And so it begins....

Ok, so I've been slacking.

I haven't posted in a long time, though I've certainly been keeping busy. Right now I just arrived in Heidelberg, my first stop for backpacking. For the next four weeks I'll be traveling through Germany, Austria, and maybe Denmark/Belgium/Luxeumbourg/Switzerland - we'll see.

I'll try and post where I'm at when possible, and throw up a few pictures from the past month and a half.

Till then, ciao.

A few little castles

First we went to Schloss (castle) Linderhof, one of King Ludwig II's smaller castles (and let's keep things in perspective, smaller is a relative word).












Neuschwanstein - the castle Walt Disney based the Magic Kingdom castle off of. There are only a few finished rooms inside, and unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures (I was not too plussed). The only room that was really cool was the music hall, which had really cool acoustics. The tour guide heard Theo was an Opera major, and he belted out some tune, which was sweet.

We began with a 20 minute walk up the mountain, had a tour through, then hiked up to a bridge behind the castle and snapped some photos.

Feiertag, take 2

Today was the second national holiday (Feiertag) since I've been in Germany. With no class we decided to visit the Englischergarten, like Central Park but much bigger.

Stop looking at me, swan.

It has at least two Biergartens inside, one which has the Chinesischer Turm and I believe is the second largest in Germany/the world. It's a very cool place to go with a big group and hang out while the sun sets.

one of the biergartens

The Friendly Engineers

Today I met Christian, one of the guys in my building. He's from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland - I had completely forgotten that there was an Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Anyway he's a very cool guy, and we have to speak in German since his English isn't good (trust me, a GOOD thing; people always want to talk Englisch with you when they figure out you're American). Christian, Katja and I ended up walking around Karlsplatz, a really cool place at night.



We then ended up at a party with a bunch of Italian Engineers studying in Munich. They insisted on giving us food and drinks - very cool. The even had posted up flyers saying "we're having a party, come in, we like to meet random people." Very cool.

Most of them were doing Internships or finishing up their Bachelor's, and I got to hear their take on Munich and America.

Munich, Day 1+2

Yesterday I arrived in Munich after an interesting night's sleep in a Sleeper train. There were three beds, bunk style, with a little sink and barely enough room for us to fanangle our luggage in there. After a placement test and some paperwork, Jenn and I helped each other move in, which somehow took forever. I ended up in a Biergarten with a bunch of people from her building. Then Francesco, an Italian Professor, bought a bunch of drinks for everyone and we went back to the common room of his building and got to know everyone. No ice-cream social here, ladies and gents.




Today I had my first day of classes, which were very different from Frankfurt. Instead of 4 people in my class, I have about 18, which changes the whole dynamic. I think it's almost as effective though, since the teachers are really good at what they do. I was placed in too low of a class, so I'll probably move up in the next few days. We liked the biergarten from last night that we invited a bunch of different people out to get to know them.

It's gonna be a great month.