It is still strange to be home in the U.S., although it's been nearly a week now. I wouldn't say I'm having full-blown culture shock, but using dollars for the first time in five months blew my mind. I used five different currencies in Europe without a problem, but coming home and realizing that it's only going to be the dollar from now on was extremely strange. I also finally recognized just how big our American cars are. Everyone in the U.S. has heard about this for years, of course, but it really takes being away for a while to see how excessive some of those SUVs are. I can't think of one good reason for a family of four to own a Hummer, but I've seen at least two average-looking people driving them down the freeway. A Hummer, I think, is the sure sign of excess in a country criticized for overconsumption.
I think it would be useful to sum up my student life in Germany, especially if anyone reading this blog is interested in visiting or living there. I'm still formulating my political post because I've been doing quite a bit of thinking about it, and that will have to come at a later point. For now, I'll just break everything down into categories for the sake of simplicity. These are the issues that I thought about the most as a student.
Transportation: Germany wins here, hands down. Public transportation was fantastic in Germany, especially in my beloved Freiburg. The tram system was always clean, well-organized, on-time, and relatively cheap, especially with a monthly pass. It was also easy to figure out with a good website that had an English option in case the German was too confusing. I could get nearly anywhere I wanted in Freiburg with ease, although I didn't use the system more than once or twice after I bought my bike in April. The German train system, the Deutsche Bahn, was also great. It could not be easier to book tickets online, there are always good discounts if you know where to look, and it offers special deals like the Schoenes-Wochenende ticket that I've mentioned on this blog before. The trains are modern, fast, clean, and quiet, and the train stations are easy to navigate and well-marked, even in the small towns. Even with a bit of a language barrier, I found the Deutsche Bahn far easier to navigate than Caltrain, which I barely ever use and for good reason. Not only does taking Caltrain necessitate a 30-minute drive to Palo Alto, it just doesn't cover the same amount of ground and with the same efficiency. Trying to figure out public transportation in San Francisco is a hassle, especially if you need to use the subway AND above-ground transportation. Boston is quite a bit easier and has an excellent subway system, but the quality of the experience on its slow and old trains pales in comparison to my experiences in Germany. Finally, Germany is much more bike-friendly, especially in a green city like Freiburg. The bike lanes were always wide and well-marked, bike racks are available EVERYWHERE, and bike stores and repair shops are easy and accessible. I loved walking or biking around Freiburg and seeing people getting their groceries or running errands on a bike rather than in a car. This also has to do with city layouts - you don't see much of that suburban sprawl like we have in California where you really need a car to get to where you need to be. In Freiburg, all the main stores and establishments were downtown and easily accessible by subway, foot, or bike. Now that I'm home in rural La Honda, I really miss the ease of transport.
Food: The food in Germany was one of the highlights of my experience. Not only did I get the chance to try traditional specialties like Spargel, I got to enjoy the benefits of a country that just prizes food. Food and mealtimes are special in Germany, and you'd never see kids wolfing down TV dinners or parents buying Costco-sized bread rolls. Instead, families eat together, choose seasonal produce, buy fresh bread nearly every day, shun artificial ingredients, and generally relish eating as an experience. It wasn't hard for me to get into that - I could access high-quality produce, dairy products, and meats at my local grocery store for excellent prices. Sometimes I'd be thinking, "Oh, I've picked out a full basket of items, most of which are local or organic - I'd better break out the 50 Euro note" only to reach the line and face a bill of 15 Euros. Then, on the way out, I could stop by the bakery above the grocery store and get some fresh Brezeln or bread for a Euro or two. I could also access the farmers' market nearly every day, which was a truly great way to get any kind of vegetable or fruit I wanted. I've been fortunate enough to eat high-quality food and produce in the U.S. as well, but I think there is still a distinction in the eating cultures. You'd never see Germans do the Atkins diet - they're much thinner than we are as a whole, but if they want to lose weight, they'll exercise more and cut down on treats. Bread is an essential part of the German diet, and the Germans aren't willing to cut traditions or their way of life just to cut pounds. It was so nice and refreshing to live in a place that views food as something to be cherished rather than as something to be controlled.
