Good 'ole Heidelberg

It might be nice if i finished up telling you about the weekend in Germany, at least before I tell more recent stories.

After arriving in Heidelberg Friday night we made our way to the Pepperdine house. The Heidelberg house is Pepperdine's oldest abroad program/facility. We got the whole house to ourselves since the existing summer students were all traveling elsewhere. We took our jolly time in the morning, making sure to catch up on sleep, before adventuring into town. I loved Heidelberg's atmosphere, it is much quieter than Florence or Munich, and I couldnt help but feel reminded of certain parts of the Disneyland Park. We spent time wandering the streets and visiting the Old Bridge. What a pretty city!


We then visited the old castle. It is crazy to think that the walls of the castle were once full of activity and operation. The Pepperdine house is just a couple minutes walking distance to the Castle, and it is incredible to see how much life occurs right outside its empty walls. We had a great time taking pictures, and exploring the castle grounds. It definitely took me back to those fabulous history books. We were able to walk around in the Moat, as well as climb on the exterior walls.

We then spent the remainder of our evening downtown for dinner. One of the Germany students had returned from his travels, so he showed us to some of the more "local" spots. We had a GREAT meal at a Schnitzel House, that had over 100 types of Schnitzel!! I was thrilled to find that they would substitute chicken! Each of us ordered such different Schnitzels, but they were tasty! It was a great way to conclude our stay in Germany.

Munich munchin

My first day in Germany continued when we arrived back in Munich. What a beautiful city! I loved the buildings and atmosphere that Munich had. It has a very different feel from Italy, which was a fun change.

Because our morning started so unusually early, we were back in the city by noon which was great! We spent time sightseeing, and were frequently distracted by the bakeries the seemed to be on every corner. Each bakery we stepped into seemed to have even more amazing looking deliciousness than the one before.

Of course, appetites grow when you are constantly walking through bakeries. Stopping into a restaurant in the main square, we got our first taste of the German cuisine. The boys tried out the bratwurst and weinerschnitzel, while the girls stuck with a classic Pretzel. Stomachs satisfied we continued our tour of the city. We discovered a great market near the city center with all sorts of booths and shops. It was so fun to see all of the German collectives, fresh foods, cheeses and such. The city had a great relaxed vibe to it, and it made for a very enjoyable afternoon.
We ended our day in Munich with dinner at the Hofbrauhaus for some good Germanic beer. The place was huge! Im pretty sure there were more than 4 options for where you could eat. Finding ourselves upstairs in one of the more reserved and mellow dining areas, we decided to try again in the main hall downstairs. The atmosphere was so lively, even though we were eating at an awkward time, the large open room was almost full. It was a perfect german beerhouse experience.


After leaving Hofbrauhaus we stopped a few times while heading back to the train station. Three hours later we arrived in Heidelberg!

Dachau

After a stop for happy to be found Starbucks and some hot breakfast, we hopped on train and bus towards the Dachau Concentration Camp.
Although I am not a huge history guru, the holocaust has always interested me. It still amazes me the pain and torture that these innocent people went through. It is crazy to think that a camp such a Dachau (which was one of the first concentration camps) could have been just miles from Munich, yet successfully put innocent people through torture without anyone stoping it.



The weather was cold and damp when we visited the camp, which was perfect considering the damper mood and atmosphere of the grounds. We were able to walk through the museum, barracks, and extermination facilities. Even after studying the holocaust several times in school, I have never been able to fully grasp the horrific reality of it. With each story and testimony there is more pain and suffering to be found.
One particular room that shocked me was in the wash room. Here the men would wash, and some who were "in trouble" with the officers would be picked out and hung from their arms for hours. The hatches in the ceiling beams are still in the building that were used for these "hangings". Their hands would be tied behind there back, and then hung from that hatch on the ceiling causing them to hang in an extremely unnatural manner. While hanging they were beaten, and oftentimes attacked by the officers dogs. Prisoners were known to hang for hours at a time. I find it extremely hard to imagine such torture, especially for such innocent people.

I learned even more as I continued to read the museum walls. The exhibit had newspaper excerpts from the area during that time. Apparently the leaders of the Dachau camp brought in civilians, reporters and other important people from the community to "tour" the camp while it was in operation. They would chose prisoners who looked somewhat healthy, and present a small portion of the camp to the "tourists", creating a false reality of what the camp was about. These "tourists" were told that all prisoners were there for legitimate reason, fed well, and treated humanely.

Over 34,000 people died at the Dachau camp.

How would you get to Munich?

