Paragliding!

Friday=greatest adrenaline rush adventure so far in my life. We had signed up to go paragliding that morning. For anyone who is reading this and does not know what paragliding is well here’s your description. Paragliding is where you are high up on the side of a mountain, and you run down a hill and the parachute pulls you up into the air. Of course you have someone strapped on behind you to

Woohoo!

 guide you while in the air but it still was amazing! I fell about 3 times on the side of the mountain in the snow and was wondering how in the heck does this guy expect me to run down this hill in the snow…? Well I started running with the adrenaline pumping and all of a sudden I’m floating about 3,000 feet up in the air. Gorgeous scenery! We were up in the air for at least 15 minutes. Wish it was longer but it was still worth it. The water in the river and lakes was so blue! We did fast spins in the air as well while we were landing. Then the next fun part was landing, which my buttocks was the first thing that hit the ground. The three of us who did it was Randall first, then me, then Angela. After Angela lands perfectly on her feet, Randall came over to me and said that she was the only one who landed like you’re suppose to. Randall said that he went face first to the ground while I just landed on my butt. Afterwards we went and ate lunch and then took a nice stroll on the edge of the mountains and right be a flowing river. We finally made it to one of the lakes that Interlaken has. The lake was huge and we had a rock-skipping contest. That night was a home made dinner. Interlaken is very expensive, like one meal would cost you 20 Swiss Franks, which its exchange rate is almost similar to the American Dollar. So we went to the grocery store and made dinner in the kitchen the hostel provided. At dinner we met this Australian guy named Max. That night Randall, Max, and I went walking around the city and looked at the mountains. Overall a great day.

Saturday. Our group split up while some went to Bern and others went up into the mountains. Randall and I wanted to go hiking in the Alps and we ran into Max again that morning and he

Mountain Tops

 wanted to tag along. So the three of us took a train and cable car high up into the mountain range. We were approximately 1,200 meters high. We went hiking that entire day into the mountains. We had to turn back though as the snow was getting to thick and you’d need proper equipment to go any further. The mountains were beautiful and it was worth all the walking. I also had the chance to drink water from a natural spring. The water was so delicious and so pure. I also felt like a real mountain man! Watching the sun set behind the mountains was amazing as well. We made it back to the hostel and had another home cook meal. Lasagna!!!!! Enough for that day, except our hostel room had the only balcony at the hostel, so I went outside and looked up at the stars. Now time for bed.

Our train left out at 8 this morning. We were able to get our own little private room that is in the trains. Now I’m here writing to all of y’all while sitting on this long train ride. Glad to be able to catch up on my blogs, and more adventures will come to be read about!

On Friday we took the free walking tour once again. It was one of the best tours since it had so much

Berlin Wall

 history in it. We saw so much like the Brandonburg Gate, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, The Holocaust/Jewish Memorial, and historical marks of WWII. The history behind the city was fascinating! We saw where Hitler committed suicide. We also learned fascinating facts about Berlin’s mottos and laws. Berlin’s city motto is, “Berlin is poor but sexy.” They seem to take pride in their nightlife, but they are in billions of dollars in debt. We also learned that Berlin does not have many laws, such as you can walk around with an open container, public indecency, urination out in the open as long as it isn’t on a government building, but the only law that citizens must abide by is you cannot jay walk.  Afterwards we went through all the museums that were in one area, and saw ancient Egyptian and Greek sculptures. That night was dinner and getting to bed super early.

Saturday was more like a bipolar day. For example, what we did in the morning was happy and joyful, but the afternoon was more sorrowful and paying respects. First we went to the Berlin Zoo,

Zoo!

