Thursday, February 25, 2010

Munich 2/19-2/21

Munchen! The heart of Bavaria was so cool to see! I headed out on friday afternoon and had a 4 hour lay over in madrid, which was brutally boring. Luckily i bought a good book by Stiegg Larsson to pass some of the time!

Once settled at the 4you Munchen Hostel, we went to another hostel to drink some German beers. Wow. German beer is amazing. They have to spin the bottle in order to get all the beer out at the bottom and it settles like guiness but is not as thick. Weisbier was amazing. Kind of like a Blue Moon taste but much thicker and heavier. I headed to bed early friday night because i had to wake up early on friday to head to the venue where DMB was playing to try and buy my ticket.

After a breakfast at the hostel which was toast with some home made jelly and making a sandwich for a snack, I went to Zenith to buy my ticket. A 20 minute metro ride led me to an old train repair warehouse built in 1918 where We would be seeing DMB that night. Little did they say on the phone I couldn´t buy tickets until 14:00 day of show. Shit. So I called this guy named Craig I met on Antsmarching.org that was in the US army in germany and had an extra ticket. I met him at the Central Station in munich and paid a little bit less than face value for my ticket, which was awesome.

After all this it was still only 10:3oam. We attempted to go on a tour of Munich, but found it a waste of time to listen to this chick blabber and we saw the same stuff in a fraction of the time on our own. We saw the famous chruch´s, royal residence, the Mac Store, and just all the stuff in my pictures on facebook! We then went to the Olympic Village from the summer games in 1972. It was cool to see but kind of snow covered, which was bit of a bummer. After that, we ended our day of tourism at the HAFBRAHAUS!

Hafbrahaus, for those of you who don´t know, is the culmination of beer drinking and oompah bands. It is long tables for 10 people or so all over with a band playing the best drinking music imaginable, women carrying around and selling GIANT homemade pretzels, men wearing liderhosen, lots of bockwurst, kraut, potatoes and other fresh german fare and waiters carrying out LITERS, yes liters (thats 1000ml or about 38oz) of fresh from the tap Hafbrau beer. The environment was quite the perfect place to pregame for dave. Much different than the dave days of summer, but a nice change of atmosphere!

People laughed at me when i wore a DMB shirt to Hafbrauhaus, best decision ever. When you mix lots of beer, lots of US natives in deutschland, and DMB you get a lot of people sitting around drinking heavily and discussing our origins and excitement to be there. We met a lot of people from the US military based in germany and took quite a few drinks with them and even met up with these 2 guys we met from ohio in the show. We met so many awesome people all because they knew we were americans and going to dave from my shirt!

Besides the camaraderie and drinking, the food was fantastic. I have never been a big fan of saurkraut but that´s because in the US it is actually sour. In germany, it is so sweet. It was deliciious. The Bockwurst and 2 other types of sausage we ate were also delicious. This one girl named kate is a vegan so she got a baked potato with hand whipped sour cream. it was sooo delicious. I´d say it was a great success.

After all of these escapades, we headed to the show a little early to get a good spot to stand because the show was GA. We ended up getting in the 5th row right in front of Steffan Lessard, the bass guitarrist, for those of you who don´t know. I won´t go through the whole show, but it was incredible. we were so close and saw some great songs, of which, my favorite was by far crush. After the show we went to get some food and headed home for the night.

Sunday morning was awful. I was woken up at 730am by 10 roomates all yelling German. Talk about pandamoniu. how people make sense of that gibberish is beyond me. Seeing as how falling back asleep was impossible, i woke up and used the extra time to see more of Munich. I started out by heading to Dachau Memorial Site where the nazi concentration camp was from 1933-1945. It took a metro and a bus to get there (about an hour each way in total) but was very interesting to see. You learn so much about the devestation that Hitler caused and everything about these camps but until you stand in the rooms where people were gassed and cremated, or starved to near death, it doesn´t really hit home. It was amazing to finally see something you hear about in history class your whole life. After wandering the city and doing a little bit of shopping for a few gifts, I headed to the airport which got me back to sevilla right around midnight. Another very exhausting yet fun filled weekend in yet another country!!

