Goodbye, Bonn

So, I’ve been playing catch up for a while.  I have a pretty big chunk to add over the next few days.  Sorry.  Hopefully I’ll be able to finish these before I get home. 

On Monday morning, we had class again.  Then a student worker for AIB took us to the Haribo Outlet Store.  It was grocery store sized with aisles and aisles of gummy bears.  And they were really cheap so I stocked up. 

Later that night, we met up at AIB again and watched Goodbye, Lenin.  We were all exhausted, and I’m pretty sure everyone fell asleep, so I’m not really sure what it was about.

Tuesday was everyone’s favorite day in a while.  We started out exploring a small town called Bacharach, where we had lunch and climbed up in a church tower for a good view of the town. 

Walking around the town felt like we were in a different century.

Then, we went on a cruise down the Rhine, which was lined with tons of medieval castles.  The boat took us to the Marksburg Castle, which is the only completely intact castle along the river.  We got a tour of it, and saw the cannons that controlled the river, and some other cool rooms, like the torture room.

Here's the boat:

and one of the many castles along the river:

This is the one we toured, Marksburg:

The Rhine from the castle:

Thumbscrews from the torture room:

 After that tour, we went to the Mayschosser Winery for another tour.  We saw the wine cellar, and the vineyards on the sides of the mountains where it all came from.  Then, we went to a wine tasting in the cellar, and tried a few of the wines that they made there.

I felt really classy.

So, that was a long day, but it was a lot of fun.  It was nice to get a break from museums and lectures.

On Wednesday, we went to the Haus der Geschichte, which was a big German History Museum.  It was interesting, but the tour went kind of slow, and we were all definitely ready to leave when it was over.  But Dr. Wasser didn’t think the guide did a good enough job, so he walked us through it again.  So we were pretty much sleep walking.  We were scheduled to have class after the museum, but I guess Dr. Wasser realized that was enough for the day, so he cancelled it.

On Thursday, we took another day trip to Cologne.  We left earlier to fit in our make-up Cathedral rooftop tour.  It was rainy, but it was still really cool.  The tours aren’t open to the public, so we were pretty lucky to get to go up there.  There was some kind of service going on during the tour, so it was just a really cool scene with the gothic structures around us, and the dark rainy day, and hearing the organ below us.

After the tour, we went to the Cologne Zoo.  We also had a tour guide there, so it was different than a normal visit to the zoo.  We learned a lot more than if we would have just looked around.  There was also an exhibit like body worlds, but for animals, so we did that too.

There was a baby elephant in the elephant house, so we spent a while in there watching them.

When I got back to Bonn, I packed up everything and said goodbye to my host family.  It was sad, and I couldn’t believe how fast the 3 weeks with them went.  My host mom got me a going away gift; it’s a German cookbook for guys.  It’s called Man Kitchen… the group thought it was pretty funny.  There are lots of pictures, so maybe I’ll attempt to make something crazy this year at my apartment.  Unfortunately, it's all in German.  I’m not sure if she realized this, but I’ll figure it out.

I got a picture with the family during our last Sunday dinner:

After saying bye, I met up with Michelle, Elena, and Carrie at the train station to catch our night train to Munich.  We slept in tiny, triple bunk beds, in a very small room.  It wasn’t the most comfortable night ever.  I think I would have rather been in a reclining chair.  There were also two other people already sleeping in the room when we got there, so we woke them up trying to maneuver our huge bags into this tiny compartment.  So, we finally got settled in, and went to sleep.  The train arrived in Munich at 7:30 the next morning.