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Europe Spain

That Time I Got Locked In A Bathroom At A Winery

After Madrid we headed up to Basque country!

Our first stop was in Segovia, where we saw a 2000-year-old Roman aqueduct.  It’s pretty unreal to go anywhere with history from that long ago, considering the U.S. is such a new country.  We had some free time there, and enjoyed some hot chocolate outside of one of the cafés.  A very relaxing morning, which was followed by a wine tasting.  Which, you know, should have been relaxing….

Except.  I kind of got locked in the bathroom.  There was a sign on it in Spanish, but it didn’t look terribly urgent or important, kind of like an announcement that they wanted to use less paper towels or a reminder not to throw your trash in the toilet.  And someone else had gotten out (escaped?) before me, and just said the lock was a bit difficult.  So I thought, ok, that’s fine, I can handle that.  Ha.  Not quite.  The lock would not turn, and even after it did, the door would not open.  And of course, there was no space between the door and the floor, so I couldn’t get out that way either.  My mom and grandma are trying to help from the outside, and I’m considering the merits of using the sink to vault myself over the top of the stall door, and our tour director is yelling at the people at the winery to fix it…. and finally they brought this guy in, and he did something to the door and it opened.

It was a bit traumatizing.

So after that we got to tour the winery, which was cool because they took us through the entire process and we got to see all their machinery and the bottles of wine that hadn’t been labeled yet.  And then they gave us cheese and crackers and wine, which was quite good.  It was Bodega Portia, at Ribera del Duero, in case you were wondering.

We went to Burgos next, to see the Cathedral of Santa Maria.  It’s this stunning and enormous Gothic cathedral.  A lot of our group went inside during our free time, but we headed to a local restaurant and ordered some sangria.  We appreciated the church from the outside instead.

After a little more driving, we finally arrived at our final destination, which was Vitoria.  It was cute, a little more modern-looking.  We walked around and checked out the main square.  After dinner, we headed back to the city center with a couple other people we had met through our tour group, Destinee and Astrid.  Destinee had heard of some sort of alcohol that was supposed to be regional in the north, and wanted to try it.  Well, first of all, there were no Spaniards out, so we went in a bar and were basically the only people in there.  We should have been prepared for the taste, because the bartender laughed when we ordered it…. I believe Astrid described it as cough syrup.  But we ordered a couple other (better tasting) drinks and hung out for a bit, talking to the bartender with our (very limited) Spanish and his (also fairly limited) English.  It was a lot of fun, although we were still a little baffled at how empty the streets were considering we didn’t go out that late.

We had one more day in Basque country, but that will have to be a separate post as we went to three more cities and I took a lot more pictures!

Adios!

Categories
Europe Spain

Toledo: A Step Back in Time

If I had to pick my one favorite place I visited in Spain, I would say Toledo.  When we took the bus there, we stopped at a lookout point where we could see the whole city, and I loved it after one look.  We took an escalator up to the top and then worked our way back down as part of the tour.  It was an afternoon day trip, so we started out with lunch, and then headed over to the Church of Santo Tome and a synagogue.  This was only the second synagogue I’ve seen, the other was in Poland.  But the thing about many of the religious buildings we’ve seen in Spain: they have influences from multiple religions in the same building.  So the synagogue had Islamic architecture, and later in the trip we saw mosques transformed into churches and Christian elements added to Islamic palaces.  Which is pretty cool in my opinion.

We also did a little shopping.  I added to my art collection and Mom and I found my graduation gift, a Lladro (which is a type of Spanish porcelain figurine and a bit of a tradition for college graduation in my family).  After we were done there, the whole tour group met up again and we went to a Damascene steel workshop, which is very intricate metal work that I saw a lot in Spain.  It’s absolutely beautiful, and the highest quality pieces are hand-made, which we saw people working on while we were there.

And that concludes the second half of day two of our tour!  Adios for now.

Categories
Europe Spain

Madrid: Architecture and Churros

Hello again to those of you who follow me!  After the last six months at school with no European vacations, I’m back to traveling for the summer, which means frequent updates again.  I just returned from two weeks in Spain with my mom and grandma, where we did a tour through Globus.  I have a week here in the US before I leave again for France.

