I traveled to Paris with about 12 other classmates of mine here at the institute, so it was a fairly large group of us. We took a high speed train from Brussels to Paris, and it took us about an hour and twenty minutes. From what I understand the trains go around 250 km/h which is around 155 mph. Definitely very fast! We arrived at our hostel, which was decently nice. Myself and three other guys got to share a four bedroom room, so we didn't have to sleep in the same room as someone we didn't know. The first day we were there, we basically explored the city. We went to Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower, basically all over the city. One thing that I wasn't ready for was the fact that Paris is HUGE. If you look on the map, two things that seem to be relatively close to each other are really far apart. We were definitely tired after our first day of traveling/exploring. The next day we did some more exploring of the city, I saw the pantheon among a few other things. I went to a cafe and had a nutella and banana crepe, which was heaven. In the afternoon we all went to this festival called Paris Techno Parade. Basically they shut down the streets of Paris for this parade of floats with DJ's and huge speakers on them. They go along playing loud techno while 400,000 people dance and party around the floats on the streets. I definitely saw some weird people doing some weird things. That went from around 1 pm to 5 pm. After that we re-convened at the hostel and a few of us decided to go out to a cafe. There were six of us at the cafe, and we were going to order beer when we saw on the menu that they had the option of serving beer in 5L "giraffes." We had no idea what this was, but ordered it anyway, because ordering 5L between the six of us was cheaper than ordering individual beers. The server came out with this HUGE cylinder of beer with a tap on the bottom. We were surprised, and it has been one of the more interesting ways I've ever been served beer. We were pretty tired from the activities we had done during the day so we didn't stay out late. The next day we went to Sacre-Couer, the Moulin Rouge, as well as the catacombs. Sacre-Couer was really cool because it's up on a hill so you can see all of Paris, although there were a lot of scam artists around trying to get your money. On the train ride there, we witnessed a woman getting pick pocketed by a few girls. However, not only did the woman catch them, but everyone around them saw it too so they caused a HUGE scene and refused to let the girls get off the train until they gave the woman her wallet back. The Moulin Rouge wasn't that impressive, I just didn't think it was too special. The catacombs were really creepy, but it was really cool to go down underneath Paris and walk around a bunch of human bones I guess. I definitely enjoyed my time in Paris, and I'm excited for my parents to see it when they come to visit in a few weeks.
This past weekend a friend of mine in the program, Chris, and I went to Berlin. This was kind of a last minute trip, and we didn't really have much planned, except that we were going to play it by ear. Normally, I need a plan for everything, but I told myself that I would take off my jetpack and just chill out while on this trip. Needless to say I was excited to see what we would end up doing. We flew into Berlin and got to our hostel which was....interesting to say the least. It was pretty far out from the city center in Western Berlin. We were sharing a room with a couple of engineering students from Lithuania, also interesting. I had read up on a free walking tour that was taking place later in the afternoon, so in the meantime we went out for lunch. I had homemade German spatzle, which was amazing. It came with melted cheese all over it and spinach, definitely some good eating right there. With it I had a German wheat beer, which was amazing. I wish I would have wrote down the name because I don't remember what it was called, some long German name. After that, we went on a 4.5 hour walking tour throughout the city of Berlin. It was a very informative tour given by a 20-something from London named Leo. It was funny because he had an outside perspective on Berlin and its history. Some of the things I saw: Brandenburg Gate, Adlon Hotel(where Michael Jackson dangled his baby out the window), sight of Nazi book burnings, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Jewish Memorial, sight of Hitler's bunker, etc...Chris and I were incredibly tired after the tour and so we ended up passing out once we got back to our hostel. The next day we took a tour, through the same tour company, of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was an incredibly powerful, insightful, educational, historical experience. Again our tour guide was a 20-something from Scotland named Colin, who was also very informative and knew a lot about Sachsenhausen. On the tour we met some really cool people, three of which we ended up getting drinks with after since the tour was a pretty big downer. Sandy, from Australia had traveled pretty much the entire world, so it was fun to pick her brain and get insights as far as places we should consider traveling to. Laura and Daniel were architecture students from San Diego and they also came along. We went to a restaurant that had over 100 German beers and had a few for ourselves. Things I've learned: the Germans know a thing or two about beer. I hate to do this to Belgium, but the beer that I drank in Germany this past weekend was better than any beer I've had here in Belgium. Chris had one beer that was 14.5% alcohol. I guess you can say that although it was really cold out, after a few German beers you're feeling nice and warm. After that, we went to a festival they were holding in Berlin marking the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany. We walked around the fest for a little while before heading back. Chris and I were walking around the neighborhood by our hostel at night, looking for a pub, when we found this hole in the wall little pub. We walked in, and all 5 people in the pub kind of stopped and stared at us while we sat at the bar. It was a neighborhood pub and I'm assuming everyone in there has been going there for the past 20 years. It wasn't a place a few random Americans wander into. I'm guessing this by the fact that NOBODY spoke a lick of English. We were able to communicate enough with the owner/bartender that we wanted beer, which again were absolutely delicious. I'm pretty sure the owner liked the fact that we were American because after a while he poured us some free shots of genever/jenever, which I had never had, but it was grape flavored, and tasted pretty good. A little bit later a guy came in the bar who spoke a little bit of English and he seemed to enjoy the fact that we were from the U.S. and that he could speak to us in English. He sat by us and spoke with us for a good portion of the night. At one point we saw the bartender pouring someone a mixture of half beer half coke, and we inquired as to what that was. He made one for us, for free, so that we could try it. The guy who spoke English explained that sometimes beers that are especially bitter are mixed with coke to sweeten them up, also so you can drink more of them before getting drunk. It was a different type of taste, but not bad. We ended up spending the rest of our night at this pub where pretty much nobody spoke English, and had a great time. The only time we left was when we ran out of money, so we went to an ATM got more cash, and went back. 4 liters of German beer later and at 3am we went back to our hostel, woke up the next day at 9am for our flight back to Brussels. I definitely enjoyed Berlin, although it was much different from the other cities I've visited. Since it was pretty much destroyed in WWII, a lot of the city is fairly new. I would say that out of any city I've been to here, it reminds me the most of an American city.Anyways, this upcoming weekend I will be staying in Belgium, and then the weekend after that I'm going to Rome! So stay posted!! Sorry I didn't put more pictures in this post, for whatever reason it was taking a really long time to load.
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