Trier

This past weekend was our final class trip - to Trier, Germany - which is the oldest city in Germany and was once the capital of the Roman empire. Unlike our other trips, we took a bus to this one, which was awesome. We first made a stop in Luxembourg to visit an WWII American Military cemetery and monument. It was truly one of the most beautiful things I have seen. The weather was amazing, about 75 degrees and sunny, so that certainly added to it. But it was amazing to see such a great monument and cemetery recognizing the support of the U.S. military, way out here in Luxembourg. We explored it for about an hour, and then had a picnic and got back on the bus to continue to Germany.

Luxembourg is a beautiful country. Who would have thought. The countryside is all rolling hills with vineyards and valleys and lots of windmills. It was really cool. When we pulled into Trier I was equally excited, because this place looked really cool. We visited many different things in Trier, the highlights include the ruins of an ancient Roman Bath, Karl Marx's house, the Porta Nigra - the old city gate, an old Amphitheater where gladiators used to duel, and a huge hill overlooking the city where our teacher let us get out of the bus and chill for a while. I actually got a sunburn! It was so beautiful out.

For dinner we went out to a real Roman restaurant, and had a more or less preset meal - interesting. When you think of Roman food, you probably immediately think pasta and pizza. Wrong. Romans ate some weird stuff. For an apertif (a "starting drink") we had some strange liquour mixed with honey and anise. No lie, it tasted like crap. I was able to finish it though, in time for our appetizer. Two sausages and some green beans. Sausages = delicious. Green Beans = Not. I have never eaten green beans prepared in a way that I didn't like until I had these. Grosssssss. We got to choose from a few things for our main meal, so I had the lamb steak in some sort of prune sauce. That was pretty good. Then dessert came, and I think one person actually was able to finish. It was literally pears covered in lard. NASTY! I asked the waitress to bring me the best German beer they had, and was disappointed as to what came back. Being in Belgium has certainly turned me into a beer snob. I mean yeah, it tasted okay, but come on, I thought Germans knew how to make beer.

For the night a group of us tried to go out, as it was the night before my birthday and we wanted to celebrate. Well, lets just say nightlife isn't the most important thing in Trier, in fact, there was none. So we went back to the hostel and went to bed, which was probably a good thing because we had to wake up at 8:30am the next day for breakfast.

Slept well, breakfast was good, then we set off for our final day in Trier. This is when we saw the inside of the Porta Nigra and Karl Marx's house. Interesting places. We had chinese for lunch, it was ok. Then we finally got to the part of the trip we were all looking forward to, Wine Tasting!

We took the bus a little outside of the main city, to a huge vineyard with very steep fields. We met this crazy German man who ran the vineyard (9th generation) and he insisted on taking group pictures every five minutes and would just steal your camera and do it. We learned about the process of wine making, and the different grapes and wines that this particular vineyard produced. The steep hills were used to grow Reisling grapes, which produce a sweet white wine. The hills are steep so that there is maximum sunshine on the grapes throughout the day. Under the ground there are rock slabs which break in the heat and release important minerals into the soil. We toured his vineyard, and saw his wine cellars and fermentation tanks. It actually was really interesting.

Then came the fun part - the tasting. Now how many people can say that on their birthday they got to go Wine Tasting in Germany, with perfect weather and a great group of people....this guy can. We first learned how to properly taste wine, hold it up to the sun, swish it, smell it, slurp it, swish it, drink it. We started with their dryest wine, a chardonnay, and then went up in sweetness to their dessert wine, and ended with their red wine. They supplied us with fresh baked rolls to eat between tastings. It was AWESOME. Matt and I purchased a bottle each for ourselves, and one for our host mom whose birthday is today. Great times.

The ride home was long, and the toilet tank was filled so we all had to hold in all the wine we just drank for a few hours - slightly uncomfortable. We watched Spartacus on the way home and all just chilled after a great weekend.

This was by far the best trip of my semester here. And who would have thought, this was the one I knew least about and didn't expect much from.

Kristina visits soon!

Home in less than three weeks - crazy!

Check the pics out.

Spring Break

Four train rides, two flights, four countries, and four different hostels. Spring Break is over. What a great time.