which is the largest zoo in Europe, when it opened and saw gorgeous animals. We saw elephants, giraffes, tigers, lions, monkeys, jaguar, rhinos, wolves, penguins, and polar bears and much more. My personal favorite was watching the monkeys fight and wrestle with each other, very entertaining. I also enjoyed seeing the jaguar, most gorgeous animal, and seeing the funny penguins. After the zoo we headed to the schalsdfloiuasdfoipjua concentration camp. I don’t know how to describe this experience. Actually seeing where men and women use to sleep and the place they were force to stay at was very emotionally touching. It was one of those experiences where you have a lump in your throat the entire time. The concentration camp was bigger than what I expected. It was totally worth going to though to see and try to grasp the idea of how other humans used to suffer in this type of place. When we got back into town, we went shopping and ate dinner. We went out that night just to hang out and went dancing once again. We met some cool, yet weird people that night as well. This captain in the military was visiting his sister that weekend and we hung out and talked all night. We met some other people from New York University, but the guy with the girls was…a little in touch with his feminine side. We also met these girls from Ohio who were studying abroad in Luxemburg. One of the best parts of the night though was when one of the girls bit Randall on the hand because he stole this plastic egg from her, while she was biting him the other girl who plays rugby at their college was trying to tackle Randall. Funniest site all night! Walking home that night I decided I wanted to be a track star and run back to the hostel. It was awesome just running in the cold.

Polar Bears

The next day we left out early to catch out train back to Maastricht. We had to run in the train station to catch out train as we were already like 2 minutes late when we got there. That’s the end of this weekend!

On Saturday, Randall and I took a day trip to Amsterdam. Words cannot describe this town. We get there and take a look at a few museums, including the Van Gogh Museum. Afterwards we had to do the obvious while in Amsterdam, walk down the Red Light District. I had never felt so unclean after walking down a street in my life. There were “coffee shops” everywhere, and the smell of a certain type of plant in the air. There were also young ladies beckoning us to come “talk” to them. A very interesting experience, and I think the worse thing of all was that there was a huge church right in the middle of the Red Light District. Right in the middle!! I was fine with getting out of there. It was interesting to see, but sad at the same time to see. That was a good relaxing weekend.

First off, after the weekend to Paris, we had the next weekend to celebrate a huge festival that takes place all over Europe called Carnival. It’s kind of like Mardi Gras except scarier. We did not travel that weekend but went on a few day trips on Friday and Saturday. We went to 2 cities in Germany called Auchen and Cologne. Both were more historical and quiet towns with really nice cathedrals. On Friday when we went to Auchen we got lost in the city trying to find the train station back. It was also snowing. Mitch and myself decided to be kids again and climb to the top of a hill and roll down

 in the snow. The most awesome thing I did all day! We did it 4 times. When we went to Cologne, they were already celebrating Carnival and the whole town was going crazy. They had street dancers dressed up in these crazy costumes. It was snowing again and very cold so we didn’t stay long. But I don’t know what else to say about those days. They were just nice relaxing trips.

The next day was Sunday and the celebration of Carnival in Maastricht. You are suppose to dress up for it and it’s a very scary sight. Take Halloween in America and multiply that times 100. All ages are partaking in this extravaganza, from 8 year olds to 75 year olds. All the men and women are in the town square getting drunk, dancing, and singing. There were some crazy costumes. At one point in time we saw a man standing up on a hospital bed getting rolled down the street with these other 2 guys pushing him along. There were people pushing baby carriages around full of beer…a very interesting sight to see I must say. I was happy to make it out of their alive. My costume anyways was an escaped mental patient. I tried to go as cheap as I could. But that was the end of our Carnival adventures.

Carnival Group!

Now the real fun begins. It is Monday and our time to travel for 7 full days. Since Carnival is a huge holiday we do not have class at all for the whole week. So what do you do when class is cancelled for an entire week…well you take a couple of plane rides to Ireland and Scotland. Monday we left for Frankfurt where we were going to spend the night in the airport there. Our flight left at 6 in the morning and check in is at 4, and we’re college kids so why not just sleep in the airport. It was fun and an experience. I don’t think the cleaning lady liked us laying on her floor that she had to clean. Finally, Tuesday we are on our way to Dublin. We check into our hostel and take the free walking tour. Our tour guide was entertaining. Afterward we were dead tired and needed sleep! 

The next day was almost the best day since I’ve been in Europe. A few of us went on a guided bus tour all the way across Ireland. We stopped in a few towns along the way, but the highlight of the tour was going to the Cliffs of Moher. The Cliffs of Moher were beautiful! Our tour guide told us that there is a barrier so you don’t get near the edge, but no one is ever guarding it.

