Long WEEKEND!!!!!

Hey all!!!!

This blog will be a bit lacking in details, because there is so much to cover, but I will try my best.

Thursday we went to a Monastery and a Brewery.

Before entering the church, we watched a 10-15 min video on it and the daily life of the Monks there.

The Monastery church was magnificent, so huge, I could scarcely believe it. There were so many people there who were praying and enjoying the sight of this wonderful building.

We then proceeded to a Brewery in Mendig, where we were taken way under ground (very cold) and had an hour tour of the old like 16-18 century Brewery and what it is now. The tour guide was a very nice man who was very informative, however, neither Matt nor I got much out of it because we couldn't understand much.

Afterwards we stopped and some people had some of the Brewery's beer. Matt and I abstained simply because it was a bit on the expensive side.

The bus ride home was quite quick and we made it back in time to get packed up and ready for the next day. That night, Matt and I went out with Tobias and some of his friends to two local pubs, where we both had one drink at each place. We had a really good time with Tobias and his friends.

There was some conflict between a girl in our group and myself, however, it was dealt with maturely and should hopefully be done with. The other students are sometimes hard to get along with and I fear that Matt and I are just not very much like them.

Everyone who was traveling with us the next day spent the night at our house because our train was leaving the East Mayen trainstation at 6:55 the next morning. We had all planned to wake up at 5, eat breakfast, and take off for the Train station. That did not happen. When my alarm clock went off that morning, I shut it off, and said, "ok, only a few more moments." That turned into Paula at 5:45 pounding on my door saying "Emily, my phone died, we all overslept." which then ensued to be the biggest panic rush of my young traveling life. Matt arrived at our house at 6, he did not spend the night because his house is only a few blocks from ours, everyone else that we were traveling on the complete opposite side of town.

He was met with CHAOS!!!! Matt Flemming, who was supposed to be traveling with us that day forgot to pack his Eurrail pass. We debated for like 5 mins too long about what he should do, run like h-e-l-l and make it back here in time. So Matt F. took off and we headed out for the train station.

When we later reunited with Matt in Munich, we found that he actually made it to the train station, but about 2 mins. too late and watched the train pull away from the platform. POOR Matt.

So our group (5) headed on our way for SALZBURG!!!!!

The trains we had booked went from Mayen to Andernach (a close city) and then a direct route to Salzburg from Andernach! It was wonderful. We actually, by mistake, ended up on one of the most beautiful train rides you can take through Europe, we took the train that went from basically Koblenz to Weimar all along the Rhein River. The Rhein river is densely populated with Castles, cute old villages, we were stoked!

Along our way people came and went, but for most of the trip, we sat next to a cute old couple going back home to southern Austria and to a older woman who was traveling back to her home in the home city of Arnold Schwartzeneger (she knows him, personally).

Our talks with these three people proved to be quite interesting and enjoyable. Matt and I read a good chunk during the train ride, but we tried to converse as much as possible.

When we reached Salzburg, we bought bus passes, ate Burger King, and headed on our way for what is probably the nicest Hostel I will ever stay in: Youth and Family Hostel.

We all got settled into our room and made our plans for sightseeing and took off. In full for our less than 24 hours there we saw the Salzburg Dom, MozartPlatz, Papageno platz, the Mozart birth house, a nun Convent, a church with a lot of gravestones... I know its an important place, but I forget the name, the Salzburg castle (with which we had to take a train up to), as well as basically every Salzburg site that is enjoyed in the movie "the Sound of Music," all except for the house and the ... gazebo. We also saw much more than this and I took tons of pictures.

After walking around for a long time, we eventually decided to retire to our hostel where they were playing the movie "the sound of music" and we watched basically from the "rain drops on rose and whiskers on kittens" scene to after the large grand party in the Von Trapp household.

Sleep came easily but the morning came to soon. we had a very large included breakfast the next morning, I ate a ton, because I didn't want to have to spend money on lunch that day, and instead made 3 sandwiches for the train ride from Salzburg to Munich. We did sight-seeing this day till around 3:30 and then we packed off for the train station and hitched a ride to Munich.

When we arrived in Munich, we were a little frazzled because Munich is huge! Our hostel was not supposed to be too far out from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station), however, it was. When we first started walking, we walked through a very shady part of Munich. I swore at any minute one of us would be mobbed. It was scary, but we all made it through it and got to the hostel fine.

The Munich hostel did not include breakfast but was much nicer than we had expected, I mean come on, with a name like "the Easy Palace" what were we supposed to think? lol. So we checked into our rooms, the boys in one and the girls in one. Because they were both 6 person rooms, we had other people staying in these rooms with us, 3 other girls were in our room, and one guy was in with our 3 guys. It all worked out just fine and we had a good time conversing with our "German" roommates.

