Tchuss!

Goodbye Germany! I’m just beginning to get to know Würzburg and now it’s time to leave. It took me about two months to start to feel at home in Ireland as well, but I still had 3 months there to enjoy it. During my last two weeks I was finally starting to get the feel of things and be comfortable with German life, but now I’m headed back home (and am rather excited about it). So here’s a recap of my last week, mostly by myself.

Hayley left Tuesday morning and then Rex and Jacob followed Wednesday so I’ve mostly been on my own. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in my lab finally actually doing the experiment. It consisted of aligning mirrors, chilling down our sample, and hitting a button to turn on the source so we could measure the transmission.

There was also my last two frisbee practices which were fun. It’s starting to get dark early again. I guess summer is over. Sigh. At least it isn’t as bad as when I got to Ireland, no sunsets at half four in Texas!

Friday I finally went and visited the Festung Marienburg, our castle. I spent the morning climbing up to it and wandering around taking pictures. Probably good that I went by myself as I did quite a bit of the latter. I had my last döner for lunch - probably terrible for you but so good! I met Steffi in the evening for coffee and we wandered around and talked a bit before saying goodbye, which was sad.

Saturday I went to Nürnberg with Dan, a guy from England who works in Jacob’s lab group. Funnily enough we had both planned on going that weekend and so it worked out great. I really liked the city, 2nd biggest in Bavaria. We started out by going to the site of the Nuremburg Nazi trials and the parade grounds. There was a really interesting museum there and so we got to read a bit of history which is always cool. After the museum we were starving and so went to find famous Nürnberger brautwurst and lebkuchen for lunch. Successful on both accounts - I can say that they are quite delicious, though the difference between Nürnberger and normal brautwurst isn’t very obvious, but I like both so don’t really care. Lebkuchen is a ginger cake of sorts usually eaten around Christmas, and very tasty.

While food-hunting we wandered through the old town and saw many of the churches there. They are really cool, and there are quite a few of them. After finding food (well, actually as we found food, as the lebkuchen was there) we saw the site of the apparently famous Christmas market.

We stopped for a beer and then headed up to the castle. It was a very un-ostentatious castle, it seemed like a place people could actually live rather than being incredulously big and stately. I really liked it. After the castle we headed back down the hill and stopped at a Toy Museum, showcasing the history of toys and the development throughout the ages. It was cool to see, though I really wanted to play with them all.


A bit more exploring lead us back through the old town and past some cool bridges. One more beer and some more brautwurst and we headed back to the train station and Würzburg. It was a good trip, Nürnberg is a cute town and it was fun traveling with Dan, who also likes taking pictures and so didn’t mind stopping frequently to be photographers/obvious tourists. Back in Würzburg, as I was already in photographer mode, and actually had my camera with me, I decided to to take night pictures of the castle there. They turned out alright, I’d like to try again though I doubt I’ll have the time to before I leave. Here’s my favorite, the rest are on flickr :) (I have internet again! My landlord got home and turned it back on :) )

Sunday morning I spent packing, which took me less time than expected as it all fit the first time (well, time and a half) so I didn’t have to repack 4 times like I usually do. I cleaned the apartment a bit and then decided that since it was a nice day I would go back to the castle to try and redo one of the panoramas I had made of Würzburg when I visited before but didn’t look great because it had been slightly foggy that morning. This time it was much more successful, so here’s the city I’ve been living in the past few months


I tried to find my way to a vineyard trail, but couldn’t find the start of it so just went home and cooked dinner and played with pictures the rest of the night.

Today is my last day in Würzburg/Germany/Europe. Kinda weird. I’d love to stay but I also can’t wait to get home. I’ve had my fill of traveling, at least for a month or so ;) After spending the morning and afternoon finishing things around the apartment/being lazy, possibly taking more pictures, I’m meeting friends for a final beer in Germany and will head out tomorrow morning for the airport and then Texas! Total travel time: .5 hour tram to train station, 1.5 hour train to Frankfurt, 10.5 hour flight to Houston, 3-ish hour drive and then I’m back in Austin! Woot, be back in Texas 2 pm tomorrow!

One week

So I have one week left in Europe. Pretty crazy, this will be the first time in 2009 that I am in America for more than 4 days. I'm excited to go home! So since the last update I've had the fun development that our internet stopped working at home. This means that I now journey to either the university or the internet cafe in the city to check my email, usually every other day or so. This also means that no pictures to this entry because I don't have time to add them.

Aside from learning how to survive without internet, my room mates and I had to give our final presentations yesterday about our summer work. It's our only real graded part of the summer, but it, like everything else, was rather informal. We had members from each of our groups come and we just talked about our work and they asked questions. Good practice for giving scientific talks. I also actually started taking data today, or trying to. We have everything set up, just need more liquid helium to cool down our sample, which we should get tomorrow. It's kind of ironic that I am only now taking data, a week before leaving and after giving my presentation. Oh well, at least it happened before I left :)

Frisbee has also been fun, now that Germany's school is out for their summer practices have been much less well attended and more just fun playing. It's still been great though. We even had lessons in how to layout after one of the women's practices. By layout I mean the frisbee term (diving for a disk), not sitting in the sun ;) It was fun, we did it on the beach volleyball courts so it wouldn't hurt so much when we landed :P

The first of my room mates, Hayley, left today and the other two are headed back to Texas tomorrow so it will just be me for the last bit, but it will go by fast and I'll be back in Austin in no time! Possibly even after a day trip this weekend :)

München Adventures

For those unaware, München = Munich, the city I visted last weekend. My room mate Jacob and I took a train down Friday morning and spent two days around Munich and then took a day trip out to Neuschwanstein castle. It was a good trip away from Würzburg for a bit and one of the trips that I had really wanted to make so I'm glad I got to.

We started out the day visiting the Marienplatz which is the main town square and home to the new town hall and Glockenspiel - the dancing clock. I'm pretty sure it's listed as one of the most over-rated tourist attractions, and definitely rightly so, but still cute. We bought fruit from a stand and munched while watching it then headed to the Viktualienmarkt, a large outdoor market which appears to specialize in sausage, for lunch.

After sampling some things Jacob and I headed north in the city in the direction of the English Gardens, wandering there and stopping by the Residenz and Hofgarten on our way. The English Gardens are really pretty, and one of the largest in Europe. We headed to the Chinese Tower, a beer garden in the middle of it, for our first mass in Munich. Throughout the weekend we decided that a) weissbier (wheat beer) is very tasty b) I drink beer rather quickly (thanks Ireland) and c) Müncheners like beer (apparently they drink 10,000 L a day, just at one beer hall). We definitely partook in that intake and tried several varieties while there including the standard hofbrau and the dark beer, called hofbrau something, along with the weissbier. The darker beer was very good as well, though rather strong (9%).

After the English Gardens we went back through the Residenz, wandered aimlessly through the city for a bit and then headed to the Hofbrauhaus for dinner. The Hofbrauhaus definitely deserves its reputation for being stereotypical and touristy, but it was interesting to see. It's not really necessary to visit though for anyone with trips planned to Munich. After dinner we headed back to our hostel for an early night as Jacob hadn't had much sleep the night before and we had woken up early to catch our train.

The next day we had a bit of a slow start and were planning on getting the typical Bavarian breakfast, weisswurst, and then heading to the Deutches Museum, a big technology museum. We did the first part and ate outside at the Viktualienmarkt - weisswurst is delicious! - but then decided that since it was shaping up to be a gorgeous day we would go on a free (nominally - they work off tips) bike tour around the city before going to the museum. The bike tour was cool, it was about 3 and a half hours and took us all around Munich, including a stop by the Chinese Tower again for a beer and lots of stories about the monuments and city along the way.

We finished the bike tour and headed to the Deutches Muesum, but unfortunately got there an hour before it closed. Because of that they didn't charge us admission, which was nice, but also meant we didn't get to see much of it. You could probably spend a full day there. We headed to the physics/computer section being the nerds that we are and wandered around until the museum closed.


We climbed up one of the church towers which had a really cool view of the city, 330 steps up to the top :) Dinner and souvenir shopping before heading back to the hostel. We spent some time relaxing in the hostel's bar before going to bed.

Our next day was largely spent on the train/bus - 3 hours to Füssen, bus ride to Neuschwanstein, bus back to Füssen, 3 hours back to Munich and then 3 hours to Würzburg and 45 min tram to our house. Lots of reading/music/nap time. But, the point of this outrageous journey was to see Castle Neuschwastein, the Disney prototype castle. It was really pretty, though one side was covered in scaffolding and there was an imminent storm. We walked up to the castle, wandered around the parts that you can get in for free and then took the trails around the grounds, which are really pretty in and of themselves and give you a good view of the castle and it's neighbor, Hohenschwangau. A side trail looked interesting and lead us to the river below the castle. It was gorgeous, and had freezing cold water that we waded in. We decided to try a different way back which turned out to be really cool and had several gorgeous waterfalls. We made it back to the train just ahead of a storm rolling in and headed back to Würzburg.