Environment: I already knew that Freiburg is a green city (and is in fact the only city in Germany with a Green mayor), but I was still very impressed with how environmentally conscious everybody was. EVERYBODY recycles into five or six different categories, windmills grace the hills around the city, people bike or walk as much as possible, solar panel usage abounds, and nearly all new buildings must reach tough energy efficiency standards. This is true for much of Germany, but especially for Freiburg. The car-free neighborhood of Vauban is hyper-conscious about the environment - not only do most houses have solar panels and/or passive energy constructions, it costs 18 thousand Euros to park your car. Effective disincentive right there, I think! Environmental consciousness isn't casually dismissed as unrealistic or a luxury problem like it is the U.S. - EVERYONE can play a part, whether it's sorting through trash into the appropriate receptacles or buying an expensive passive house in Vauban. It's no secret that the U.S. lags far, far behind Europe in energy efficiency and surges way ahead in oil usage and emissions levels. No contest in this category.
Friendliness: I had heard lots of stereotypes about hostile Germans before I got here, but fortunately, they were wrong for me. It's true that Germans won't walk around and smile at every person they see, throw out a casual "how are you" out of habit, or say "we should hang out sometime!" just to be polite. What they will do, though, is enthusiastically greet their friends and acquaintances and really mean it when they ask how they are. Their friends will respond with a honest assessment of how they are rather than "I'm fine, and you?" If a German says "we should hang out," it means you'd better get out your calendar, set a firm date and time, and genuinely want to keep the meeting. If you don't feel like hanging out at a particular time, there's no need to do the old "Oh I'm so sorry, I really would, but I already promised I would do X on that day..." It's considered okay and non-offensive if you just don't feel like it. In many ways, I think Germans are friendlier than Americans. Americans will be aggressively cheery towards each other, but with a good deal of fakeness. Germans are more genuine, and at the same time, nice to strangers. I've asked for help with directions or whatever many times and every single person I asked was more than happy to help me out. I'm happy to say that this particular stereotype was debunked during my experience.
Education: Unlike in the U.S., nearly all of Germany's universities are public. The point I want to focus on is the vast difference in cost for German students versus American students. Students at public schools in the U.S. will pay at LEAST several thousand dollars per semester and usually more, while students at private schools encounter costs as high as $55,000 per year. Every time I told Germans this, their jaws dropped. They absolutely could not imagine how or why anyone could pay that much, even if they had enough money to easily do so. In Germany, tuition was banned until 2005 when states won the right to charge student fees. Even now, the states that have exercised this right (including Baden-Wuerttemberg, where Freiburg is) don't charge more than about 550 Euros per semester. While there are some other costs for students that can add up to a few thousand Euros, studying at the most expensive German university will still cost less than studying at the cheapest American state schools. When the 500-Euro fees were introduced at some German universities in 2007, students took to the streets in protest. They viewed the imposition of fees as an abridgment of their fundamental right to education. The charges would, in fact, make university prohibitively expensive for many students, effectively preventing them from exercising their rights under German law. The U.S. considers education a right until at least the 12th grade, but the more time I spent in Germany, the more I wondered why that right should suddenly cease after high school. True, we have federal financial aid, but the neediest families aren't going to find a measly $4,000 Pell Grant enough to cover even one semester at an average public school. Rather, too many students and families will find themselves drowning in debt after only a few years. German students aren't even familiar with the concept of student loan debt and would shake their heads in disbelief when I talked about it. I believe there should be as few financial obstacles as possible on the road to public higher education, and not because I think it would be a piece of cake to offer a fully funded education to all students at the college of their choice. Rather, the U.S. has a compelling interest in facilitating the university education of as many students as possible. Our economy and civil society would no doubt be better off if, like Germany, we truly viewed education as an investment rather than a cost.
This post came out a bit longer than I intended, so I'll cover a few more categories later on to avoid cramming everything into a monster post. I'll be offline for a few days, so bis spaeter!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Reflections
Days Abroad: 126
Countries Visited: 10
Cities Visited: 21
Languages "Spoken": 9
Currencies Used: 5
Currencies Used: 5
Pictures Taken: at least 2,000
IES Students: 61
Flatmates: 6
Bad Experiences: 0
I'll use this post to update everyone on some of the activities I did since my last post as well as provide some sort of overarching perspective on the whole experience. It's going to be a bit long, so consider yourself warned! After my bike ride with Mike that I wrote about, I became extremely busy. Not only were there lots of final papers to write and finals to study for, it was our last week in Freiburg and we wanted to live it up. I'm glad to say that we finished all of our work and had an incredible last week at the same time.
