Day 40 3/1/2010, Catch up continued

Day 32 2/21/2010

Well this was our last day in Munich but it was still a long day. Nobody's flight was till around 4 and only Jake and Jacob had to leave before that. I didn't get up as quickly as I wanted but I was still up around 8. Jake woke me up and told me that they were going to leave and to hurry if I wanted to join. I didn't exactly want to go but I also didn't want to wait down stairs until Catie and Trisha were ready to go. So I hurried and got ready I packed up my stuff and went down stairs to watch the others eat breakfast while David sneaked me some orange juice. I went up stairs with the rest of them grabbed my stuff because we were checking out that morning and we headed out. By now my feet were killing me. I shouldn't have gone with them but I wanted to see more of the city and I did my best to keep up with these long legged guys. No matter how hard I tried I had just brought too much stuff and I wasn't able to keep up. I felt bad because I couldn't and they had to wait for me at some points. It was because I brought my computer when I should have left it at home. I brought it because I might do some work on it and usually its better to have it and not need it. Not this time. I really wish I had left it at home. Well some of the things that we did on the walk was first we walked to Marien Platz. Yes, to there from the Hostel. We walked through the platz for the last time. The we went down some of the side streets and we found a different platz that had an interesting Romanesque temple type building with a statue in front of the platz. Then we found another area with another Romanesque porch. This was huge. It had statues under it. Right next to it was the theater cathedral. I only know the name because I looked it up in a book. This was a beautiful yellow cathedral with elaborate swirling on the tops of the two towers. It was very pretty to look at. This is where I got behind. I asked the guys to wait a moment while I looked for my battery and they just walked off. The battery on my camera had just died and I needed to find the other one I had with me. I couldn't find it so I missed out on quite a few pictures because I spent a lot of my energy trying to catch up to them. I was rather upset but here starts the downward spiral of keeping up with them. They walk fast already and I was hurting trying to catch up to them. After the area with the cathedral we went to a small open park like area with a pavilion in the middle. This was again Romanesque in style it was very pretty because the mosaic in the middle of this small pavilion was nice to look at and there were tiles arranged around the columns with different fountain bowls on them. I looked at that for a moment before resuming my attempt to catch up to them. After a little while longer we found an area that was just a park. A huge park. It was kinda like what you would think of when you thought of Central Park with out the skyscrapers. It was enormous. They even had a man made river running through it. We watched the ducks and took pictures of them. Jacob chased one around that was rather amusing. After that we started walking deeper into this park. Eventually we found another pavilion on top of a hill. It completely reminded me of the pavilions you find in Oblivion, a game I play. It was taller and thinner than the last one. It took us forever to get to it mostly because I was walking slower than the rest. The ice and the baggage again making it difficult to keep up. I didn't get to enjoy the pavilion that much because as soon as I got up the hill to them I was digging through my bag to try to find my battery. I was so afraid that I had left it at the home in Bonn. But, I found it, thankfully. So off we went pretty much right after I found that battery. I didn't even get to enjoy the sight, whatever. It was my fault that I brought so much stuff but still they could have waited a little while. Immediately started heading down the hill in front of them and we started to make our way to the museums we were interested in. The first one we finally arrived at was called the Glyptotek. This was a Roman and Greek sculpture museum dedicated directly to this guy who made a living out of collecting these things. I enjoyed it very much because I love sculpture and getting to see these things face to face was mind blowing for me. Yet again I spent the time in the museum alone. I walked through and studied what I could. Then I got to the sculpture I had been waiting for. This was the sculpture I spent at least a week of my life writing about. It was amazing to get to see it in person. To get to study it. I was so happy for that brief moment, also in awe of actually getting to see this relief. After seeing that I kinda went a little faster because I wasn't too interested in busts, which was the entire rest of the room. There were a few other neat sculptures that I found, but that was the star of the show. After that museum I called my group and they had already left for a different museum up the road. Again, I'm getting tired of these reminders that they don't give two cents about me. So I walked there. David was nice enough to meet me outside and he shared one of his apples with me. Hes one of the few that has actually treated me decently. So we sat outside for a little while while I rested my feet then headed into the building. This one was also amazing but I didn't let myself get too wrapped up in seeing these for one. Not as interesting and for two the only ones that I wanted to see were the Rubens and most of those were in the first few rooms. I didn't get to see much more than a few of the galleries. Most of these paintings were huge. I was amazed that anyone would work on one painting for that long. The renderings of cloth were amazing. It made me wish that I had studied a bit more art history because then I would know what some of this era meant in their paintings and that I might recognize any of them. All of them were incredibly well painted of course. We walked through there spending no more that around an hour because I had spent so much time at the other place. Then it was time for David and I to head back to the hauptbahnhof to catch our train to the airport. This day was just destined to be a bad one. So after we finally got to that place. It was a long walk on my hurting feet. This old guy decides he wants to help us. I didn't want to but David let him. He fixed the machine for us so we would get the right tickets but as it turns out he made us pay for twice as much as we needed because he put in there that we needed a 5 person ticket instead of a single for the both of us. I was a little irritated with David that he let him do this. So I gave 10 Euro for this stupid train ticket that should have only cost 6. I was a little irritated needless to say. Well we got on the train and got to the airport. After getting through security and getting to the gate we find out that our plane is delayed. Awesome. I ended up napping till it was time to leave. That was very uncomfortable. When we finally left the plane was leaving more than two hours after the scheduled time. So the plane took off and the plane landed and we were done. We got on the trains to head home stopping briefly in the Cologne hbt. This is when I realized that I left my ipod on the plane. As you can see this day wasn't all that great. We decided against going back and that I would just get it later that week. We headed home and I went to bed after reading for a while in a book instead of on my ipod.