Back in Würzburg I'm working on putting together a presentation of my work this summer. The four of us each has to complete a presentation at the start of next week as a final for our work. Still haven't taken any data, but I have done some analysis with the previous data my group has. Maybe (though its looking increasingly unlikely) I'll get to do some experiments next week.

Also, two weeks until I'm back in Texas!

Italy... or not

This post was supposed to be the one detailing my fun adventures in Venice and Rome, but instead I'm going to tell you about fake Italy and Würzburg.

Last Friday Hayley and I woke up really early to catch a tram at 5:20 to take us to the train station in time to catch our train, which was going to get us to Hanau in time to get on a bus at 8:00 which was supposed to get to Frankfurt Hahn airport at 9:42, plenty of time to catch our 10:50 flight. Everything was fine until the bus, which was running a little late anyway, hit traffic on the freeway. An hour and a half of traffic. Apparently there had been an accident, so we ended up at the airport about 10 minutes after our flight took off. We were very sad about this and so went to the italian restaurant in the airport and ordered pizza and wine and pretended that we were in Italy. We then did all of the above transportation backwards and got home at 6 pm, 13 hours after starting out and getting pretty much no where.

We thought about trying to catch a train to France, since we had already planned on traveling that weekend, but everything was too expensive and it was rainy in Germany, so we just stayed home, did some work and watched movies all weekend. Sunday was Rex's birthday so we went to Kiliani for it's last night, watched fireworks, ate pretzles and candied nuts, and had a mass (1 liter of beer).














The next week I was just working on my project and playing frisbee. Supposedly I'm going to take data the first week in August, but it keeps getting pushed back. Hopefully it will actually happen before I leave so that when I have to give a presentation of what I've been doing all summer it is more than just simulations and theory.

This weekend I decided to do something outside. I tried to find a winery tour, but they're all in German which is problematic. There is a walk through various vineyards which I will probably do eventually, but this weekend one of my room mates and I decided to walk to a nearby forest and wander around it for a while. We really did wander - there isn't a map of the place so I just looked on google maps, took note of the roads around the edges of the forest so that we could find our way back to where we started, and off we went taking random turns whichever way looked either a) more interesting, b) had less stinging nettle or c) more pathlike and less road like. It served us well and we saw some pretty German forest before popping out in a wheat field just above the town we started in.

Slow summer

I haven't posted in a while because there hasn't been much going on. The first weekend in July I went to a women's frisbee tournament with team Frankas, comprised of women from Würzburg, Bomberg, Nürnburg, and one other city in Franconia (part of Bavaria). We were a decent team and had several close matches but just didn't play well together and so only won our last one. It was a fun tournament though, and of course lots of frisbee :) Here's our team -
I spent the week after the tournament just doing research, well, working in mathematica trying to simulate negative refraction (my project topic). Hopefully I'll get to start actually taking data next week. I did much the same this week as well, with the exception of Kiliani. Kiliani is a festival that is held every summer consisting of lots of carnival rides and food tents, as well as a large beer hall. My room mates and I visited it twice, rode the ferris wheel and partook in the 1 liter beers offered at the tents. I wanted one of the mugs and couldn't find a place to buy them, so when three elder Germans sitting next to us told me that I should take my stein after drinking the liter, I was rather easy to persuade and now I have a Würzburger Hofbrau bier stein :)

This week has been filled with Grey's Anatomy and trying to work on my research. This weekend Hayley and I are headed to Italy for what will probably be my last international adventure of the summer (funds are running out, as are available weekends), so definitely a much longer, more interesting post to come!

Snipets from Germany

Life continues here in Würzburg. I eat a lot of ice cream, finally found decent tea, my research is actually starting to be productive, I play frisbee a couple times a week, going to a women's tournament this weekend, our flower plant died so we bought a basil plant, listening to
thunderstorms almost daily, cooking with the room mates, wine festival this week, beer festival next week, planning a trip to Italy, bought plane tickets home, found out a HS friend is in Germany too, nearly finished with Gilmore Girls, found a swim park nearby, getting used to summer heat without air conditioning, finding a thesis advisor and trying to convince them to give me a project, and learning small bits of German. And writing run-on sentences. That's my life in a nutshell, be back in Texas August 18!

Germany vs Ireland vs America

This entry is mainly because I'm a bit bored and have been thinking about these things while I'm here. So instead of playing with Mathematica some more, I'm going to tell you the pros and cons of these various countries

What I like about Germany:
-Renewable energy everywhere! It's awesome, there are so many wind turbines and solar panels on most roofs. I very much approve
-Weather, its warmer than Ireland but not hot like Texas. Also, they have actual storms! There was a thunderstorm my first night and I was excited about it :)
-Trains. The Germans have a great transportation system, which is awesome and convenient
-Sooo cheap!! It's amazing, especially after Ireland, and especially because I'm running out of money. But seriously - döner and a beer for under 5 euro, and cheap fruit and veggies = happy Brady
-Flowers everywhere. Our neighborhood smells really nice, and its just happy to walk along and see roses everywhere

What I miss about Ireland:
-People. The Irish are really friendly in general, and the friends that I made in particular I miss. Also, not being able to speak German, and hence talk to people, bothers me more than I thought it would
-Tea! definitely miss this more than I thought I would. I've become addicted, and used to good tea rather than mediocre I'll-drink-it-because-its-tea tea
-Walking everywhere (we live too far away in Würzburg to walk places)
-The green-ness of everything
-Faffing, aka not doing much. I guess more particularly, not needing to things immediately, and having people to faff with

What I miss about Texas
-Strangely enough, the heat. I can still wear pants and a jacket if I want to, which is really weird
-Food - I keep getting cravings for things like Taco Hut, Amy's, bubble tea, sushi, greasy bacon (weird, I know. That one really surprised me) and good hamburgers
-Having my own kitchen with everything I need to cook things. can't wait for that again!
-The people (obviously) miss you guys!
-Low-key Austinites, especially when it comes to clothing (this is mostly directed towards Ireland, though they did succeed in making me at least think about what I'm wearing before leaving the house)
-Barton Springs/Town Lake. I won't have been swimming/in a swim suit (except for working out in an indoor pool, which doesn't really count) in nearly 10 months by the time I get back to Austin. This is sad and I need some warmer weather/a beach or pool!

Woo, so there's my nostalgia/comparison bit. Back to work I suppose.

Berlin etc.

My first full week in Germany! And I already managed to squeeze in some traveling :P Many stories to ensue, and I'm going to try and add pictures for the first time, which will probably mean a rather long post - get excited :)

Last week wasn't super exciting but had some highlights. I practiced with the Würzburg ultimate team, Disc-0-Fever, Wed for womens and Thurs for open practice. It's really fun playing with them because they basically warm up, run a couple of drills and then scrimmage for an hour, so lots of playing :) They actually asked me to play with them this weekend in their equivalent of intervarsities, but I wasn't sure if I counted as a student and wanted to go to Berlin so didn't. It was cool that they asked though! After open practice I went with Hayley and two Germans to get ice cream (Eis - one of the few German words i know :P ). Eis stands are all over, and its really cheap - 80-90 cents a scoop! - so we eat a lot of ice cream.

On Friday my room mates and I went to visit a friend at the restaurant she works at, and get crepes and beer. It was really good, and good weather for sitting outside. The two boys left to go too the "Free and Outside" music festival while Hayley and I stayed because we were leaving early the next day. We ended up talking for a while to a man sitting next to us about America. It was cool, and interesting.

The next morning we left early (tram at 6:49) for Berlin. It took just just under 5 hours to get there, but we made it safe and excited. We found our hostel and left our backpacks before heading out to the city. Our first stop was the East Side Gallery, which is the longest section of the Berlin Wall left standing. We walked along it and took lots of pictures. It is now basically a graffiti gallery, with some pretty cool paintings! Some of them were still in progress, and one guy was painting :)

We left the wall and headed into the more central part of town, which is supposed to be a hip area/good place for bars. We decided that we could use a late afternoon cocktail after our walking and so went to find a good place. Along the way we tried currywurst from a stand. It's basically brautwurst but with a tomatoey-curry sauce and is supposed to be a Berlin specialty. It was pretty good, even for me who doesn't like tomatoes :P

We found an Indonesian restaurant that had a pretty good happy hour, so we decided to go there. After drinks we walked to Museuminsel, a small island in the middle of the river that has a bunch of museums on it. On the way we got distracted by an open market that had a lot of random things for sale, especially old records. I ended up buying a pair of earrings that are puzzle pieces :)

After the market we went on to the island and took a lot of pictures of a cool looking building, I think it was called the Berlin Dom, but I'm not sure. It had a cool fountain though, which made a rainbow :)From here we headed to Checkpoint Charlie, which was the point from which you used to be able to go from East to West Germany. They had a really cool wall explaining the history of Berlin, which was really cool to read, and a good history refresher for me :P We decided to go back to the hostel before continuing our touring, so we took the tram back, officially checked in and had a short break before continuing to Alexanderplatz, which it turns out is mostly shopping and a big tower that is expensive to go into. We wandered around a bit, took lots of pictures, and searched for food (which was actually hard to find cheaply - this surprised us as Berlin is apparently where döner, the ultimate delicious, cheap, eat on the street food, originated). We finally just took the tram back to a place we had seen earlier and ate a late dinner. We decided for the novelty factor that we would take beer with us on the tram (which you are allowed to do in Berlin). Back at the hostel we just went to bed, as it had been a rather long day.

