This week has been a roller coaster of events! Again, I will say it has been crazy busy!
Thursday (Christmas Eve)- This day was pretty hard for me. I’m used to being at home and celebrating with my parents and brothers, so it was tough to be alone in a hostel in a foreign city. That night I went to “Midnight” Christmas mass at the Vatican. I figured that the Vatican was the place to be on a holiday. I went with 2 sisters from my hostel. They have the same mother kind of sisters! I really wish I would have gone with a brother and sister from Ecuador, because the sisters ended up being super annoying. They were from Chicago so it was kind of nice to share that Midwest background. They were also Jewish, not that that is a bad thing at all. I don’t favor any religion or non-religion! The trouble was that they were very disrespectful towards the church. I am not super religious where I was offended, but still there is an amount of respect you should show in a religious place during the largest holiday celebration of the year. They didn’t know anything about Catholicism, so I was trying to teach them about it. I am all about learning about different religions, but some of their questions were just plain stupid. I wanted to ditch them so badly, but they didn’t know their way back to our hostel so I was a good person and stuck with them. We were wandering around before mass and I ran into a couple of guys that had stayed at our hostel a couple of nights before. It was funny seeing “familiar” faces in the crowd when I was expecting to run into a couple of guys from my trip that were supposed to be there. I did separate from the sisters during the mass though. I ended up with the spot front and center in front of the gate where I could see the church and screens showing the mass perfectly! The Pope was walking towards the altar and suddenly they showed all of these guys dressed in black running towards him. It was almost like a movie with the CIA running. The footage then switched to views of the church. I didn’t know until the next day that the Pope was attacked! The slightly funny thing about it was I just got done writing about my new red coat, and the woman who attacked the Pope was wearing red. I promise, it wasn’t me! Public transportation ended up closing early that night for the holiday. So I got to try and find my hostel in the pouring rain with the most annoying girls in the world! Merry Christmas to me! Part of the way through the walk I finally decided to tell them to lower their voices because English is looked down upon, and they were drawing negative attention to us. They ended up getting really scared and wanted to take a taxi, but I convinced them that we were fine to walk. At least they were quieter then! An hour and a half later and I was back at my hostel cold, drenched, and not pleased with the beginning of my Christmas day.
Friday (Christmas)-Again, today was a tough day not being with my family. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I just had to keep in mind that I would most likely see them the next day. I went to the Vatican on the Metro. I walked into St. Peter’s Square and was pleasantly surprised to see that the Pope was speaking to the crowd from one of his windows! I saw the Pope in person finally! Not on a screen! I took a tour of St. Peter’s Basilica to waste time and feel like I was celebrating Christmas. I went to take the Metro back to my hostel and found out it was closed again! Awesome! Another hour and a half walk for me! I mainly just wasted time in the hostel in the evening. There were a couple of TV channels of American TV in English, so I enjoyed that.
Saturday- Today was the day my family was due in. I wasn’t sure if they would make it in, because of snowy conditions in MN. Mom, Dad, and Steven had a layover in Amsterdam and I thought they could have been held up due to weather there too. Kevin had a layover in Frankfurt so I didn’t know if he would have trouble with weather. I kept watching their flight statuses and everything seemed to be going smoothly. Then I was flipping through the channels and noticed that there was a report about terrorism on a flight in Amsterdam. Awesome! I quickly ran to my computer to check it out. The flight number was one digit away from my family’s, but luckily it wasn’t their flight. After several phone calls of “I’ll meet you here. Where are you?” I was finally reunited with my family! It was so exciting, I cried. I’m telling you I am a softy in emotional situations. I knew where our hotel was so I took them there and we went out to eat that evening.
Sunday- I took my family on a hardcore walking tour today. We planned on going to St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museum that day, but the line for the museum was too long. I guess that’s what happens when it is tourist time and they have a day of free admission! We ended up walking through St. Peter’s and it was fun to see their reaction to it. The Pope actually made an address to the crowd after we got through the line to get into the basilica. We didn’t want to get in line again, so we just went into the church. I ran into Brita, one of my Athens roommates! It was good to see someone from the group again! After the church I walked them to my apartment. From there we walked by Circus Maximus, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Monument to Vittorio Emannuele II, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps. They were exhausted and it was dark so we took a well deserved break at a restaurant near the Spanish Steps.
Monday- It was another busy tour day of Rome. We started off this day at the Vatican Museum, because the line was much shorter. We got to see the Sistine Chapel and they had a similar reaction to it as I did. We went back into St. Peter’s Basilica for a few minutes just for kicks. After that we walked by Castel St. Angelo on our way to the Pantheon. We ran into Piazza Navona on our way there too. They finished seeing the “Top 10 things to see in Rome” according to the back of my map, so I was pretty proud of that. I didn’t get lost very often either! That evening we decided to make a game plan for the rest of our trip. We discussed possible locations, times, and modes of transportation. It was a lot to take in, so we continued our plans the next morning.
