a week and counting

In just about a week from today I will be flying home to Tampa for Christmas break, something I can say I am quite excited about. The last struggle between me and total relaxation over the holidays is finishing a paper and submitting the last of my materials for my graduate school applications. I am hoping to have all of the aforementioned completed by Monday. So we'll see how that goes.

Last week Wednesday we had a trip to Heidelberg that I have yet to talk about! It was actually a lot of fun and felt very Christmas-y. Heidelberg is about a 2 hour drive from Bonn, although with the double decker bus we take on trips with the International Office it took closer to 3 hours. And once again we left quite early, 7:45am. But it was all well worth it. When we arrived, we were split into three groups of 20 and were assigned tour guides who took us on a walking tour of the castle and the city, which is beautiful by the way. You'll have to see pictures for the testament to this. The river is very picturesque, and so is the old bridge over it. (It's actually called The Old Bridge btw.) The ruins of the castle are the largest along the Rhine and possibly in Germany if I understood the tour guide correctly. You'll have to consult wikipedia for the history lesson. But large parts of it are still intact. You can see where one whole side of a tower fell away into the ground below because of a massive explosion of the gunpowder stored there. There was even a garden around the castle dedicated to an Elizabeth! So that was fun. :) Although it wasn't the prettiest garden, but that simply could have been that we went in the one month that Heidelberg is visited least, December, and so that's when they do all their renovation work. So there were construction guys all over the place fixing things and making it all look pretty again. They were entirely re-cobbling (or however you say that) one walkway up to the castle, but they were doing it in exactly the same way they used to do it back when the walkway was originally made, so it was relatively interesting to watch. Heidelberg also has the largest cask in the world. They have a huge wine cellar and really huge wooden casks to hold the wine in for the population of the castle, and their biggest one is something like 45,000+ gallons. (I think...I might have done the math wrong on that one.) There's a picture of me standing in front of it so you can see just how ridiculously huge this thing is. You can actually climb up stairs built along the side of it and have a look from the top to see where they filled it up.

After the tour of the castle, we wandered into town. Their Christmas market had started the weekend before and it was really cute. It's similar to the one we have going on here in Bonn, but there were more artists in Heidelberg crafting things like jewelry and ornaments right there in their little log cabin hut things. We had a lot of fun drinking Gluehwein and eating roasted almonds covered in all sorts of delicious things and walking through the markets. It was really pretty lit up at night too. They have one Gluehwein stand that looks like the candelabra thing Mom and Dad have, where it has candle holders on the bottom and when you light the candles, somehow that makes the little propeller like things at the top start moving so that the scenes carved in wood in the middle of the thing spin around. What do you call this thing?? Anyway, they have a huge replica of one and it was cool looking. I bought lots of Christmas presents here so be excited! :)

Other than that trip to Heidelberg, I've pretty much been hanging around Bonn the last couple of weeks. I went to go see the Golden Compass movie, which sadly wasn't nearly as good as the book, particularly considering they cut out the ending completely. Oh well. This past Wednesday my friend Caitlin who is studying in Koblenz came to Bonn with a friend of hers who is actually a German girl currently studying at UCF. So I had fun wandering around our own Christmas market with them. I believe I am going Saturday (tomorrow) to Cologne with Caitlin as well. And if I can swing it, I'm looking into going to Koblenz the beginning of the week.

Also this Sunday there's a concert at the Beethovenhalle of the winner of the piano competition Bonn hosts every year. It has been going on for weeks, and they finally narrow it down to one winner who is supposedly the best pianist of them all, and that person puts on a concert. So I'm hoping it's going to be good.

Thursday of next week the International Office is hosting a Weihnachtsdinner (Christmas dinner). They are providing the main part of the meal, I think there's a goose and pork chops or something, and a couple of side dishes, and everyone else has to bring either a side dish or a dessert with them. Stacy and I are signed up to bring pumpkin pie, something no one here has particularly heard of. But we're going to have to make it from scratch. Sadly no Mrs. Smith's around here :) So that should be fun.

All right well I'm back to work on my paper. Go look at my pictures of Heidelberg, and I will be home in a week to celebrate Christmas with some of you, and will certainly be telephoning with others once I'm in the states. Much love to all.