The next morning we started out with tasty (but kinda expensive) breakfast at our hostel and then headed to the zoo. It took us a while to get there as there was a bike race and so buses weren't running, but we made it and looked at lots and lots of cute animals, and of course took lots of pictures :) I liked this bird, he was trying to eat the camera :)

After the zoo we tried to go to a massive department store, KaDeWe, but sadly it was closed on sunday :( So instead we hate lunch of chips and currywurst and headed to the Brandenburg Gate. It was really cool, very massive. Again, pictures and a cool history lesson before heading out. We decided to head back to Würzburg at this point, so walked towards the train station. On the way we were going to go in the Reichstag, but there was a very long line and so decided against it. At the train station we found a very cheap ice cream stand and so had one last cone before getting on our train back to Würzburg.


We had some interesting adventures getting home - our first train was full so we had to just sit in the aisles between compartments (normal in Germany). Then, apparently our second train was delayed, but a train also going to Frankfurt was coming in at the same time, but this one didn't go to Würzburg. Guess which one we got on... An hour later we ended up in the Frankfurt Hauptbanhof and realized we had made a mistake, but luckily there was a train literally about to leave for Würzburg (we double checked this time) so we jumped on it and finally made it home. Long, but fun trip.

One more fun story as to why I should probably learn German (you would think I would have thought about this before moving to Germany). Today we decided to make chicken and pasta for dinner because we had bought a big thing of breast meat of what we thought was chicken - we don't know German, but what else is pink and sold in filets? Well, apparently turkey is because when we opened the container to take out what we expected to be several chicken breasts we found one very large filet. By very large I mean about the size of a plate. Thanks to a translator I now know that Putenbrust = turkey breast :P

Back to Europe

I've been back in Europe for a week now, though have only spent about 2 and a half days in Würzburg (my summer home). It was great to be home for a bit (a very short bit), just to get to see people and spend time with my family. Also to get rid of things that I won't need (though I still somehow packed 35 kilos of stuff to bring back). In the time I've been in Europe I've spent 2 days traveling, 2 days in Würzburg and 3 days in Amsterdam playing frisbee. Fun times :)

Getting to Würzburg was complicated, I had booked roundtrip tickets to Dublin, so I flew back to Dublin then got a Ryanair flight to Frankfurt Hahn, a bus to the main Frankfurt airport and a train to Würzburg where I met one of my room mates and we took a tram to our summer home. It's a cute house, four of us from UT are renting the top floor from a family, and we have a balcony and nice rooms. And the neighborhood is filled with gardens so it smells and looks gorgeous! That was Tuesday, and all of that traveling basically filled the day.

The next day I went into the city to get my tram card, cell phone, and sort things out with the university/what I'm going to be doing. I managed to get most of it done, and bought delicious strawberries and a cute flower plant for our kitchen. Hayley, the other girl from UT, also plays frisbee so we went to the Würzburg team's practice in the evening. It was fun, and I'm excited about having people to play frisbee with over the summer! After practice the four of us went to a party with some of the physics students and talked for a while before heading home.

On Thursday I spent most of the day traveling. It was a German holiday so no one was going to be in lab, so I could head to Windmill early. I decided to try and see Hannover on the way, as some of my ancestors were apparently from there. Unfortunately I slept in more than I expected and so was only in the city for 2 hours before having to catch the train to Amsterdam, but it was fun to see, and a good break from sitting on a train. I finally got to Amsterdam and got the bus to the pitches where I was very excited to see all of the Irish there. We spent the evening talking and drinking before climbing into tents.

Friday was the first official day of the tournament - a long but good day. We played 4 games (at this tournament they were full length matches, 90 min or game to 15) that day. They went pretty well, we won 1 and lost 3 but played fairly well in the first 2 (won the 3rd) and then were tired and kept making silly mistakes in the last game. After our last game we ordered pizza and hung out at the main tent for the rest of the night. They had a table quiz which was good fun - there were I think 5 Irish teams finishing in the top 10 teams. The rest of the night we were very Irish and spend the night singing, having push up contests, and Kev brought out his guitar until we were forcibly removed from the tent and told to go to bed.

The next day we only had 2 games as our pool had one less team so we had a by game in the middle of the day. Our first game was against the top seed so while we tried to put up a good fight we ended up losing that game. Our next game wasn't for several hours so we hung out at the teepee the tournament had set up and watched the guys teams play. Our next match was against the team we had played first in the tournament, and sadly we lost to them again. Saturday was the night of the tournament party and bbq. They had delicious food for us and then we sat in the grass for a while relaxing and drinking. Then there was a beer race which I entered with a German guy who had been in Ireland for a while and so knew most of my team. They had us spin in circles, ride a bike, drink a can of Heineken, leap frog back, eat this Dutch caramel cracker thing, run and drink another beer, and then hit a cone with a frisbee. We were doing alright until the cracker thing, which was really hard to chew. It was a fun race though. After a game of Mingle Mingle we met the Swiss team in the teepee for a drinking game (they had beaten us earlier in the day, we said we could probably take them in drinking though) and ended up hanging out there the rest of the night. I apparently napped through most of it (I was exhausted) - as say the pictures of me asleep on the couches. :)

The final day was a bit disappointing, our first match was pretty bad, we lost 15-1 in less than 45 min and so spent the time before our next match getting our heads together and cheering for the guys in their match. Our final match was actually well matched, we played really hard and the other team was about the save level as us so it was a really good game. Sadly we let them get a few easy points and then couldn't catch back up, but it was a much better way to end the tournament than our previous game. We finished in time to see the end of the women's final and then were watching the men's final when I had to leave. It was sad to say bye to everyone as I don't know when I'll see them again, but the tournament was a great way to do it! I had a 7 hour train ride back to Würzburg - fun times. I was knackered enough to sleep for large portions of it and read for the rest of it.

Today I basically recovered (aka, sat around home) and read some articles about the research I'm going to be doing this summer (negative index of refraction in either iron or metamaterials) and then in the afternoon went up to the University to meet my professor, who basically told me that I just need to read more and talk to him again soon so I have lots of physics papers waiting in my future... After dinner my room mates and I went downstairs and had tea with our land lord and his wife and talked for a bit. They're really nice and are trying to learn English so it was an interesting conversation involving online translators from time to time :)

So that's what I've been up to recently (and why I haven't posted in a while ;) ) Now that things are settled more or less I'll probably just be in Würzburg with a few side trips for most of the summer - I just have one trip out of the country (to Venice/Rome!) planned and a few cities in Germany. Looking forward to a relaxing summer :)

Last days in Ireland

Well, I’m currently flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my way back to Texas. I’m actually very excited and not sad to go as I thought I would be. I think a large part of this is that I will be seeing most of my friends from Ireland in a week at Windmill Windup (so excited!) and because I had a great last few days. I loved my time here, it was a great semester and wonderful experience. I’ll do my reflecting later, but here’s what my last few days looked like.

After my last exam before the week-long break I spent the morning doing laundry. I had literally worn everything I brought with me except for the dresses, and had even worn some of those and so was desperately in need of laundry time. While waiting for it I went and tried a mexican food place that my friend wanted an ‘expert’ opinion on, and they did make quite good enchiladas (I was pleasantly surprised to find good mexican food in Ireland, though during my last week). On Friday I had my going away party. I spent the morning trying to study a bit and then made salsa with Courtney in the afternoon. She, Jen and I went to a maritime festival that was along the Liffey. It was pretty cool, and they had lots of food stalls so we got paella for dinner. We headed back to my apartment before people started coming. It was great to see everyone and have one last night out. We ended up in Doyle’s, which I thought was fitting. It was a really good night.