Tuesday- What a day! We finally decided on a game plan for the rest of the trip and went to the train station to buy tickets for it all. The tickets were all sold out. All of the hotels at the places that we wanted to visit were booked. We had to start from scratch. We looked at all forms of transportation and ended up ordering tickets online to fly the next day to Germany. From there we would take a train to another town where we could get a room. Not ideal, but we could manage. Oh, another small detail, we couldn’t all fly together because the airlines didn’t have room for 5 people. Kevin would end up flying on his own, and meeting us in Munich. We essentially spent most of the day in the hotel room trying to figure out any way to get to Germany, or more importantly out of Rome. As Kevin put it, “When in Rome, you stay in Rome.” Ah, what a headache.
Wednesday- I’m just going to say that the Griswolds have nothing on us. The theory of the day was Murphy’s Law (what can go wrong, will go wrong). I was hoping for a smooth day especially since nothing in our day went as planned the day before. (We were supposed to have been in Florence). Kevin woke up early and went to catch his plane, ok things are going ok so far. No calls from him, so everything must be going smoothly. We go to catch our plane. We have enough time and we are where we need to be, things are good. Oh wait, small problem. The flight we were supposed to take doesn’t have our reservation on record and the flight is completely booked. This isn’t right, we got a confirmation email!! I’m not going to say the name of the online booking company, (but it starts with an “Or” and rhymes with sits) messed up our booking. Frantically trying to find an internet connection so we could look up other flights we saw the Air Berlin desk. Berlin is in Germany, so it must go to Munich too. We quickly booked a ticket (and WAY overpayed) that was going to take off not long after. It was supposed to take us to Hamburg and then we would switch flights to go to Munich. We go to the check-in desk and they gave us trouble. Really? We just bought tickets 2 minutes ago, right over there. We waited in a really long line for security and finally made it to our flight. We get to Hamburg and only have a small ticket stub from the first flight. No new ticket for the next one. The next desk gives us heck too. Jeez people, don’t you understand what kind of day we have had? They reluctantly give us a handwritten ticket to get to Munich. Finally in Munich! Oh and the cherry on top of the sundae? They LOST our luggage!!!! We finally meet up with Kevin and go to take the train to find where our hotel we are going to stay at is. It was supposed to be a “block” away from the train station. Fifteen minutes later we found it. We take a train to the city where our hotel for the evening was. Again it was supposed to be a block away. A half an hour later after a long day we showed up at our hotel after midnight. The whole situation wasn’t great, but I was proud of our family for working through it.
Thursday- Happy New Year’s Eve! The family had a fun day wandering around Augsburg and visiting different stores and old city streets. In the evening we went out for dinner and enjoyed a couple of beers before going to search out holiday fireworks. We were leaving the pub and saw one of the bartenders out on the street with a whole bunch of fireworks ready to be set off. We decided to walk down the street a little bit until we came to a corner full of excitement and explosions. I guess there aren’t really laws against fireworks in Germany, because we saw people of all ages setting off all forms of fireworks. I seriously have never seen anything like it. Fireworks were going off all around us! We had to constantly be on the lookout to avoid getting hit by them! We had to go back to the pub to have another beer to celebrate the New Year and the fact that we survived all of the fireworks.
Friday- Happy 2010! We really didn’t do a whole lot this day, because we were busy transferring to our hotel in Munich. Also, a lot of businesses were closed because of the holiday so there was not much to do.
Saturday- We spent this day visiting different sites in Munich. We started off by going to where the 1972 Summer Olympics were held. It was really cool to see especially after seeing the progression of Olympic stadiums in Greece. We got to go into the pool area to see where Mark Spitz swam. After that we went to BMW Museum. I think I would have gotten into the museum more if I had a longer attention span when I was there. The guys liked it though! After that we went to the Deutsche Museum to look at science and technology displays. It was a nice change of pace from the art and history that I had been looking at.
Sunday- This day we went to Salzburg, Austria! That added one more country to my list! Salzburg was beautiful, as was the train ride there. The Alps are amazing and the city itself was adorable. We mostly just wandered around the town and went to visit different churches. I was really glad that I had the chance to visit Salzburg, because my school has a study abroad program there, and it was cool to see the town that some of my friends lived in.
Monday- This day we walked around to see different churches in the Marienplatz area in Munich. In the evening we went to eat at the famous Hofbrauhaus in Munich. All of the waiters at the Hofbrauhaus are dressed in traditional German clothing. There was live music that we listened to after piling into one of the few open benches at a table. The Hofbrauhaus was huge and packed with people!! It was crazy!
Tuesday-This day was definitely one of the most memorable of the whole trip. My family and I spent the day touring and learning about the Dachau concentration camp. It’s amazing how much more real an event is to you after you visit where it took place. We had a very informative tour guide that walked us around the site for a couple of hours. I learned so much! The -10 degree weather was harsh, but the whole experience was definitely worth it. I defrosted my hands in the museum after and everything was fine! We also saw a video about the concentration camp with pictures that were taken when the camp was occupied. I feel like I understand my German heritage so much better now.
I’m sorry it has taken me so long to finish this! I just couldn’t leave my blog without an ending to my trip! The whole experience was completely life-changing and I am glad that I did it. I can deal with conflict so much better now and am so much more confident in difficult situations. Even though not everything went as planned, I do not regret anything that went wrong. I dealt with it and it made me a stronger person! Thank you for sticking with me throughout my experience! It means so much to have such wonderful people supporting me! I’ll try to not talk your ear off about my experiences next time I see you! Thanks again! I love you all!
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