So pretty much she told us we could go across and near the edge if we dare, and I bet you can already guess what we did…of course we jumped over the barrier. We got right on the edge, and Randall, Amanda and I dangled our legs over the edge. Pretty exhilarating. I then did a cartwheel (or the best cartwheel I could try to do) on the little edge part we were on. An amazing experience!!! It was also my first time to see a legit ocean. I’d never seen an ocean before. After the Cliffs then we went to The Burren. I do not know exactly what it was except that it had rocks from melted glaciers from hundreds of thousands years ago everywhere. We also got to get close to the Atlantic Ocean. Also for lunch, I tried lamb for the first time and Irish cheesecake!!!! (MMMM cheesecake!) We were dead tired when we finally got home that night, but went ahead and listened to original Irish music by a few bands at a bar. That night we spent another night in an airport. We had another 6 a.m. flight. Now come with me and follow me to Scotland!

Hanging over the edge

Edinburgh here we come. We took our flight over to Scotland and landed on Thursday. The first day we did the free walking tour again over Edinburgh. Our guide had a lot of energy and was very enthusiastic. He taught us a lot of common day words and phrases that are used today and how they were originated in Scotland, but of course a few of those are not appropriate to put on this blog. After the tour we walked around Edinburgh and went shopping, that is when I purchased my awesome Loch Ness Monster T-Shirt!

New Shirt

At dinner this drunken lady, who was from America, asked if she could sit and talk to us because we were all American. The only thing I got out of any of our conversation was she told me to take my wife to Las Vegas right when we get married…I have no idea why she told me that or how it related to the story she was telling…just another weird story to put in this blog.

The next day in Scotland was one of the best. We took a tour through the Highland Mountain range and went out on a boat on Loch Ness. The day was gorgeous and our guide told us that this was the clearest he had ever seen a day been. Driving through the mountain range we were able to stop every now and then and take pictures. Next is Loch Ness! This was awesome and I was determine to find Nessie!!!!!! I know she’s out there. We took a boat out on the middle of the loch and saw the beautiful scenery. Oh by the way, I did find Nessie. I saw her swimming and ever got a picture with her! That night we went out dancing which I always love to do.

We found Nessie!

Now it is Saturday, and our last day of our trip. We all separated and went our own ways. Four of us went inside Edinburgh Castle. Inside Randall and I found our Brother David Doerries.

Scottish Man

 He was playing the bag pipes! The castle was awesome especially seeing the dungeon rooms and crown jewels. Afterwards we decided to climb a volcano (yeah no big deal just decided to climb a volcano). Okay it was an extinct volcano, but it used to be a legit volcano. It was a work out, and I learned the hard way that you do not go dancing the night before climbing a volcano or your legs will not be happy with you for the rest of the day. It was so worth climbing though because getting to the top you could see all of Edinburgh and look across the ocean. That night was dinner and take a guess what we did again that night???? Yep you guessed right, we had another eventful night of sleeping in an airport. Lets count it: 6 nights, 3 night spending in an airport. The glory days of traveling. Finally our week was over and we were landing in Germany on Sunday morning. A great week off from school and a well worth trip! 

On top of the volcano!

Well where to start…We had our first trip on our own, dealing with the trains and hostels by ourself. Now I can mark off on my bucket list that I have had to run to catch my train in a train station. We arrived to Liege right when our other train was suppose to leave so we sprinted to our next train and barely made it. Doors were just about to close on us. Interesting experience but definitely not the last. We were doing good so far until we get to Namur where they told us that our train from there to Paris doesn’t even exist anymore…but the internet told me the time it was leaving and everything. From there we had to take a train back to Brussels and pray that we can even get on a train from there to Paris. We finally make it to Paris and to our very nice hostel (which was more like a hotel) around 12:30. We check in and found out that the awesome guy at the front desk speaks 12 different languages…yes that’s right I said he can speak 12 different languages. Here’s our start in Paris.

