Christmas Markets in Aachen

The next bright but cold morning my housemates came and picked me up in Eersel. Alina, my housemate from Germany, has a tiny little disel Ford which all five of us squeezed into and drove the 45 minutes across the boarder to the city of Aachen.

Parker, who is quite a history buff, told me a bit about the city before I left his house. It's main claim to fame was that it was the home to Charlamagne. It was also the first German city that the allies captured. We went because it is home to a beautiful christmas market. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from these markets but the German students, Alina and Paula, said that they were something not to be missed.

As soon as I stepped out of the car in Germany I realized that I had delayed getting a coat for too long and that buying a coat was a neccessity of the day. After dropping our stuff off at the hostel around 2 we went to the markets. We looked through a bunch of stalls, and then I saw a coat shop. I went and bought a new coat, which it looks like I will be wearing for the rest of winter. As the first snow covered the roads and bike paths today in Utrecht. It is a kind of magical transition to see everything get covered by snow. My entire landscape changed as I walked from the IND to pick up my residence papers and back to the bus. Quite extraordinary.

Warm Mulled wine warms you up. In this picture I'm wearing my new coat and gloves. You can't see it in this picture but the gloves have these cute little buttons on the side that are very chic.
Nick bought a sausage at one of the food vendors. There were also numerous other types of sausages, warm chestnuts, fried fish, and lots of other delectable goodies. The market was quite crowded, but you can see the market stalls on the left and the big historic cathedral in the background.

Here are Alina and Paula with traditional german gingerbread. This is at dinner, where we spent the rest of the night since it was so cold outside and we didn't want to have to walk around when it was so cold. After dark all the lights came on. Lovely!
Mmm. Candied almonds.

Here's another shot of the Christmas decorations with the Dom in the background.
This is the bookstore where we had tea because it was freezing out!
We caught the very end of a puppet show.
Breakfast at the German bakery.

Driving home in Alina's car. I didn't know that Europeans drove American cars, but they do!

A Visit with Family

Friday afternoon I went to visit Parker Brophy and family in Eindhoven. We had planned to have Thanksgiving dinner together but that ended up not working out. This is due to the fact that Parker never received the email I sent him, accepting his lovely invitation, and because I made plans Saturday night when it turned out he was having Thanksgiving.

I throughly enjoyed my evening with him and Susan who are both incredably sweet and very interesting people. Parker picked up in Eindhoven where he had to drop something off at the accountant. While he was in the office, Millie and Bart, told me about their trip to the U.K. They liked the Edinborough castle the best because of the old cannons that they fire at 1 pm on certain days. Later, Susan told me more about how they had seen Hadrian's wall. I hadn't heard anything about the wall, but the next time I am in Europe I am going to make sure I get to see it. This journey is already packed with the gills with things I still need to do.

Once we arrived at their adorable home in Eersel, right off the market square, I was immediately shown around the garden accompanied by Bart, Millie and Hughie. It is a very nice backyard, although rather chilly, with a chestnut, apple and walnut tree.

We had the first real snow the night that I slept there.

Toms Family
Bart and Millie at the playground down the street

We went for a walk and there was snow. Bart is used to it, he says, since it gets cold in Colorado too.
Millie ( Marion) is already an accomplished Dutch cyclist. She is currently looking for more friends and trying to learn the language.

Praha

"Never let schooling interfere with your education" - M. Twain

-School-

After another week of procrastination, on numerous fronts, not just my blogging, I am finally catching up with all the work that I have left undone. Perhaps unluckily for you all, my blogging responsibilities fall in the middle of my list of priorities rather than at the top. Luckily, for me, I have been taking Twain's quote more seriously than I often do. Since I have been rather frustrated with the schooling system here, I have been spending time exploring more of my interests.

I am finished with my old classes and have just started my new courses. In my opinion courses aren't the fun part of studying abroad, but the work they entail still has to be finished. This block starts now and finishes in the end of January. Since I am leaving early, I have to do the work for these courses in a more condensed period. I will also have to write one ten page and one 5 page paper over winter break ( or at some point before then).

-Prague- Praha-

I have gotten to do a bit of weekend travelling to Prague. After finishing our school work many of the Californians headed to Prague. I was on the same flight as the American boys (Paul, Alex, Dave and Ronald). Kristyne and Camille had travelled there earlier as they had fewer end of block obligations. It seems all the Californian students had been told by numerous sources that Prague was one city that we simply had to visit. I must say that we were curious to find out exactly why.

After getting a bit lost out of the train station. I found my hostel. This is a picture of the entry hallway. It reminded me a bit of the Berkeley Student Co-ops. The Hostel was upstairs in Praha 1. It was close enough to old town and once I found it the first time it was easy to find again.

That night, after flying in relatively late, several of us went out looking for dinner. While it was around 10:30 almost every place to eat dinner was closed. This seemed strange to me, since in many southern european countries, dinner doesn't start until 9. In the Czech capital though, they do not dine late. We ended up eating stand sausages and warm mulled wine. It was quite a hearty and nice meal for a rainy night.

The next morning I was determined to see what exactly made Prague so special. So, I got up early, had a pastry (that looked surprisingly like a doughnut filled with nuetella) and some tea. Below is what I saw walking around that day.

Main Square- Sculpture of a hertic

River and Saint Charles Bridge in the background.

That night I went to see a Prague speciality called black light theatre. I saw Faust by Goethe. The production did not have any dialogue and was about an hour in length. The way they represented the play was quite comical. Black light theatre means the use of black lights to obscure certain things and highlight others. Some of the costumes were very florescent and they could make it seem as though puppets were flying through space. I couldn't take pictures of the performance and it is rather difficult to describe so, here's a video of a different production. It should give you some idea of what I saw.

That night, after spending forever, trying to meet up with Kristyne we ended up eating a at a little cafe and I ran to my production.

Saturday morning we all headed out to check out the Lennon Wall. Here are some pictures from that excursion and what we found along the way.

After fooling around in the fall leaves and enjoying the relatively nice weather (we saw some blue sky) we decided to head up the hill overlooking the city.

Petřín Lookout Tower

On Sunday before our flight left, I spent some time in the old Jewish quarter of the city and visited the Franz Kafka museum. I don't have any exciting pictures to share from either of those places, but both were very interesting.

Fall Colors and Apathy in Utrecht

It has been a month since I last posted, but it feels like a lot less time than that. I've been busy with all sorts of stuff including finals. When it got rainy and cold and the workload increased it started to feel like home and less like something I really wanted to blog about.

I did catch some beautiful photos of the leaves changing colors. I had never lived in a place that got cold enough to do that. Below are some photos that show what the last month looked like here. It is nice to have all the color in the trees since the color of the sky hasn't changed in ages here. It's pretty much always grey.
The Green Machine ( my bicycle) provides a pretty contrast to all the yellows and reds!

For some reason it won't let me show it as a vertical picture. I am too tired to figure this out just yet.

Upcoming Posts:

My trip to Prauge ( Nov 11-14)

Alana trying out Dutch Fashion