Barcelona, Spain and more Schwarzwald

I took last Thursday and Friday off work to go to Barcelona for the weekend, it was an incredibly fun weekend, one of the most party filled weekends of the summer. There were supposed to be six of us going but Joe had to cancel due to the lovely German bureaucracy causing him problems, so I ended up going with Breagh, Carolann, Danielle, and Kaylen. I'm starting to wonder where the other guys are on the weekends. I met Danielle and Carolann on the train to Baden-Baden where we met up with the other two and caught the bus to the airport. We met a guy on the bus from the states who is also in Germany doing an engineering work term, he was also heading to Barcelona for the weekend. We had a an hour and forty minute flight to Girona airport which is an hour and a half from Barcelona. I slept for most of the flight but couldn't do the same for the bus ride; I had a headache and the smell was terrible on the bus. I was glad when we finally arrived in the city around 5pm. We navigated our way to the subway, passing by the Arc du Triomf, and finding our hostel off the incredibly popular Las Ramblas. This was definitely the most centrally located hostel we've ever stayed at. We put our stuff in on lockers and headed down into the Placa Reial, or Royal Plaza, over which the hostel looked, and had supper. I had a mixtures of 8 different tapas, most of which were pretty good.  We walked around a bit after supper before partying with some Australians and Americans we met in our 26-bed dorm room. We ended up getting back to the hostel between 5am and 7am, and I only had one person attempt to steal my wallet as I was trying to enter the hostel, thankfully I had my back pocket buttoned so he couldn't get it!

 Arc du Triompf

 Placa Reial

 Placa Reial

Las Ramblas

The next day, or later the same day, after waking up, we headed to the market with the three Australians, Joe, Scott, and Ronnie and a Californian, Will, where we had something to eat before walking around the marina/port area on our way to Barceloneta Beach. We spent the afternoon at the beach and had a ton of fun. The waves were huge, and the water was a great temperature. Nobody got really burnt so that was a bonus. Once we got back to the hostel I went out to buy a pair of pants, because I had discovered the night before most bars in Barcelona don't let guys in if they're wearing shorts. I found a pair for 25 euros, and we didn't end up making it to a place that I even needed them, but I now have a pair of jeans from Barcelona. We partied in the hostel for the night, and got to bed at a reasonable time, about 2 or 3am.

I got up earlier than everyone on Saturday, got my free breakfast downstairs, had a shower, and was almost ready to go before anyone else was up. I really wanted to see the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's church, and I knew that not everyone else was feeling up for it. Carolann ended up getting ready in a hurry and came with me. It was an incredibly impressive church, I like the design style inside as it is unlike any other church in the world that I have been to. The pictures don't even do it justice, if you go to Barcelona you have to visit this place, even if the wait to get in is an hour!

 Should be finished between 2030 and 2050

The hat look was unintentional

We looked around the church for a little while before catching the subway back the hostel where we got a free tour of the Gothic District of Barcelona from one the employees at the hostel. There were only us five and one girl from France in our tour group, and the French girl left early so it was like a private tour. It was the first tour I've been on with a guy as the tour guide and he was hilarious, we didn't see the typical world famous sites, but the humor made up for that.

The tour was only about 2 hours, ending around 3pm, so we then headed to Park Guell. This is an amazing park developed by Gaudi, and includes the world's longest park bench. We spent a couple hours at the park before heading back to the hostel. We went out for supper with four guys from Florida that were staying in our room, Will, Adam, Ryan, and Alex. We had a very entertaining dinner at a tiny place called 'Restaurant' that claims to serve Barcelona's best sangrias. We had four or five pitchers between us, and I had paella with chicken to eat, it was extremely filling, but pretty tasty.

We bought a few drinks and headed to the Magic Fountain by the Royal Palace with the Australians to watch the fountain show. It was very impressive and we all had a great time among the thousands of people. Once it began to shower it was a mass migration to the subway and we had a very entertaining trip back to the hostel.

We partied in our room at the hostel with a bunch of people that joined us from the next room before catching cabs to the club Razzmatazz, the largest club on mainland Spain (the largest in Spain is on the island of Ibiza). We had a great night partying at the club, as you may have seen in the facebook pictures. 

Once we got back to the hostel around 5am we tried to find food, I forgot to eat supper, but did not have much luck, and had several prostitutes/gypsies chasing me and cornering me to try and steal my wallet. I didn't really have much money left at this point, but I managed to get away. We found a black market in the square our hostel was in where presumably stolen stuff was being sold, I bought an FC Barcelona scarf for 3 euro, not sure why, but it's a good souvenir. We gathered up our stuff and said goodbye to our new friends before heading to the bus station to catch our bus to the airport. There was no time to sleep. We missed the bus by 20 minutes, I thought they ran every 30 minutes, they did not. We begrudgingly took a cab to the airport at a cost of 170 euro, because it would have been much more expensive had we missed our flight. I slept for the whole cab ride and the whole flight, getting back to Schwenningen at about 4pm. I then proceeded to sleep for 12 hours before going to work the next morning. It was definitely a weekend to be remembered, we had some great laughs, and met some awesome people, I definitely could have stayed longer.