Next to come: London the weekend of March 5th-8th!!

Barcelona

It has been a while since i´ve posted anything but times have gotted pretty busy with classes and my internship keeping me busy during the week and traveling and having fun in sevilla on the weekends!

So the weekend of Feb 5th I met up in BarÇa with Jen and around 10 other people from the U of I Architecture program. we stayed at this place called Centric Point hostel which was in a great location close to a main Metro station and a lot of the Gaudi Architecture. It was right by the Casa Batlló on Passeig de Gracia. They got in pretty late on friday so we headed straight out to this guy named Blaha´s apartment where the guys had been taking some drinks for quite a while. we then went out to some club called Opium that was a complex labyrinth that was impossible to get out of, and was wayyy over priced. After quite a long day of travel and what not, passing out was not hard at all.

The next day we woke up early and hauled ass around Barcelona. We went to La Sagrada Familia, some othre architechture by Van der ohs, (sp?), Park Guell and some other stuff as well. Park guell was like Dr. Seuss´s inspiration, i felt like i was in whoville or something. Very cool.

The metro was really efficient there and we used it to go pretty much everywhere. After a long day of walking around we went out for some tapas! We went to this place called Bo where we had 12 people and tried a ton of awesome food! Not to mention, some cervezas! After a 2 hour meal and lots of tapas, beers, and a free shot, we headed to another place called Elefante. It was on the outskirts of town (or so we felt) but was a cool place. They had all these characters walking around on stilts, which was nuts.

on sunday, jen and everyone had to leave early in the morning so I ventured around Barcelona all day until my flight in the evening. Seeing a city by yourself may seem boring, but you get to go exactly where you want to go. So i went to the Catedral, Christopher Columbus Statue, walked through some Barrios and along the Med. Ocean! After that, i ended my trip to Barcelona in La Pedreda, one of the coolest things i saw. It was an apartment complex designed by gaudi in 1900 that looks like it was built 10 years ago. It had tons of awesome sculptures and parabola effects that were amazing to walk through and see. He was a genius and i can´t wait to go back to barca in 2030 when La Sagrada Familia is complete!

One thing i hated about Barcelona was the language. It is like a combination of french and spanish that nobody should understand. I would ask for something in spanish at a store or restaurant and they would look at me like i was crazy. Screw Catalan.

After a long weekend of next to no sleep and tons of sight seeing, getting back to sevilla was a warming welcome and so was my bed!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Busy in Sevilla!

Hola! It has been a while since I have written, but when they say the first two weeks of class is an intensive spanish session, they mean intensive. I have had a lot of work to do and cannot wait for this weekend to be here!

To bring you up to speed:

Last week we had our midterm, which I got a 100% on, so that was good news! The weekend was pretty standard. Friday I went out with my 2 roomates, Laurent and Werner to have some beers and sure enough, a half hour later 120 american people walked into the exact same bar. So we just got drunk and headed out to meet some of Laurent's friends and people at the Discoteca, which was packed and expensive!

Saturday I met up with Laurent and his french friends who had been drinking heavily and were HALARIOUS to watch. They were so drunk that they got kicked out, so that was the highlight of the evening and I got some sleep to rest up or sunday!

Then sunday was the best night of the weekend. It was my first Soccer/fútbol experience. Let me tell you, I know now why people are obsessed. It was an awesome experience and I am now becoming obsessed as well. I went with this guy named Stephen from my program and we met up with some people for dinner before hand and then headed into the game early to watch the pregame warm ups. A few hours later and 2 awesome goals from Daniel Negredo, Seville beat Valencia, their rival in the division. It was an awesome night and a lot of fun!

This week has just been filled with homework and projects and a final on friday but I am looking forward to traveling to Barcelona this weekend!

Make sure you check out all of the pictures I posted on Facebook!