Bike Rides

Friday! Our first day out on the town on Paris! We had planned a bike ride tour of Paris at a place called Fat Bike Tours. We took a 4 hour tour, including lunch, around the main tourists spots of Paris like the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre Museum, Les Invalides (where Napoleon is buried), the military school that Napoleon attended, and a gorgeous park. We were also the only Americans on the tour out of about 30ish people, and the others were Australian! We were tired after the bike ride and went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. The guys at the front desk were able to hook us up on dinner that night. A restaurant right beside the hotel gave us a deal because we were staying at the hotel. They served us free wine, and the meal was delicious. After dinner we walked around Paris, and back to the sites we had seen earlier in the day so we can see them at night and watch the Eiffel Tower light up and sparkle at night. Time for bed, but first we found out that Paris’s Red Light District was only 2 blocks down from out hotel, and it’s pretty shady. Now time for bed!! 

Courtney and I in front of Les Invalides

Saturday!!! A great thing about this hotel is it provides free breakfast, got to love it.

Rain by the Church

Today we went out to see Sacre Coeur, which is a gorgeous white church that overlooks all of Paris. It was raining, but still gorgeous. On our way up to the church, which took forever because of all the stairs, we saw a creepy guy trying to be like a greek God. He kept looking at us and winked 6 times at the other guy in our group. He was seriously creepy and interesting. They were having service inside of the church when we went in. While we were there some people dressed in crazy costumes were putting on a street show. They were dancing and acting crazy. We talked to one of the girls part of it and to the main guy leading it, and they told us that they are a Christian fellowship that were spreading the gospel and showing people that you can be a Christian and still have fun at the same time. They were pretty awesome and the girl told me that she will come back with us to Texas and we can do the same thing in America! We then kept on walking and found the Montemarte square where there was a lot of artists who would draw your picture right there. Afterwards we went and checked out

Baylor in Paris

Notre Dame, and took even more pictures by the Eiffel Tower. We then saw the Arc de Triumph. We witnessed a bride and groom take wedding pictures and cross the busiest street in Paris and stopped/blocked traffic and was almost hit. We also saw 12 year old kids smoking cigarettes, starting so young now a days. We headed back towards the hotel but along the way we rode on a double decker metro subway, and realized just how loud Americans really are. Other Americans on the metro were getting out and one of the girls got stuck in the door because they didn’t get out as quickly, but it was pretty hilarious. That night was dinner and a celebration because at 12 that night Courtney, a girl in our traveling group, was turning 21. It was her birthday in Paris! So it was dinner and then we went out dancing. Overall a great day.

Sunday! Well we kind of went our separate ways this day. Some people woke up too late, but Randall and I wanted to go see the Louvre Museum. At first we got lost trying to get in, but then found the entrance. It was a great day to go because they told us admission was free!

Imitating Cupid Sculpture

 We went around mimicking a lot of the sculptures. The museum was gorgeous and huge, and you could easily get lost in there. They told us that if you spend 1 minute on every exhibit and do that for 24 hours a day and 7 days a week then it would still take you 9 months to see everything in there. The funny thing is we were asked my a lot of Asians to take their picture with the item in the background, I think I got asked twice and Randall took 3 pictures. It was really awesome seeing a lot of the ancient Egyptian artifacts. We even saw a real mummy!! We saw the Code of Hammurabi, Venus de Milo, Cupid Kissing Psych, and the Mona Lisa. After leaving the Louvre we decided to go souvenir shopping. I actually bought a new hat that has pen stripes in it! Got to love it. Now it’s time to leave and we have a scary ride ahead hoping that nothing goes wrong with our train rides like they did on the way to Paris. We finally made it safely back to Maastricht at 11:30.

Mona Lisa

Well finally the vacation feeling is over and now it’s back to the books. I don’t have a class on Monday which is excellent. On Monday Stephanie and I walked around Maastricht to find a cell phone store, but stores in Europe are not like the ones in America. They don’t usually open till around 11 or 12 o’clock, plus they’re in no hurry to open up. It was one of the first actual relaxing days I’ve had so far. I forgot to mention before about what happened that night. Randall and I decided to go play frisbee out in the snow! It was awesome and very original. Then Katherine Ann, Randall, and myself built a huge snowman, like a legit snowman. We were all a family and took family photos. His name was Yawn and well he’s in a better place now…he melted just the other day. 

                  The Family: Grant, Randall, Katherine Ann, and Yawn!