So we flew into Madrid and spent two days there.  After a very long day of flying from Denver to Washington DC to Madrid, the three of us were pretty tired so we had a relaxed day.  We walked to the Mercado de San Miguel and looked at all the different types of food, went through Plaza Mayor, and then got chocolate with churros at the Chocolateria San Giles, which was recommended by my friend Kaitlyn as the best place to get churros in all of Spain.  I haven’t tried every place in Spain, but they were truly incredible.  Later, after a short nap, we headed off to dinner where we met the other 27 people that would be on our tour.

The next morning, we had a short bus tour of Madrid, with stops by Puerta del Sol, Plaza de España with the Cervantes monument, and the Parliament building.  After that we headed to the Prado museum and had a tour of the artwork, which, admittedly, was not artwork that I knew much about.  We focused a lot on Goya, and in particular I thought the Black Paintings he made at the end of his life were the most interesting because they were so different from any paintings I’ve seen before.

That afternoon, we headed to Toledo!  But that’s going to be in a separate post.

We got dinner in Plaza de Santa Ana, which was lovely and had lots of outdoor tables.  We ordered some delicious sangria and were happily enjoying our dinner under the umbrellas when it started pouring rain, so we had to move inside.  But rain aside, sitting in beautiful warm weather under an umbrella with sangria is something I could get behind.

Some first impressions from Spain:

1. Immediately I could feel the difference in lifestyle pace.  Having traveled primarily in northern Europe before this, there wasn’t that same culture of eating outdoors, and closing shops for a few hours in the afternoon.  I’m not sure if I would want to be there when I had deadlines and work to accomplish, but it was an ideal feeling for vacation.

2. Thankfully my mom and grandma had taken Spanish before, because we had some language barrier struggles throughout the trip and starting the first day.  Unlike when I lived in Denmark, I could not walk up to anyone and assume that they would understand me if I asked a question in English, and my Spanish abilities are about 20 words, half of which are literally counting to ten.  More stories about this to come.

Adios for now!

Categories
Research Grant

Exciting News

Today, I received notification that my school is funding me to spend eight weeks doing a research project in Strasbourg, France!

I still don’t entirely believe that this is happening, because it seems absurd to me that Northwestern is willing to give me almost $4,000 to go interview expert witnesses and observe trials for two months.  Which I guess brings me to what my project is.  It’s formally titled L’Expert Judiciaire: Examining the Safeguards Against Bias in Expert Witnesses in France and the United States, and basically means that I will be comparing the laws regarding expert witnesses in Strasbourg.  I’ve observed a lot of trials in the United States, so I’m very interested to see the differences in French procedure (and will probably write nice long blog posts on the subject periodically, see my post on the Danish prison for an example).  And ideally, this research will carry over into my Legal Studies thesis for senior year.

Anyway.  I will be traveling in Europe for a total of about 10 weeks this summer, which means I will be resuming activity on this blog!  In the meantime, I guess I need to figure out some logistics and increase the amount of time I devote to studying French 🙂

Au revoir!

Categories
Europe Study Abroad

“How was study abroad?!”

Coming back to school has been a bit of a whirlwind.  After my semester abroad, where the only “extracurricular” I did was travel on weekends, it’s been a huge adjustment to go back to work, mock trial, student government, and all my other responsibilities.  It’s been lovely to see my friends in the United States again, although the following conversation has been played out so many times:

Friend: “Hi!  How was study abroad?!”

Me: “It was awesome!  I did a lot of traveling.”

Friend: “That’s so great!  Your photos looked really cool.”

Friend: *moves on to another topic*

It feels so weird to relegate my study abroad experience to small talk, because it’s probably the most life changing experience I’ve ever had.  And so here I am, readjusting to my normal schedule and trying to fit myself back into social life with my friends, but I don’t know if there’s any good way to sum up how much I’ve learned and felt and done with those few months.

I miss European bakeries, and passing historic buildings every day on the way to class, and my commute.  I miss my lifestyle of traveling on the weekends to cool and exotic places, and wandering through the streets of Copenhagen during my free time.  Most of all, I miss the friends I made in Europe.  I wish they could go to school with me in the States too.

At the same time, it’s nice to have a job again with real income.  I love the apartment I have here in Evanston, now that I finally get to live in it.  I missed my friends here, and even though all my friendships don’t feel quite the same, I’ve been enjoying the chance to reconnect and to talk to them without a 7 hour time difference.

Readjusting to life here has been strange, but good.  I’m already plotting ways I can go back to Europe, with a family trip to Spain over the summer and hopefully a research project abroad as well but I have to apply for that.

