Mittwoch, 16. November 2011

Fall Break



A week off from school!  I decided to travel around other parts of Europe during my break.

I went to London with a few fellow FU-Besters and met up with my friend Andrew From Semester at Sea and his friend Nick in London.  On the first day I decided to take an organized tour of London.  This tour was done with a bus and tour guide that would drive us around, drop us off and tell us about each of the sites.  The first sight was the London towers I went to take a picture at this first sight but realized I had left my memory card back in Berlin.  But fortunately there was a small souvenir store nearby that had the one I needed.  Once in the London Towers a beefeater showed us around.  They then brought us to Buckingham Palace.  At this palace our guide gave us a history and where the best place to take pictures.  After this out tour took us on a boat ride down the river in which we go to see a different view of London.  The tour then took us to St. Paul Cathedral.  This church was massive and had been slightly hit during the bombing of WWII.  Then afterward I meet up with my semester at sea friend at the hostel.  We decided to go to the only Chipotle in Europe that night.
The next day we did a tour of Stonehenge.  It was bigger than I had imagined.  Its shocking to see that there is nothing around for hundreds of miles in any directions and makes you really wonder where these rocks came from.  That night we did a jack the Ripper tour.  Our guide had been doing the tours for almost 29 years and had even wrote a book on the matters.  It was one of the most fascination tours I have been on.  The next day we decided to go on the London eye which is the tallest Ferris wheel in Europe.  It was built in 1999 and opened in 2000.  Once on tope you could see in every direction twenty five miles.  When on top you had a great view of Parliament, the rivers, and most of central London.  Afterwards we went to Camden town.  It is a huge outside flee market area with plenty of great cheap international food to.
The next morning was the last morning in London.  I decided to go to the British Museum which had an impressive collection some of the highlights for me was the full medieval samurai uniform, the Rosetta Stone, mummies, and the Parthenon sculptures.  I then made it just in time for the changing of the guards ceremony at Buckingham palace.

Madrid
In Madrid I saw a bull fight.  I have never experienced anything like this and it was a great experience.  During this bull fight I got to see one matador get hit by a bull fortunately the matador was ok and continued to fight.
I went to the Reina Sofia Museum which has many of Picasso’s paintings.  What is considered Picasso’s greatest work the Guernica had quite a humorous security system.  It is stored in its own room where you have to stand fifteen feet away, and if you come any closer an alarm will go off, and there are also two security guards by the painting to ensure that no one attempts any crime.

I went to the naval museum in Madrid too.  which had model of the old Spanish navel boats.  It also had weapons they used and from other parts of the world such thing as the tribes which had shark tooth spears.  It also had any part of a boat that you could think of.  The next morning we took a guided tour around the city.  They showed us the palace, a few of the important churches of Madrid, a highlight of the great museums in Madrid and the main streets of Madrid.

Freie Universität Excursion


Munich
To start off the Munich trip, we embarked on a tour of the city to sight see. One of the first locales that was explored was the Newarshtein Castle.  We arrived at the castle through a two hour train ride in which we were able to see the country side of Bavaria.  Upon arrival, we were in a small town at the bottom of the mountain.  We trekked up the mountain for about 40 minutes, which allowed us to see the view from the mountain and the forest that inhibited the location.  We arrived at the castle soon after and took a guided tour in which they exhibited the bedroom of King Ludwig.  The tour concluded with walking to a bridge where were able to see a majestic view of the castle and the surrounding country side.

Vienna
We took a guided tour of the city.  I was very impressed by the architecture of the buildings and of the long years of establishment may of these buildings had.  During my stay in Vienna I went to Wurstelprater, an amusement park that opened in the late 1700s.  Because of the cooler weather we did not have to deal with incredible amounts of people; my friends and I waited in line for about 2 minutes. During the trip we also took a day excursion to the city of Melk, a small town in Austria about an hour and a half from Vienna. We saw this massive palace that had been turned into a monastery named Melk Abbey.  It was built in 1736 on a hill overlooking the town.

Budapest

Me and my friends had a few free days on the excursion and decided to go to Budapest.  We took a walk up to the Statue Liberty Hill in which we were able to see a view of all of Budapest.  Afterwards we went to a Hungarian Bath House which was a traditional Bath House in the park.  It had thermal pools both indoors and outdoors, and they were very relaxing.  Afterwards the hostel we booked had a homemade dinner of chicken soup with paprika, vegetables and other herbs.  The following day, we went to the Terror Museum.  This museum displays the Communist oppression Hungary felt during the communist reign.  It was a modern museum that presented this material impressively.