Erin and I took a little nap and at 7:30, we all took off to meet two girls and poor Matt Flemming from our Msu group at the Hofbrau haus. We got lost along the way, because of an error in navigation by Paula, but we soon on the right track and got there. Matt was standing outside of the HB having a cigarette and when we saw him, we all ran to him. We were so happy to see him, because we felt so badly leaving him back in Mayen. Once reunited, we all ate, drank, and were merry!!! It was a very good time and we returned to our rooms to sleep for the night.

The next morning we awoke, took showers, and proceeded like 10 feet from our hostel to the McDonalds for breakfast. P.s. no hash browns in European McDonalds, we were not amused. (lol).

We ate, and then took our time using the S-bahn to get around, we went to Marienplatz, saw St. Peters Kirche which is extremely rococo in style, the Frauen Kirche which is more bare inside but huge!!!!, the Glockenspiel (which we happened to find out from a southern American that it was supposed to go off not only at 5pm, but 11 and 12, daily) So we caught the Glockenspiel show at 11, and headed off to meet the others Jessica and Kate at the Munich Jewish Museum.

Until they showed up, we took amusing pictures, told Matt the things he missed, and reincarnated, through Nick, the CHAOS, of Thursday morning. It was a riot.

Everyone but the two Matts went to the musem, it was 4 euros a person and so they decided against it. The museum was alright, but mother, I can promise you the stuff we did in Munich last time was worth missing this for. The museum was very strict, you couldn't take coats, bags, cameras, or phones into the museum, and to be real honest, the museum was very small, the first floor which was aboubt as big as the Farwell 8th floor lobby was the only floor that I really cared for( there were three levels all teh same size, but the other two floors were special exhibitions which I didn't find too terribly interesting. I felt that the first floor was cool and I appreciated the history, etc. but the others I felt were a bit lack-luster.

After that, we headed off for the Englisches Garten (English Garden). If you know how big Central park in New York is, take that and maybe x's by two, thats how big it is. HUGE! We took the subway in, so we came right a huge sunbathing area where we laid down and bathed for awhile. Within 20 mins, people were already sunburnt (Not Matt of I, because Matt ,laid in the shade, and I had my back to the sun.

We then took off for the lake which was not far from us and found an eatery of sorts. We all ate something, I a huge plate of French fries, Matt ... well... Matt had like interesting huge like cinna-cakes. Everyone else had something like sausages and French fries. After this, we decided to rent paddle boats, that cost everyone 2 euro per person since we split the cost. We spent a good 30-40 mins on the lake. The girls boat held four: Paula, Erin, Jessica, and Kate, and the boys boat held easily 5, but we only had 4: Matt, Matt, Nick, and I. The boys did all the work paddling while I took pictures of the water, trees, ducks and ducklings, geese and baby geese, etc. It was a fun time. Afterwards the group split up, Matt and I decided to make our way to the Residenz and the rest went back to sunbathe.

We eventually found a S-bahn station, but the first subway that came was so packed you couldn't get in so we had to wait. We made it to the Residenz, but it basically closed 5 mins. before we got there. I had just wanted to take Matt to the free portion with the rooms painted with scenes from the German "die Niebelungen", which both Matthew and I have read. Since that was no longer an option and we needed to meet our group back at the Hostel at 8 to pick up luggage and what not, we decided to go to the Oedeonplatz which was just around the corner of the Residenz (which by the way is all under renovation). And then we walked in the Garden behind the Residence where that fountain and that green gazebo type thing is.

We then headed back to the Hofbrau haus so Matty could buy a T-shirt and we proceeded to walk back to Marienplatz. Along the way we found the most delicious ice cream and could not resist.

We made it back to the Hostel early, and sat in the lobby until our group arrived. The hostel had told us the night before that every night they do free beer tasting sessions at 8. So at 8 we all went in and learned some history and tried 4 different beers.

After this, we headed to the Haupt Bahn Hof. Our train was an overnight train, so we had seats which reclined back quite far and we slept on the train from about 10: 40 till 5 am when our train reached Bonn. then we had to take a train and back track from Bonn to Andernach, and then Andernach to Mayen Ost. We arrived around 7 something this morning and we slept. I slept till noon. Got up, ate breakfast, and have been on the computer answering emails, uploading pictures, and making dinner since. It is now time for me to get off the comp. because I am going to go spend some time with Matthew and his host family. I hope that this was a detailed enough update for ya'll and I will update more pictures when I can figure out how to make them smaller.

Much love to you all and take care!

Biss dann!