If you’re still following this blog, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of my future trips to Europe.   Vi ses!

Categories
Denmark Europe Study Abroad

Copenhagen: A Love Letter, and A Goodbye

24 hours until I’m in Colorado again.

It’s so strange that my time here is ending.  Unlike when I left for college, or when I go home for summer breaks, there’s a finality about the goodbyes that I’ve said here.  Although I would love to travel in the US and see all of them again, it’s not as easy to do that when we’re settled back into our regular lives.  Sadly, there is no budget airline where I can book $100 roundtrip weekend flight to see the wonderful people I’ve spent time with here (some of whom are pictured above).

It’s funny, because when I went into this experience, making friends was very low on my priority list.  This was always meant to be an experience where the goal was my traveling, my personal growth, my self discovery.  And yet I’ve come out of this with awesome friendships, where I’ll wonder how it’s possible that I’ve only known (most of) these people for four short months.  And, while I can always come back to Copenhagen, part of what made it home for this semester were the people I was experiencing it with.  So many people touched my life this semester, and I’m so grateful that they were a part of my time here.

In the spirit of reflection, things I will miss about Copenhagen in no particular order:

1. Personal space- not talking to strangers on public transportation/on the street/anywhere really is amazing.  The US should seriously adopt this aspect of the culture.

2. Kanelsnegle- the Danish obsession with cinnamon rolls is wonderful and I love it (unlike the Danish obsession with licorice.  Why.)

3. (Mostly) Reliable and Clean Public Transportation- the trains and buses in Europe are a massive step up from what I’m used to.  And as someone who hates driving, I’m a huge fan.

4. Tivoli- my absolute favorite place in Copenhagen.  Between this and Legoland I’ve sort of fallen back in love with amusement parks.

5. Ability to Travel- I’ve gone to so many new places this semester.  In Europe, you can do things like take a day trip to Sweden or go to the Czech Republic for a weekend.  I’ve loved having that freedom and ease to see and experience new things, and go to the places I’ve always dreamed about.

(I could add many more items, but I think that’s enough for now.  Also, expect another list that’s things I’ve missed about the US once I’ve returned and adjusted to the 8 hour time difference)

Study abroad has been everything I dreamed of, and more.  I’ve gone to 11 countries, climbed 3 mountains, and had conversations in my 2nd and 3rd language.  I’ve seen the place Hitler died, and a place where over a million of his victims died.  I’ve seen Viking memorials, Russian churches, medieval fortified churches, many other churches, magnificent palaces, the Berlin Wall, and the Queen of Denmark.  I met my German family for the first time and I saw the church my grandma originally painted in Prague in 1938.  I drank beer in Germany, wine in France, and vodka in Russia.  I traveled alone for the first time in my life, even though that part was unplanned.  And throughout all of this, I took 17 credit hours and wrote well over 60 pages of papers.  It’s been quite the journey for these past four months, and I wouldn’t change any of it.

Jeg kommer til at savne København og mine venner her.  Jeg synes byen er fantastisk og jeg skal at rejse til København igen.  Vi ses, Danmark.

Categories
Europe Study Abroad Sweden

Malmö: Wandering in the Rain

As part of my process of saying goodbye to the wonderful people I’ve met here, I spent my second to last day in Europe on a day trip to Sweden with Courtney and Amy!  My other friend from my core course, Joey, couldn’t go with us, but he at least came to meet us for hot chocolate in the morning.

Malmö is similar to Copenhagen, which is unsurprising given its proximity.  It’s only half an hour away by train.  We walked down the main street (Strotoget, as opposed to Copenhagen’s Strøget) and went in some shops and enjoyed the Scandinavian atmosphere.  If you’re in Malmö, I recommend the science fiction bookstore!

I have one full day left here.  I can’t believe it’s almost over!

Categories
Europe Germany Study Abroad

Berlin: Five Days of Museums and Christmas Markets

For those of you who read this blog with any regularity, you may have caught that I said Berlin wasn’t going to be “exactly as planned.”  Initially, this trip was supposed to be with my friend from school Andrew, before he caught what appears to be the Italian superflu and was stuck in bed for a week.  So, Berlin ended up being my first real solo trip.

The amount of history that happened in Berlin is crazy.  There are memorials and museums everywhere.  I feel like I went to so many museums, and in reality I barely scratched the surface.  It’s also fascinating to be in a city that is actively rebuilding.  As I went back through my pictures of the cityscape, most of them had a minimum of two cranes in the background.  It’s incredible to think of how recent the fall of the Berlin wall was, and how big of a difference those 25 years can make.