The next day I studied until the library closed at 4 (Trinity doesn’t believe in long library hours during exam time) and then tried to study outside but ended up just throwing on the cricket pitch (this was exciting as normally they will bodily drag people off of it to keep the grass nice) for a while. The next two days were my Belfast adventure which was way cool, and even though it did mean I studied far less for my last exam than I should have it was definitely worth it. I spent all of Tuesday studying and packing and then had my exam Wednesday morning. It went well enough and I was very excited to be done :D I finished packing and then me, Jen and Courtney went to the Botanical Gardens in Dublin for the afternoon. The gardens were lovely! I took nearly 200 pictures of flowers :P but now I have had my fill for a while... at least for the day ;) Courtney and I had lunch there and then went to Penney’s where I bought a dress (I know, crazy right?) and Tara met us. She and I tried to go to the Guinness Factory but sadly got there after it closed :( So we went to Trinity for a bit of throwing instead. I finished up packing, watched two episodes of Friends (I have a feeling I won’t be watching nearly as much of that back home as I did here) and then went to the Pav with my room mates. When we got there some of the frisbee kids were throwing so I went to say hi and ended up staying for an hour :) We then went to the Pav and had time for one beer before they closed and then I went with my room mates to the Globe. We finally made it to a pub together, though Steph had gone home and Breda was studying for her last exam. Overall it was a great last day, and a wonderful way to end my stay in Ireland :)

Northern Adventure

Jen and I decided to take one last trip during our break in exams. I had taken four and had one left, she had taken 9 and have 2 left. We figured we deserved a break, and had been planning on going to the north since about March, so went.

We left Dublin at 7 am on a bus to Belfast in order to catch a train up to the northern coast to see the Giant’s Causeway and Bushmills Distillery. The trip was rather uneventful, though long (as most traveling in Ireland is) and we got to Portrush just before 12. At the visitor’s center we found a map of a trail to the Giant’s Causeway, the buses weren’t running as it was Sunday, and it was gorgeous sunny weather, so we decided to just walk there. Here begins our adventure :) We got fish and chips for lunch and had a picnic on the beach and then headed down the coast. We spent a good bit of time looking at the limestone rocks along the beach and trying to get to a particular one that was an arch over the water. When we decided to head on our first attempt to climb up to the road was foiled by nettles lining the path so we decided that wasn’t the place to go up and went back to the car park to go up the safe way.

At the road we saw a sign that said Bushmills - 4. Thinking it was in kilometers we thought that was grand and started walking. An hour and a half later when we got to Bushmills we realized that Northern Ireland definitely measures distance in miles. Oops. Because of that we ended up getting to the distillery just after the last tour had left so we just went to their restaurant and had whiskey cheesecake (didn’t taste like cheesecake but was really good) and a whiskey each. Jen decided she wasn’t a fan of whiskey straight though, so we bought ice cream so she could pour the whiskey over it :)

We then headed to the Giant’s Causeway, another 3 miles along the road. Our feet were rather sore at this point. The causeway was really cool, I took lots of pictures and we played on the rocks. The Giant’s Causeway is a basalt formation where an ancient lava field cooled and separated into polygonal columns, leaving a field of these polygons out into the ocean. There’s a legend about it that I couldn’t remember except that it involves an Irish hero, a giant, and getting to Scotland, but don’t remember why or who was doing the going.

After the Giant’s Causeway we decided to take a taxi back to our hostel, which was in Portstewart, on the other side of Portrush and we were definitely not walking back. The hostel was nice and right on the beach. We walked to a store and bought cheap meat pies and a bottle of wine for dinner and then back to the hostel to cook. It stays light in Ireland until about 10, which is very cool and makes for great traveling ;) Dinner was finished just at sunset so we sat outside and I took lots of sunset pictures - there was a gorgeous sunset over the ocean! While we ate we laughed at the strange custom of Portstewart - cruising. All of the teenagers get out and drive up and down the main street for hours. The would turn around near our hostel and then head back in the other direction. Now, as nearly the whole town was doing this there was bumper to bumper traffic for most of the way. It was kind of a rather ridiculous thing to do, but amusing to laugh at.

The next morning we got up, ate breakfast and then walked back to Portrush to catch either a train or bus. We made it in time for a bus, but realized when it came that we didn’t actually have enough money for it so went to get the train, realized we didn’t have enough money for that either, so ran to an atm before the train got there and wondered how we spent all our money (hostel, taxi and train apparently). We made it back in time and headed back to Belfast. One of the trains was delayed so we ended up getting to Belfast about 12:30 and so got a cheap lunch and ate it at the city hall, which had a nice lawn and lots of people sitting around. Our first plan was to walk to the Belfast Castle, but then went into Primark and decided shopping was cool too. We got new swimsuits and then headed out to go find the murals.

First we went to West Belfast to see the political murals. There was a long line of murals for all of the oppressed cultures and/or times, like the Basque region and one about Frederick Douglass. We saw quite a few smaller murals in that area and then headed back to the city center. We stopped in a pub that we found from the “historic pubs” tour leaflet and mapped out the rest of our day, which involved more murals, a park, Queen’s university and a bus home. We headed out towards East Belfast to see the Titanic mural (the Titanic was built in Belfast, I hadn’t known that) and two C.S. Lewis murals, as well as loyalist murals. It was cool. We bought cheap food and Bacardi breezers on sale and headed to the park for our last picnic (the weather was so nice the whole trip we couldn’t help but picnic :) ). After dinner we walked to the Botanical Gardens, but unfortunately they were closed so we just walked around them and to Queen’s University. They have really cool buildings there - pretty red color and castle-ish. We sat in their grass for a bit and talked before heading back to the bus station.


Our original plan had been to just stay out and go to pubs until we were ready to go home and then get on a bus back to Dublin (buses between the city run every hour all day), but as we were now out of money we decided to just head back. We slept on the bus and got back to Dublin at 12:30 and walked home. We ended up walking between 25 and 30 miles over the two days and finally got to see Northern Ireland. All in all, a good last trip :)

Exams exams exams

It's definitely exam season at Trinity - the libraries are completely full all day long (no one buys text books so come study time everyone is at the library), very few people are outside, and everyone is focused on studying. It's pretty crazy, but that's how it is here. There is very little assessment during the semester, so people don't bother learning things as they go. Then comes exams, when everyone realizes just how little they learned and so camp out in the library and feverishly go over notes for about a month. Trinity has a week long dead-day period, and then about 3 weeks of exams, so things are spread out more than UT and cramming is a bit more feasible, though I probably should have started a bit earlier.

I had my first exam on Monday and it wasn't too bad, I don't know how they grade here so I'm not sure how well I did but I am confident that I at least passed. Also, in the middle of the exams, they bring you tea and coffee :) It's very cute and quite nice! I've got another exam tomorrow, then Monday, Wednesday, a week off and my final one June 3rd. Twenty three hours after I finish that exam, I get on a plane home! It's crazy how fast things go!

Pretty much all of my free time now is studying, literally 8 or more hours a day. It's very sad, but its been raining a lot which makes spending all day inside less depressing. I made carrot cake after my last exam as a mental break, and to enjoy while studying. My room mates were very happy with that idea too :) Lots of tea and lots of studying still to do, so back to the library I go.

Little Things

I felt like blogging today, mainly to put off studying again - I haven't had any crazy adventures in the past 5 days :) This morning I did a bit of photography which was fun - a gorgeous day for it too! I read a photo blog by a guy in Austin, which was a bad idea because now I want to buy two new lenses (both cost about the same as my camera :\ ), and it made me a bit homesick as all the examples were from around Austin, even the 37th st lights :P So I went and took some pictures of my own and played with HDR, hopefully I'll get better at it with practice.

Trinity Ball was last night, I failed on the picture front as we were running late when getting ready and then I kept forgetting to take my camera out at the ball. It was a lot of fun though, they put up 5 different stages around campus, which is completely enclosed, and have bands playing from 10-5am. It's apparently the largest private party in Europe, woo! I went with my room mates but then hooked up with a couple frisbee kids (Sam, Jen, and Kevin) and we wandered around, running into Finola and Dave and then met Niall and several others for a 2am throwing session in the midst of the crowd. Good times :)

I also made pumpkin pie yesterday because several of my room mates had never had it and I felt like baking. I ended up buying a cheesecake in order to get a pie pan, and so now we have cheese cake and pumpkin pie in our fridge. Pie turned out surprisingly well considering it was baked in a deep-dish 6 or 7" pan rather than normal 9". I've decided I've definitely made too many pies in my life as I didn't even bother looking up a recipe for pie crust and could still make it. I guess there are worse things to know by heart.

Other news in my life: We found out that we have a place to live in Germany this summer, which is always good. The four of us going will be sharing a house outside of Würzburg, it'll be interesting and a bit far, but at least we don't have to pay for 6 months of housing. One of the girls is going in less than two weeks so I'll get info from her about it, as well as figure out what I'm actually going to be doing :P And I decided to go ahead and register for Windmill Windup, an ultimate tournament in Amsterdam the weekend I get back to Europe. It's kind of expensive but including airfair will end up being cheaper (and easier to get to) than Jestival (the other tournament I was thinking about, same weekend. Yes, frisbee has taken over my life) And finally, I'm actually starting to be productive - yay! Classes are done and my exams don't start until the 18th, so I have quite a while to buckle down and learn everything. Jealous of everyone who is already done!!

