München: couchsurfing in Germany!

So I need to play a little catch-up... thus far I have prided myself on my prompt blog posts (usually because it's much more fun to write a blog than do homework on a Sunday night), but last week I was a little busy and I just did not have time to write a post. I just got back from Barcelona a few hours ago, but LAST weekend, November 18-20, I was in Munich, Germany, and that will be the focus of this plog (my new word for a blog post... I'm tired).

Let's go back in time... November has been a whirlwind of traveling and being super busy! After a fantastic birthday weekend in Geneva, I came back for another busy week in Toledo, and then turned right back around to go to Germany. I went with three other people, but somehow we couldn't get the same flight, so two of us had to fly out early (like sleeping-at-the-airport early) on Friday while the other two flew later. So to make the suckiness of sleeping at the airport even better, Roberto and I went to a Rodrigo y Gabriela concert Thursday night in Madrid before heading to the airport. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!! Perhaps one of the greatest concerts I've been to.

Roberto and I arrived in Munich around noon, and had four hours to explore the city before the other two arrived. So we pretty much just walked down one road as far as we could, then turned around and walked back on another road. We started out in the main plaza, Marienplatz, and walked down a big shopping street. We found a cool outdoor skating rink, a cute little park, a beautiful church, christmas decorations/markets everywhere, and then went to the English Gardens. This park was HUGE (bigger than Central Park, according to some internet source), and we barely walked through 1/4 of it. There were people surfing on a river, cute dogs everywhere, people slacklining and hammocking, sitting, walking, eating, even someone RIDING A HORSE! We just sat for a while and enjoyed the view before trekking back to Marienplatz to meet up with Andrew and Lauren. Once we found them, we headed over to the Viktualienmarkt, a glorious outdoor market of food and even some Christmas-y goods! We settled on some bratwurst, our idea of stereotypical German fare.

This trip we decided to try something new, and instead of staying in a hostel we did couchsurfing!! So we met up with our host "Baba Kace" and he took us to an Irish pub for a drink. Of course, when in Germany, drink beer.... so Lauren and I had cider. Then we headed back to his place, which was a little outside the city, and he made us dinner! Some traditional bavarian food, which was excellent! We pretty much just hung out at his house all night, drank amazing homemade chai tea, and talked with him and his friends. Our host was very interesting; he lived in India for 6 months recently, which seemed to have influenced him a lot, and he had a lot of cool stories to tell about that. I feel like couchsurfing definitely changed our traveling experience: instead of just going to a hostel at the end of the day, we got to sit down with locals and actually learn about them/their culture, share some of our culture, etc, which I feel is exactly the idea of couchsurfing. It was very cool!

Saturday we decided to get our history on. There is a concentration camp memorial site in Dachau (very close to Munich), and we thought that this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually see some of the history that we have learned about all our lives. It was very sad (even a little creepy when a dense fog set in), but it was extremely interesting, and I'm definitely glad I did it. By the time we got back into Munich and ate some lunch, it was starting to get foggy/dark/cold there as well, so we didn't have a lot of time for sightseeing. We went to the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady), the Theatinkirche St. Kajetan (another church), and saw a bit of the English Gardens before we decided it was just too dark and foggy!

After holing ourselves up in a bookstore cafe for a while we decided it was time to call it quits in the city and head back to Baba Kace's. He cooked us another lovely meal, showed us how to make his chai tea, and we sat around for some more talking and sharing! Later we decided to check out Munich's nightlife and Baba Kace took us out to a club that was playing old funk music or something... it was awesome! After some funky dancing, Roberto and I again headed to the airport for another early flight, while the other two hung around Munich for another couple of hours. Then I returned home, this busy busy week began, and I ran off to Barcelona.... new post coming soon!

Munich in pictures:

Marienplatz

English Gardens

Bratwurst with sweet mustard... yummmm....

Dachau

cider, beer, cider, beer

Happy Birthday in Suiza! (And a little bit of France as well)

Dear future birthdays... you have a lot to live up to. This past Friday was the much-anticipated "ultimate wish-day," November 11, 2011, 11/11/11 ... aka: my 21st birthday. For years, I anticipated this day as an epic birthday, one birthday to rule them all, a celebration extraordinaire with all of my best friends! Then one day Emilie (a fellow November baby) and I realized that we would both be studying abroad during our 21st birthdays! Honestly, I was a little sad that I wouldn't be at home for my birthday... HOW WRONG I WAS!

EMILIE!

To start of the birthday extravaganza, Emilie came to visit Toledo! After Paris, she and Nolan went on an adventure through France and Spain, and then ended up in Toledo last Sunday. It was lovely! She stayed for about four whole days, and in between classes, homework and extensive Switzerland planning, we were able to grab a chocolate con churros, wander/get lost in Toledo, and even get some early birthday drinks! Luckily Nolan had a little more free time than lame me, so he was able to show her more essential Toledo before they jetted off for Madrid.

SUIZA:

Since we had a pretty early flight on Friday, we were originally going to leave Thursday night and sleep in the airport... but that SUCKS. Instead, we decided last minute that we could cut it super close and take the earliest bus from Toledo! So on Friday, after some drama regarding our boarding passes and Kelsey almost not making the flight, Kelsey, Lauren, Roberto and I made it to Geneva without any more problems! We got into downtown Geneva, saw the Jet d'Eau (enormo fountain), and walked around a bit while we searched for our tram, but we decided that we should get to our apartment before any exploring.

