Germany

After another layoff of a couple weeks, I'm ready for the final push on this blog about my summer and then my semester abroad!

For our last big trip, we got to take a very long weekend (there was a holiday on Tuesday, so naturally, Spanish citizens take Monday off as well...so we went from Thursday night to Wednesday morning before class) to central Germany. Elise spent a summer in Germany after graduating high school and I loved it so much when our group went for Oktoberfest, so while other friends trekked to Morrocco, Prague, and Rome, we decided to get back to Germany! My uncle Raleigh and his wife Pam live not far from Nuremberg, so this provided us with an opportunity to have tour guides and hosts for a few days. Hard to beat!

After some drama with our first flight (I was put on the standby list and had to sweet talk my way onto the plane with the last seat on board), we landed late Thursday night in Frankfurt. We took the train into the main train station (Hauptbahnhof), got some questionable yet very tasty Chinese food from a stand in the station, then walked literally across the street to our hostel. The next morning, we caught a train to Bacharach. Don't worry, I had never heard of it either. It was a very small town right on the Rhine river. Our train ride went right along the Rhine and gave us gorgeous views of the valley created as the river dug through the surrounding hills. Elise arranged our hostel in Bacharach--and what a youth hostel it was! We stayed in a castle atop a hill that overlooked the town. After checking in and resting for a bit, we strolled around the quiet yet picturesque Christmas town. It was very German (half-timber houses and buildings) and very Christmas (lots of decorations and setting up for their Christmas market). We walked in shops, got a couple of pastries, and really just enjoyed the wintry cold before heading back up the hill at sunset to relax and read before dinner in the hostel.

On Saturday, we hiked down the hill to the train station, catching a beautiful sunrise over the Rhine, and took a great train (ICE, it is the German express, semi-high-speed train and it was very comfortable, smooth, and fast) to Nuremberg. After a few hours on the train, we got to Nuremberg and met up with Uncle Raleigh and Pam! They drove us to the hotel, then we got a good, German (warm and hearty) lunch right up the street and at the foot of the castle. Potato soup, Nurnberger sausages and Hells beer. Mmmm. From there, we toured the famous Christmas Market with thousands of other people, wonderful smells (candied nuts, sausages, gluhwein--a hot red wine cider-ish drink, and more). We walked around the city and rode in an old carriage for a tour of Nuremberg. The next morning, after breakfast in the hotel, we walked around, checked out some art and armor (German combination) at the German National Museum, then drove to Colmberg.

Uncle Raleigh and Pam visit Colmberg a lot and treated us to join them in a stunning hotel/castle for the night. It is one of the nicest/coziest places I've ever been and after an early dinner in the dining room, we drove to Rothenberg, one of the oldest surviving walled cities in Germany. Rothenberg had another fun Christmas market (picture rows of vendor stalls, Christmas lights, hundreds of people, and sausages, gluhwein mugs, and Christmas music). We even went on a tour with the Night Watchman where we learned a great deal about the city's history and traditions. A beer in the bar with my uncle later, it was time to get to bed.

One more morning in Rothenberg and a fantastic lunch at Raleigh and Pam's favorite restaurant (Elise, Uncle Raleigh, and I all ordered a pork with a mushroom sauce and a German-style macaroni and cheese, with goose ravioli soup), then it was time to tour the town's Torture Museum. The best exhibit was a device used that linked two fighting women so they had to go everywhere together until their issue was resolved! Uncle Raleigh and Pam dropped us off about an hour away in Wurzberg. We said goodbye and thanked them for their generosity in showing us a great time all weekend, then walked around, saw one more Christmas market, dinner, and had fun talking about Christmas traditions in the Sharpe and Cargill households. Obviously, these markets had really gotten us in the Christmas spirit!

On our last full day, we hiked up to the Marienberg fortress on a hill in Wurzberg, got bratwurst at the market for lunch, then saw Germany's answer to Versailles--the Residenz palace. After seeing several palaces this semester, this may have been my favorite. We had a very good tour guide (which, I've learned, always helps to enjoy a place), but this place was great. Probably the most memorable was the Imperial Banquet Room, where the ceiling was painting in a 3-D sort of way, with some of it being a normal painting and other parts (a foot, a corner of a robe) being little sculptures hanging from the ceiling. Very cool place. That afternoon, we caught a train back to Frankfurt, had one more doner kebab for dinner, then walked back to the hostel to get to sleep before a 4:30 am wake-up call for our flight back to Madrid.

What a great final trip in such a memorable semester. I'll try to post one or two more times on wrapping up Madrid and getting back home.