And with that, back to the studying! Wish me luck :)

One month to go

Wow, time goes by fast! I have exactly a month left in Ireland and I'm not really sure what happened to the last four months. I've got 3 days of class left, a week of studying, then 5 exams spread out over 3 weeks before heading back to the States for 3 days and back to Europe (Germany this time). Crazy!

Since you last heard from me I've done a lot of studying and played a lot of frisbee (yes, it is taking over my life). The studying part is really uninteresting and involves me, the library and terms like "branching ratio of a complex logarithm" and "spin and parity of nucleons"so I'm assuming you don't want a detailed description of that. As for frisbee I played in two tournaments, mixed nationals in Dublin and Tom's Tourney in Bruges.

Mixed nationals was a club tournament for the various Irish clubs, there were 8 teams playing, mostly from Dublin. I played for Open Club Sandwich, a beginner's club mostly from DCU and DIT. We came in 8th but played a lot better than we were expected to. The team had me handling, which was new but probably good for me :P We had a lot of fun, and the weather even turned gorgeous for the second half of the day! I was voted team mvp and got chocolate :)

The next week went by really fast, as my flight to Brugge was early thursday morning (and over 100 euro cheaper than other flights, hence the skipping of class) I had to turn in assignments early so spent a lot of time in the library. My friend Jen and I did have a cooking date wednesday and made fajitas :) I decided against sleeping in the airport and just woke up really early to make my flight. There were 3 of us from the team, Deadly Buzz (Irish women), on the same flight and after having fun with ryanair's baggage restrictions made it to Charleroi and a bus and a train later to Brugge (definitely starting to get tired of ryanair and their out of the way airports). We spent that day grocery shopping, throwing, and basking in the sun - glorious! Kebabs for dinner, party on the pitches that night as the 4 Irish teams gathered (the other teams were Jabba, Broccoli, and Johnny Chimpo), and learning how to throw hammers and scoopers rounded out the night.

The next day our first game wasn't until 1, so 4 of us girls went in to town in search of waffles and chocolate (we were successful) and were back in time to watch a bit of Broccoli's game and then on to our day of ultimate. It was our first time to play together (I hadn't met about half of the girls before the tournament), so our first game was really rocky - 15 - 2 not in our favor, but as the weekend went on we got a lot better. We lost all 3 games our first day but learned a lot, and ran a lot - European teams are really fit! Our last game of the day we lost in sudden death, which was disapointing but showed how much we had learned during the day. That night there was a bbq which was really good and then a comedy show. We hung around afterwards, the Irish girls tried to have bonding time but the guys ended up joining us for a fairly epic game of never have i ever which ended with Kevin playing his guitar until we were kicked out of the tent at 3:30.

Saturday was our toughest and best day - we played 4 games and won 3 of them (technically our record for the day was 4-1, but we won the last match because a team dropped out). We started at 11:30 and played 3 games in a row with an hour in between. Our team of 17 slowly dropped in number as 4 people got injured, though thankfully not debilitatingly so we could still keep 2 lines. We played hard and won our group for the day and then decided to immediately play a challenge match to try and move up to the top 8, but lost that game and then found out we had to play a cross-over match. When we realized that we were "playing" the team that dropped out I don't think any of us have ever been so happy to not play a game. Instead we celebrated with showers, watching Jabba play, and going for dinner. After dinner we headed to the tournament party. That was great fun, lots of dancing and the vegetable game (try and say various fruit/veggies without showing your teeth or laughing). The Irish definitely won the party award - they danced all night and apparently were again the last to leave as the club was closing.

The next morning this was very apparent as all 3 teams (I don't know about Jabba) lost their early morning games. We couldn't get together the flow we had on Saturday and dissapointingly lost to a team we had beaten before so ended up playing in the semi-finals of the plate division (lower half). It was really windy and we started out quickly losing, but fought back and as time ran out scored a hard fought point to tie it, so continued play but sadly lost in the end. We did yoga with the team to try and avoid sore muscles (didn't work) and then celebrated a good tournament with champagne showers (apparently a tradition for one of the other Irish teams that we stole), watched the final, and headed to the airport.

Four of us were flying out of Charleroi, and could make the flight if we left Brugge at 4 am, and made it in 2 minutes from the train station to bus stop. We decided this wasn't worth it and so just headed there that night and slept in the airport. I was tired enough that I slept surprisingly well, then woke up dealt with the annoying baggage rules for ryanair, and made it on the plane back to Dublin. Great weekend, though I'm pretty sure I only got 18 hours of sleep the entire time and now my legs are competely exhausted. Gotta love frisbee :)

Trinity Term

We're halfway through Trinity term, the 3rd and final term at Trinity. Nothing major has happened, I've been trying to study a bit and work through the tutorial work and playing quite a bit of frisbee. But I have had some new developments which are kinda cool. So here goes update on the past 3 weeks.

1) I'm officially coming home in June! I fly in late June 4th and will be here until June 8 when my flight leaves in the morning, back to Ireland and then on to Frankfurt and from there to Wurzburg (that's going to be quite a long day(s) of traveling, but it was much cheaper than flying straight to Frankfurt. I'm definitely excited about coming home for a bit before spending the summer in Germany.

2) Frisbee! This gets abc's because there's lots of stuff.
a) I joined the club Open Club Sandwich, which is mostly beginners but needed more girls for a tournament next weekend, mixed nationals. (mixed means you have 3/4 guys and girls, the ratio can go either way) It'll be an interesting tournament, we're not very good but at least its more frisbee :)
b) I'm officially going to a tournament in Bruge, Belgium the weekend May 1-3. It's supposed to be a lot of fun and Ireland has 3 teams, 2 open and 1 women's. A girl dropped out of the women's team so I joined to fill the spot and am really looking forward to playing! And going back to Bruge, which I really liked from my previous travels
c) Colours: this thursday was the annual Colours match against UCD. It's apparently a big deal and happens in every sport. We had two games, one womens and one open. The weather was terrible, rainy cold and a bit windy, but it was still great times and some pretty good frisbee considering the conditions. Trinity won both matches, the women 13-1 and the open 15-7. Woo Trinity!
d) Because of the above, I've trained for or played frisbee every day for the past 7 days. I did fitness training 2 days, OCS training 2 days, a day of Trinity training, the Colours match, and a day of women's training. :D

3) I bought a ticket to Trinity Ball, which is a huge party the Student's Union throws every year just after teaching finishes and before exams. They have several bands come play and apparently its over most of the college. I still need to figure out my dress.

4) Other random things I've been doing include taking pictures (flowers and trees are blooming everywhere, its so pretty!), cooking (a couple girls and I made fajitas after fitness, and my room mates want to have a tea party, and possibly more cooking dates in the future with frisbee kids), and studying (exams are coming up :( ). Time goes by so fast its crazy! I can't believe that I've only a month and a half left in Ireland!

Weeks 2 and 3 of break

So quite a lot has happened since my last post, specifically I've been to 5 countries and 10 different cities. And my sister was visiting. So I'm going to try to not make a massive long blog about it all, though I do have a cup of tea at the ready. What would probably be more enjoyable for you though is to look at pictures from flickr! Since I got my camera I've been a bit trigger happy, so most of it is recorded on film (well, digital film). So go look at pictures (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bradyabroad/) and I will try and fill in details and tell anecdotes on here :)

Where I last left off on my life my sister had just arrived to visit for a week. We spent the first day running her around Dublin, making sure she was as exhausted as possible after just getting off a plane from North America :) We were Dublin tourists for the day, and invented a game called "Spot the Tourist" It was quite easy since most of them were wearing ridiculous green clothing and guinness shaped hats. We tried to be discreet and act like locals :P We packed sandwiches for lunch and basically just wandered west from Trinity to Phoenix park, ate lunch and then wandered back, by way of attractions in either direction :P We saw Dublin castle, both cathedrals, Phoenix park, Guinness factory, Grafton St, Stephen's Green, and the Book of Kells. We got back to my place with just enough time to drop stuff and then head to Porterhouse to watch the 6 nations rugby match between Ireland and Scotland. The place was packed but we found some standing room at the walls and Katie tried her first strawberry beer, and began her love of rugby :) We left to get dinner and then met some friends of mine at Doyle's, where there was actually room to sit. Ireland won! and after the game we just headed back and basically went to sleep (I told Katie jet lag was real)

The next morning we woke up really early to catch a bus to Doolin to see the Cliffs of Moher. It was a 5 hr bus ride with a short break during which we bought Aero bars to try (Europe has better candy than the US). We made it to our hostel for lunch and then rented bikes and biked up to the cliffs. It was quite a ride, but really pretty. When we got there we realized that we didn't have chains and so had to take our bikes with us. Oops. We took lots of pictures and had tea and hot chocolate to warm up our hands before biking back. We had dinner at one of the local pubs, went back to the hostel for a bit, and then went to listen to live music, but apparently we were too early and so ended up just having a pint and going to bed again.

