Austria/Bavaria!

we had a break recently from school for a week so i took advantage and traveled to the cities of Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich. It was very cold, still a really nice trip. lets go on a picture adventure!

Vienna:
a real classy place. unfortunatly a lot of the palaces and treasuries were "closed for cleaning" until the end of april, but i still felt like i was able to do and see a lot.






Cathedral with carved Roman imspired columns:

some uber cool museum shots:






Salzburg:















Munich:







these are just a few. i'll throw up more pictures later, and i'll try and get another post soon.

Basically I’ve traveled a ridiculous amount in the past few weeks. Two weekends ago I was in Germany on a study tour for one of my classes. We where there study the witch hunts and trials that plagued the country from the 1100s-1600s. we visited the towns of Trier, Rothenberg, Spyer and also stayed for a night in Nancy france.
Over the course of the tour we met and listened to a couple lectures from what were apparently the world’s LEADING experts in witch-huntology (I just made that phrase up) and visited the handful of sites that still held historical relevance to the material. Apparently the entire world population of people who all get their PhD in this sort of thing all know each other and hang out on the weekends to talk about who knows what. For the most part the professors met were enthusiastic to see a bus full of American students riding around germany/france “taking an active interest” in the study of witch trials. No doubt they were happy to take a break from their riveting life of sitting in archives dissecting medieval legal records and church manuscripts to talk with us.
Some of the lectures were better then others, but we did get to learn a few interesting things.
Our Professor who teaches our class in Lux herded us around onto buses and to museums and exhibits. Since he’s from Ohio like most the rest of the students he was visiting many of these sites for the 1st time as well. In an endearing sort of way he reminded me of a dad on vacation with his family, calling “his kids” and stuff and warning us not to get into trouble on our free nights.


Trier: spent an afternoon there in a library with a German professor listening and passing around 14th century codex’s. he took us on a brief tour of the town taking us the big cites and then releasing us to explore on our own for about an hour. The town is very medieval with ruins and remnants of ancient buildings all over the place




Nancy:
Our second stop, as well as my favorite of our destinations. Nancy is a farily big city in france, with lots of braouqe architenchre everywhere. Although Nancy was an important destination for witch hunting back in the day there aren’t many modern sites still left around that relate to the subject. Hence we did were schedualed to do a lot of things that had NO relance whatsoever to our class. For instance as a class we visited an art nouve furniture museam. We were did visit an important archieve and listened to a decent lecture from a french professor. Later on we toured the historical part of the city.




Speyer: relativly small german town with not much going on in it aside from a huge cathedral and an actual witch museum. The meseum exhibit was entirely in german, so our comphreiension was limitied.




Rothenburg: tiny touristiy bavarian town that was the most medival looking plac I have ever been before. Aside from us the town was absolutly FULL of japanese tourists who got off of tour buses in droves.
The entire city is still surrounded by an intact wall from the 1300s. here we met with a british professor in another lirary and who took us on a tour of the anceint city jail what still includes tourture chambers. After that we vistied the famous mideaval crime museum and looked at a ridiculous display of tourture devices used throughout the centuries.
When we were free to wonder off on our own I managed to accidentalyt isolate myself from the entire group and walked in shops and to sites. I walked along the wall by myself for a creepy half hour and realized that I didn’t remember how to get back to the hotel that we were staying at. After another two hours of wandering I finally found our place just in time to attend the group dinner. We left the next morning to make the five hour drive back.





I really wish I could post my own pictures because I took about an entire memory card’s worth of them but something has gone wrong with my camera in the past few weeks that prevents me from uploading them to my computer. The pictures that I’ve put up so far have come from me picking stuff off of google, which is deceptive because all of these pictures show how sunny it was, which it was not.
I’m going to try again tonight to get it working, hopefully its not a big deal.

I’ll post another blog of my most recent trip soon later today or tomorrow hopefully. Sorry I’ve been slacking on the European travels documentation.

Paris:
So last weekend I decided to visit my friend racheal, who lives and goes to school in France. She’s all about the european emersion and sweet Parisian culture. Everyone else from my school was heading to Beilgum, and for a while I thought I wanted to go there too. But plans changed and I ended up buying a round trip ticket to Paris last Thursday night at the train station. Since it was going to be my 1st trip outside of lux and I was doing it on my own, I was skeptical that it would work out, and nervous that I would make some sort of sloppy mistake and not get there or get lost, or stuck somewhere. The guy that helped me at the counter ended up finding a seat for me in 1st class (for a really discounted price) from the boarder of lux and france. You could tell he was used to stupid students buying tickets who have no idea what they were doing because he spent about 3 mintues giving me a lecture about how I was not to try and get a refund and I could change reservations, or get off at any stops inbetween and expect to get back on in time and blah blah blah.
I was still nervous about doing it, but after making my 1st switch over I felt pretty decent. 1st class seating was also nice. I was the only person under 60 in train car.

Anywayyyssss ONCE I made it to paris, rach picked me up at the station. Nortre Dame was close by so we walked in.





Consequently we ate two dinners that night. BOTH crepe places, just because it seemed like such a good idea for when you are hungry late at night Paris.
Saturday morning we headed to the lourve and spent a few hours there. European Students get in for free so we skated past the ten euro fee and went straight away into exhibits. I guess I didn’t realize how massive the lourve actually is and just how much stuff is actually in it. If you actually were to do the entire thing it would be like walking through several football fields worth of galleries. I’m sure we only scratched the surface of it. Rach said she used to go there every Friday night and explore a different gallery. I would be totally all about that if I lived in paris.

(although there are signs that say no photos in the museum, it seemed like everyone just ignored that rule. So I feel good about using my camera.)
















After the lourve we walked around the city in the slightly rainy weather. We used the buses and the metro to go to farther places in the city.

Later that night Rachael made plans for us to go to a classy techno club, in Paris where we meet up with one of here friends. Apparently it was the Russian new year, and the club was giving out fake Russian hats to the guests. Sadly I didn’t bring my camera for this but, it was pretty entertaining.

Day three in paris it was sunny, something that made me extremely happy since I finally got to see sunlight in Europe. We walked around and took buses to a bunch of different places. some of the places we visited was the pantheon, Napoleon's grave, the luxembourg palace, the Eiffel tower and some other neighborhoods and streets that i can't remember the name off. i'll get them from rach later on when i organize my pictures. heres a few of them, anyway:



















I took the train back about 9 30 and got back in lux city after twelve.
For my 2nd weekend in Luxembourg I think it was pretty eventfully and went smoothly. Having an actual Parisian as a guide (rach) made everything much more fun and effiecnet. Not to mention economical.

Anyways now I’m back in school working my way thgouh classes. I think I’m come down with a cold, but hopefully I’ll get over it soon. In februrary we get to go on our 1st study tour through Germany and france so I have that to look forward to soon.
I can’t believe I’ve only been here two weeks. It seems longer then that, but that’s probably because I’ve done so much in my time here.

Au revoir,
-emma