When traveling in Europe, with six other unemployed college students, you have to be wise about how you spend each dollar... or in this case the euro. The fact that the european exchange rate is so poor doesn't really help our cause either. However, we pulled our heads together and figured out some great strategies to save on a trip to Germany. Strategy number 1- Sleeper trains.
Now, if we leave at night, and take a 11 hr sleeper train straight to Munich, Germany, we will get there in the morning, fully rested, and save on the otherwise cost of a hotel. Perfect. So the six of us (Lindsey, Jen, Fabrizio, JJ, Armando and I) grabbed our backpacks and headed out the front door of the Villa. We stopped on our walk to the train station to pick up some necessities for the ride (pizza and wine of course) and eventually climbed aboard around 10:00 pm.
Now, none of us had ever actually been on a sleeper train, but we knew that from movies and pictures it didnt seem bad, and we had a 6 person room reserved for us... so it was going to be great right?! Right. After being yelled at several times in German, we finally found our little room. Emphasis on LITTLE.



The room was about 5 x 6, and with the beds down, had no more than a foot of room between the beds. What a surprise! Clearly this wasnt going to be comfortable to hang out in until we went to sleep, so we took on the challenge of converting the beds to sofas... (supposedly a super easy task).



Well, after the boys struggled and the rest of us blocked the narrow walkway of the moving train for a good 15 minutes, we finally had a couple of small "sofas" to sit on. Luckily we had great spirits about this whole thing, and had a fun time despite the lack of room.


The pizza, wine, and simple exhaustion allowed for us to get a few hours of decent sleep. Woken up by a loud pound on the door, the funny German lady working the train returned our tickets and passports. 6am and the six of us had a no more than 10 minutes to be ready to adventure in Munich!

Rain Rain Rain... GO AWAY

I've been here for 12 days, and if I remember correctly, it has rained 10 of the days! YIKES
When i was packing for Italy, I was told by previous Florence travelers that the weather would be hot! Supposedly I wouldn't even need a sweatshirt? uh.... lets just say its been a LITTLE cold and wet.
One especially rainy day, we decided to invest in a couple umbrellas from a street vendor. cost: 1 euro! Clearly we got a steal right? Well, they did the job for a few hours.






But sometimes what you pay for is what you get... and in the case of these umbrellas... it didnt turn out well!!



Besides dodging raindrops, the week has been full of classes and field trips to local museums and other Florence sights. Today we visited the Uffizi museum in downtown Florence. The museum was full of all sorts of artwork of the Renaissance period. It was pretty neat to be able to see the artwork we are studying in person.

Meanwhile, back in the states things have been busy for my family. My sister had championship swim meets and senior ball last week, and my parents have sold their house! To make things a little crazier Kayley graduates at the beginning of June, and the new home owners want to move in within a couple weeks! It sounds to me like things are crazy, and Im a little curious where we will be living when I come home from Europe!

City of Tortellini

Bologna, Italy.
Although it was raining yet again, this saturday 5 of us hopped on a train and ventured to Bologna, Italy. Home to the oldest university in the Western world, Bologna is one of the most developed cities in Italy and has a much younger italian crowd than what we are used to Florence which is more diverse in age range. However, Bologna is also famous for its culinary tradition. Giving its name to Bolognese sauce, and also very famous for being the tortellini capitol!

Needless to say, we saw lots and lots of scrumptious looking food during our day in Bologna.




I don't think I have ever seen so many types of! tortellini! Everywhere we seemed to go we saw another color, shape or size. Definitely made us hungry.
But we didn't only see food, we got to see a gorgeous Church, and other historical buildings throughout the city. The city layout was more open than that of Florence.


I really loved the atmosphere and the younger energy of the local people. There was a random outdoor rock concert in the courtyard outside the church which was completely unexpected! After walking around and enjoying our afternoon seeing the various sites, we grabbed some tortellini before heading back to Florence in the evening.

The case of the stolen margarita

Would you expect to see a mexican food place in Italy? I definitely didnt!

This past Friday night we ate dinner at TIjuana's Mexican food for JJ's birthday. Making reservations was a battle, and the place was packed when we got there... apparently mexican food is pretty popular this side of the world.

Although it was nothing authentic like you would find in San Diego, or other parts of Cali, the food was delicious and trumped any expectations i had of mexican food in Italy.


The restaurant was super crowded, and tables were real close to each other, making moving around a struggle, and privacy at your table practically impossible. However, the love-birds a few feet to the side of us found themselves in their own world, and took a break from their giant margarita to enjoy some time in each other's eyes. What happened next shocked all of us that saw. Two girls from a table across the room walked over to the kissing couple's table with an empty giant margarita glass. They proceeded to switch straws with the couple, and walk away with the almost full margarita, leaving their empty glass for the occupied couple to find!!! WHATTT. they surely must know the couple, and it surely must have been a joke right? After watching the situation closely, and noting the high-fives that were exchanged back at the girls table, our jaws continued to drop. After coming up from their love exchange, the couple did not seem to notice that their margarita glass was now completely empty. We decided to fill our neighbors in on the recent happenings. The couple was shocked, and confirmed to us that they did not know the girls from across the restaurant.