Last Monday, we went to Das Quiz one final time and enjoyed some beers and a 21st-place finish. It was amazing how people of all different stripes would come to this Irish pub in Freiburg every single week, completely committed to playing an English-German quiz game. Looking back, I consider those nights as highlights of my experience, and I wish I had gone every single week. We ended up going back there the next night just to hang out and enjoy each other's company. Even though we all had tons of finals, we rallied so we could have a great final week.
The next day, Wednesday, was also a highlight. It was the first sunny day in a long stretch of rainy days and we decided to take advantage of it. My good friend and I went on a bike ride around Freiburg and into the neighboring town of Kirchzarten. Luckily, he was able to borrow a bike from our other friend. It was absolutely beautiful with all the flowers in bloom and the green hills of the Black Forest. We came back by the soccer stadium and down the river, which is an especially beautiful area of Freiburg. We went about 25 kilometers in total - not too shabby, I think!
On the stretch to Kirchzarten
What a truly beautiful city
Wednesday night was also great. My flat had decided to cook dinner together to wish me farewell and to welcome our new roommate (a girl!) who moved in the day before. "Cook together" is a bit of a stretch, though - instead, Johannes cooked us a German feast while we provided drinks and a few Euros for the food. The result was a delicious (and nearly 100% organic) meal of traditional potato soup, Frikadellen (German meat patties, similar to meatballs), mashed potatoes, red cabbage, and homemade tiramisu. The food was absolutely amazing and we had a great time with everybody there together. After dinner, we played a few rounds of UNO and then went to a party next door that my friend was hosting. It was so much fun to go out with the whole flat at once.
Our flat! We're incapable of taking pictures where everybody looks good, so this will have to do. It was interesting not to be the only girl for the first time all semester.
I spent most of the day on Thursday trying to get work done before the opening ceremony for Model EU. I know I haven't really mentioned that before, so I'll start here. Every semester, IES puts on a Model EU conferences that takes place over three days. All the students act as either Heads of State or Foreign Ministers for each country in the EU, but a couple of people assume leadership roles such as the High Representative as well. I was the Foreign Minister for the UK, which is a role that allows for a bit of fun. The UK is known for being Euroskeptic, which is only more true given the recent change of government from Labour to a Tory-Lib Dem coalition. At the same time, the UK is a major influential player in European Union policy. We all got dressed up in our business clothes and went to the opening ceremony at IES on Tuesday night. That wasn't what we were really looking forward to, though - back in early April, the central IES Study Abroad office announced a contest to see which IES location could get the most votes for the best study abroad program. Our program director, lovingly known as Ulli, told us that if we made it to quarterfinals, he'd take all 61 of us out for cocktails at Kagan, one of the trendiest clubs in town. The entire group cheered upon hearing that, but I don't think Ulli realized how serious we were about to get. We all voted right away, got family, friends, and flatmates to vote, and dominated our way not just to quarterfinals, but all the way to finals! Unfortunately, the final voting period coincided with our program being stranded all over Europe without Internet access during the volcano drama. I'm convinced we would have won if we had Internet, especially since we only lost by 100 votes. Regardless, we earned our cocktails and headed to Kagan as a massive group shortly after the Model EU opening. Kagan is a great club on the top two floors of one of the tallest buildings in Freiburg. This means it had a great view of the entire city and the Black Forest. It was so much fun to enjoy free cocktails with all of our program, including most of the teachers. Nothing like seeing middle-aged Germans let their hair down, right? Afterwards, most of us stayed to enjoy some dancing before having to wake up early for the first real day of Model EU.
Model EU was pretty fun. We debated issues that are especially important in EU foreign policy, notably Afghanistan, illegal immigration, and anti-terrorism intelligence efforts. The downside was that we had to sit in the two rooms for eight hours a day, which was especially difficult for some people who had partied a little too hard the night before. Regardless, we had a good time pretending to be important on the global stage. Several different people came up to me afterwards and said how impressed they were with my debate skills, which made me really relieved! I was afraid I'd lose it all after leaving the debate team for a semester. On the last night, Saturday, we wrapped it up, took a few hours off to relax, and then people came to my place to hang out for a few hours.