I arrived Sunday, and spent the afternoon walking around near my hostel.  I went to the DDR museum, which is interactive and shows the realities of life in East Germany, with spying, housing lotteries, and keeping up the appearance of the good communist.  I would definitely not have wanted to live there.

Monday I started with the more iconic aspects of the city: the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag (which I sadly did not climb), and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.  I also went into the Tiergarten and checked out the memorials for homosexuals and Roma/Sinti murdered during the Holocaust as well.  I appreciated that my trip to Poland happened before this one.  I think seeing Auschwitz and discussing how to best memorialize the victims gave me a deeper understanding of the different perspectives that must be considered.  Looking at how Polish guides present the Holocaust also differs from the way that it is framed by the museums with a Jewish focus, and so on.

Continuing on the theme of touristy Monday, I went to the Topography of Terror next, which is a very cool partially outdoor museum that has both a chunk of the Berlin wall and some ruins from the headquarters of the SS and the Gestapo.  The museum itself is fantastic, with a lot of pictures and detail on the rise and fall of the Nazi regime, their policies, and documents that I couldn’t fully appreciate due to my lack of German skills.  From there, I walked to Checkpoint Charlie and went to a museum near there.  Since the information was in English, French, German, and Russian, there was a massive amount of text, which got a bit overwhelming.  The stories about both successful and failed escapes, however, were totally worth it.  After the museum, I went to my first German Christmas market, which lived up to the hype.  I went to Christmas markets a total of four days, and I love the lights and decorations and ice skating.  Also, if you are related to me, there is an extraordinarily high chance that your gift will come from those markets.

Tuesday, I started the day at the longest piece of the wall, the East Side Gallery.  The paintings are incredible, with amazing quotes and images related to the struggle for a free Berlin.  Although I was freezing by the end of the walk, I highly recommend going to see it if you’re in Berlin!

I went back to the hostel to warm up, and met the newest roommate in my hostel, an Australian who was going to be studying in Hamburg starting in January.  She invited me to come to the Jewish museum with some of her friends, and after that we went to another Christmas market and had spiked hot chocolate and glühwein (which is German mulled wine) and enjoyed the atmosphere.  We ended up stopping for more glühwein on the way back to the hostel, where we met an older German couple and ended up having a lengthy discussion on our three countries.  It felt very hyggeligt! (even though it feels weird to apply that word outside of Denmark)  Plus, I learned a lot about Australia and their slang, so that was cool.

Wednesday I did a bike tour, which was…. really cold.  It started sleeting on us in the morning, and then turned to snow.  Nevertheless, I’m glad I got a real guided tour because I did learn a lot.  Biking is a really cool way to see a city.  Something to look for next time I travel in Europe, I think.  The tour took most of the day, so afterwards I went to… yet another Christmas market!

Thursday I decided to hit a couple more museum exhibits that I wanted to see, and I also did last minute Christmas shopping at… you guessed it, another Christmas market.  I went to the museum at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, since it’s closed on Monday and so I hadn’t been.  Then, I went to the German History Museum because they had an exhibit on the RAF!

A bit of background for this: I spontaneously took a German History class freshman year, which turned out to be political extremisms in Germany since WW2, and we spent almost half a quarter on the RAF and the left wing movement.  I found it fascinating.  We watched a film on it, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, and when I went to the exhibit I could see the images of the crimes they committed playing in my head.  I got to see the motorcycle where they shot someone’s bodyguards before kidnapping him, the sketch of them in the courtroom, and even the wanted posters where the police X’d out their pictures when they were captured or killed.  It was so amazing to see history that I’d learned about so in depth come alive.

I apologize that this is turning into the world’s longest blog post.  Basically, Berlin was awesome.  I definitely want to go back, because I feel like there’s still so much to do and see there.  (And Andrew, if you read my blog, I wish you could have come too and I’m glad you’re finally starting to feel better)

I have two more full days in Europe, so it’s going to be a whirlwind of packing and saying goodbyes and seeing anything else I need to see in Copenhagen before I go.  Tomorrow I’m doing a half day trip to Sweden with my lovely friends Courtney and Joey and Amy, who are featured in some of my Russia pictures.  And on that note, I should go to bed so I can be awake and functioning for our foray into a different country.