THE APARTMENT. Funny story... the main reason we went to Geneva was that a while ago we found super cheap plane tickets. So when we went to book our hostel about a week before, we found out that there is literally no way to stay in Geneva on a student budget. We spent the entire week up until the trip researching couchsurfing, airbnb, hostels, cheap hotels, STRESSING, and we went back and forth between a million different options before we found a cheap airbnb apartment that was actually just across the French border! It turned out to be amazing, and it was only about a 15-minute tram ride from downtown Geneva. And everything was cheaper in France!

When we got to the apartment, we first ogled our host’s collection of gaming systems/video games…it was impressive! (Of course, despite an enormous collection including such newfangled contraptions like a Wii, the old Mario for Nintendo won the day!) Then we got ourselves to the grocery store, bought food for the weekend, and in our very own kitchen, we whipped up a lunch of scrambled eggs and potatoes!

The girls, working it in the kitchen!

After gorging ourselves and just lazing around the house, we finally got our butts into gear and went back to Geneva. Of course it was only about 6pm and already dark… so we did the nighttime tour. We walked along the river, saw the lake, the fountain at night, a lot of swans, looked at some Swiss chocolate stores and some cool monuments. HOWEVER, we soon realized that everything closes really early… like 7:30pm. We actually got kicked out of a supermarket. We wandered into the “old town” and got a glimpse of the Cathedral St-Pierre at night, and found a little café for some coffee and hot chocolate. Since we couldn’t actually find any bars to celebrate the big 21, we decided to head back across the border, but not before stocking up on some chocolate bars!! Back at the apartment, we celebrated with a stir-fry dinner, classy drinks, chocolate, video games, card games, and good conversation! Some may call this lame, I would call it perfect! And I'm the birthday girl, so what I say goes!

Since we were in Switzerland, and we could see mountains from our apartment, I was determined to go to the Alps. There is not much that I love more than mountains. Earlier in the week we had found a sweet deal where we could take a cable car up into the mountains for only €7.60 round trip… um YES PLEASE. So on Saturday we got some directions from our host about how to get there, and we took a few buses to what we thought was the cable car place… of course on Saturdays our bus didn’t go all the way there. The bus driver told us to just walk along this road and we’d get there. We started walking, the sidewalk turned into the side of a highway, and eventually we saw, far in the distance, the cable going up into the mountains… at least a 30-minute walk away! Oh well, what were we going to do! So we stuck it out, did a little hiking and finally made it to some cute little town in France where we bought our tickets, hopped in a little square box and ascended into the clouds!

Mountains. Clouds. 

I was a little scared that we would go up into the clouds, and not actually be able to see anything… but when the cable car came up ABOVE the clouds, it was amazing. We got out of the car, and immediately ran over to the edge, where we saw a sea of clouds with mountain peaks popping up all around us. There was even a paraglider who took a dive into the clouds! We ran around, frolicked, saw some more awesome views, got some hot chocolate, and then we went UP.

After hiking upwards, we came out onto a huge field with absolutely gorgeous views of clouds and snowy mountains all around! We mostly just stood and stared until we got too cold! And while we were descending, we saw a gorgeous sunset over the clouds! IT WAS AMAZING. Although I must clarify, technically we were not IN the Alps, but the French Prealps. Pretty much the same thing…

The hills are alive with the sound of music!!!

After this, we were not exactly sure how to get back to Geneva, but some nice people on the mountain told us to take the 8 bus all the way back into town. So after waiting at a random bust stop for a long time, we finally saw some normal-looking people and decided to ask if we were indeed in the right place. Luckily they spoke English and informed us we were not, but they were going the same way! So we followed them to the correct bus stop, and found out that one of them was Australian, and the other was an American nuclear physicist working at CERN…. nice. We chatted them up on the bus until going our separate ways downtown.

Your basic cheese on the left, and Mediterranean on the right

Once again, we thought we would make it to Geneva during the day, but alas twas not to be… So we spent another night walking around the city, and finally we found a place to have dinner. And not just any dinner… FONDUE. We went to this cute little place and got two types of fondue, the basic cheese option, and a Mediterranean fondue that had some tomato mixed in! It was fantastic! And it even came with potatoes on the side so Lauren could fondue too! (And we were so proud of ourselves that this was the most expensive thing we did the whole weekend!)

Then we headed back to France for another relaxing night at our lovely apartment, drinking hot cocoa, eating chocolate, and playing video games, the usual. We had an early flight on Sunday, and luckily the guy who owned the place came over at 4:30am to drive us to the airport! He was super nice, and we realized that we definitely should have met up with him/talked to him earlier because he told us about so many cool things that we could have done in Geneva! Oh well... next time!

Just wait, the fun doesn’t end at the airport… When we got on the plane it was still dark out, but by the time we took off and passed through the clouds we looked out the window and saw a faint orange glow above the line of mountains and sea of clouds! Despite being extremely tired, both Kelsey and I couldn’t help but keep our faces glued to the window as we watched the orange become brighter, the streaky clouds above the mountains change from purple to bright pink, until finally a burning orange sun started peaking up over the mountains! It was hands down, the most beautiful sunrise I have ever witnessed.

PURE BEAUTY 

I don't think I could have asked for a better way to spend my 21st birthday! It came about randomly and unexpectedly, but I was able to spend a wonderful weekend relaxing with good friends, eating chocolate, climbing the (pre)Alps, and just enjoying the view (yes, both literally and figuratively)!