Yes it has been so long since my last post in February! So much has happened since then. I had several visitors come and I traveled quite a bit too since I had a 2 month break from Valentines Day to April 20th! After visiting Simona in February I had a couple weeks until the 1st semester would be over and that meant, two 10 page papers I had to finish, in GERMAN! That was a bunch of stress on my shoulders especially since I have never even written a 10 page paper in English before. So I got to it and with a lot of work and late nights in my computer chair, I finally finished them and handed them in!
So my 2 month break began with my friend Ashley Edge and little brother Adam coming to visit me and Eric. Ashley came to Germany a day before Adam, which was a little bit chaotic because Eric wasn't going to be able to pick Adam up in Frankfurt, but then last second figured out he had time to get him, which was great for me. So I went to pick up Ashley in Frankfurt and I had found out the night before that her flight from Moline to Chicago had be canceled and she was going to have to take a bus all the way to Chicago and totally take another flight to Europe. She ended up getting to Chicago by bus and then Chicago to London and then London finally to Frankfurt. She got in 6 hours later than she was supposed to. So I hung out with Eric in Mannheim until she was supposed to get in.
Once I found her at the meeting point in Terminal 1 she had some older looking lady with her. Ashley had told me that this lady helped her carry her bags and get to the meeting point because she had no idea where it was. So I was thinking in my head, wow this lady is really helpful and kind. Ashley then proceeded to tell me that this woman had a question for me, I was thinking maybe she wants to ask me something in German, but wow was I surprised at what she asked me next. The woman said, "Do you know if there is any way that I could get a hold of Kanye West because there is a poem I wrote about your president Obama and I would love for Kanye to rap it for me!" HAHA! I was speechless, what was this woman thinking? Like just because I am American I obviously know every celebrity and personally know our president? She wouldn't stop asking how she could do that, and strangely enough she has my phone number because Ashley had texted me on her phone letting me know she was at the meeting point, so this woman has texted me twice since this event wondering if I had looked into the question she asked me before about Kanye West, I have yet to respond to this crazy woman. After we were done trying to get away from her, this woman pulled us both in for a hug and gave us kisses on our cheeks...lol, weirdest first experience for Ashley ever. I was telling Ashley later, people DON'T usually act like this in Europe, she was just crazy. Even crazier this weirdo woman used to work in the airport and got fired apparently, and now she still just comes to the airport every day wandering around the terminals aimlessly.
After that weird run in, Ashley and I got a train to Freiburg, it was nice to chat again since we hadn't really gotten to talk all year and hadn't seen each other since last summer. Once we got back to Freiburg we just hung out in my apartment and fell asleep.
The next day Adam was set to arrive in Germany! Eric went to pick him up and they both came to Freiburg because we were leaving the next day for Interlaken, Switzerland to go skiing. Once they got to Freiburg we went to my apartment to drop off his stuff and then we all walked around the lake and went up into the lookout tower to take some pictures, it was a nice relaxing afternoon. Later that night we were meeting up with my friends Shane and Kelly and their visitors; Kelly's parents were in Freiburg and so was Shane's older brother. We all went out to eat at a place called the Feierling Brauerei (Brewery). The food and the beer was awesome! It was nice to meet everyone's families and just talk all night. After dinner we headed to Schlappen, which is a really popular pub in Freiburg. Kelly's parents decided to go back to their hotel and sleep and let us youngsters run free. Once we were in Schlappen I had the idea of doing Absinth shots, Absinth is illegal in the USA because it used to have hallucination effects when you drink it, but now it is just purely high alcohol content and bright green. The way you take the shot is pretty unique too, you burn some sugar over the top of it and the pour water in and mix it all together once the sugar is burned and caramelized. After the shot we all just hung out and drank a couple beers, it was a fun night in Freiburg.
