First: Weekend in Hamburg. One of my friends from the program has a friend who lives in Hamburg, so we made a weekend trip up there. Hamburg is a gorgeous city--it's historically been a huge port city, so many important people have been through Hamburg at one point or another. We took a train on Friday morning and made it to Hamburg around 5:00, where we met up with Melly and took the S-Bahn back to her house. She lives with her parents who both speak only German, so our German skills were really put to the test! We spent Friday night taking a boat tour of Hamburg's harbor and walking around the Old City--it really reminded me of Amsterdam because of all the canals and bridges. We slept in on Saturday, and then proceeded to see a couple of churches, the shopping district, and of course the Rathaus (city hall). We ate dinner with Melly's parents--I have yet to have any German food I don't like! On Sunday, Melly's parent's drove us around so we could see a football (soccer) stadium, and we drove under the Elbe River! We also walked under the Elbe--there's this old tunnel that is still used by commuters, etc. to quickly cross the Elbe. Another highlight was eating hamburgers in Hamburg :) We headed back to Münster on Sunday without any train problems--as much fun as we had in Hamburg, it really felt good to be back home in Münster! This picture is of us in front of the Hamburg Rathaus.
This last week was really a blur of classes, homework, and preparations for the rest of the semester. I'm still really enjoying my classes, but the enormity of picking paper topics is looming...I'll be a lot happier with that when I know what I'm doing! Other highlights from the week were dinners with host families (they're so much fun to talk to!), meeting the son of a friend of my advisor at Luther--the whole group had a "play date" with him and he showed us some fun places to go in Münster where we can probably make some friends.
Yesterday was our first group trip--we went to Köln to see the Dom (cathedral) and the rest of the city. I spent the day in museums...who'da thunk? I started out at the Römish-Germanisches Museum, which is dedicated to showing the history of the Roman Empire in Germany and Köln in particular--the museum is actually built on top of the site where they discovered a gigantic Roman building. The museum had a few cool mosaics, and tons of Roman tombstones and everyday objects. I had a conversation with one of the museum guards who apparently had his razor sharp American-radar on, and we talked about a few of the different objects in the museum, and he told me about the other museum I went to in Köln.
I can never remember the name of this museum, but it featured art from the middle ages through the Impressionists. This museum's collection was really concentrated around art from Köln, but they had a few Rembrandts and one Cranach painting, so I was happy. I didn't make it up to the top floor to see the Impressionist paintings because the museum was closing for the day. Next time, I guess :)
The other highlight of the day was getting a tour of the Köln Dom--I'm pretty sure it's one of the largest cathedrals in Europe. I love cathedrals (the picture reflects my love of both cathedrals and jumping pictures), but I'm still deciding if the tour of this one added to my appreciation for this particular cathedral or took away from it. Construction of the cathedral started way back in the day (and by that I mean somewhere around the tenth or eleventh century) because Köln was a huge port/trading city with a lot of rich people who were willing to fund a cathedral. Construction stopped and started at various points throughout history whenever there was money or interest, and was only completed at the end of the nineteenth century as a majestic show of German nationalism after it became a country in 1871. I mentioned that to one of our professors, and we talked a little bit about how a lot of buildings in Germany have more than one meaning--it makes it really interesting!
Well, this has been really long. I have a presentation tomorrow, so I'm going to go finish that!
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