Post 10: All I Have Time For...

So my sister came to Deutschland! It was a nice going away present to get to travel with her and show her some of the great things I have enjoyed about the country all summer. We traveled to Freiberg, where Brandon studied abroad last summer (made for a great tour guide), and we also spent some time in Köln.

Here are some pictures of us hiking.

Don’t be fooled by my position when taking the picture, I was leading the entire time. Actually to be honest, the mountain was more leading us. The incline was so steep we basically endured a controlled 3-meter fall down the mountain. Good thing we took the tram up and hiked down instead of the other way around!

I think we had gelato everyday that she was here.

My favorite cake in the entire world is Black Forest cake. My mom makes it for me on my birthday and I usually eat 5 pieces by the time I am one day older. Now if you know anything about German geography, you should know that Freiberg is located in The Black Forest. So as you can imagine, I was pretty excited to try some of the Schwartzfeld kuacke where it originated! Needless to say, after searching high and low for three days, we finally found a bakery on the last day that carried the cake (it was also at 9am in the morning). It was good… I mean it was okay… I mean, I think I like my mom’s better. Sorry Deutschland, don’t get your feelings hurt. Hey, you got her beat on brewing beer!

When we got back to Köln, we went to see a musical. Yeah, I know. However, it was the Queen musical, We Will Rock You, so not that lame, right? It has been playing in Köln for a few years now so I figured it would be something my sister would like to go to when she was here. It should be noted that I had absolutely no idea until I bought the tickets that the dialogue was all in German! So needless to say, I can’t comment too much on the storyline. The songs on the other hand were really good. There was a live band playing the music so it sounded great. The singers were probably the best in Deutschland, and definitely some of the best I have heard, and the costumes and sets were phenomenal. It was definitely on par with something I would imagine Broadway or London putting on (since I’ve been very close twice but never actually been to a production in either city). So basically, it was still fun to watch even though I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I could however tell that they solved the whole plot conflict by playing, “We Will Rock You” on Brian May’s (guitarist from Queen) guitar that busted out of a mountain or something and it just seemed really silly. Silly Germans.

Besides my sister, a few of our friends from our fraternity stopped by when they were in town – Brian Young, Trey Flowers, and Kyle Citrano. I didn’t get in until very late but Brandon treated them to some Kölsch, and then the next day we took them to get Schnitzel. Being with Kyle reminded me of how loud Americans are, but it also reminded me how much I missed the charismatic Texas spirit.

UPDATE: I love Oxford. I love this program. Climate change is bigger than you think. It's different- just different, and its a great business opportunity.....:-)

Post 9: God Bless The Swiss

I’ve put off writing this post because I’m afraid I won’t be able to accurately recreate my weekend in Switzerland. I don’t think I can squeeze all the action, adventure, physical endurance, delicious chocolate, beautiful scenery, interactions with foreigners, and cows with bells on their necks into one easy to digest post. Oh well, can’t blame me for trying.

Save one trip to Colorado, a week in North Carolina, and a few nights in Santiago, I have never been privileged enough to spend a lot of time in the mountains. This became incredibly apparent to me as I was riding the train into Switzerland and just happened to notice some large rock formations out of the corner of my eye. What are those? The Alps. The mighty mighty Alps.

After spending six hours on the train, we decided it would be a good idea to spend our first day getting accommodated with Interlaken…on mountain bikes. I couldn’t tell you the distance we covered – it would be in meters anyway, and they never sound as impressive as they really are – but we rode up for approximately 3 hours and down in about one hour (always easier going back down).

The small town of Lauterbrunnen with its touristy waterfalls was a nice rest, and a place to get a cheap tuna sandwich (the only thing I ate that day). Here are some random pictures of the country side / Swedish homes that I took on the bike ride:

CANYONING GRIMSEL
The next day was when the action started! It’s hard to describe the sport of canyoning to someone. To be quite honest, for me it was putting your trust and money in the hands of a displace New Zealand as they lead you around rocks, off rocks, through rocks, over rocks, under rocks, jumping, climbing, repelling, grabbing, falling, yelling, laughing, smiling, adrenaline, cold glacier water in a canyon! The point of the activity isn’t so much as to pass through the canyon, as it is to do every scary, dangerous, and ridiculously fun thing while in the canyon! This post won’t even begin to illustrate the amount of fun I had- or how fast my adrenaline was pumping!

This was literally the first thing we did once we got to the canyon – repelling down 150 feet! I’m going to be honest, I had never repelled before in my life (much less used a carabineer for any purpose other than to decorate my backpack in middle school). Now that I’ve done it once, I refuse to ever use elevators again.

We did a lot of sliding down natural rockslides. Most of the time you couldn’t see where you were going, and our guide would just tell us to trust them. “Don’t try and look where you’re going or you’ll break your nose against a rock. Lean back and have fun” Haha okay! Every sentence they said ended with “ …and have fun”

I definitely did!