Day 33 2/22/2010

This was the second to last day of German class. We went over verbs and then she told us to write down what we would be bringing the next day for breakfast. We were going to have breakfast together. I wrote down that I would bring some brot (Bread). Then we had our lunch break then for the last part of the day we had our game history class for the first time. This was interesting because we talked about the different types of games that exist. It was a fun discussion I really enjoyed it. I think I'm going to enjoy this class. Right after that we were done for the day. I spent the afternoon messing around on my computer till I was ready to head home. The only thing out of the ordinary that I did was I had to call Trudy to bring me some bread for the breakfast tomorrow. Did the usual other stuff at home, then bed.

Day 34 2/23/2010

Well today was the last day of Duetsch class. It would be the last time I would get to talk to Fenja. I was kinda sad but happy too because I don't know if I could have learned anything else in that class. We had our test that morning first. Then, the breakfast right after. It was nice getting a free breakfast. We just sat and talked and enjoyed the morning. I talked mostly to Fenja and Trisha. After that it was lunch break but we had all just eaten so it was kinda pointless. Then it was time to get to business with studio. Our final project was due on Thursday and we had stuff we needed to do. We worked most of the afternoon and into part of the evening getting stuff done. The next day we were going on an excursion so we wouldn't be able to do any work. Again not much else happened.

Day 35 2/24/2010

Today we were going to Frankfurt. It was one of our day excursions. We had to meet at the bus stop at around 7:45 ugh. I hate when we have to get up that early because that means I have to get up at around 5:30 in order to be ready in time to get there. I met Trisha and Catie at the bus stop and we rode one past our normal stop at the hbf to University/Markt. We got out and headed to the meeting place. We stood around waiting for more people to show or at least the professor. The bus came first then Lars. Thats when we boarded the bus. Trisha and I ended up at the front while everyone else was at the back. Then, unknown to our knowledge the students from LMU joined us. We were wondering why it was such a big bus. Now we knew. So we rode the two and a half hours to Frankfurt. When we got there we dropped the LA students off first then we went to where we were meeting our city tour guide. The tour guide took us to the platz where the rebuilt Altes Rauthaus and a cathedral were built. She told us about them. I don't remember much. Except that the facade of the Rauthaus was original because it somehow wasn't destroyed with the bombs but just the facade survived. Everything in the platz except that was a rebuild of the old style. She talked about the justice fountain in the middle of the platz having to do with justice after the war. The statue on top was a woman holding scales. She is a symbol dating back to the Egyptians. After that we went into a different larger pink cathedral. She told us about some of the art in there like one of the painting on the wall that was painted to depict a king. All the other like it were covered after World War II because they didn't want any reference to a male sovereign leader and all the painted referred to kings of some sort. After that she talked about the sculpture at the front of the church. It is a Crucifixion scene done in the Early Renaissance. I don't remember much about either. It was made out of Tuff and it was one of the first sculptures to come out that actually had expression and character in the figures. Right after that we were pretty much done with that tour and we went back to the broccoli trees where we met in the first place. Lars took us down to the street that we could walk down to find food. I went to get some cash while everyone else walked to find food. Finally I found an ATM and got some cash. Then I headed back to this chicken stand. I got some chicken and fries. Trisha and Catie were there. Catie didn't like that I ate it with mayo so she left to join the rest of the group. Trisha and I hung around for a little while while I finished eating then we walked over to a mall that we decided to explore a little. Trisha saw some "Geisha" standing inside and she wanted a picture. Then as we walked farther we passed a Hollister store and there were two models outside. Two extremely good looking men with very nicely ripped bodies. We couldn't help but drool a little. They were nice to look at very nice. We walked farther into the center and found... A LEGO Store. That's right a Lego store. We kinda squealed a little and went inside. I ended up getting a race car for my brother. Then we spent the rest of our free time digging through the people station making little Lego people. It was fun. Trisha made herself a wench and a soldier, and one of her characters. I made myself a wench, Sean and a race car driver for Colton. Right after that we had 20 minutes to get back to the meeting point. When we got there and everyone had arrived we headed to our next destination. A gaming company that we were going to visit called Keen games. After a little bit of a walk we arrived at the building and up the elevators we went to their floor. Then, we talked to them a bit and they told us what they do. Just like all the other companies we've visited, we talked and asked questions and blah, blah. However, since we were there they wanted us to try out a game they had. This was really cool because it is a game that hasn't been released yet. So we were essentially testing it and giving our opinion. It was quite amusing because after a while they had stopped what they were doing and everyone was watching us play. After that was done and we were going to gather our jackets, I mentioned that I wanted one of the mugs because I really liked them and one of the employees rushed off and brought me back one of them. He gave it to me for free. That was cool. I felt all special. So afterward we gathered our stuff and went down stairs to wait for the bus to pick us up. This was the last thing that we did in Frankfurt and we were on our way back to our final destination. This was the most interesting part of the trip because it was at a Winery. We were going to have a "wine tasting" but essentially they let us drink the wine. Trisha, Jacob and I ended up sitting at the middle table with some of the LMU students that joined us. We talked about random stuff. I ended up trying to explain some Aggie traditions to the guy next to me. We also ate dinner which was just cold cuts. So, bread, cheese, and meats. It was interesting because we were all quite loud and tipsy afterward. So I bought two of the bottles of wine because I knew that this was one of the things that Sean would want. So I bought him a bottle and myself a bottle. Afterward we all headed back to the bus and headed back to Bonn. They dropped one group off at the Hauptbahnhof which is where I got off and went on to drop the rest at Munster Platz. This was the end of the day. Trisha and I were talking about another deep subject having to do with her 'religion' or lack there of. Not lack of belief, lack of religion. Again. So we caught our train home and we were done for the day.