Vi ses, hej hej!

or as the Germans say, tschüss!

Categories
Denmark Europe Study Abroad

Copenhagen: Christmas in Christiania and Tivoli

Page Count: 46

Word Count: 15,105

And with that I’m done with all of my finals.  This was my last week of classes with DIS, and my last full week in Denmark.  It’s hard to believe, but this time next week I’m going to be back in Colorado.  It’s been a whirlwind week, with essay writing, classes, and trying to spend every spare moment with the wonderful people I’ve met in Copenhagen.  After the past four months, it’s sad that I may never see some of my friends here again.  I’ve had amazing adventures with them, and they’ve helped to make my study abroad experience wonderful.

Friday, Paige and I celebrated the end of classes by going to Christmas season at Tivoli!  It was a little cold and rainy, but we still had fun.  Christmas is my favorite holiday, and Tivoli decorates with fake snow and trees and lights everywhere.  They also have an adorable Nordic themed market where I found some decorations to bring home so that I can bring a little bit of Copenhagen back with me.

Christmas continued when Emmy and I went to the Christiania market today.  It’s in a giant room where all of these stalls are set up and people are selling handmade scarves and artwork and jewelry and other fun things.  I also ended up having a conversation with a Danish man, who was telling me how Christiania has its own Christmas celebration for people who are hard on their luck.  He said it’s a really cool experience.

Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Berlin.  It’ll be my last trip during this amazing semester, although unfortunately it isn’t going to be exactly as planned.  For now, though, I’m going to make the most of the short amount of time I have left!

Vi ses!

Categories
Europe Netherlands Study Abroad

Amsterdam: Canals, Van Gogh, and Prostitutes in Windows

For Thanksgiving weekend, I headed to Amsterdam to meet up with Kelcy and Anna!  This is now the third time I’ve seen Kelcy in Europe, and Anna had come to visit both of us for her fall break.  It was lovely to spend the weekend with both of them!

I got in Thursday night, and after finding the hostel, we walked around the city and got some first impressions.  Amsterdam is beautiful.  It’s very cohesive, with most canal streets looking nearly identical.  Which made it fun trying to get back to our hostel that evening.  I had heard that it’s similar to Copenhagen, which is true (although often overstated).  There are a lot of bikes, the facades of the houses are structured the same way, and it has a similar laid back vibe.  I saw primarily men on the streets, which was a bit surprising but can probably just be explained by the red light district.  Obviously the random areas that smelled of marijuana isn’t a totally new experience because I live in Colorado.  However, seeing prostitutes in windows was strange.  It’s one thing to know that prostitution exists, and it’s another to see women selling their bodies in the open that way.

The next morning, our day began bright and early.  We started at the Anne Frank House, and it was pretty cool to see the place I had read about in her diary.  Moreover, after some of the other places I’ve been this semester (i.e. Auschwitz) it was nice to see a place where people risked their lives to help save others.  About two thirds of the way through, the power went out and so we ended up completing the museum tour in the dark.  After that, we did a canal tour.  The audio guides were a bit cheesy, but looking at the city from the water was pretty great.  My favorite story was about the clock tower, where apparently each side is set for a different time which means the bells go off completely randomly.  It must be pretty frustrating if you actually want to know the time!  We also went to the Van Gogh museum and saw some pretty famous artwork.  After my impressionism class, I can actually see where his work developed out of that style.  For someone who came into this semester knowing pretty much nothing about art, I felt very accomplished!  Our night concluded with a visit to the prostitution museum, which was an interesting experience.  There were some rooms set up to look like brothels, sex toys, a room where you looked out onto the street as the sex workers would do, and even a section where visitors put “confessions.”

The next morning, Anna had to leave in the morning to catch her flight back to the US, so Kelcy and I had a relaxing day of walking around, taking in Amsterdam, and looking at shops.  We learned that if you want any type of phallic shaped item, you can probably purchase it in Amsterdam.  It’s a teenage boy’s dream.

For those people who asked me if Copenhagen was in the Netherlands or if I would be learning to speak Dutch, I now understand the confusion.  The cities are similar.  Dutch sounds like a cross between German and Danish, with the crispness of German in some words and the soft letters in some cases.

I had a wonderful time in Amsterdam.  Two weeks from now I’ll be back in the United States, but in the meantime I have two more essays to complete and one more European trip to prepare for.  Which means it’s time for me to go back to being a productive person.

Vi ses!