This is me jumping off a 25-foot cliff into a pool of 40-degree water.

Other activities included zip lining across crevasses, scrambling around huge rocks, and one of my favorites- scrunching up into a ball and being thrown down a rockslide into the water. “When we’re not canyon guides we work as baggage handlers- so we need to practice throwing bags. Act like a bag while we throw you in…and have fun”

The last thing we did was a combination rockslide and cliff jump. We basically stood on one rock and jumped about 3 feet across on to a rockslide that dropped us into another canyon pool. The entire day was filled with these types of seemingly impossible things! One girl in our group would always say, “No way am I doing that.” and then after she did it she would have the biggest grin on her face!

I don’t know if these pictures have done the experience justice, but trust me it was exhilarating, exciting, and 100% enjoyable.

WHITE WATER (LITERALLY) RAFTING
Regrettably I don’t have any pictures from my next little adventure in Interlaken, river rafting, but if you stick with me, I will do my best to explain how wicked awesome it was!
So the rate river rapids on a scale from 1-6, with 1 being the weakest and 5 being the limit for commercial rafting. Well, I definitely didn’t know if until after we were done, but the rapids we rafted on that day were all between 3 and 4! This definitely wasn’t a pleasant little float down a lazy river.

If I thought my adrenaline levels were high the day before in the canyon then I had no idea what rafting would be like. The safety instructions were more than “have fun” they were “learn these commands or you will fall out of the boat and have a good chance of drowning!” Haha awesome- I volunteered Brandon and I to sit up front.

Try and imagine the opening scene. There had been a big storm the night before so the clouds had gotten stuck in the mountains, and there was a nice layer of fog rising for about 4 feet off the river. We place our raft into the water and get in. We have about 30 seconds of floating before our kayak guide in front of us turns around and smiles. Immediately we plunge into rapids. “Row left! Lean right! Stop- get down! Row left! Brace yourself!” Our guide would yell commands one after the other and we had to react in a millisecond or we’d get tossed over board. The ice-cold water would mercilessly slap against our raft (and in our faces) as we slammed into rapids. The water was straight from the glacier so it was ice cold, and my hand that hung on to the safety rope was freezing within 5 minutes. I would say for every 30 minutes we had maybe 5 minutes where we weren’t just getting annihilated by rapids! It was so intense and sooooooo fun!

There was one area in particular that I loved. It was called something inappropriate but I will let you use your imagination and only hint – it rhymed with “The Hubble Bucker” and the first word is “double”. It was named this because it started right when you dropped our raft in the second time (had to move around a fish reserve) with a six foot drop (1) then as soon as that was over a giant rock would suck your raft straight to it (2). If you didn’t lean into the rock, it would flip your raft over, and it had many times in the past! This was probably the most intense 2 minutes of my entire life! Between the yelling of my guide, the physical dexterity required to survive the huge drop and quick paddle direction change, and not to mention the panicked glances to make sure no one had fallen from the raft, it was probably the closest I will ever be to serving in the military!

SERENDIPITY
I know that is a title to a horrible horrible chick flick, but it is the best word I can think of to describe this really cool event that happened this weekend. We had met a family from Indiana while rafting and became quick friends with them like most people do in dire situations. Anyway, they were planning on going to Frankfurt that evening, and we told them we were going to stay another night. Well long story short, and thanks to my hang gliding adventure being canceled (low clouds), Brandon’s misdirection’s, and their change in plans we ran into them at the Freiberg train station. The thing is my brothers, when I say run into, I mean we were getting on the same exact train car that they were exiting in a town that 8 hours before, when we had met, neither of us had planned on going to! How cool is that?

Okay, you’re right it would be a lot cooler if it was some hot Swiss chick who was going to marry me and give me citizenship so I could eat delicious chocolate all day and be a river rat on the weekends. Not that I’ve dreamt of that every night since coming back…

EUROPEAN HAIR CUT
This is another thing that would be much better illustrated with a picture, but I’m not (quite) that much of a narcissist.In short, I very recently got paid and so decided to finally cut my hair. Trust me, or Matt Kiesel who saw me a week ago, it really needed it!

I can’t tell you how scared I was to get my hair cut here. Some people walk around with multiple color stripes in their hair, mullets down their necks, or just weird bangs! Needless to say, my hairdresser, who didn’t speak English (good thing I brought in a picture of myself [okay so maybe a little bit of a narcissist]) did a really good job. Although there was one point where she had stopped after only trimming the hair in front and asked, “Das gut?” Fearing that I was going to receive a 15-dollar euro mullet, I quickly said “NEIN! Cutin ze rest of mein hair!”

Other than that misunderstanding, it was the most precise haircut I’ve ever received in my life. She measured every hair she cut against another cut hair probably 3 or 4 times. Either the German attention to detail reaches all industries, or she knew that Americans tend to tip when Europeans don’t!

Cheers to you for reading this far! I love and miss everyone in the United States, and will be home in no more than 33 days. Not that I’m counting…