We headed back to Dublin the next day, stopped in Galway a bit to buy more chocolate and lunch supplies, and take pictures of daffodils :) We got back to Dublin and I think we spent the afternoon shopping but I'm not sure. Then the next day was St. Patricks day - so much green everywhere! We watched the parade, I was a creeper and took pictures of people, and then we took Bulmers with us to Stephen's Green and sat in the gorgeous weather for a bit. On our way back my friend Sean called me and he came and hung out with us for a while and we ended up going out with him to Temple Bar, which is indeed insane on Patty's day. We went to the Porterhouse and listened to the band there for a bit before heading home before the craziness really started.

The next day we went to a church service at St. Patrick's Cathedral which was pretty cool, I did laundry, we did more shopping, made a picnic lunch because it was so gorgeous out and did some throwing with a couple frisbee kids then packed and got on a plane to Edinburgh. The sunset was gorgeous, both at the airport and on the plane. In Edinburgh we found our hostel, watched a movie they were showing, then bed time.

Here's where I really started taking pictures, so I'm going to be much briefer here (and I also ran out of tea and have started eating chocolate (see later in the post), which is probably a bad idea so I should get away from my computer soon). In Edinburgh we started the day with a walking tour, which was a good way to see the highlights of the city. For lunch, we tried haggis, which was really good, and Iron brew, which was less good and really really sweet (but not bad). After the tour we went to an art museum and then climbed Arthur's Seat, which is the tallest point in the city. It was really gorgeous there, definitely could have spent a day exploring and wandering around the park! We stayed for sunset because it was going to be gorgeous, and indeed was. I took lots of pictures of that :P On the way down we took the interesting route (= lots of sliding and running down slopes) and ended up at the base with only a small mishap (muddy boots and pants). Dinner was sub way and then we went on a pub crawl organized by the hostel to see some of the Edinburgh night life (apparently they have 27 bars on one street).

The next day we started at the castle which was really cool, we saw lots of stuff about scottish soldiers, the Scottish crown jewels, and really cool views of the city. It was lunch time when we left, and we found fish & chips at Marks & Spencer, so went back to our hostel to make lunch. After the hostel we went to the National Museum, which was way cool - they have stuffed Dolly the sheep! We actually didn't do much of the museum - it was huge and we had limited time. On our way back we picked up our stuff from the hostel and went to the New Town to wander a bit before catching the bus back to the airport. Apparently I had miss remembered our flight time, and then our flight was delayed, so we ended up spending a good chunk of time in the Edinburgh airport, but ate lots of chocolate :) (chocolate can indeed be a mean). We got back to Dublin about 10:30, got back to my apt, unpacked, showered, and repacked before going to bed.

The next morning we got up early again and headed back to the airport for our flights home and to Amsterdam. My flight wasn't until 11, so they wouldn't let me check in until 8, so I couldn't go down to wait with Katie, but I did manage to get through before she boarded and so we said bye in the airport and she flew back home and I sat and wrote post cards while waiting for my flight. In Amsterdam I found Kristin, Alex, and Josh and we went to Kristin and my hostel to check in and dump stuff. We then went to the Mannequin Pis fries place and had some delicious fries with mayo (the first of many such meals). Afterwards we went to the Heineken brewery for a tour and some beer, and then to an Irish pub to watch the last 6 nations game, which Ireland won, meaning it swept the tournament!! It was a lot of fun. Afterwards we got crazy hot dogs (mine had chicken and some sort of veggie, maybe peppers, on it). Kristin and Alex wanted to see a coffee shop, so we went by one and then Josh had to leave so we said bye to him and then just talked for a bit at Alex's before going to bed.

The next day I got up early to go by the Anne Frank house, which the others had done the day before I got there. It was a really cool museum! Afterwards I met up with Kristin and Alex and we wandered/souveneir shopped until Alex left, then Kristin and I went to the Tulip museum, tulip sellers area, bought some yummy cheese to put on our fries and walked along one of the canals through the Jordaan area. It was a really nice afternoon of wandering. We had more chips for dinner, had a couple of pints at an Irish bar near our hostel, and then went to bed early in preparation for our first train the next day!

Our first train was from Amsterdam to Antwerp, which we had planned on spending half a day in on our way. But then we walked out the train station and it was raining and icky, and we didn't really have anything planned, so decided to not stay long. Originally we were just going to find waffles and get on the next train to Brussels, but it took a bit longer than expected, and I bought gloves, and we got lost a bit, and ended up spending a grand total of an hour and a half in Antwerp :P Then on to Brussels! It took us a bit to find our hostel, but we did in the end. The rooms were really cute, and had high ceilings so I had fun jumping on the top bunk of our bunk beds :) We got hamburgers for dinner and tried our first Belgian beer, which is really good! We realized though that we didn't have a bottle opener, so could only buy cans from the supermarket (a problem) and began our search for one (to be continued). That night at the hostel we met Becca and Cara, who it turned out were planning on doing the exact same route we were! It was quite funny. They were really nice and we ended up traveling a lot together.

The next day Kristin and I started out by finding the Mannequin Pis (peeing boy statue) and wandering through the tourist area. Then we went through the market square and up to a cathedral, the palace, a park, a really cute square for some more chips and mayo for lunch, and my first chocolate purchase :D Then we visited the Cantillion Brewery, a working brewery that makes geueze and kriek beers the traditional way. It was really cool to see, and taste at the end. Afterwards we did some more window shopping (and found a cheap bottle opener), went back to the hostel for a bit, and then went out for cheap sandwiches. The guy at the shop gave us free coffee and told us some stuff to do in Brussels, it was really nice. We then headed to Delirium (bar that sells 2004 beers and has 25 on tap, including what was voted the best beer in the world) after dinner and tried their delirium beer, which was indeed very good.

The next day we day tripped to Bruge. In the lobby we met Cara and Becca, who were going to stay there that night as it was cheaper than Brussels, and so we took the train there together. Bruge is adorable, we loved it as soon as we got out of the train station! First Kristin and I walked through a park that had really cool benches and a giant Harry Potter-esq (from Chamber of Secrets, yes I'm a nerd) chess board. After the park we headed to a market they have every wednesday, and passed by a pond with lots of swans and ducks and LOTS of chocolate and lace shops. We finally made it to the square (after lots of oggling in store windows) and they had lots of different food and flowers. We decided to eat lunch there and got chicken kebabs from the meat stand and some bread and pastries to go with our amsterdam cheese. It was quite delicious. Afterwards we went to the chocolate museum where they showed the entire history of chocolate, pretty nifty and included samples :) From there we went to a spot that was supposed to have a good panorama of the city, but was actually just a slight rise with some windmills on it. The windmills were cool though, and the fence around them had been made into lace! It was way cool. We wandered back to the city center, I made Kristin play with me on a bunch of logs, but we felt justified because afterwards we went in search of lace and so figured that the 5 year olds playing on the logs and the 70 year olds buying lace evened out to a nice 21 :P I did quite a bit of chocolate shopping, and couldn't help but buy a lace apron :) We then headed back to Brussels for our Belgian meal, mussels in Brussels :P We decided to go with the cheaper place, which was probably not the best decision, but it was pretty good, and afterwards we went back to Delirium for our final belgian beers (in Belgium, we took some with us to Switzerland).

The next morning we met Becca and Cara at the train station (they had come back down from Bruge) and headed to Luxembourg. This was our longest travel day, a total of 9 hours to get us to Interlaken, so we decided to stop in the tiny country along the way. When we got to Luxembourg we stowed our bags at the train station and went exploring. We didn't really have any plans and so just ended up wandering around the city for 3 hours. It was pretty interesting, it was on 2 sides of a deep valley with city on either side and in the middle. Very cute, but not much to do there. We bought groceries for dinner and got back on the train to Interlaken. Lots more train riding later and we were in Interlaken. Kristin and I had decided to splurge and stay at a cute looking B&B called Walter's. We got there, and it was indeed adorable. We had our own (large) room, and a post card and chocolate next to our beds :) We ate our dinner and then went to sleep.