Luckily, no fights broke out, and the couple just left angrily. I am still shocked, and next time we are eating at Tijuana's we will be watching our drinks!

Jet-lag Jogging

Like all things in life, you should never be too confident that you have beat jet-lag. Last night i woke up at around 4am with no luck at falling back asleep. Although i knew the rest of the day would be a struggle, but at around 8 i decided to give up on slumber and take a morning jog instead. Running in Florence is a bit nuts, especially since cars and Vespa's don't stop for pedestrians! I took a quick left out of the villa and started my way towards the pontevecchio. Although I have been here for a little over 2 days now, I am still not super familiar with the city grid. <5 minutes into my jog, total downpour began. I was now that american, completely drenched, dodging umbrellas and italians, running through the cobblestone streets. As crazy and nuts as it was, I couldnt have been more content. Knowing full well that I was about to find myself completely lost, I continued my run in the rain ending up at the river eventually. But getting there is the easy part right? After snapping some great photos, I started my journey back towards the Villa. The return distance ended up being about 3x the distance of the way there... but I am now veryyy familiar with the streets of Firenze. Starting my morning with a jog, was a great decision, even if I was completely soaked by the time I found the villa.

Hit the ground running

The past few days have gone by in a blur. It is crazy to me that I have only been here for 3 or 4 days, I feel like i have been here for weeks! After arriving on Saturday, I grabbed my first Italian dinner on the patio of a restaurant in a nearby square. Pepperdine's basketball team happened to be in Florence for a few days, so we spent some time with them and enjoyed and evening out with a larger pepperdine community. Not bad for my first few hours in Italy!!

Sunday afternoon we got the chance to see the championship futbol game between Firenze and Siena. It was great seeing all the of crazy fans, some completely belligerent, and the energy and enthusiasm they carried. The game itself, with an ending score of 1-1 ended up not being super intense, but it was still a blast cheering for the Florence team.

Soccer is truly an amazing sport, the amount of running and intensity that goes on during the game is impressive. But I could not help but get frustrated while watching. Firenze was clearly dominating all aspects of the game, but it did not show in the score. I have a huge respect for the players that are able to keep up their dedication in a game that doesn't always show truth in the scoring. I know other sports are similar in this way, but it seemed to me that soccer was overwhelming in this aspect. How could one team dominate the entire game, with so many shots on goal, and the other team get one shot and tie the game? crazzyyy

48 hrs of chaos

Monday May 3, 2010.

Three days after school is let out for the summer. Two days after Taylor's graduation. One day after running around crazy making last minute purchases. 5 hours until a scheduled group departure to Florence, Italy and a Missing Passport/Visa.... 48 hours of chaos.

Well, as many of you know, Watson's never really allow things to be simple. But you would think that after traveling so much in the last few years, I would have a handle on how to keep track of my passport. I failed at that game. Somewhere between Taylors graduation, a couple stops at CVS, school, some grad parties, and the hotel, my passport went mia. Unfortunately, I did not realize this until I was in route to the airport Monday morning. Then began the frantic search. AFter exploding all my luggage, phone calls were made to various places, and friends and family were asked to search closeby areas. 3 hours later, still no passport. While still making hundreds of phone calls, we began plan B... getting a new passport and visa.

I paid visit to the Federal Passport Service center. A very intimidating building... But somehow after standing in several lines, and taking the most amazingly beautiful passport photos, I was able to get a new passport less than 5 hours later. The things these federal agencies can do when you really need them to.

I made several (about 6) trips to the Italian Consulate [thx Lara for being my chauffeur] and I now have 3 new Italian best buds, as well as a Visa that will be ready Friday morning.

The last couple days were insane to say the least. But I cant think of any way that they could have gone smoother. I somehow made it without getting in any arguments, or becoming a basket-case (well, maybe once). But in addition to that, I was so impressed with my family's attitude. I am so blessed to have parents that will drop their day's agenda to help their daughter who lost her passport and is 300 miles away. I am left in awe of the way they kept composed and efficient, never getting angry. They were able to keep faith that things would work out, and that I would end up where I am supposed to be. God is Good!

So.. in two days, this Friday, I will be leaving for Florence, Italy. I am so stoked to see what kind of adventures lie ahead :)