that was officially the first thing that I wanted to see when we arrived in Berlin - the Berlin Wall. Luckily it is the first thing you see when you get out from the main subway station, so I didn't have long to wait.

Uni Bamberg offered a weekend-long trip to Berlin for all the exchange students, so I got to travel to a city just filled with history. And let me tell you, I certainly played the tourist. Below you can see me chatting with a soldier dressed in uniform from west Germany (the man sitting down) and east Germany (the man standing in the back). It was so cool - if you had your passport with you, they would stamp it with all the checkpoint stamps from Eastern Germany. Unfortunately I didn't have my real passport, but after a few minutes of talking about Canada (with my oversized I'm-so-excited-about-life smile) I did get a free fake visa with all the stamps! So cool!

Once we had finished gawking at the wall - and it certainly was interesting seeing the differences between the graffiti from east and west Germany - as well as all the surrounding information boards we decided to head on to the next biggest tourist attraction in Berlin: the Brandenburg Gate. However, to get there, we had to cross the road. Not such a big deal you might be thinking. But then you take a closer look at the Berlin traffic lights...

The little walking man is different! *gasp*

Yep, that's right. Berlin has the oh-so-famous "Ampelmann" to guide people safely across the road. If you look close enough you can even see the red man. Apparently Mr. Ampelmann is a big deal - they even have an Ampelmann store (outrageously overpriced of course).

Along the way to the gate you run across the new Jewish War Memorial. It's a really neat, interactive structure - you can walk in and amongst the coloums. It's certainly got an interesting atmosphere, especially when you're walking between coloums that are taller than you are. I tried to get a nice picture... but as you can clearly see, I had some trouble and fell over. Big surprise... :)

As you approach the gate, you start to notice that there are cobblestones running randomly through the middle of the road. Turns out they're not as random as they might appear. The cobblestones mark the path that the actual wall took through the city. 1961-1989. Wow, what a crazy piece of history - and the most interesting part is that you can still see the city working to be unified. When the wall came down they had to reconnect roads and railways; to make one city out of two.


And here we are! We finally made it to the gate. I won't bother naming everyone, but it's pretty neat to think our group was made up of people from Canada, France, Korea, Latvia and Germany. I love the people this exchange has allowed me to meet!

The soldiers were stamping passports here as well, but I got a picture instead. And I'm not exactly sure how it fits in... but behind the person taking the picture was a random character from Star Wars (one of those dudes in the white plastic armour that work for Darth Vader)... Ceratinly made me laugh!

Next stop: Checkpoint Charlie. Certainly a bit of a juniour burger, but one of those things you have to see as part of the whole experience.

Then it was time to pause for an ice cream break before a 3 hour tour of the parliament buildings. Really really gorgeous old building from the outside... but I certainly didn't need the rooftop tour to last 3 hours. It was cold and windy up there!

But everything was made better when (at 10:00) we sat down for dinner. And what should happen to catch my eye? A N.Y. Cheeseburger (don't judge me for eating North American food! There's only so much schnitzel a person can eat and all the Döner places were closed at that time). But imagine my suprise when the waitress placed this down in front of me (ok... so this is actually my friends hamburger, mine came with fries)

What sort of burger comes on a piece of garlic baguette (with no top half of the bun) and a baked potato on the side?! Oh boy we laughed long and hard over that one! But in the end it didn't matter because it tasted oh-so good.

The next morning dawned rainy and cold. Perfect weather for a round the city bus tour. And luckily enough, when it ended the sun was shining. Below is a picture of me standing in front of a piece of the wall that's still standing in it's original location.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty touristy. We walked past the Berlin Cathedral and a really ritzy chocolate shop, where I took this picture of a chocolate frog prince. Not the most impressive statue they had (that was probably a tie between a model of the Brandenburg Gate or the Titantic...), but my favourite.

As I was walking back to see the statue of the golden angel, I passed by the square where Hitler had thousands of books burnt. There's a plaque in the middle of it commemorating the event. Like I said before, so much history. It's too bad not all history is happy.

Another thing I loved about Berlin was the Tiergarten in the middle of the city. It's this huge garden and it's beautiful! On my way to the angel I ran across a walk for cancer that was running around the garden. And to motivate the participants, they had percussion groups playing along the route. I only saw two of them, but that's because I could't tear myself away to find any more. The music was just too fun! So instead, once they'd finished up I decided to wander through the garden for a bit.

Are you waving back yet?!

Later that evening we went to see Illuminati. German is hard enough to understand when they're not talking about anti-matter and Vatican conclaves... but it was still entertaining.

The next day dawned bright, sunny and hot. Perfect weather to get on a bus a travel all day... not! We did have a brief stop in Potsdam, where we got a tour of the Neues Palais (beautiful!) before hopping on the bus and starting the 5 hour trip home.

The best part of the trip home, was the random thunderstorm we hit, about an hour outside of Bamberg. We were all warm and cozy on the bus - with a panoramic view of some of the best fork lighting I've seen in years! And then my luggage and I got to dance in the rain on my way back to my room. What a good end to a brilliant trip, for I do love the rain :)

Hugs from Germany