The next morning when we looked out our window, there were the Alps! It was awesome! We met Becca and Cara at the train station and headed up to Grindlewald to go sledding. On the first train we didn't get off, so ended up riding the train a bit more than expected, but it was gorgeous so that was ok. On the second train though, the conductor told us that Eurail/Interrail passes weren't valid, which was a bummer so we had to buy tickets. Then in Grindlewald we realized that sledding was actually going to be pretty expensive, so we walked around for a bit to see what else we could do. Becca and Cara decided to go back down to Interlaken and Kristin and I took a cable car halfway up one of the mountains. It was absolutely gorgeous! I got very picture happy and took over 200 pictures of the alps (about half the pictures from the entire trip). At the top we made a snow man on the side of the ski run, my first real snowman!! It was a lot of fun, and we used chocolate for his eyes and chapstick for the nose :P We had to destroy him in the end since he was on the ski run, and ended up making a snow ball fight out of it. We had a beer at the restaurant and then headed back down to the town and then to Interlaken. Walter offered a fondue dinner, so we told him that we wanted to do that, and walked around Interlaken for a bit before dinner. It was really good fondue! We bought veggies to add to the meal, Walter provided cheese, bread and wine and dessert, and so it was a really fun meal. The dessert was ice cream and cookies, brought in adorable little cups that we got to keep. We decided that Walter was our favorite person ever :) After dinner we went to Cara and Becca's hostel to have a drink with them and ended up talking for several hours before going back to Walter's.

The next day Becca, Cara and Kristin and I took a scenic train to Lucern - it was absolutely gorgeous! I really wanted to get out and wander around for a bit and take pictures ;) In Lucern we did some more wandering (We're really good at that :P ) And saw their cool bridge and lion sculpture and tower on a hill and shops. We spent about 2 hours there and then parted ways as Kristin and I headed to Zurich while Cara and Becca were back to Interlaken for one more night. At the train station we grabbed some food and then hopped on a train to Zurich! It was raining there too, which was kinda depressing, so we went to our hostel, sat for a bit, bought hamburger making supplies, and then did the hw we had been meaning to do all trip :P When we made dinner two guys were in the kitchen cooking so we talked to them for a bit and made our dinner. Since it was our last night we decided to go out for a bit, but had a hard time finding a place close by that wasn't a club, and ended up at another Irish bar :P We watched the tail end of a soccer game and then headed back to the hostel (late night for us - 11:30 woo! we laughed the whole trip about us going to bed super early every night).

The next morning I got up early and wandered around the Old Town, which was super cute and had some really cool streets. Kristin's flight was 6 hrs later than mine, so she was going to do it in the afternoon. After checking out we went by the train station to check on getting to the airport and then walked down the main shopping street (I can't remember the name, something with a B) but everything was closed because it was Sunday - probably good for our wallets. We also saw the lake, the corner with all the swiss banks and a cool park and aviary before going back to the hostel to grab my bag. We got preztles and eclairs for lunch and picnicked in a park. After killing time by taking pictures and watching an adorable dog play fetch we headed back to the train station, looked for drawings of the swiss alps (sadly couldn't find one) and then it was time for me to leave. Sadly we said goodbye (this was our last of several trips together) and I headed to the airport and back to Dublin. I had to check my bag (the Swiss would be the first ones to actually weigh it), which was sad but I guess inevitable (as much as I wanted to try and get it down to weight, putting on 6 kg of clothing probably wasn't going to work, I think it was the massive amounts of chocolate I had bought that did me in). I made it home safely and unpacked before a couple of people from UT arrived to crash on my floor for the night. We made dinner and talked for a bit and I finished my hw before going to bed.

The next morning was the start of Trinity term and back to class. Not so fun, but it's good to be back! I've been going through pictures and getting caught up on emails the past couple of days. Also, Trinity Ultimate won intervarsities! That was pretty exciting to hear and so we celebrated that monday night. And that about wraps up my life for the past 2 weeks in a very long post. I'm impressed you made it this far, and even more impressed if you did it in one go :P

London and Brighton

So when I left you last I was leaving France on a ferry. I waved goodbye to the French coastline and spent most of the journey looking (in vain) for a way to get on the top of the ship (they only have an observation deck about half way up) and watching the cliffs of Dover approach. It was a gorgeous clear day, but really windy which also made it cold.

We made it to Dover without any trouble and I bought a bus ticket to London. I had planned on watching the English countryside, but instead promptly fell asleep on the bus and woke up as we were in traffic outside London. The bus dropped me off at Victoria station, which was conveniently where I needed to be to catch the train to Brighton. I bought a train ticket, decided it wasn't worth 8 pounds to store my bag, and set off for some brief sight-seeing of London. I decided I wanted to see Hyde Park, by way of fish and chips, so set off in that direction looking for food. I found a place near Buckingham Palace and so bought a late lunch and picnicked in the park across the street from the Palace. The queen's flag was flying, so she was at home, but I didn't see her. Oh well. I then walked through the park and took pictures of flowers and then went off to continue my search for Hyde Park.

I thought it was really cool, there was a cross walk that instead of a person as the walk sign, had a horse and a bicycle. It was awesome :) I passed a square with WWII monuments in it and across the street was Hyde Park. I walked along one side of it and saw some cool statues, the Speaker's corner, and lots of trees and green. It would be a great place to spend a sunny afternoon! At the end I didn't know where to go next so I looked at one of the maps from those tourist buses and decided to go to Trafalgar Square. I made my way in that direction and passed lots of shopping, the Eros statue, and Leicester Square. At Trafalgar Square I took pictures, climbed on a statue, and was sad to find that there were no pidgeons :( I did have a really weird feeling that the restaurant the Texas Embassy was nearby, which was weird because I had driven past it 3 years ago and so I shouldn't know where it was, but I felt like it was around there. I decided that would be a fun way to pass the time before my train, as I didn't really have enough time to go across the city, so I asked some tourists but they hadn't heard of it. I continued onward and saw Big Bend, the London Eye, and the Thames. At Big Bend I asked a policeman if he knew of the Texas Embassy and he told me where it was, next to Trafalgar Square! Pretty crazy, I either have a really good memory or a Texas homing device :P I headed back there for a drink. At the bar I met a guy trying to start a new clothing line who was meeting up with a producer and photographer to talk advertising. I talked to him and then his friends when they arrived. He took pictures of me and my English margarita, shared some wine with me, and then insisted on buying my drink. They were all very nice and I said good bye and good luck before heading back to the station and to Brighton.

The train ride was uneventful, I slept through most of it and then in Brighton caught another train to Falmer where Kristin met me and we walked back to her apartment. She's studying at the University of Sussex in Falmer. That night we went to the student bar on campus to meet some of her friends and have a pint of cider - drinks in England are so much cheaper than in Dublin! I was super excited for a pint to be only 2 pounds. After talking for a bit we went home and went to bed.

The next morning Kristin had class so I walked along some of the paths in the hills behind her apartment. There were a bunch of cool walking paths that I took, and I met some really sweet dogs :) I also climbed a tree that was just too cool-looking to resist. I met her back at her apartment and we went to a creperie on campus for lunch and then took the bus into Brighton. We spent the afternoon exploring - we went on the pier and saw what will be a crazy carnival when the weather gets nicer, looked at the beach, and went shopping in the Lanes which are lots of shops with tiny walk ways between them. There was a cup cake store that I had to go in and got a carrot cake cupcake with plenty of cream cheese frosting - delicious! We also had tea at a tea room, complete with cheddar scones for Kristin and pistachio cake with ice cream for me. After exploring we returned to her apartment and made a delicious cheap meal complete with pasta, bread, and wine. We were definitely very classy :P We spent the rest of the night planning for our upcoming trip across Europe :D

The next day I went into Brighton while Kristin had class and did some more shopping. I got a new phone since my other one broke and was rather excited about that, spent way more time in cooking stores than clothing stores and laughed at myself because of it, and then met Kristin in Borders to begin our afternoon adventures. We took a bus to Rottingdean to get cream tea, tea and scones with raspberry jam and clotted cream. It was super tasty! We then walked around Rottingdean and headed back to Brighton to see a movie. We decided upon Slumdog Millionaire, it was definitely good! Afterwards we went to a pub for some drinks and waited for Kristin's friends to join us. We split a few pitchers and then had yummy cheese fries before taking the bus back to Falmer and going to bed.

Kristin was headed to Dublin for the weekend and I had booked the same flight, which left the next day so we spent the morning being productive students and then packing before taking the train to the airport. We got there pretty early and so chilled for a bit before getting the plane back to Dublin!

I spent Friday in my room recovering from traveling, posting pictures, and fighting with my computer... I think I have to buy a new battery :( Hopefully I'll figure that all out later - I'm traveling for most of the rest of March so I won't need my computer much until Trinity term starts :P

This morning I woke up really early to pick up my sister from the airport, she made it safe and sound from Texas to spend her spring break visiting me :D I'll update on our adventures later though. ttfn!