Sunday was a bit exhausting because those of us in the highest-level EU seminar class had a massive paper to write for Monday morning. There was also the added pressure of having to get work done before leaving for the IES farewell dinner in a neighboring town. I worked relatively productively given my lack of sleep for the last week and then headed to the dinner. We went to a dairy farm in the nearby town of Hinterzarten. The walk up to the barn was really nice and pretty, especially since we ran into some friendly Scottish Highlander cows that came close to us/tried to lick me. It was an interesting choice for a final dinner, but it was great all the same! We took a short tour of the dairy farm led by the head guy who spoke no English. He had a translator, but I'm happy to say I didn't need one! At least I haven't forgotten all of my German yet. After the tour, we headed into the barn to eat. The food was basically tray after tray of meat products and homemade cheese (i.e. DELICIOUS). It was nice to wrap up the semester with an original and quintessentially southern German experience.
I wanted to take this one home.
My plate and one of my favorite local beers
Monday was both a fun and incredibly challenging day. The weather was really nice and most of us finished our essays on time, but the knowledge that this was the last day really weighed heavily on me. Even still, I tried to enjoy it as much as possible without being sad. We finally made it to the top of the Freiburg Muenster (the main cathedral), which we'd been intending to do all semester! The view was great and we had lots of fun trying to take a picture of the whole group with the self-timer. This was the best we came up with:
We could not possibly have been more American/had more fun.
We all headed back to our rooms to pack in the afternoon. I picked up a few things from the grocery store to bring home before getting started. Packing wasn't as bad as it is at Brandeis since I really didn't bring all that much stuff with me. I took a break for a few hours to have one final beer with one of my favorite flatmates. I'll have more to say about him and the conversations we've had in a later post. That night, I went out with some friends to a local restaurant and finally had some of that famous German Spargel (white asparagus) prepared in the traditional way. It was absolutely delicious and the perfect way to wrap up the culinary element of the semester. Afterwards, we met up with most of the other students in IES at one of our favorite bars to say goodbye. We enjoyed hanging out there for a few hours, although we were quite a spectacle by the end as many of us (including me) started crying. The prospect of saying goodbye to all the people that we've spent nearly every moment with for the past five months was just overwhelming. It took nearly half an hour to say goodbye to everyone when we finally decided to leave.
Luckily, I didn't have to say goodbye to EVERYONE at once since quite a few of us would be taking the same train to the airport the next morning. I checked out of room pretty early and said goodbye to my flatmates before heading over. It really sucked to say goodbye to them. Some people in IES never became friends with their flatmates, but I was really close with two of mine and pretty close with the others as well (even our new one who just moved in the week before). It's hard to believe that I won't be able to sit in the kitchen and chat in German or English with them while sharing beers and food together. The simple pleasures in life have always been the best for me and I'm so sad to leave the good times in my flat behind.
The train ride was relatively uneventful. One of my best friends helped me get my stuff there (he's not leaving Freiburg until June) and it sucked to say goodbye to him, but I tried to focus on getting my two heavy bags on and off the train without knocking people over. Most of the people on the train were on the same flight to Chicago, but I had another best friend with a flight to D.C. around the same time as mine. After we said another tearful goodbye to the others, we headed to our terminal and spent the last few hours eating chips and trying not to focus on how hard it would be to say goodbye to each other. We had spent so much time with each other and with the other friends in our close-knit group, which was fantastic all semester but so hard when it came time to leave. I somehow survived that final farewell with her and boarded my 12-hour flight back to San Francisco. The flight was utterly depressing, but there was no way to avoid that (especially given the super cramped economy seats nowadays).
So, I guess I've basically finished summing up everything I did this semester. I absolutely cannot believe it's over. I have honestly never had a better time in my entire life, and if the biggest complaint I have about Germany is that the dryers in my apartment building didn't work right, then I consider my semester there a huge success. I plan to write another post soon comparing life in Germany to life in the U.S. now that I've experienced both. It will also contain some reflections on politics and how my political views have evolved as a result of my observations and conversations with Germans.