The next morning we had to leave at 8 am to catch our train to Interlaken, it was going to be a 3 hour trip so we had time to doze off a little bit. The scenery was so pretty, we went by the lake in Zurich and saw the Alps on the way too, it was beautiful, and I am pretty sure it was Adam's first time seeing mountains. We finally arrived in Interlaken and found our hostel called Balmer's Herberge, it is the most popular hostel in Interlaken, there were even signs on the road leading us there. The hostel was really cute and very helpful, I was bummed everything was soooo expensive in Switzerland because there were a ton of fun outdoor activities to do besides skiing. We opted for skiing. So there was a place right next to our hostel that had ski equipment to rent. After renting our skis we headed to find somewhere to eat, we walked for a while and then out of nowhere saw a Hooters! It was the weirdest thing because who knew that Hooters went international. We wanted to go there because Eric and I hadn't had wings in foreverrrrr! It was a nice taste of America again. After eating we just went back to the hostel and hung out for a while until dinner. That night we decided to go look around town for something cheap for dinner and found a Mexican place, it was so tiny and barely any room for us to sit, we looked at the menu and everything was about 30 Swiss Franks for a meal, which was a bit ridiculous, considering in dollars that would be about $25. So we ate our not so Mexican dinner (Europeans have no idea what Mexican food really is, but it satisfied my hunger.) After dinner we decided to go back to the hostel and go to the club that was at our hostel, it was jam packed with people our age and people spilling beer every where, a little too cramped. All of a sudden Adam reached back in his pocket and couldn't find his wallet and was freaking out thinking someone had stolen it from him. We started to get frantic because there was about $100 in there and all of his IDs and Debit card, I went up to the bouncer and said I think my brother got his wallet stolen, but he looked at me strangely and was like, there's nothing I can do about that. So we rushed inside the hostel and were about to message my mom online letting her know what happened until we heard a guy say, "Hey Adam." I was wondering...how would anyone know my brother's name. He came up to us and asked if he lost his wallet and Adam was like, YES! So thankfully this guy who worked at the hostel had found it next to a computer and everything was still inside the wallet, this was only one of the lucky events Adam experienced in Europe.
The next day we decided to go skiing, we didn't realize how far away it was to get to the mountain with the ski resorts, we opted for a mountain called Maennlichen (Manly), it composed of a lot of different levels of skiing. Once we got up there it was really scary because the hills all looked straight down and Eric and I aren't very good skiers, so we were a little reluctant to start. Adam hopped right on his skis and went down, I never knew he was such a good skier because the last time I skied with him was about 4 years ago and all he would do was just go straight down the hill at super fast speeds and not weave in and out at ALL, which really scared me because skiing in the Alps is nothing like skiing at Snowstar in Illinois. Ashley also started down the hill on her snowboard, she was pretty excited for it since she hadn't snowboarded all winter. As for Eric and I, we just sat and had something to drink for a bit and just take in the view. After relaxing at the resort restaurant for a while, we finally got the courage to go down the hill. Just a little side note, this was Eric's SECOND time ever skiing, the last time he went was in 8th grade for the 8th grade ski trip, which was at Snowstar. It was probably one of the funniest things I had ever seen, even though I know Eric was extremely frustrated with life at this point because every 5 ft. he went on skis, he would wipe out. On a couple occasions Eric even slid down the hill on his butt and was going faster than I was on my skis, it was hilarious because he just accidentally fell while he was walking down the hill and just kept rolling down backwards and spinning around. That was the only run we did the whole day, I think it took about 2 hours. We were just about to go to a restaurant half way down the hill and have a drink and we saw Adam on the ski lift and told him to come and meet us. I think Adam made it down the same distance we had done in about 12 minutes. HAHA! So the four of us sat and had bratwurst and something to drink, the weather was strangely really hot, we were all sweating pretty bad at this point, maybe it was because we were so high and not too many clouds around blocking out the sunlight. We all got a little sun on our faces that day. We finally headed to the ski lift and went on the gondola back down the mountain, it was such a fun day of skiing even though I wasn't very good, but we got some awesome pictures and videos from the mountain.
After skiing we had to hurry back and check out of our hostel and return our skis and equipment and catch our train at 5. We only had abouot 30 minutes once we got back to Interlaken. I was a frantic mess trying to get everything together so we could leave. We finally left on foot to the train station with about 20 minutes to spare. We didn't realize how far away the train station was, and it felt like we were walking forever, we finally got there and I was out of breath and sweating because my bag was pretty heavy, and we had to run to our track and hop right on the train because they were blowing the whistles to leave. So we hopped on our train, or what we thought was our train, but it wasn't moving, then I happened to look outside of the train and we had totally hopped on the wrong one, which was about to leave and be going towards the opposite side of Switzerland. Our train had been on the left and the train we accidentally got into was on the right, our train was just leaving as we finally noticed we were on the wrong one, I was so furious because we had to wait an hour and a half for the next one, just after we had ran to catch this one and were totally out of breath. So we ended up having to wait for the next one. Finally reaching Freiburg was great; I am ALWAYS happy to come back to Freiburg after traveling because it is very cheap and I know my way around, it just feels like home.
Our Interlaken trip was so much fun, especially getting to see the Alps again. Up next....Adam's week in Germany and our day trips.
I hope everything is going great back home and everyone is loving the spring weather!!!
Auf Wiedersehen
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