Weather

Well folks, as I settle into the routine of daily classes and appointments, there is one unpredictable force that is continually interfering with my plans: weather. I know Colorado has crazy weather, but I am coming to realize that Colorado weather is a predictable crazy. In Colorado, I can usually depend on a lovely sunny morning, to soften the blow of wildly unpredictable afternoons. Here, every day is a gamble. I wake up and think, oh what a lovely day, sunny, light breeze...I think I shall wear short sleeves and a light jacket. Lo and behold, I walk out of the building and look in the other direction only to be confronted with a near dead-on re-creation of the scene from the Wizard of Oz right before a cow flies by and the witch rides by in the air on her bicycle. Suddenly my light jacket feels paper thin and I despair that I once again forgot my umbrella. These sorts of days generally end in me walking back inside at the end of the day sopping wet. On the other hand, sometimes I look outside, see the dark clouds and think...ok we're in for another rainy day. I open my window, feel the cool temperatures and responsibly don long sleeves, a jacket and my vest. 2 hours later, as I leave my class, I encounter a hot blast of air as I exit the building. Within minutes I am shedding layers and sweating like its going out of style. What is equally baffling is that the Germans are all just as confused and unprepared as I am! 

Well, all of this came to a hilarous head last weekend at a birthday celebration for one of my good friends here, Marcel. We decided to have a lovely little grill party outside. We borrowed tables from the landlord, set up our grill and had a great feast spread before us. From my side of the table, I praised the beautiful weather, blue skies and sunshine. The person sitting across from me suggested that I look a little more thoroughly into the weather in the whole sky before making that glowing prognosis. Upon turning around, the aforementioned Wizard of Oz scene dampened my spirits a bit. A few minutes later, we heard thunder in the distance. Then the wind picked up. We started packing up just as the heavens opened up and began dumping buckets of rain. Being fairly well-sheltered under a thick canopy of trees, we decided to wait it out and move the party inside after the flash downpour was over. Simultaneously eating and packing up, our attention was abruptly called to a lound "thump" on the table. An ominous icy-orb lay in the midst of our food. It quickly became apparent that we had no chance of making it inside in this hail storm. Most of us headed as fast as we could to the base of a large tree nearby. Huddled all together, we hoped to mostly escape bodily harm. At this point, I was laughing hysterically  (perhaps due to the large hailstone that had thunked me on the head as I fled towards the tree). This laughing was only exacerbated when I noticed that 3 people had taken shelter under the picnic table and that one of those three, Sophie, was calmly sitting on the ground with a fork and a huge salad bowl, eating.

The outside portion of the party ended in a hasty cleanup and soggy walk back to our building, but we continuted the celebration indoors late into the night. More good memories and fun times with friends. How thankful I am for my life here (even in spite of the fickle weather!)

Photo Summary part 5 aka, finale

SOOOOO excited to have my Mama with me in this country that I love so much! It meant more than I can say to be able to share everything with her. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful mother!

Thomas and I in front of the cathedral at his old school. We traveled to Thomas' family with my mom so she could enjoy a bit of the black forest and meet Thomas' family. It was a beautiful trip!

Oficially my favorite picture of the trip...My mom, Thomas' mom and Thomas posing with this interesting statue in St. Blasien. They definitely keep me laughing!

Mom conquered her fear of hights to climb this tower overlooking Freiburg. What a brave adventurer!

There was much silliness and many self-portraits...I am so blessed by my friends and family!

All in all break was a great time filled with great memories that I will truly treasure forever. I am overwhelmingly blessed by the vast number of opportunities that I have, and more so by the people that I have walking alongside me on this great adventure of life. I hope this small photo journey helps to convey a bit of the last few months here and hopefully it is also the kick in the pants that I need to keep me blogging! Loving and missing you all!

Photo Summary part 4

I think it is safe to say that this is part 4 of 5, for those of you who are worried that its getting a bit long (although, if such people are out there, they should perhaps consider not reading my blog anymore as I have never, ever, ever, been known as someone who is concise and to the point...) This exciting part 4 begins the section of the summary that chronicles the visits of Gillan and my mom. Sharing my home here with the two of them was such a highlight and privilige!We sure do love jumping pictures. Unfortunately the weather decided to be gross and mean while Gillian was here, so we had a lot of rainy, chilly walks, but enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. A walk along the Rhine River is always a great way to enjoy the day!

If you were wondering what heaven looks like, and where it is located, I can give you a heads up...its in Heidelburg and it looks exactly like this bookstore. Literally filled to overflowing with books, Gillian and I could barely contain our excitement. Seriously. I am in love with this place

I do so love Heidelburg, and was glad that Gillian was equally captivated by this beautiful, romantic, historic city.

We went on a grand adventure in search of a monestary in Maulbraun by way of train and a 3 kilomenter hike through the woods. When we arrived at the deserted train station in the middle of nowhere, we were understandibly a little nervous. Luckily for us, we found our way without incident and enjoyed a very interesting audio tour of the beautiful (if freezing cold) monestary there.

I think it was by far the coldest audio tour I have ever been on, but it was truly beautiful and incredible. I could not have asked for better company either!

