Thwarted

*So I actually wrote this last Sunday, but my computer/internet wouldn't let me post it and I truly didn't realize how beat I would be after my travels each day, so this is the first chance I have had to put it up. As for my Spring Break, I have been writing lots of stuff down while sitting on the train/waiting for the train, so the next couple of posts will be slightly different in format, but that is excitement that is yet to come. First, on with this show. PS. I did get to adventure out much later in the day on Sunday and it was awesome!*

My adventures today have been thwarted by icky weather (it's about 30 degrees and raining. I'm good with one or the either, but I'm not going to walk around on cobblestones(=slippery) in weather like this. I'd rather be inside in my freezing cold room than outside in the rain and freezing cold(the heater and I have just agreed to disagree; it'll continue not working and I'll continue to live under my amazing blanket). Hopefully it'll clear up a little and I can go for at least a walk. And regardless of the weather tomorrow, I'm going somewhere, I'm just not sure where yet. There is a castle in Bad Bentheim that I want to go to, but I'm not sure if my pass will get me there and my program director hasn't e-mailed me back yet. But there is a library in Wolfenbüttel that I'm pretty sure has "Bethann" written all over it.

So, instead of talking about what I might do, I'm going to talk about something I have done. Here are pictures of my trip to Goslar, which I did about a month ago with a guy from Michigan named Mark. It took close to 5 hours on the train(3 trains actually) to get there, but Goslar is probably one of my favorite cities so far. It is older than Lüneburg at around 1500 years old(I believe) and has a lot of similarities to Lüneburg. It has the same vachwerk(the wooden slates on the houses and buildings that make it scream Germany. I'm pretty sure that's the name of it, but I have no idea if my spelling is correct) but instead of reddish-brown, everything was a dark blue or black.

One of the first things we saw was this gorgeous church that was just plain huge. We ended up walking past another church where people were handing out pamphlets and a man was screaming about Jesus(which was the only word I could understand), but that was also very exciting and another incredibly gorgeous church.




Walking around Goslar made me feel like I was in a Robin Hood movie. There were really random wooden bridges over streams and everything just felt very medieval. We even found a shop that has medieval costumes (I think there is a festival of some sort, but I can't honestly remember).











So Mark has this thing for currywurst(it is what it sounds like. In theory, it should be a curried sausage, but it usually ends up being a regular sausage with curried ketchup, which I personally am not a huge fan of. I'd rather eat a bratwurst over a currywurst, but that's just me), he's not addicted to it or anything, but most German cities have multiple street vendors that sell it, so we figured we would look around for it. Yeah, after over an hour, we were just looking for places that serve food. We ended up in a part of town that didn't have much in the way of shopping or food and when we found our way back to the part of town that has shopping and food, we realized it was far more shopping than food, which we eventually did find. We ended up eating at a German fast food place were the cashier was very nice and very eager to help us with our German.

So, we wandered and ate and were trying to figure out what we should do since it would be pretty lame in for almost 5 hours to spend maybe 2 hours in a city. I should also mention here that when we got there, the first thing we noticed was this really big hill and there was talk about climbing the big hill.

Which we did. We really just started up a street and then kept walking up. We were really lucky and took all of the right turns to get up the hill and man, was it a fantastic view at the top. It was a pretty foggy day, so we couldn't see nearly as much as on a clear day, but it is one of those "really want to do this again before I leave" things. This was by far one of the steepest hills I have ever climbed(and a bit of weirdness, I was reading "The Princess Bride" on the way to Goslar and I stopped on the Cliffs of Insanity. This hill reminded me so much of the one Buttercup pushes Westley down that it was just plain creepy).












And that's all I have of Goslar. Not the nicest of all days to travel, but it didn't rain too much and it was fairly warm(which is all you can ask for here). As I said earlier, I did end up going out on Sunday. I took a walk and a few pictures that some Kristins might be interested in(also, it is true, many of the pictures show me without a hat, but if you notice, my hair is up in all of those pictures. Why? So, glad you asked. It is incredibly humid here, so straightening and keeping my hair straight is a challenge and since I only like to wear my hair down when it is straight, up it usually goes.) So, these ones are just because I am just the best littlest sister ever(and they're only about, what? a year late?).