All in all, it is incredibly hard to be home right now. I'm happy to see my family, but the change is already so drastic. I had to stop myself from doing things that have become so routine, such as saying goodnight, good morning, and goodbye in German. Even though my flatmates and I spoke English to each other quite a bit, we ALWAYS said those three things in German. I miss the sounds of people walking in the hall in my flat and knowing who was there based on whether they were walking fast or slow or whistling or not. I hope it'll get easier eventually, but it's certainly a struggle right now. I know some people are able to look back on all the happy memories and leave it at that, but I don't feel like I can do that because I'm not done with Freiburg yet. I don't know if I will ever be. Even if I never go back, though, at least I know that I have been so lucky to have such a wonderful experience. Thanks for reading this blog throughout the semester - there will be more posts soon! As usual, bis spaeter.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
I'm Still Here
This is just a brief update to let everyone know I have not forgotten about my blog in the final days in Freiburg. As soon as I get home to California, I'll write much more to let you all know how things are going. Despite the lingering final essay I must complete, we've all been having so much fun. Talk to you soon and wish me luck on the way home!
Monday, May 10, 2010
Fun in Freiburg
It's been raining almost non-stop in Freiburg for over a week now. You can imagine how nice that is when I have so little time left! I also had the misfortune of getting sick last week. You'd think the rain and sickness would keep me inside, especially in the finals period, but my flatmate asked me if I wanted to go on a quick bike ride around Freiburg yesterday and I of course said yes.
We ended up riding outside of the Freiburg city limits and having a ton of fun. We were riding directly into a storm cloud the whole time, but we wanted to explore the path by the river regardless. Our adventure included taking pictures from our bikes, meeting lots of nice cows, talking to some Germans who also braved the rain, going for a quick dip in the Dreisam, and eating ice cream in the rain. We were soaking wet by the time we got home, but it was so nice to take a break from studying and enjoy Freiburg with one of my favorite flatmates.
The Dreisam
Of course I'M the one who got soaked. Some Germans teased me and asked if I went fishing.
Mike in the ultimate staring contest
I come home a week from tomorrow. If I had the money, I'd stay in Germany longer, possibly forever. I've had the absolute best experience of my life here and I'm not ready for it to end. I'm going to enjoy this last week to the fullest, sick or not, and starting with Das Quiz tonight! Who cares about my two finals tomorrow, right?
Bis spaeter!
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Pictures from Friends
Here are a few pictures from our travels:
Meeting at the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry
Below the Acropolis
Our Bulgarian feast! We basically sat there open-mouthed as tray after tray of dessert came out.
The main cathedral in Sofia with my friend photobombing me
Palace of the Parliament, Bucharest
There will be more soon! We have literally hundreds of pictures on our collective cameras.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Castles on the Rhein and Roman Ruins
After getting back from our epic adventure (see details in my last post), I had no desire to leave Germany ever again. This worked out well because the weather was absolutely gorgeous when we got back and there's nothing better than biking to a Biergarten and drinking a local beer in the sun. Last week was our last week of classes, though, so there was also quite a bit of work to do. Now I'm in the finals period, but my first final isn't until Saturday and I don't have to go crazy on the studying front just yet. We decided to take advantage of this time and go on a little German vacation.
We (three friends and me) originally intended to go to the Fairy Tale Road, which is a long route connecting lots of castles and historic towns featured in the Brothers Grimm stories. This would have been lots of fun, but it's also quite expensive since it's not all that close to Freiburg and would be better seen with a rental car. We decided to downgrade a bit to save money, and after talking to my flatmate about his recommendations, we looked into a shorter trip on the Rhein River where we could see some other castles.
Our trip began at the train station in Freiburg on Saturday morning. We had a Schoenes-Wochenende ticket, which is a special saver ticket that allows up to five people to travel anywhere in Germany for 37 Euros. The catch is that you have to take ultra-slow regional trains, but still, that price can't be beat. Our first stop was the city of Sankt Goar, which is a small town on the Rhein with a huge castle called Burg Rheinfels. On our way there on the train, we passed castle after castle overlooking the river. There are dozens in that area of Germany and it was really cool to see them one right after the other as we headed towards our destination.
The Burg Rheinfels
My flatmate lives in that region of Germany and recommended the Burg Rheinfels because it's a great castle for exploring. Not only is it huge and sprawling, it has a gigantic network of tunnels deep underneath it.