Photo Summary part 3

Here is another picture from St. Andrews...note the Scottish Highlands in the background, pretty castle ruins in the center and the North Sea all around. I was speechless.

Good friends are priceless. It was really fun to be able to see Isabelle in a different setting and meet her friends in this place that is so close to her heart. Plus, their sarcasm and Scottish senses of humor kept me doubled over in laughter for the entirety of our 3 days there!

Travelling on a student budget makes for some interesting stories. For example, in order to keep under the 10 kg limit for hand luggage enforced by RyanAir, we devised a solution of putting on as many articles of clothing as possible/necessary. Because of this, Izzy found that she could no longer close her jacket! Worth it? Absolutely!

Amy and I in the courtyard of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, historic university and home to the Book of Kells. While expensive, Dublin was also a good time (but my least favorite of our destinations on our whirlwind tour)

What is a trip to Dublin without a visit to the Guiness Brewery? Arthur Guiness signed a 9,000 year lease on this property...if that's not confidence, I don't know what is! In case you can't tell, I am here holding my imaginary pint of Guiness beer (and in my imaginary world, it is also gluten free) 

Photo Summary part 2

After Warsaw, we made our way by plane to Scotland. We landed in Edinburgh and enjoyed the city for about 4 hours before we caught a bus to Inverness. I have to say that I had no real expectations for Scotland and I was absolutely blown away by this beautiful land. Everywhere we went was breathtakingly beautiful and filled with friendly and entertaining people. 

Edinburgh was lovely. I could have easily enjoyed a few more days there taking in the landscape, castles, culture and history. 

I was surprised with how much I really fell in love with Inverness. I have to admit that seeing Loch Ness was not very high on my life to do list, I took the chance because the opportunity arose, not because I necessarily orchestrated it that way. As soon as we arrived in Inverness, I understood why it should have been much higher on my list! Not only is Loch Ness beautiful and mysterious, the whole region is incredibly rich with culture and Clan history. Above is a picture of the ruins of Urquhart Castle with Loch Ness in the background. This castle was blown up by the last inhabitants in order to prevent it from being used as a base for Jacobite forces in the British struggle for the throne in the late 1600s that ended the Glorious Revolution. I would recommend a stop here to anyone who has a chance, it was well worth the 4 hour bus ride to get there! 

Having a Hootananny in front of Hootananny's, Inverness' most popular pub-home to a lively live-music scene and popular destination for tourists and natives alike!

St. Andrews, hometown of the game of golf, was a lovely day-trip away from Dundee, where Isabelle studied for a year. Above is a poor pictoral representation of the incredible ruins of an old cathedral turned graveyard located directly on the North Sea. This place was beauiful in a way that I cannot describe with words and could not capture in a picture. The sheer size and openness of this cathedral lent it an air of holiness that I have not felt even in the most decorative and lovely cathedrals of Europe. 

There was a whole lot of silliness on our whirlwind adventure and for that I am so grateful. Here I share a kiss with one of my favorite animals!

Photo Summary part 1

In an effort to jump back on the blogging train, I am including here a brief photo summary of my 2 month break. During this long stretch, I was able to visit Warsaw, Scotland (including Edinburgh, Inverness and Dundee), Dublin, Cologne, and Lake Constance. I was also overwhelmingly blessed by visits by Gillian and my mom! As you can imagine, these past few months have been incredibly rich with new experiences and great time with friends old and new. Hopefully it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, so that you all can understand just a part of this time that I treasure so much. Enjoy!

Here are the 4 PH students in Warsaw - my lovely travel companions, Amy and Isabelle, and our dear friend and tour guide (as well as Warsaw native) Ewa. You may or may not be able to tell from this picture that it was unbelievably cold there...but well worth the trip. We were also blessed with more sunny days than cloudy - a huge blessing in February!


Much of our time in Warsaw centered around food. I think it is quite possible that I gained about 5 pounds in Warsaw alone...all of the food was absolutely delicious, plentiful and dirt cheap!

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip - the three of us in front of the "Kulturpalast" in Warsaw - a gift from Stalin to Warsaw in the 50s - a prime example of Communist architecture and just one of many examples of the living and continuing history of this incredible city

This is one of my absolute favorite monuments ever (being a history and memory freak, I pay attention to stuff like that - how and why history is remembered tangibly and intangibly) This is a memorial to the citizens of Warsaw who led the uprising against the Nazis in 1944, completely without allied help - they wanted the uprising to be something that they themselves, as residents of Warsaw and captives of the Nazis, did themselves. A huge percentage of the population died in this attempt and the memory of this event is still fresh and quite sensitive in the hearts and minds of Warsaw residents to this day. A friend of Ewa's, when asked if she wanted to come with us to the recently opened museum memorializing this uprising, replied that it was all just too sensitive and emotional and that she couldn't bring herself to go there because it is just too sad. This memorial, near the center of Warsaw, has such movement and purpose to it - I was incredibly moved by this great sculpture.

I loved this outdoor ampitheater in the park of the summer palace - If I remember correctly this is a sculpture of the composer Chopin (native of Warsaw) and it was absolutely beautiful in the snow!

