The Past Week and Plans for Next Week

Once again time has flown (likely a common occurrence). This past Saturday our German classes took group field trips to one of two locations. My group went to Heidelberg, Germany, known for beautiful scenery, a gigantic castle, and its university. The others went to lake Constance, another beautiful place. 

The trip was a blast. We saw a good chunk of the old part of the town, including some churches, the university, and a memorial to Martin Luther, who worked on his Heidelberg Dissertation here.

My favorite part was the castle, hands down. I could not shake the feeling when I was there that of the epic history I was walking through. It was also fun to see towers that I think the Lord of the

Rings city of Gondor took ideas from. Inside there is a vat or gigantic keg for used for holding wine from the river valleys in the area. If I had to guess, it was probably 20 ft tall and 40 feet deep. Huge! This town has maybe 140,000 people with students, but the atmosphere is very nice. We spent the whole day here, but it flew by.

Today marks the end of my program's "intensive phase." What that means is that for the past week and a half or so we have had two hours of German class followed by an hour and a half of a crash European Union course. We had a half hour in between, but I am glad to be done with that schedule. Tomorrow morning, we leave for Basel, Switzerland to catch planes to either Riga, Latvia, or Tallinn, Estonia. My half of the program is headed to Riga. We spend two days there holding meetings with various government and academic people talking about the benefits and struggles of European integration that a small European country so close to Russia faced. After that we go to Berlin, where we will talk with similar people but in the German government (Bundestag). This should be very interesting. Historically, Riga was the largest city of the Swedish "empire," so there is a lot of history there. Berlin will no doubt hold much for us to learn as well. 

Today also included two tests, one in each subject :( that I am very glad to be done with. On Wednesday next week we return to class where I have, International Economic Relations of the EU, Advanced Composition, Reading and Conversation (German), Europe- The Dynamics of Integration: From the Marshall Plan to the Eastern Enlargement of the EU, Shifting Paradigms from 'Domestic' to 'European' Politics: Germany in the European Union, and lastly my continued seminar on the EU that ties in our field trips. A full schedule, but that first week, we start Wednesday, then are finished Thursday, and go skiing in the Alps on Friday!! What a week to look forward to. 

I went to my first German soccer (football) game yesterday, I leave for Riga tomorrow, and go skiing in the Alps next Friday. This program is amazing.