Mere in Deutschland!

It’s been awhile, my bad haha. busy, busy. :P

Gummy Bears galore!! We too a trip to the Haribo Candy Shop last week. The founder of Haribo was a man named Hans Riegel. The name Haribo comes the first two letters of his first name, last name, and Bonn. Hans Riegel, Bonn. Cool fact for ya. Haribo Candy Company originated in Bonn so it was super cheap there and super tasty. It was pretty much a huge warehouse of sweets. There was a candy bar, and every kind of Haribo candy in dozens of sizes. I am honestly surprised that I haven’t developed diabetes from all this sugar. Yall let me know if you want me to bring you back a bag or two, they won’t run out, I promise ;)

We also too a field trip to the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Bonn to have a presentation of some of their ongoing work. We got a cool presentation on capturing human motion and hair simulation. They even showed us an awesome machine that creates hyper resolution texture maps from physical texture material samples. The machine takes thousands of photos of the material from 151 cameras and uses around 600 GBs to store it! That’s alot.

We had our first Game History class this week. Our teacher, Krystian (guy), is super cool. He’s so funny and makes the class hilarious by using funny videos as examples for his lecture. We have a project for the rest of the semester where we choose a certain genre of video game and make a presentation about it to the class on the history of that style of game and elements of what inspired it. We work in pairs of two, so Cameron and I teamed up to present about RACING GAMES! I was so excited, because racing games have always been my favorite. Dad, you’d be proud ;) Ever since Dad got me Cruisin’ USA on Nintendo 64, the rest has been history. Cruisin’ USA, Gran Turismo, then all the epic Burnout games, Dad and I would play for hours. Because of my experience and love of racing games and Cameron’s knowledge and obsession with cars, Cameron and I are pretty much the best team ever. Oh yes. :)

Last week, the class took a trip to Köln, Germany for a historical tour of the city, a visit to the Ludwig Museum, and tour on the Köln Cathedral rooftop! We started off with the city tour and it was really cool. I learned alot of interesting facts. Did you know that Cologne (Germans call it Köln) was where perfume and “cologne” was created? Funny story actually. Apparently, back in the day, a certain number of buildings would share bathrooms. Since there were many people sharing one toilet, desperate people on the top floors would hang their butts out the window and.. yeah, you get it. The streets eventually evolved a rule of walking in the middle of the road and avoiding the sides to stay clean. If they were forced to the outer sidewalks by traffic, people would even carry umbrellas to shield them from the falling poop. Obviously, the streets reeked, so a man named Giovanni Maria Farina invented Kölnisch Wasser, or “Water of Cologne”. It actually began as an alcoholic drink consisting of 85% alcohol to take the people’s minds off of the horrible smell around them. Other countries received word about the Water of Cologne and sent letters asking for “Eau de Cologne” to be shipped to them. Eventually, the cologne evolved to be worn as a fragrance instead of as a drink. Weird, huh? Another random fact about Cologne, it took 632 years to build the Cologne Cathedral. The bars are open all night, they don’t close at 2am like other cities do. There is a bridge in Cologne that became known as “The Lover’s Bridge” because along the railings of the sidewalk of the bridge, couples would hook padlocks on the fence, write their initials on the locks, then throw the keys into the Rhine River behind them. There are thousands of locks on this bridge. One whole side is full so they had to start on the other side of the bridge. So cool! And cute!

Aparently, the people of Cologne have a tradition of disliking the people on the other side of the river. This guy on the clock faces towards the other side of the river, and at the same time every day, sticks his tongue out haha

And this guy represents the Eau de Cologne story haha

Anyways, after the tour, we got tickets to the Ludwig Museum and walked through it. It was an awesome museum. There were so many paintings that we all had studied in Art history. There were works from artist such as Picasso, Warhol, Ernst, Bacon, Matisse, Pollock, Klein, Marc, Braque, and Mondrian. It was really cool to actually see them in person.

After that, we met our guide outside the Cathedral, then took an elevator up to the top! After we got off the elevator, we climbed up an awesome looking spiral staircase to the roof of one of the towers. Once we got to the platform outside, it was breathtaking. It was just about dark, so the sky was a beautiful dark blue over the horizon of city lights. You could see the Rhine river and all the bridges. So pretty. After, the tour guide actually walked us along the outside scaffolding around the entire cathedral. It was amazing! Then we made our way inside and walked around the cathedral up on the passageways that border the outside walls. Since it had turned dark by then, my pictures didn’t turn out very well. I’m definitely planning on revisiting the cathedral in the day time sometime soon. I have to say, it was an absolutely amazing day!

Alrighty! My next blog will be about KARNIVAL!! and SWITZERLAND!!! Yay!!!