This isn't where we are, is it?

**this post has been in process for a couple of weeks now...sorry for the delay. Gillian came to visit and then I left for another little trip, but I am trying to get back on top of things before my mom gets here. This is part one of a multi-part series chronicling my travels and adventures of the past few weeks. Enjoy.

The title of this post is a quote from none other than yours truly, and illustrates quite aptly what a whirlwind adventure I just completed. I'll clarify: what I *meant* to ask was if our bus was coming to the stop where we wanted to disembark, however due to exhaustion, a little bit of sensory overload and a lot a bit of language confusion, I asked instead: "this isn't where we are, is it?" to which of course the answer is, always and forever, yes. This is where we are. We are, in fact, where we are. Which is good news, as it turns out. 

I'll start from the begining. I am one of those weird people who has really wanted to travel to Poland for quite awhile now. I have rarely met anyone who shares or even understands this desire, which is also understandable. I can say with conviction, that Warsaw in every way exceeded my expectations and I would recommend a visit to this city to anyone. Amy and Isabelle (my travel companions) had no real burning desire to go to Warsaw and decided on this stop only because a good friend of ours grew up there and offered to show us around the city and introduce us to her family. They loved the city as well. A trip to Warsaw is worth your time and money, I heartily recommed it! We arrived there mid-afternoon after leaving Karlsruhe at 5:30am (not my favorite part of traveling...) and promptly found our hostel and saw a bit of the old town. Honestly, the 3 days we spent there are a bit of a blur on this end of things, so I will save you the play by play and just give an overview of highlights (in no particular order)

1. Dinner with Ewa's family was maybe my favorite couple hours of the entire week. Her family was so friendly and really pulled out all the stops to introduce us to (a LOT of) Polish food and culture. Her mom even prepared one of the dishes gluten free for me. Their hospitality and the humor of cultural interactions is best illustrated through the following incidents. First of all, they put the food on the table and everyone started serving up food. Not realizing that this was just the first course, recoginzing that there was a lot of food on the table, and being quite hungry, Isabelle and I filled our plates. Only to learn 2 minutes later that that was just appetizers. Very very delicious appetizers. So, by the second course, we were both pretty full. Oops. We stuffed ourselves full with the rest of the food anyway. It was all delicious. Anyway, the second incident went as follows: Isabelle, after finishing her glass of juice, reached for water to refill her glass. Ewa's father jumped up (speaking mostly Polish with a few German and a few English words mixed in...) and communicated that she should not drink water, but that she should try this other kind of juice. Ewa and her sisters, after recovering from their embarassment (good to know that dads all over the world embarrass their children...haha!) explained that water is seen as "not nice" or not fancy somehow, and was only on the table for the family. In Poland, it is especially important for them to offer their guests only the best...in this case, juice. At any rate, their hospitality was a generous display of familial love for which I am very grateful.

2. A visit to the musuem for the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 was absolutely wonderful. The museum is quite new and does a great job of combining interactive elements with displays to effectively memorialize the brave actions of the residents of Warsaw in their 1944 fight against the Nazi occupiers. This memory is still very fresh in the minds of all Warsaw residents, Ewa's own family was torn apart and deeply marked by this event, as were all families at the time. It was amazing the way that visiting this museum opened up so many different conversations. Ewa shared how her great-aunt waited for 50 years (until the day she died) for her husband who disappeared during the uprising - his fate is still unknown. Isabelle shared her perspective of being German in a world so marked by Nazi atrocities and illuminated the difficulties of German self-identity, even a few generations after Hitler scarred Europe and the world. 

3. Polish food. I have never eaten so much good food for so little money in my life, ever. We ate so much good food we decided we all probably gained a few pounds (hence our founding of the "Polish diet" for those looking to put on the pounds as fast as possible!). Delicious soups, sausages and ribs are just a few of the amazing things we ate, all for just a few euros - amazing! We were also quite thankful for the hot wine and beer that was available to help ward off the below freezing temperatures (every time we went outside, I had about a 5 minute regimen of wrapping my head and neck to protect from the bitter cold...brrr!)

4. Summer palace and gardens. The parks in Warsaw are beautiful, also when they are covered in snow! We fed birds (they would really come land on your hands) and toured the summer palace of Polish royalty. The most interesting fact that we learned was that people in times gone by would sleep sitting up due to a fear of contracting illnesses and dying in their sleep. A lesser motive was to preserve the elaborate hairdos of the times. After years of touring palaces and wondering at the extraordinarilly short/small beds, it was interesting to learn that it is not because people back then were that much shorter (as I had always assumed) but rather that their method of sleeping was so different. 

All in all, Warsaw was definitely the high point of our trip for me. The people were so incredibly friendly, helpful and hospitable, the city is a treasure trove of historical sites, and the feeling of a city that has such a long, complicated and beautiful history lends to the whole place a mysterious granduer that should not be missed. 

After three days of snow, sunshine and freezing temperatures in Warsaw, we bid Ewa goodbye and headed to the airport in Lodz to travel to our next destination: Scotland.