Winter Break

At the Royal Palace in Brussels.

Hi everyone! 


I'm so happy to be officially back in London after winter break! Last week was my most ambitious travel expedition to date.  I've learned that traveling is wonderful, but so incredibly exhausting.  Nevertheless, I'm back safely at the Worrell House with a bunch of new stories.  

Remnants of the Berlin Wall.

Our first destination for the trip was Berlin.  One of the things that immediately struck me about Berlin is the dark tone that overshadows the city.  I suppose this tone makes sense due to all of the terrible things that the city has been through so recently, yet I was still really surprised at the how prevalent it was.  Because of the wars, everything looks super modern.  There are really no traces of what one might think of as a traditional German city.  On our first day, we took a four hour walking tour around what was once East Berlin.  We saw some pretty intense things like the remnants of the Berlin wall and we stood above what used to be Hilter's bunker.  


We kept it a little lighter on the second day by visiting the Berlin zoo, which was perhaps one of my favorite activities on the trip.  The Berlin zoo is pretty amazing.  The way the zoo is set up, you are allowed to get so close to the animals.  Our final day in Berlin we visited Checkpoint Charlie, the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between West Berlin and East Berlin during the Cold War.  Other observations about Berlin-it's really cold in the middle of February.  To most people that would not come as a surprise, but for whatever reason, I was expecting it to be no colder than London.  This was not the case.  It was freezing and raining almost every day that we were there. Subsequently, we spent a lot of time in German bakeries trying to stay warm!

The Berlin Zoo

St. Michael's Cathedral

After Berlin, we moved West and spent a day in Hamburg. Even though it's the second largest city in Germany, Hamburg could not be more different from Berlin.  Unlike Berlin, Hamburg has a really traditional European feel to it.  In Hamburg, we visited St. Michael's Cathedral, which was absolutely beautiful.  The inside of the cathedral reminded me of Cinderella's castle because there was so much white everywhere! We also climbed to the top of the cathedral to see beautiful views of Hamburg.  I feel like so much of my time in Europe has been spent climbing cathedral towers, completely terrified.  The views were beautiful though.  We also took a boat tour around Hamburg Harbor.  The water was beautiful, but the tour was entirely in German and before long, we were all asleep.  As in heads on the table, legitimately asleep.  We got some pretty disapproving looks from the other passengers, but the water was just so soothing!


After Hamburg, we spent a day in Osnabruck, Germany.  You've probably never heard of this town, but it was absolutely adorable.  It may have been my favorite place we visited.  It's exactly what you would picture if you thought of a quaint German town with adorable bakeries and shops everywhere.  Also, we stayed in this lovely hotel run by an adorable older German woman.  No one in the town spoke very much English so we had a bit of trouble communicating at times, but everyone was so nice and interested in us.  

Osnabrück

Tourist-ing it up in Amsterdam.

After Osnabrück, we left for Amsterdam.  Amsterdam in one word ... strange.  It was such a strange city.  So many things really, but one of the things that stood out was the crazy traffic patterns.  Everyone rides their bikes everywhere (without helmets) so you get people flying past you on bikes everywhere you turn on top of the cars and the above-ground metro system.  The metro system uses the same streets as the cars and the cars sometimes drive on the sidewalks and the bikes are just everywhere.  So basically it was chaos.  I was pretty sure I was going smashed to the ground at some point.  Despite all of the craziness, we were able to see some really neat things there like the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank house.  Furthermore, every college group visiting Amsterdam needs a crazy story so here's ours: we road the metro back to our hotel without paying! Gasp! Ok, that's not actually that crazy.  And actually it was a complete accident.  Amsterdam metros have so many entrances and everything is in Dutch so we got completely confused about who to pay.  Subsequently, we ended up at our stop before we could figure it out.

Just one of the musical instruments
at the museum.

Finally! Our last stop was Brussels in Belgium.  Though I didn't think it was possible, Brussels might be an even stranger city than Amsterdam.  We ended up visiting this extremely odd museum called the Museum of Musical Instruments where you walk around with head sets and look at instruments.  When you get close to the display, music starts automatically playing on your headset.  It was actually pretty fun once you got the hang of the system, but it made for some really hilarious moments at the beginning.  Moreover, and I think this goes without saying, Belgian waffles are delicious.  I ate so many while we were there.  That was overall theme during our entire trip actually. Our activities revolved primarily around our restaurant-visiting for what we affectionately nicknamed first lunch, second lunch, first dinner, and second dinner.  


So I think that's enough for now! I know that was a terribly long post, but thank you so much for reading if you've gotten this far.  For now, I must get back to my London life, which includes reading Romeo and Juliet for my theater class. Appropriate for Valentine's Day, I think ... depending perhaps on which way you view the story.  Also, one more thing I love about Britain: Colin Firth was on the cover of every English paper this morning.  


Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Lots of love to you all.  

January in London

Tower Bridge (as seen from the top of St. Paul's Cathedral!)

Hello everyone! So I've been in London for three weeks now and this my first blog post - terrible, I know - but nonetheless! I'm going to try to do much better from now on.  London is wonderful so far.  The city is absolutely beautiful.  Remarkably, despite its size, it has a very village feel to it and every neighborhood is so unique.  I love taking the tube because every time I get above ground, I feel as though I'm in a completely different place.  It's like a new surprise every time I go somewhere! I've seen so much thus far, but since I'm terribly behind on my blog posts, I'm going to try to review some of my most memorable moments.

1. First of all, seeing Cassandra's portrait of Jane Austen at the National Portrait Gallery was one of the most exciting experiences I've had yet.  That's terribly nerdy, I'm aware, but it was just so amazing!!! Jane Austen probably once touched that portrait! Ahhhh, I just can't get over it!

2. Also, my first week here, I went to Windsor Castle, which was beautiful! My favorite part of the tour was looking at all of the photographs taken of the Royal family throughout the years.  Elizabeth and Margaret were perhaps the cutest children of all time.

3. Finally, St. Paul's Cathedral in London is absolutely stunning.  The cathedral survived all of the bombings in London during the Blitz, which is quite spectacular considering it was hit.  The most exciting part was climbing about a million stairs (seriously, a million) up to the top of the cathedral and getting to see spectacular views of London.  I'm deathly afraid of heights and had fleeting thoughts of eminent danger atop the cathedral, but it was still worth it.  One of my most embarrassing moments in London (not including the many times I have tripped up the tube steps) happened at St. Paul's Cathedral as well.  The tour guide led us into this beautiful straircase that led up to the bishop's office.  Just as I was saying to my friend that it reminded me of something out of Harry Potter, the tour guide informed us that parts of Harry Potter were filmed there.  I subsequently let out a huge gasp attracting the attention of the entire tour.  They did not seem quite as impressed.  Perhaps it was a bit of an overreaction - but mostly not.  The scene where Harry and Hermione are walking down from the divination tour in the second movie was filmed there! So exciting!!!

So that is a quick overview of my first month in London.  Tomorrow is the first day of winter break and I'm leaving for a 10-day excursion to Germany, The Netherlands, and Belgium! I'm sure I will have much more to report when I get back!

Hope you're all ok!

Love,
Rebecca