Ok, here we go. This is gonna be alot of info to put in one post because I just came back from the BEST CITY EVER!

Ok so first of all, Amsterdam is a gorgeous city. Canals are everywhere! There are small personal boats everywhere in front of the buildings. Its like Venice haha. The first day we got there we all went on a canal cruise through the city, and it was beautiful!! The churches, palaces, bell towers, everything made you want to just explode with awe.

Along with the elegant architecture is the, how can I say it.. stereotypical aspect of the city haha. As we all know, Amsterdam is pretty much known for sex and drugs, and it is pretty obvious when you walk around haha. It is very liberal there. Around every corner is a “coffee shop” and the smell of weed radiates from them. People smoke as they walk down the street, so you constantly get whiffs of it as you walk around town. The souvenir shops are full of pipes, bongs, grinders, and marijuana-themed gifts like magnets, shirts, lighters, etc. Inside “coffee shops” are weed menus with all the different types and mixes to buy, right then and there. People just go in, pay for it, and either walk out with it, or sit down at a table with a bong from the store. It is absolutely crazy how different their society is than ours! It is unbelievable. A few of us toured around the red light district. I wont go into detail about it, just know that it is exactly as you would imagine it. Exactly. haha

So anyway, all of us also got the chance to tour through Anne Frank’s house. It was an incredible experience. I’m upset that I didnt get to read her diary before I went. I definitely will soon, after what I saw. We werent allowed to take pictures inside, but i got a few of the exterior.

Midweek we all bused to the town, Noordwijk, to perform our studio workshop on the beach there. For class, we had to design, construct, and race a “Windrunner”, which is pretty much like a mini land-sailer that we could only make out of supplies like paper, cardboard, straws, tape, etc. Our wind runners had to only move across the beach using the force of the wind. We were graded on speed, construction, and visual appeal, or “sexiness” as our prof would say haha! We would work in groups of two, so Anne and I were partners and created the BEST windrunner ever! We named it “The Turbinator” since it used things that looked like wind turbines. And guess what! Ours won the race and we got a prize for speed! It was a big set of markers haha :) We were kinda suprised since we were afraid The Turbinator was going to fall apart on the 15 min walk to the beach. It actually did when we were racing it! the end piece flew off, but once it did, it actually went faster! haha! We played it off like we did it on purpose and constructed it to deject a piece like a space shuttle does ;)

The beach was beautiful there. There were no people walking along it since it was 20 degree weather and super windy. When I mean super windy, I mean ice-like powerful windy that made my eyes water and nose run like a faucet. Overall I enjoyed it though. It was alot of fun, especially since we won ;)

After Noordwijk, most of us went back to Amsterdam on Friday to soak up the last bit of experience we could before class on Monday. We spent the weekend exploring, touring, and just enjoying ourselves. We went to a torture museum where it had lots of medieval torture devices and explained how they worked and what they did to people. It was pretty disturbing and cool haha! We also went to a Rembrandt museum, the Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam, and got to tour a small animation studio located in Amsterdam called Lemonade Animation!

I definitely did not want to leave Amsterdam. I wasnt done yet seeing all the museums and shops. I, for sure, want to visit it again, because it is probably one of the coolest cities in the world :)

Our hotel the first night

This is a restaurant we all went to called Moeders, which means mothers. All the walls inside are completely covered with pictures of mothers.

these are some things from a museum we went to.

That is Rembrandt’s self portrait.

Torture museum

Us working on “The Turbinator”

The Turbinator!

Hallo :)

The past couple of days have been a little more slow paced. We all are started to get used to the town and find our way around just fine. Though, every muscle and joint from my knees down are extremely stiff and achy from all the constant walking. Very painful. But it’s worth it :)

Yesterday we had our first studio class. We got the info on our semester-long class project. The education goal this semester is to work on communication globally. Our class has 2 teams that communicate and work with other students from A&M, UTD, and a high school in San Antonio to create an entire 30 sec animation. It should be.. interesting haha. My group is awesome though :) Its me, Anne, Kevan, Justin S, Justin H, Lauren, Jessica, Colin, Kay Leigh, Stephanie, and Evan. We will DOMINATE! ;)

Today was fun. Although this morning, Cameron was enjoying talking to his host brother about me and insulting me in German.. Cameron would say something to him and he’d just look at me and laugh. I was not amused.. Wanna learn a sentence in German? “Du bist so klug vwie ein stein.” That means, “You are as smart as a rock.” Thank you Cameron, so much..