Our adventures in the tunnels were alternately fun and terrifying. They ranged from tall and dimly lit to tiny and pitch-black. There were no safety lights or exit signs in these - they were completely original except for a thin white line painted on the ceilings of some of them. We saw an absolutely massive spider above our heads in one. I bolted from that tunnel faster than I've ever run in my life and I can't even bring myself to upload the picture of it. It's too terrifying to know that it could have dropped on us at any time! We fortunately didn't see any more spiders like that, although they could have been there in some of the smaller, pitch-black ones. We crawled along with only two cell phones for light, but we tried to test ourselves and go along in complete darkness. It was really exhilarating, but quite unnerving at the same time. It would be extremely easy to get lost in that labyrinth and there were no guards or anything to make sure that everyone could get out. Regardless, it was definitely the highlight of the trip for me! I think we all lost a few years of our lives with the spider incident, but we emerged at the end relatively unscathed.
Faces of fear/excitement. That tunnel was pitch-black.
We had to crawl quite a bit on this trip...
We stayed in a nice youth hostel right below the castle that night. I had had to write e-mails in German to get us the reservation and I had to speak quite a bit once we got there to figure out how to pay for the room. Even though I was traveling with two good German speakers, they were both conspicuously silent as I tried to explain to the hostel clerk that we didn't want to join the German Youth Hostel Association. It turns out he spoke English, but he seemed to enjoy listening to me mangle his language. Oh well - as long as my German is intelligible, I consider my interactions a success.
The next leg of our trip took place in Trier, which is the oldest city in Germany and has tons of Roman ruins left over from the reign of the Holy Roman Empire. We took the train from St. Goarshausen (right across the river from Sankt Goar - we had to take a ferry) and had an absolutely beautiful scenic trip across the state. I didn't get pictures from the train because they were too blurry and the window was dirty, but we rode through fields and forests that were reminiscent of California. My time in Europe has made me a big fan of train travel. It's so nice to sit back and relax while seeing countryside you wouldn't see otherwise, especially in a beautiful country like Germany. I didn't mind the long ride to Trier at all because of the gorgeous scenery, and even in the more nondescript areas, I had Harry Potter in German to occupy me.
The Roman ruins in Trier were really interesting. We didn't have time to see absolutely everything, but we saw the main city gate (the Porta Nigra), walked to the amphitheater, explored the main cathedral and its grounds, and walked around the remains of a coliseum. It started raining heavily partway through our little tour, but it stopped in time for us to enjoy walking around the high sides of the amphitheater. It's really amazing to see ruins like those in modern cities, especially in a highly developed country. Of course that's commonplace in Europe, but for an American, it's pretty special. Roman ruins in Germany are a little less common, though, which explains the high number of tourists and tourist traps. We avoided that by grabbing a quick lunch of Currywurst and ice cream and eating on the fountain in the main square. The central square reminded me of Prague, which we visited SO long ago...
The Porta Nigra (city gate)
Our disheveled and rain-soaked group at the amphitheater. Love these guys.
The amphitheater (you could walk around in tunnels there too)
We got back around 11:30 last night after a long trip on the regional trains. Regardless, we all had so much fun. The three people I traveled with shared my desire for a budget-friendly German vacation and we all had a great time seeing the castles, exploring the scary tunnels, and then coming back to Freiburg. Most of the people in my program are currently traveling internationally, but I could not be happier to be in Freiburg for the remainder of my time here. There's so little time left and I want to enjoy it as much as possible. I'm really lucky to have found great friends and flatmates to share it with.
Also, here are the links to my photo albums! People reading this who are my friends on Facebook can also see the pictures that other friends have tagged me in. I'll add some of those to the blog as they get posted online.
Romania and Bulgaria: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=171176&id=599810215&l=d7dc681c59
Greece Part 1:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=171190&id=599810215&l=9279756c53
Part 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=171291&id=599810215&l=3f9b543eb0
There will be more pictures as soon as Facebook lets me upload them (from our epic journey back to Germany as well as the Sankt Goar/Trier trip). It basically does things when it wants, not when I want it to...
I've got a nice week of relaxation/finals studying ahead. At least there's plenty of time for both! It's raining back in Freiburg, but I managed to make it to the farmer's market because it started pouring. We're hoping to go to the pool with a water slide as soon as it warms up again. All for now - bis spaeter!