Paris = Food <3

Get excited about part 1 of my first trip of the break! We have 3 weeks off and I planned quite a bit of traveling (probably too much, but thats ok). The first bit was to Paris and then London/Brighton, where I currently am visiting Kristin. I'll give you the low-down on Paris first and then update on the England part of the trip when I get back to Dublin.

I left for Paris Thursday evening after my classes were done (yay, one term down!). RyanAir flies into Beauvais airport, which isn't actually in Paris so had to bus into Paris and then take the metro to Saloni's apartment. It was a fairly easy journey, but took me 2 hours to get from the airport to her place. That night Saloni and Chole, who was also visiting, had been to a party that Saloni's school hosted, so we just basically went to sleep that night.

The next day Saloni had class in the morning so Chole and I took to the streets and did a bit of wandering around Paris, taking pictures and just enjoying the city. We saw the Bastille, I ate my first pastry for breakfast (as you will see later, I ate quite a lot of food in Paris, it was kind of the theme of the weekend), we walked through the high-end shopping district and then through the tourist shopping district, took pictures of the Notre Dame, went through part of the Latin Quarter, stopped for a stuffed baguette (lots of cheese, ham, and I think cream cheese in the middle - very tasty!) and then went back to meet Saloni after class. We stopped at a grocery store to get some cheap food - Paris can get expensive! - and 2 euro bottles of wine (except for their wine :D ) and went home to make lunch and plan the afternoon. We decided to explore Saloni's neighborhood which has a lot of shops and cute boutiques. We shopped for a bit, there is a way cool frozen foods chain that sells anything and everything frozen, and Chole tried on dresses, and then meandered home, almost but not quite getting lost in the process. Saloni made us a french dinner which was delicious - green beans, pureed carrots, quiche, and an apple tart. That night we stayed in as well and just talked and planned some more.

The next day I spent with Fatima, we went on a culinary adventure in Paris. Our goal for the day was to try every quintessentially Parisian food experience, and I think we did a fairly good job of it :) We started out with breakfast at Angelina's, a tea house that is famous for their hot chocolate which is sooo tasty and basically just melted chocolate poured in a mug served with whipped cream. Also for breakfast they give you a croissant, pain du chocolat, and a raisin swirled thing, bread with jam and butter, and juice. After that we were quite full and headed off to the Musee de Orsay to see some art and digest a bit (we didn't want to be entirely overzealous hehe). I really liked the museum, and it's much more managable than the Louvre. After the museum we decided to head to a park Fatima had wanted to see. On the way we stopped at a street vendor and bought various pieces of candy and chocolate to try and nibbled on that throughout the day. Just before the park was a creperie and so I had my first crepe in France - ham and cheese. It was very delicious and we ate them in the park and then wandered around, saw a massive head statue, watched people play tennis, and wandered out.

We next wandered through the Latin Quarter and went to see the Pantheon. It was pretty on the outside but we didn't go in because it cost money and we're cheap :) We passed an outdoor market, but they were closing up so we didn't get to shop but saw it. Then while we were walking I had the weirdest feeling that I had been there before, and when we turned a corner I recognized a wine shop from when I had come to Paris on my HS trip. It was pretty crazy and I was a little weirded out that I remembered a place that I had only been once! As we left the Latin Quarter we decided to go get ice cream on the smaller island, I don't remember what its called, but I had heard there was a really good ice cream place there. It turns out that there are lots of ice cream places there, so we couldn't just go to the first one we saw. As we were looking for it I saw a cute bakery and went in and bought macaroons, 6 flavours though I'm not entirely sure what they all were. Fatima's allergic to nuts so I was the only one to enjoy this French dessert, but Fatima did ask the shop keeper about the ice cream place and he gave us directions. As we were going there we found a really cute shop that sold all sorts of crazy things, and we both bought adorable timers that are shaped like lady bugs :) We then found the ice cream place and tried fruit sorbets. They were absolutely delicious! I tried mango and raspberry and I think Fatima had coconut and strawberry maybe? Super tasty!

We were quite full at this point, actually , we had been all day, but were definitely reaching our breaking point now, but we still had several key things to try. First though, we walked past Notre Dame and I wanted to get a scarf because they were fairly cheap and I wanted a green one so we set out looking through all the vendors to find the particular shade of green I wanted. Fatima found it for me and I was super excited and bought it. We then went to go find another open air market, what used to be one of the biggest ones but is now a mall. We thought that it still had some market to it but apparently not, just mall. After that we headed to get coffee and chill at a cafe. On the way I had to stop at a chocolatier to satisfy my chocoholic-ness, and we passed the oldest bakery in Paris so I bought another pastry (I told you there were lots of them). Then we went to a cafe for some coffee, both to pick us up as we were tired from our long day of walking and as a French experience. After the cafe we went to more gardens and I ate my pastry - I don't know what it was but something strawberry with mousse inside. We decided to finish our day with french onion soup for dinner, as we couldn't eat much more than that. Fatima knew of a restaurant that made good soup so we went there for our final meal. I contemplated also getting a meat and cheese platter but my stomach said no. The soup was delicious but unfortunately my day didn't end there - Fatima had other plans. She told me that her favorite crepe place was just down the street, near our metro stop, and I couldn't have a food day in Paris without a banana nutella crepe. So away we went for the final food of the day. It was indeed a delicious crepe :)

At the end of the day we realized that we had walked through all of the first 7 districts and ate something in all of them. Our mission was a success, and neither of us wanted to eat anything for quite a while :P

That night Saloni and her room mates were having a wine party so I got back just in time to get ready and meet her friends in Paris while drinking some wine, I guess another quintessential parisian experience. Overall it was quite a good day.

The next morning, since I wake up crazy early all the time, I went to the train station to buy my ticket to London the next day. With my eurail pass I could get to Calais for 3 euro, as opposed to the 75 euro to go all the way to London directly, so I opted for that and reserved my ticket for 8 am the next day. When I called Saloni they were still just waking up so I decided to go see the Sacre Coure (I can't spell in French), which Saloni and Chole had visited the day before. It is a gorgeous church on top of a hill. You had to walk up a crazy staircase to get to it, but it was awesome to see, and the inside was cool too. I liked it more than the Notre Dame. After walking around I headed back to Saloni's and made a lunch before the 3 of us headed out for the day. We had lots more planned for the day. We started by walking to the Louvre and then headed down through the gardens below it to the Champs Elysee. We walked up it and stopped at an adorable bakery, Laduree, and bought pastries there. Their macaroons were amazing! My two favorites were the dark chocolate and rose flavored ones, mmm! I also got a madeline to try and an amazing chocolate cake/pastry that was incredibly rich. From there we continued along to the Arch de Triomphe (again with the spelling) and walked up to it and took lots of pictures. It had been raining/drizzling all morning, but the sun started to come out at this point and we got really excited.

We continued our walking in the direction of the Eiffel Tower, by way of chocolate shop which was unfortunately closed, so we just meandered and took pictures along the way. We got to the Eiffel Tower just as a break was reappearing in the clouds and so walked down the gardens to get a good view and took lots of pictures in front of it of us doing silly things like licking the tower :P Saloni got a call from Kristen saying a friend of a friend was visiting and headed to the Eiffel Tower as well, so we waited for him so he could go up it with us. We met him under the tower and then walked up. We walked to the 2nd floor and then took the elevator up. The day had cleared out really nicely and we took lots of pictures before heading down in search of more crepes and food. We went back to the eiffel tower to watch the lights go on which was really pretty, and then back to Saloni's for dinner. One of Saloni's friends was having his birthday at a bar that served drinks from baby bottles, so we headed over to that, but we didn't want to order drinks because they were expensive, and so the bartender made us leave. We ended up just heading back and going to bed since Chole and I were both leaving the next day.

I woke up pretty early to catch my train to Calais and headed out without incident. At the station I wanted to get an eclair as my final french pastry, but didn't realize that I had to go through customs becaue I was riding the eurostar, even though I wasn't leaving the country, and on the other side there were no eclairs :( I had an espresso instead and hopped on the train. I half slept and half watched the french country side and then got off at Calais and took a bus to the city center. There a very nice cab driver gave me directions to the ferry so I could buy tickets across and I walked through the city to get there. They had a gorgeous park in the center and I passed a bakery that had eclairs and bagettes! I bought them for lunch and happily continued to the ferry. Eurail pass won again and I got half price tickets to Dover. I'm pretty sure the security guards were laughing at me carrying a baguette through security, but it was super tasty. I also confused the British passport checker, cuz apparently I had been stamped in Paris as going all the way to London, and she asked me why I didn't (it would have been much easier and faster) and then laughed at me when I told her I would end up saving about 50 euro :P

I then got on the ferry and headed away from France! It was a fun trip, I definitely enjoyed France. I can't seem to be able to write short posts, sorry guys. I'll fill you in on the ferry ride and London/Brighton later!