Our trip started off with 5 days in Paris for our Art class. This was the part of my spring break that I was least looking forward to (because we had to follow around our teacher all day) but it turned out to be one of my favorites. Paris is an amazing city, and I now understand what all the hype is about. True, the prices are absolutely ridiculous, I don't understand how anyone could ever live there, but around every corner is a post-card worthy picture or something that belongs in a museum. We spent most of our time looking at art in different museums, the Louvre and the D'Orsay museum most of all, and learning about the history of Paris etc. The Louvre was absolutely insane. We spent over 6 hours exploring it and only got to see about one tenth of the thing. I saw the Mona Lisa - which was probably the dumbest thing I have ever seen but apparently people like it or it wouldn't be so famous.
From Paris we took a day trip to Versaille, which was my favorite part of the Paris trip. The palace at Versaille was nice, but the thing that was most amazing to me were the acres and acres of gardens with hidden statues and ponds and even a small petting zoo. Versaille was an amazing place and thankfully we visited it on our only sunny day in France. We also visited the famous Pere-Lachaise cemetery which was beautiful - we saw Jim Morrisons grave!
One night a few of us with a Bentley Alumn who also studied abroad in Brussels but now works in Paris and learned about his job as a financial consultant for a MIS company. We got taken out to a nice pub after dinner and thankfully it was paid for by my class because my meal was over $45 U.S. dollars. Whoops!
Our hostel was pretty crappy in Paris, but it was alright. We were shoved into an 8 person room in the attic of this hostel - which just so happened to be filled with a bunch of punk ass younger school groups. There were seven of us from class in the 8 person room, but the 8th person just so happened to be an Alumn from Holy Cross in Worcester, Ma (the same school my girlfriend goes to). Small world huh? He was pretty cool and on our last night, before heading to the airport for Krakow with Matt and Caitlin, we ate dinner with him and had a few drinks.
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Krakow, Poland - After Paris was finished we were free to go and continue on with our own spring break plans. Matt, Caitlin, and I were heading out to Krakow, Poland, and had a very early flight so we spent the night at the CDG Airport in Paris. Needless to say we got no sleep and were all pretty cranky by the time the 5:00 am check in came around. But everything went smoothly and by 10am we were in Krakow. We had to take a train from the airport to Krakow, and the minute I stepped out of the train I immediately fell in love with Poland. This was my first true taste of Eastern Europe and it was a good one. You really got the feel that you were someplace foreign (more-so than western europe at least) and everything just seemed a bit grimy and mysterious (which I like). We checked into our hostel (which was absolutely amazing) and sat down with one of the hostel workers to figure out the city. She showed us how to get to the good sights, restaurants, clubs and bars, and shopping areas, and we set off for our first day in Krakow. We ate some traditional Polish perogies (sp) at a pretty upscale restaurant, and spent only about 9 us dollars for the meal. The transition from one of the most expensive cities in the World (Paris) to one of the cheapest cities in Europe (Poland) was awesome. We bought some souvenirs at this cool clothhall which had really nice handmade stuff for cheap prices. We explored the castle and the downtown area then called it an early night because we were exhausted.
The following day Matt and I hopped on a sketchy little shuttle to go visit the Auschwitz museum, which was very interesting but pretty depressing. We took a bus on the way home that seemed to stop in every little Polish village, which was nice because we got to see some of the countryside and rural areas of Poland. After we got back we hung out with some of the people we met at the hostel, a few American girls, three cool scottish guys, and an insane Australian. We went to a grimy club and hung out for the evening.
The next day it was a bit rainy so we spent the day just hanging around the hostel and ended up watching a movie...we all needed to relax at this point. Plus, that evening we were taking a night train from Krakow to Budapest so we figured we wouldnt get much sleep.
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Budapest, Hungary - One of the scottish guys decided to join Matt, Caitlin, and I on our trip to Budapest, so the four of us bought tickets for the night train from Krakow to Budapest. This was my first night train experience and lets just say it was pretty interesting. We were wedged into a tiny room with two three-level bunk beds on each side and a place where only about one person could stand. Our two other roomates were two american girls who were studying at Cambridge and were on spring break. Lets just say that it was a little bit cramped haha. I managed to get a few ours of sleep but was awoken at about 1 in the morning to the sound of people talking out the window. We must have been somewhere between Poland and the Czech Republic literally in the middle of no where. Outside the window all I could see were army men and some army vehicles. I had no idea what was going on it was pretty scary, but after about a half our the train continued on. We arrived in Budapest after about 9 hours of being on the train, and the time was about 10am.
Luckily we found our hostel very easily. We checked in with Olga - the owner of the hostel - who was really nice and definetely a hippy haha. She was playing some Ben Harper and made us feel right at home. Matt and I had gotten a two person room which was pretty sweet because we didnt need to lock up our stuff. We immediately headed to the thermal spas because we were all exhausted from not getting enough sleep on the train and decided that a day soaking in hotubs and sitting in steam rooms was in order. We went to the Gellert Baths which were absolutely amazing, and cheap too! We killed about 3 hours just getting good and relaxed and then went to dinner. I had goulash soup, a traditional hungarian meal, and Unicum, a traditional liqour. It was a great meal but during it I noticed that I was starting to get a sore throat and head ache. Uh oh. I went to bed early that night in hopes to kick the cold before it came but unfortunately I became pretty sick and didnt venture out too much the next day. We did see some really nice sights and climbed up a hill for a view over the whole city. Budapest is a beautiful place! We spent three nights in Budapest, and then took a day train to Vienna for the last stop on our trip.
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Vienna, Austria - Caitlin decided to stay an extra night in Budapest with her new scottish friend ;), so Matt and I headed to Vienna alone. One of the most memorable parts of my spring break was this train ride as I got to see the rural side of Hungary. It was interesting to see all of the old soviet communist block houses and really poor villages with dirt roads and self sustaining farmhouses. It was really neat. But as we approached Vienna, things became more modern and I felt as though I was back home in Boston.
Once again we found our hostel with ease, I guess I am just a great navigator haha. This hostel had a much different feel but was very nice as well. We had our own 5 person room with a kitchen and shower (as we were meeting up with Elena and Steph). The beds were unbelieveably comfortable, which might have actually been a bad thing because it made me not want to get out of it. We spent our days in Vienna visiting museums and palaces, and one afternoon we went to the Vienna Zoo! I was pumped to do something different than just sightseeing. One of the evenings we went to a Mozart concert and had a nice night watching the orchestra play while sipping on champagne! A cool place we went to was the Belvedere, which is like a smaller version of Versaille. We saw some cool paintings and gardens there. I also tried some weiner schnitzel which was pretty decent, and of course some austrian beers, which have nothing on Belgian beers at all.
I was amazed at how clean and efficient Vienna was. I didn't see any trash anywhere at all, and the metros and trains were spotless. It was quite a contrast with the grimy eastern europe cities we had just come from.
By the final day of our trip I was tired and ready to head back to Brussels. Our flight was quick and painless, and we got home around 10 oclock at night. All in all, a good trip!

Many people probably wonder what my favorite cities were so here ya go:
1) Krakow
2) Paris/Versaille
3) Budapest/Vienna

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Tommorow my mom comes to visit! I am not sure what we will do but it should be fun!

I will upload pictures ASAP!