This weekend I went to Italy to visit Liz! I took an overnight train from Berlin on Thursday and arrived in Venice on Friday around 4 pm. We walked around Venice a bit and I was able to see some of the main highlights…. the Grand Canal, Piazza San Marco and Ponte di Rialto. The sun was shining and the city looked just like I had always imagined and seen in pictures. We stayed the night at a youth hostel in Padua, a smaller college town about 30 minutes outside of Venice. The next morning after breakfast we explored Padua. We [View Full Entry]

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Last Saturday I ventured to explore the heart of Protestantism in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. As most of you probably know, this is where Martin Luther lived a large portion of his life and where he ‘supposedly’ posted his 95 Theses, although they don’t seem to be quite certain. Lutherstadt Wittenberg is named, obviously enough, after Martin Luther and is located about an hour southwest of Berlin in the region of Saxony-Anhalt. The city lies on the Elbe River, a major German river, and the old city, which I saw, depicts a very cute, quaint German town. The city commemorates Martin Luther’s life [View Full Entry]

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Here are the pictures of my apartment that I promised! [View Full Entry]

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So, you have probably been wondering what I have been up to since my wonderful trips to Hamburg and Copenhagen… April 6th, the day after returning from Copenhagen, I ran the Berliner Halb-Marathon! Here is the website where you can see my finishing time! http://www.scc-events.com/events/berliner_halbmarathon/2008/ergebnisse.php Click on Durchsuchen under “28. Vattenfall Berliner Halbmarathon“ and then you can type in Dromgold under Name. I was thrilled to finish in just under 2 hours and 6 minutes, beating my goal for a finishing time by more than 4 minutes! It was not only exciting to run my first half-marathon and to finish [View Full Entry]

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Of the two cities, Copenhagen was definately my favorite. Monday was spent mostly traveling from Hamburg to Copenhagen by train. It was pretty funny, because for one portion of the train ride the train had to get on a ferry and we all had to get off the train and climb above to the ferry deck for about 45 minutes! We began our exploration of Copenhagen on Tuesday morning. We got up early to eat breakfast in our hotel (and what wonderful breakfast they had for us!) and walk around the city before a group harbor tour (yes, yet another harbor [View Full Entry]

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Through the program that I studied with for the semester we traveled as a group on a weeklong excursion first to Hamburg and then to Copenhagen, Denmark. The first three days were spent in Hamburg, which is only an hour and a half away from Berlin by train, and as Germany’s second largest city (after Berlin) and Germany’s largest port city (although, since Germany isn’t exactly surrounded by water, the power of the statistic is questionable) it is a very interesting and busy industrial harbor city. We arrived Friday March 28 in Hamburg, the harbor city, a little after noon and [View Full Entry]

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On the 13th of March, Allison came to visit me for her spring break! Therefore, the past week has been complete with touristy activities here in Berlin and elsewhere, as well as a lot of fun! Friday morning we went to Sachsenhausen, the former concentration in the area outside of Berlin, as it was one of our required field trips for the semester. It was very interesting to see and reflect on the historical events that had taken place there. In the afternoon, Allison and I rode our bikes downtown, like real Germans, and we hit the top site, the Brandenburger [View Full Entry]

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Friday morning we got up and went running through Parc Montjuic on the other side of the city. After breakfast we went to Parc Güell, an entire park designed by Gaudi. It was a beautiful day and we ate our lunch under the palm trees there. We explored the main square there, where there are colorful benches decorated with ceramic mosaics. Below the main square is a hall of columns, in which the ceilings are also decorated with intricate mosaics. This was originally intended to be a market hall. Outside of the market hall is a statue of a dragon covered [View Full Entry]

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Our Thursday in Barcelona was spent exploring the works of Gaudi. We went first to Sagrada Familia, the church that Gaudi had designed, although he was only able to finish one of the four facades. The finished façade is the Christmas façade, which depicts the birth of Christ, and in three different portals focuses on hope, faith and love. The design of the façade is very intricate, and some even go so far as to declare it ugly, but I liked seeing the façade of the church. One other façade has now been completed, the Passion façade on the opposite side [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday, February 26 we arrived in Barcelona around 2 and by 4 began our exploration of the city! Barcelona is a city that really speaks as an architectural piece of art. We began our time there with a self-guided walking tour through Eixample, one of the sections of the city. We saw the major sites of this part of the city, including Casa Bonaventura Ferrer, a modern building from Pere Falques I Urpi. By walking through this part of the city, we came to a lot of the squares, where important moments of Spanish history played out, including many bloody [View Full Entry]

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