Rainy ol’ Regensburg

This past weekend was a tough one for me…
it was officially the last time I would be with all the other exchange students before my return home in January. Saying that, it was a rather emotional outing to Regensburg for our Christmas weekend, and I tried my hardest to keep in the tears when we had to say our “goodbyes”, or as I preferred it, “see you soon’s”.

Thankfully I will see some of them again soon… namely the english speakers and those living in my town. :] I’ll definitely try to visit the others all around the world!

Here are some of the photos I took over the weekend. The main sights included the Regensburg Cathedral and the Turn Castle, where we wandered through the stalls of the lovely Christmas Markets.

Christmas is getting closer! :]
But I really don’t want my time here to end. :’[
Ryan
x

Up in the clouds.

I’m certain most of the people with an inner-child have seen this brilliant film below right?

Well, this weekend I was at pretty much the same level in the sky that Carl, Russell and Dug were at. Invited by my Rotary Club, a fellow exchange student from Chile and I spent two nights, three days in the Wendelstein Mountain area, quite close to the beautiful town of Schliersee in Southern Germany. :]

We ended up doing a short hike, ate some amazing food, stayed in a beautiful old hotel, went into a cave, saw a waterfall, went to an old German village, and took a cable car down the hill (or should I say giant-ass mountain?), just to name a few things.

Here’s a small gallery of what we got up to (I seriously had to cut down on the photos… so many of them were simply superb).

D-Tour Week 3 (At last…)

Just to fill in with all the other Deutschland Tour Posts (and yes, I know they’re well over two months late), perhaps start with the first one and then go in order. :]

You can’t defy the logic.

And now here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: the very last post, that finally means you can stop wondering when, if ever, this post will get written. Well it has at last!

As you all should know, the last stop that we had on our tour was in Hamburg, and in order, we’re now on our way to Bremen, the beer-brewing city that Beck’s calls home.

On arrival, we were herded out of the bus, told to chuck our luggage in the hostel (seen below), and then slip out to the Beck’s brewery to see how all the magic happens. After a fairly lengthy tour, that saw a few people drifting off into a land of slumber, we made our way into the older part of the city, encountering an Aussie themed cafe, going inside the city’s historical church, and checking out the main square. :]

What a weekend!

Dating from the 30th June to yesterday (3rd July), I spent four days in attendance to either a Rotary or Rotex function, spent the whole of Friday in a disco, did a high-ropes course and filled myself with typical German food. What can I say…? I’m stuffed, tired and do not want to be disturbed, because sleep is on my agenda. :/

It began on the thursday night, a formal rotary dinner where I ate the most delicious of fine meat. It went late and after getting picked up by my host mum at a little before midnight, she opened a bottle of sekt (champagne) on the hour to celebrate my official first minute as an adult. Lovely thought. :]

I then plodded up the stairs to bed and hit the hay for my much needed six hours of sleep. School felt like a normal day… except my class baked me not one, but TWO, cakes. SOOOOO good. :] One tasted like crushed Oompa Loompas and marshmellows, the other like Willy Wonka and his flavoured wallpaper. In other words, they were magically good.

Soon afterwards, it was time to head to the next Rotary meeting. A most joyous occasion to have on ones birthday. But I didn’t mind. I got to eat Schweinshaxe, one of the most delicious and meaty Bavarian specialties there is. After finishing up the meeting, I finally headed home around 2pm with Victor (from Mexico) so we could eat this lovely surprise that my host mum whipped up for me.

After two pieces (bringing my total for the day up to 7, along with other meals), I was completely full and said goodbye to Victor, who returned home to prepare for his farewell party. I too got ready, and then I went into Augsburg (after missing my first bus, because I’m so stupid that I can’t read a timetable.) to meet some of the others. We had some”dinner” in Burger King and afterwards headed to his party at PM, a disco near the city.

I love Allens lollies lots. They make my heart go….

