Hey guys! I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but time has been flying here. I’ve been trying to fit everything in before I leave, and writing about my life here has been the furthest thing from my mind. That being said, I also don’t want to just abandon my blog, so I’ve decided to do a post for Eurotour, and later one final post before I fly home.
Eurotour was 15 days long, from June 3rd to June 17th. We were sixty-two exchange students, mostly from this district, but also including a few from the Hannover district who arrived in January and couldn’t find places in their district’s Eurotours.
One double-decker bus.
We stayed in pretty nice hotels, although usually away from the city centres, so once we got to the hotel, it was basically pool time until bed. In each city, we usually had a walking tour, followed by free time for lunch, and then another tour or monument visit in the afternoon. Other days were 90% driving, which were spent mostly sleeping, watching movies, or singing along to music. We visited 10 different countries (not including Germany) on our tour, so it was a pretty tight schedule. We started from Bremen, Germany, then drove to:
AMSTERDAM – Netherlands
In Amsterdam we got a bike tour (very terrifying in this city), a boat canal tour, and visited the Anne Frank house. Restricted free time here for obvious reasons.
BRUSSELS – Belgium
Every other store in Brussels was either selling chocolate or waffles, so it was a pretty nice place to be (and always smelled good). Brussels was actually just a lunch stop between Amsterdam and Paris – on this day we ate each meal in a different country! Outside of the city we visited the Atomium from the World’s Fair, which was way bigger than any of us had expected from the pictures. Overall we found Brussels to be pretty similar to Germany, although I could use my French here.
PARIS – France
We spent two full days (three nights) in Paris. The weather there was a bit strange – nice and sunny one moment, and then suddenly cloudy. Crossing into the Champs d’Elysee, there was sun, but we could see some dark clouds. One of the trip staff got anxious and said we had to cross the busy street and get to shelter before the rain. I started to take my raincoat out, but I was completely soaked through before I could get my second sleeve on. It came so quickly and so hard, we all just started screaming and huddling together on the island in between the two streets, waiting for the light to turn green for us and then running across, hoping we weren’t going to die. Someone somewhere has a bad quality video of it. I didn’t even step in a puddle and my shoes were absolutely soaked through within seconds. Shortly afterwards, it became sunny again for our free time.
Sadly for our Eiffel tower visit another storm came, and we couldn’t visit the seeing platform at the top. We did end up meeting another Rotary Eurotour group at the tower, who were all doing their exchange in Spain. They were visiting the same cities but in the reverse order. We ended up meeting them again in Vienna!
The second day in Paris we visited the Sacre-coeur area, and a few of us splurged and shared some escargot, which was chewy but delicious (covered in butter and herbs of course).
GENEVA – Switzerland
Wow. Geneva was literally a breath of fresh air after spending the previous few days in Paris – we all noticed it as soon as we stepped off of the bus. The water and city were also super clean – it felt great, although the crazy prices made it bittersweet. That didn’t stop some us from buying 20 Euro’s worth of chocolate though, of course. Thankfully I could still use my French to find out exactly where to get Frigor.
Our hotel that night was actually just across the border in France, probably because it was cheaper. The next day we got a tour of the UN buildings, which were very top-notch and had a (surprisingly) very calm and relaxing atmosphere. The next day in the bus we tried our own model-UN, which was pretty funny.
We were all disappointed that we didn’t get to spend longer in Switzerland, although we knew our exchange student wallets wouldn’t have survived any longer.
VENICE – Italy
Venice is probably my favourite place of those that we visited on Eurotour. I figured Venice was going to be a disappointment; that it would smell horrible and be packed with tourists, with only a few actually pretty canals. There were definitely super touristy and crowded areas, but it was easy to get away from them and explore the city through the small streets and tiny bridges over the canals. Our tour guides were locals and took us to the more local areas of Venice, which were just as pretty, but with no one else there! The gondola ride was short but really nice (our canal tour in Amsterdam was three hours long and definitely nowhere near as pretty), and the weather was perfect, as you can see from the photos, although pretty hot.
Even though Venice is a pretty big tourist hotspot, the compact streets and many small squares can make you feel more alone, and having no bikes, cars or trams makes it have quite a calm atmosphere in those places. In Amsterdam, for example, you never knew when you were going to get run over by an aggressive cyclist or a tram!
POSTOJNA CAVE – Slovenia
The cave here is massive – we took a train ride just to get to the main part of it. Everything was so huge and intricate, it seemed like something out of an elaborate movie set like Lord of the Rings. Actually a few of us were getting a Lord of the Rings vibe, so you can imagine how elaborate it all was. Then we tried to identify exactly which part of the movie involved such a cave, and everyone kind of drew a blank. But the vibe was there. Once again, this was a place I figured was going to be much smaller and anti-climactic, but instead took us all by surprise. I have lots of photos, but sadly they’re all pretty poor quality.
Driving through the Slovenian countryside, I decided this country was the perfect place for European fairytales (although I haven’t been to the Black Forest in Germany yet).