Next we met at Town Hall along with the other AIB student groups to meet the Mayor of Bonn. German class was next then me, Anne, Kevan, and Natalia shopped for like 4 hours haha. That, my friends, is the reason why my legs feel like they’re about to fall off. haha

Hallo aus Deutschland!

ok so im finally here in Bonn and finally was able to make this blog! I just got wifi access to my laptop so here it is =] Right now, im in the AIB building, which is where our classes will be held (in English, thank the Lord!). ok so let me get everyone caught up from the past few days:

Day #1! 1/16/12

The plane ride was… fun? I guess? haha. Sitting next to Cameron and Anne for 9 hours made it better, even though Cameron was hogging the window seat.. jerk. We had TVs on the head rest in front of us though, which was cool. we could watch movies, tv shows, and it had a gps-like map that showed where the plane was, what the altitude was, the outside temp, and how much longer until we land. It was pretty cool. We landed in London, and had 3 hours to burn so some of us ate at a little restaurant in the airport. I had fish and chips, and it was AWESOME. We eventually got on the plane to Frankfort and rode a 2 hour bus to Bonn. We arrived at AIB to meet our host families there so they can take us to our new “home.” Unfortunately, my host mom (my host family consists of only one 68 year old lady, no pets, and no children that live at home =/..) is currently in Austria skiing and wont be back in Bonn until Sunday. So until she gets back, i’ll be staying with Cameron’s family, who actually live only a house away from Frau Benze (my host mom)’s house. Cameron’s family have like 5 children, from a range of 3 to like 23 or something like that. They also have a cat, dog, and birds. They are really nice and speak english for the most part. Interesting fact about Germans: the younger generations normally can speak english along with german because within the past few decades, their schools have enforced them to learn a second language, usually German. So the older generations typically can only speak basic english, if any at all. So cameron and I are having fun chatting it up with his family since they all speak english, even the parents. I, unfortunately, dont know much german (not really any) but Cameron took it in high school for 4 years, so he’s having fun rubbing it in my face by speaking to them in German while I sit there with a desperately confused look on my face. ughhh… Anyways, that night, we had our first german meal, which consisted of bread, fruit salad, chicken, and a bowtie pasta dish with chicken, green beans, peppers, and stuff like that in it. It was really good :) We then went straight to bed, the jet lag was killing us haha. And that concluded our first day in Deutschland!!

Day # 2! 1/17/12

Cameron and I woke up and made our way to the central train station to meet everyone and our Program Coordinator so she could lead us around and show us where AIB was. We walked through the town and, of course, were fascinated by the scenery. Everything is so old-timey looking. It is absolutely beautiful. Its like walking through the past. We made it to the AIB building and sat through a introduction lecture and filled out some forms and things like that. For lunch, Cameron, Justin, Anne, and I experimented by picking a random cafe for lunch. Cameron ticked off the waitress off haha. We all order water, forgetting that we wanted to try the the beer, and water in Germany is NOT free. At that place, a glass of water was 2.50 euros (which is almost $5). Cameron, being ..himself, pissed off the waitress by changing his mind from the glass bottle of water to beer, right as she arrived at the table, which is very frowned upon in Germany. He also got chewed out by keeping his huge bottle of water he had gotten earlier on the table. She had to ask him to put it away. We could tell she was frustrated with us (hopefully just cameron haha) and was probably dissing americans in her head lol. Way to go Cam haha. We went back to AIB to meet for another little tour of the city.  After that, we were free from class for the day. We used our afternoon to walk around and look through some stores. Later that night, a few of us met at an Irish pub for a beer or two. Im not much a beer drinker, probably because ive only tried crappy cheap beer, but this stuff was good! I had a Kölsch, then a Strongbow Cider which were really good.

Day #3 1/18/12

We had our first real class where we learn beginner’s German. Lets just say my mind felt full when we were finished haha. In one class we learned numbers, letters, pronunciation, grammar, how to introduce ourselves, and random introduction questions. I have alot of practicing to do cuz there’s only so much I can fit into my brain at one time haha. After lunch, we had an awesome historical tour of Bonn. We got to see and learn the background of a gorgeous church, a palace of the Bonn college, the Rhine River, and Ludwig Van Beethoven’s house that he was born in. Cool, huh? :) Later that night, a few of us went to a bar we learned about on the tour that is the oldest bar in Bonn. It was established in 1582. The inside looked like it hadnt changed since :)

Day 4 1/19/12

Today it’s raining so its kinda dreary, but the weather says it will probably snow for the next 4 days so that will be fun. Right now, Im sippin’ some coffee and just had an amazing croissant from a little pastry store conveniently located right next door :). Class starts in a couple hours so im just burning some time until then since I had to get up early this morning to situate things with my Visa. Tonight we’re taking a field trip to Cologne for some kind of designers fair. I have no clue what to expect so I guess ill find out!

Auf Wiedersehen!!