This past week was pretty uneventful, many people at work are on vacation, my supervisor is away for three weeks, and the head of the department will be gone for at least two weeks after next week. Some of the businesses around me have shut down for most of the month, it's very strange. It explains why there are no holidays in July and August. All workers in Germany get a minimum of three weeks of vacation, but many get several more. I slept for three hours when I got home from work on Friday, did some laundry and went back to bed. I got up early Saturday morning, I just can't sleep in (jetlag is going to be killer), so I did laundry, made breakfast, and went to the market all before 8:30am. I went to Lake Titisee for the day where I met Laura, and Carolann and her friend joined as around 2pm. It was a great day, I got pretty burnt but it's not so bad today. 

We left Titisee around 7pm, I went with Carolann and her friend who had a car to the Feldberg, the highest mountain in the Black Forest and the highest mountain in Germany outside of the Alps. It was a terrifyingly exciting drive in the 'Batmobil' as the decal on the back said. It was the tiniest car I've ever been it, it stuggled to climb the hills, the fuel gauge was on empty the whole time, and during the descent the breaks started to smell horrible, I'm glad we survived. We were able to drive to an elevation of about 1250m, and then we walked up the last 150m. It was a great view and because the sun was setting, there was hardly anyone there. We left the Feldberg around 8, I was dropped off at a train station in some small town where I waited an hour for a train before taking two trains and a bus, finally arriving back in Schwenningen after 11:30pm. 

I managed to sleep in today until 9am and I spent the afternoon in Rottweil, the oldest city/town in Baden-Wurttemburg, just a 15 minute train ride away. I met Greg at the train station and he showed me around as he had been there before. It was a very picturesque town but there is not much to do in any German city on a Sunday unless it's a major tourist destination. I got back home around 3:30pm and decided I should finish this blog since I've been putting it off long enough.

Hard to believe the first day of classes is just a month away. I am definitely not prepared for that!

London, England and then some!

Well this post is a bit delayed, it's been a busy week! London was an amazing city, it was a great change to be somewhere that we could understand people and be understood. I would definitely consider moving there at some point in my life, but only if I could get a job that pays well because it's incredibly expensive! I went with Laura, Danielle, and Carolann, the three girls that also went to Paris. We stayed overnight at the airport hotel and caught a flight to London at 7:40am. With the time change, we arrived at Stansted Airport at 8:00am and had no trouble with lines so we exchanged our Euros for Pounds, and caught the Standsted Express train into the city. We switched to The Underground, or The Tube, and headed to King's Cross Station where we got pictures at platform 9 and 3/4, from the Harry Potter books. 

We then caught a double decker bus to another tube station, and then headed to the hostel which was on the other side of the city. We walked through the largest mall in Europe which was directly across from our hostel, and finally found the hostel. We couldn't check in yet so we put our bags in a locker and grabbed lunch at a Thai place across the street. We headed back towards the downtown area, the girls headed off to the Harry Potter studio tour outside London, while I took the tube to the center of the financial district where I walked around for a bit and climbed The Monument, a memorial to the Great Fire of 1666 during which the city burned to the ground. I had a great view of the city, Tower Bridge, London Bridge, The Shard (the recently topped out tallest building in Europe), The Gherkin, among many other things.

 I then walked along the River Thames to the Tower of London, one of the most historically significant parts of London, where I paid to go in, and had a tour by the Yeoman, commonly known as the Beefeaters. After the tour, I went into a number of the areas not covered on the tour, including the building housing the crown jewels, White Tower, the first building on the site which contains a number of different exhibits, and I entered the dungeon where torturing took place, including the torture of Guy Fawkes. My memory card decided to stop working just before entering the dungeon, and I was thinking I had lost all the pictures I had taken. It wasn't until I was back here in Germany that I was able to determine that I could still access them, but I don't think I'll be using that card again. 