BUDAPEST – Hungary
Budapest has many beautiful monuments, including its massive parliament building, although I had originally thought that the city would be more like Prague, with more old-town areas and small streets. We went to the famous thermal baths there, which was a huge but beautiful complex with pools of every single temperature. That evening we also ate typical Hungarian food (including goulash) along with a show: a gypsy band and Hungarian dancing. The diverse activities definitely made it a unique day on the trip.
VIENNA – Austria
Most people were excited to be in Vienna because we could speak German again. Our tours were also done in German, which I personally like better than it were in English with an accent and super slow. We visited the old town area, some parks, the old libraries, the Mozart house, and went to an ‘opera’. They told us is was an opera, anyways, but when we got there, it was a concert hall, with a small quartet performing selected songs FROM operas, with guest singers. That was kind of a let down, but in any case Vienna was a very nice city. Sadly quite expensive, especially after Budapest.
BRATISLAVA – Slovakia
Bratislava was another “lunch stop” city, after Vienna and on our way to Prague. It wasn’t a super interesting city, although had very attractive prices. On the other side of the river were huge apartment buildings built and used in the communist times, which didn’t add any beauty to the town. It also had tons of tourists, which had a large effect on the relatively small city and town centre. The traditional food here is pretty much the same as in the Czech Republic, so I ate one of my favourite dishes I remembered from the Prague trip I did three years ago.
PRAGUE – Czech Republic
Coming back to Prague, I figured it wouldn’t seem as interesting. The Prague trip was my first time in Europe, so of course I found everything to be amazing and “oh look – COBBLESTONES!” But I’ve just spent a year living in Europe, and also just recently toured most of it – I though I could view Prague more objectively this time.
It’s true I could compare Prague to other European cities this time; and I found that Prague is definitely still one of the prettiest ones. It wasn’t bombed in World War II, so all of the old architecture is still intact, making the ‘old town’ feeling last and not seem like just a facade. It has small alleys as well as wide shopping streets, and very few modern buildings, which are usually very creatively designed (ex. the Dancing Building). I realized how lucky I was that Prague was my first impression of Europe, and super glad I got to spend three weeks there on the trip. Spending only a day and a half in Prague on this trip, it made me realize how little we explored the other cities, and how much more they probably have to offer. Of course, I wouldn’t really want to spend three weeks in Bratislava, I don’t think.
One of the bigger differences I noticed from last time was that there seemed to be way more tourists. Our guide said that tourism has gone up like crazy there, because of other big European cities having terrorist attacks and so on. Prague is also relatively cheap.
It was great being in Prague again, this time with all of my exchange student friends. I hope it won’t be my last time there, either.
…aaaaaand back to OLDENBURG (and then to VAREL, Europe’s metropolis).
It was a whirlwind of a trip, but unforgettable. After the storm in Paris, most of us got sick, and I’m actually still recovering, but I’m hoping it’s reaching its end. The next week I went to the Dokumenta in Kassel with my art class, then the final Rotex sleepover and Rotary district conference, and this week I’m mostly going to the airport every other day to cry as my friends are all starting to fly home. BUT more about all of that next time!
I hope you enjoyed the photos! Thanks for stopping by!
Wir sehen uns nur noch ein Mal wieder – unglaublich! Bis dann!
Hannah
Speaking of food, Fabiola and I made our very first Apfelkuchen (apple cake) ourselves using a German recipe (only had to look up a few words), which we were very proud of. It tasted delicious, but once again I forgot to take pictures (only Snapchats ha ha sorry).
My host mom (Pam) has a sister living in Stavanger, Norway, so my host parents, Fabiola, and I spent a week visiting with her there. We drove up through Denmark and then took a ferry to Norway. The traffic was horrible around Hamburg, though, and we arrived too late to catch our ferry. This meant we had to stay overnight in Denmark, catch a shorter ferry the next day, and then drive for a few hours to Stavanger. Hirtshals is a small fishing town, which was nice to stay a night in, and the drive through southern Norway was very beautiful (although Rainer kept complaining about the constant 90km/h speed limit). Norway had many rocky hills and mountains, with tons of car tunnels. Around Varel it is very flat, so Rainer is used to going 180-200km/h on the Autobahn (no speed limits).
With Pam’s sister (Sue), we went mushroom hunting in the forest and crab fishing by the ocean. The two sisters cooked the mushrooms and made a very spicy Thai dish with them (Sue also made a traditional Norwegian meal of lamb with a sort of gravy sauce). We also visited a museum in Stavanger about vikings, along with another museum about the town’s local history. We were going to do a day hike up a mountain, but the weather was very bad, and apparently there was no view at the top.
Hallo there! I have now been in Germany for about two and a half weeks, and figured now was a good time for a first blog post. I might try to do a post a month, or have it vary on the density of interesting events. Every day, of course, is interesting for me, but I will try to boil it down for these posts. Much like when making maple syrup.
Varel - Deutschland 