Tuesday was when I actually started class…at 8:30 in the morning. My first class is called International Management, and sounds interesting because the students are the ones who get to lecture and teach the class over the reading material. I think someone that helps is that our teacher is very young and beautiful and she’s very nice. Later in the day was my abnormal psychology class with our awesome sponsor, Dr. Hodges. She’s the nicest lady you’d ever meet, and she makes her class very interesting. 

Today was the long day of classes. I begin at 11 o’clock with Dutch Art History, but the class goes from 11 till 3:30 with a 30 minute lunch break in the middle. We took a tour of a cathedral that was built way back in the 1100s. We saw a big giant tower that was painted red with 400 oxen blood. It’s a marvelous sight to see. It was also one of the best dinners that they’ve served us so far at the dorm, we had salmon with mashed potatoes and carrots. After dinner I had abnormal psychology again at 6:30 and we took our first quiz which went very well. I just got back from a nice walk/jog around the town and found a nice little park where guys were all playing soccer in the cold. 

The first week of classes went well but it has shown me that this study abroad thing isn’t just a walk in the park. There is a lot of reading to do for each class and it’s your responsibility to get the reading done. So far so good, and tomorrow our train leaves out and we are heading to Paris for the weekend! But until after Paris, see you next time.

Saturday was awesome! We went to a small tourist town in Germany that was covered in powdery white snow. The country side was amazing! We got a tour of the city and was able to taste some of their famous chocolate. We also ate at some small pub that served us pork and potatoes! A lot of potatoes. We had free time in the city and went back to one of the chocolate candy stores, but no one there spoke English. It was a very interesting time trying to order coffee. There was plenty of people slipping and falling in the snow, and we did start a mini snowball war. The day ended very nicely when later that night we were able to watch Baylor kick UT’s butt in overtime!!!! 

Today was our first free day that we didn’t have anything planned to do as a group. It was time to explore this foreign little town. Randall and I went walking around and suddenly stumbled upon a small petting zoo. Random to say the least. The petting zoo had goats, deer, peacocks, roosters, and hundreds of ducks and birds. There was also that creepy bird guy who feeds the birds and they swarm to him like aunts on peanut butter. We were like what the heck is a small petting zoo doing in the middle of nowhere, but I did get to pet the goat. We walked a little farther down the road and found an old fort on a hill. It was at the highest point in Maastricht it seemed. We climbed the stairs behind the fort to go higher up on the hill and had a gorgeous view of the city. We found a huge snow sledding hill that we definitely plan on going back to. After getting back to the dorm I decided to go out again for a nice jog and walk farther into the city by myself. I found a bridge that goes down the river that had frozen ice on which made it good for dancing and doing the moon walk on. Since I had my ipod on I decided to bust a few moves right there, and I got a few weird looks from the locals. That was the end of that excitement, and now I’m waiting in the laundry room to use a dryer, which the dryers and washers stink here and take forever!!!!!

We took a group trip on Monday to see Stonehenge and the city of Bath. Stonehenge was awesome to see and the history that our awesome tour guide gave us was very interesting. Our tour guide was fun to listen to especially when she would say the word “brewery”. The city of Bath is the most gorgeous city I’ve ever seen. We took a tour to see the hot springs that the city was famous for. We ate at Sally Luns which was a house built in the 1400s. A great all around trip.

London was amazing. We saw Big Ben, Westminster, the Eye of London, Parlimient, Hyde Park, Tower of London, a couple of museums, and ate at a few interesting pubs. During the museums, Randall and I just decided to mimic the statues and take pictures doing their poses. We also got to see dinosaur bones! We went out dancing two nights and the places were bumping. The other night of dancing was a little weird because European creepers who stunk like they haven’t taken a shower in 7 days were everywhere and they would try to dance with every girl they saw. Going out was a blast but seeing the city during the day made the trip worth it! Seeing the crown jewels and the priceless diamonds that are in the Tower of London was amazing. At last our trip was over and it was time to get back to Maastricht. But the adventures did not stop there. On our way back on the train ride, one of our girls on the trip was being hit on by a creepy European. He kept trying to make out with her and so they other girls sitting with her came and got me. I went to where he was and acted like I was her boyfriend. He seemed drunk and high. He kept talking to me and questioning me, but finally he went away, and that was that.