 

I caught the tube back to the hostel where I was able to move all our stuff from the locker into the room, grabbed a shower, and a new memory card, and headed to Oxford Circus. I walked down Regent Street, much fancier than the Regent Street in Fredericton, to Piccadilly Circus, where I wandered around a bit, saw where all the theatres are, and kept walking to the next tube station at Leister Square. I got back on the tube and took it to meet up with the girls at another station. We then headed to Covent Garden where we located The Maple Leaf, a very busy Canadian themed pub that serves Canadian beer (Moosehead and Sleemans) and poutine. We had a great time enjoying a little piece of home and chatted with the people at the table next to us, a CTV production crew in London for the Olympics. We headed back to the hostel around 11:30pm and headed to bed once we determined the hostel bar closed at 12:00am.

We woke up to a rainy Saturday, but we expected rain, so it wasn't a real surprise. We had a traditional English breakfast at the hostel with beans and black pudding, I thought it was delicious. We headed to Hyde Park Corner where we took another Sandeman's New Europe free walking tours, this was my fourth one. This tour had a royal theme, so we saw mostly the sites relating to the royal family. It was probably a combination of the poor weather, the detours due to the Olympics, the amount of walking we had to do, and the fact that our guide was a bit sick, but this was probably the least enjoyable free tour that I've done yet. It was still informative, and we did get to see a lot of things on my list of things to see in London. 

After the tour, we joined the guides and other tourists at a traditional English pub for lunch where I had fish and chips with English ale. It was delicious. We also bought tickets for the Old City Tour and the pubcrawl later than night. 

We proceeded from the pub to the Old City Tour meeting point in Covent Garden. We had a much smaller group on this tour and the weather had improved a bit, with the sun coming out by the end of the tour. We saw a lot more of the City of London, and the history on this tour was much more interesting. Although much of the places were where I had been the day before, it was great to learn the history behind them. 

After the tour Laura headed to see Wicked the musical, while the rest of us went to the hostel to change and go out on the pubcrawl. Once again we had a great time on the pubcrawl despite getting soaked by the rain leaving the first place. We met people from all over the place, and with the help of the extremely friendly London Police, we made our way back to the hostel. The tube had long since closed, so we had to make our way across town by buses, we would have had a hard time without the help.

Sunday we headed to London Eye, where we avoided the worst of the line ups, and thankfully we had pre-ordered our tickets. We were fortunate to have very decent weather and we were able to see the city perfectly during our 30 minutes trip on the Eye.

 Afterwards we grabbed a traditional McDonalds lunch, I tried to get mine to be as British as possible. We then headed back to Piccadilly Circus where we did a bit of souvenir shopping, and then to Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens. We walked around there for about an hour, seeing the Diana, Princess of Wales memorial fountain and had a delicious Belgian waffle. 

We then caught the tube to where we had to catch the train to the airport, and after a bit of a delay, we reluctantly departed London at 7:30pm. We landed at 9:30pm, and I had to take a bus, train, and a cab to get home, which wasn't until 1:00am, but the trip was definitely worth it.

I spent the past week working in the lab, so the week flew by. I partied with the German students that'll be going to UNB for the fall semester on Wednesday night, and met some of the students who had been at UNB last year. It made for a bit of a rough Thursday, but it was worth it. I had a work BBQ, called a grillfest in German, on Friday night, and I made a dessert that was supposed to be pecan pie squares, but you can't get pecans here this time of year, so I did a lot of improvising, and surprisingly people ate them. There was an impressive variety of meats and salads, and a lot of beer. I ended up going back to Schwenningen after midnight with one of the guys from my work and we went to the club in the train station where I met a bunch of the guys on his football (soccer) team. I got home around 3:30am I think, woke up around 10:00am, and headed to Konstanz. I met up with Breagh and Kaylen there, we walked around the city, a beautiful place, and Kaylen did a bit of shopping. I had met the girlfriend of one of the guys at work the night before at the BBQ and she was working in Konstanz so we found her store and made plans to go for a drink with her, her boyfriend, and some coworkers, after the store closed. We wandered a bit more until it was nearly 5:00pm, and it started to downpour. We were to meet at 5:15pm, so we waited for the rain to stop. It didn't. We ended up running part of the way there, but it was pointless, we all got mildly soaked. We went to a very 70's style bar and had a few drinks before sprinting to catch the ferry to Friedrichshafen where Breagh lives. We made nachos and potato chips for supper before catching a train to Ravensburg where we attended a massive festival with thousands of people, had some great beer, and ate some delicious food. It was probably the closest I'll get to an Oktoberfest like setting, it was pretty insane. We made it back to Breagh's around 2:00am and we spent Sunday wandering around Friedrichshafen having Thai food for lunch, and another great ice cream afterwards. I caught the train around 3:00pm to head back to Schwenningen. It was a nice to not have to fly anywhere this weekend, and I think I may have caught up on a bit of sleep, although I'm pretty tired at the moment, having nothing to do at work makes for a long day, although tomorrow I'll be working on the production line, so hopefully that'll go well!