What is that song? I would be truly delighted if someone was able to tell me the accurate words. I don’t trust the internet, and I’m secrelty hoping that someone else makes the same error as I do. Shame I don’t really know Allens‘ famous tune off by heart. Also a shame that I can’t buy them here in Europe when we head off for a day at the movies. Absolute bummer! :/

I have to point out that Lily, the dummy that she is (I know right, what is it with Canadians and being stupid?), decided to make us trek around Munich to find an open grocery store, even though the intelligent Mexican declared it was Sunday and that everything would be closed. Lily’s response: none. She was an ignorant b***h. God love her :]

The cinema, kino as it’s called in German, was an English theatre and rightfully so, the English exchange students went along – excluding the Americans, adding a Mexican to spice up the mix a little. We ate nachos joyfully and laughed at the fact Torrington is so clumsy he doesn’t know what to do when he loses something precious of his. Note the photo of what the ‘Rescue Team’ was forced to face.

We faced a giant metal grate..... So heavy.

We were watching the new Pirates of the Caribbean if you wanted to know. Good film, not wondeful. Schade. We also caught up with one of the outbounds, that is, someone who’s leaving the country on exchange. We saw Freddy who’s off to Mexico. (Viva Mexico!) He gave us a short tour of the Botanischer Garten and was nice to see München (Munich) in the Summer, not covered by bundles of fresh snow and ice.

Distrikt Konferenz

This was quite a recent event. Perhaps about two weekends ago and held in the town of Dillingen, on the Donau River. It was a picturesque German town and was very similar in attributes to most small towns we saw on the Deutschland tour: quiet, calm and pretty. We were lucky enough to have the Rotary District Conference for 1840 (The Greater chunk of Bayern) here. It was I must say, a memorable weekend. We had a lot of fun.

I did this just to spite you Lil.

So this is Lily, and she’ll love it when she sees i’ve uploaded an embarrassing photo of her. It’s when she had ice cream. Evil one. Anyway, enough of Lily, and more of the events… So we were asked to do a presentation [all the exchange students] in front of the entire conference, based on something that is culturally significant for our own countries. For example, the Argentinian’s danced Tango, the Brazilian’s danced Samba and Capoeira, the Taiwanese girls played traditional instruments and then all the English speakers (plus one Finnish girl) joined forces to sing their own verses to an Australian song: Home Among the Gum Trees! Win for the Aussies, aye? Think Again… We were followed by a lone Kiwi who performed the Haka with every other male exchange student, apart from me. It was a small defeat. The crowd cheered at their performance. So I ask every Aussie back home or abroad who’s near a Kiwi. Beat him at something. And I don’t mean with a plank of wood.

The beginning of a very long three weeks.

It may appear that my coining of this article provides a sense of despair or anxiety, but it is by far the opposite. I’m referring to, and beginning to unravel to you, the first week of what I got up to on a tiresome, but amazing, three week tour of this wonderful land. The ‘Deutschland Tour’ as we had called it, got us so hyped up before it had even begun that we bought t-shirts emblazoned with our trip title for the entire world (more so entire Germany) to see. (You’ll probably catch a glimpse of them later on).

So our story begins in my home town here: Augsburg, the beautiful  capital of Swabia. Our first stop was Rothenburg ob der Tauber, some 184 km’s drive from where we started. This is some of what we got up to on that very first occasion:

Haha. The Dolan face. I'm yet to conquer it.

I love weekends with friends and [new] family. :]

So this was one of the most joyous weekends I’ve had in a while. In fact it may very well have been the date when I finally fell in love with Germany. I’m not saying I didn’t like it beforehand. But until this point I still felt like a stranger to the people here and my language skills were not all that good. But these two days changed that for me.

Saturday

Ingolstadt

It began after a week of poor planning, so there were really only seven of us who ended up going. We were lucky that Vicky from Taiwan was hosted here so we had some form of tour guide. Our arrival was unorganised. Sarah and I got there first and ended up waiting an hour for everybody’s trains to pull in to Ingolstadt Hauptbahnhof (Main Station). Before any real action though, I was able to convince Lily to let me steal some of her face wash. With the trippy futuristic toilets they have here in Germany it made for an interesting attempt at washing my face. Lily was there by my side to help get me through the ordeal. And to film it.

After the ordeal had ended we made our way outside. What an amazing old model train we discovered. Naturally we took pictures. And I took a video, accidentally. This is Lily here. The stupid, yet wonderfully humorous woman in all her glory.

The ever-gorgeous Lily in Ingolstadt