Last Leg: Athens and the Trek Home
We flew from Sofia to Athens on Tuesday. We were a little bummed to not have more time in Sofia, but of course we were all excited to see Greece. After landing at the main airport, we took a 45-minute subway ride downtown. The ultra-nice subway was clearly the result of the 2004 Olympics - it was probably one of the nicest I've been on in Europe. We rode it to Akropoli, which should give you a hint as to where our hotel was located - right by the Acropolis! That's the name for the mountain with ruins, most notably the Parthenon, overlooking Greece.
Our hotel wasn't the nicest I've ever been in, but when we first got there and saw the Acropolis from the street, we were all pretty excited. Zeus' Temple was also a block away. We also had a rooftop terrace that made the whole thing worth it. We were in the Plaka district, which is quite touristy but also really pretty with winding streets and cafes. Everyone dropped off their stuff and got ready to go exploring right away.
Pre-Exploring
We headed up towards the Acropolis with the intention of seeing everything, but unbeknownst to us, all the monuments in Greece close at 3:00! Geez Greece - maybe you'd make more money if you stayed open until reasonable hours! We griped about the situation and teased Greece a bit more (being EU nerds as usual) before moving on to find something else. We ended up walking around the base of the Acropolis and finding a good rock from which to view the city. Athens is absolutely enormous, but we found our bearings a bit and noted some sites we wanted to check out later. The sheer number of preserved ruins in that city is incredible.
We ended up getting some ice cream and wandering around town after that. We checked out the Parliament buildings and took our usual pictures of the Changing of the Guard. The Greek ones definitely had the best shoes compared to guards in the other country. I can't imagine standing for hours in that heat in a woolly suit with big felt balls on the toes of each shoe. What a good life. There was a nice park next to the Parliament where we walked around and viewed some animals in the petting zoo. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were all tired from a nice long day of walking around and enjoying the city.
How many people are in this picture?
The rest of the trip was just as fun. We had academic meetings as usual, but we had plenty of free time to go exploring and to go out at night. My favorite academic meeting was at the Foreign Ministry. We spoke to a knowledgeable and eloquent woman, Ms. Irene Riga, about Greece's position on major EU issues such as enlargement. We had lots of time for questions and I asked one about enlargement in the Balkans (my theme of interest for this trip). Our meetings are almost always better when we have lots of question time and when we discuss policy rather than lofty EU goals. I would consider this one in Greece one of the best academic meetings from the whole semester.
Our entire time in Athens was great, but of course there was a small incident involving Iceland and a rogue volcano. We found out about it on Thursday and weren't too worried initially since we weren't scheduled to leave until Sunday, but when some of the people trying to get back on Friday had their flight cancelled, we started to wonder how bad it was going to get. I'm sure everyone saw the emerging news stories about the thousands of stranded travelers. Little did I know we would be joining them soon...
We put the volcano out of our minds and took a trip to the beach on Saturday. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip - beautiful weather, lovely beach on the Aegean, great friends, and nothing to do except relax and enjoy the experience. The water was a bit cold, but we went swimming anyway. There weren't too many tourists on the beach, but there were quite a few well-oiled Greek men playing some cross between badminton and tennis. It was great to relax on our last (or so we thought) day in Athens with a good group of friends.
One of my favorites of us from the beach
The last thing I'll say about Athens before going into our travel adventures is that the food was DELICIOUS. We ate so much Greek salad, feta cheese, olive oil, lamb, and fresh fish accompanied by good wine at nearly every meal. We also found a local hole-in-the-wall pita shop that sold the absolute best beef pitas we've ever had. An old Greek man told us that they were the best in town and he was completely right. This was off the beaten path, but they were even better than some of the dinners we had in the more touristy parts of town. All in all, we ate well for an entire week and couldn't have been happier about it.
It wasn't really until Sunday that s*** started to hit the proverbial fan. One of my friends and I were scheduled to fly out together around 11:00 am. We knew that wasn't really going to happen, but we had to go to the airport anyway to talk to the ticket desk and figure things out. This entailed getting up at 5:30 a.m. in order to make it on time. Sure enough, our flight was cancelled and we found ourselves in a long line waiting to talk to Aegean airlines. The best offer we could get was a flight to Berlin the following morning which "might take off" or a flight to Frankfurt (our original destination) on Thursday. We took the crappy Berlin option knowing that we wouldn't be able to get anything better before heading back to our hostel to meet the others. We spent a lot of the day on the Internet trying to figure out our rights as travelers under EU law and the like before things really got crazy.
Around 5:00 p.m., when the rest of our friends figured out their flights were all cancelled too, we were all sitting around the computers doing research on potential ways to get back. One friend's dad had recommended that he look into taking a 32-hour ferry ride to Italy and then taking a train back to Germany. We all scoffed at the idea, but he continued to work out the details. Meanwhile, news surfaced about German airspace being closed for longer than initially planned, meaning our flight to Berlin was definitely going to be cancelled. Everyone was starting to get anxious at this point because we really wanted to get back to Freiburg after travelling for nearly two weeks. Finally, our friends figured out all the details for the ferry and asked if anyone wanted to go. Some people said yes right away, but the rest of us were a bit skeptical and asked how long we had to decide. The answer? "We'd have to leave in 15 minutes." WHAT??? That really upped the stress level and people began to frantically weigh their options. No one wanted to be the one person to stay behind and then get stranded for a week, but there was no guarantee whatsoever that we could even get on the ferry or on a train in Italy. We also didn't know if our flights would be cancelled for sure and we didn't want to lose money. Ultimately, most of us decided to go for the ferry and we sprinted upstairs to get our stuff before coming back down to cancel our night in the hostel. Then the epic journey began...
We had to take a three-hour train, bus, train combination to get to Patras, a port town on the other side of Greece. That part was no fun at all as everyone was still super stressed about whether or not the plan would work, but it was also very exhilarating. Our motto was basically, "This will either be the very best or the very worst idea we've ever had." It turned out to be true. We got there and started looking for the ferry office with about fifty other people with the exact same idea. It was basically chaos/Amazing Race as everyone started sprinting towards the office: "There it is! Run! Go go go go go go!" We bolted in and asked for eight tickets and a cabin. We got the tickets (thank God), but we told that there were no cabins available. No matter - we were more than happy to sleep on the floor if it'd get us out of Greece.
We got on the ferry at about 11:00 pm and quickly staked out a corner in the lounge for the eight of us to occupy for the next 32 hours. This turned out to be a smart move as the ferry became more crowded than it had probably ever been. There were literally hundreds of stranded travelers camping on the stairwells, in the hallways, and even on the deck in the rain. Apparently we weren't the only crazy ones after all! We made makeshift pillows, blankets, and eye masks out of our clothes and went to sleep on the carpet.
Our "beds"
Believe it or not, we slept well and had an enjoyable ferry experience. After the craziness of the dash to Patras, it was really nice to sit back and know that we couldn't do anything to change the situation anymore. We just relaxed and read books for the whole next day. My book? The first Harry Potter in German! I read much slower in German than in English, but I was really happy to be able to understand everything. Besides, it wasn't a problem to be reading slowly with so much time to kill.
It was cold and windy outside, but we went out to enjoy the view and take some pictures. It was also a relief to hear that my flight to Berlin was in fact cancelled, meaning that I was guaranteed a refund. Most other travelers on the ferry had theirs cancelled as well. At one point, someone posted a sign near the massive line for the computers saying "If anyone knows how to get back to the UK, write it here!" That sign remained blank for the entire ride.
Just a bit windy...
When we finally got to Venice after a day and two nights on the ferry, we discovered that there were no trains to Germany. They had all been completely booked. We had one option of taking a bus to Karlsruhe, which is farther north then Freiburg, but it would have been quite expensive and inconvenient. We sat there in the train station in Venice, finally feeling utterly defeated. Luckily, IES decided to send a coach to pick up the other people still in Athens, the other trip that was stranded in Rome, and us (we were going to meet them in Bologna). The other people in Athens boarded a ferry to Italy as well and we went to Bologna to get a hostel for the night and wait. We didn't even leave the hostel when we got there - everyone was too burnt out to even consider going out and exploring.
The next day, after about eight hours on the bus from Bologna to Freiburg, I had never been so happy to get home in my life. We started traveling at 6:00 pm on Sunday and got back in Germany at 2:30 a.m on Thursday. We went through Greece, Croatia (territorial waters), Italy, and Switzerland before making it back home. Overall, it was the best rather the worst idea ever. We had an epic journey back, but we made it in one piece and with a little bit of sanity left!
That's all for our adventure. Check soon (as in later today) for my next post about the wonderful weekend I just had exploring Germany! Bis dann!
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