Would you like fries with that?

Yup, I have finally sorted through my pictures of Hamburg!! I survived midterms(hopefully, I did well on everything, if not, I still have half a semester to fix poor grades) and now we are into Spring Break. Yup, I have no classes for a week (ah, finally). It didn't actually occur to me until yesterday how burnt I am. I walked out of my normal Friday exam and all I wanted to do was just take a nap(which I didn't, instead I organized my pictures!)

So, for Spring Break, I've opted to stay in the state instead of flying off to Paris or Milan or London like the other American students (financially speaking, it's just a smarter move for me to stick in the state where I can travel for free). So, for the past week I've been getting the "Oh, that sucks" from the other students here, but I'm really excited about this next week. Yes, it would have been awesome to fly off to Ireland for a week or even go south to Austria, but there is a lot to do in Lower Saxony. I really lucked out on my school location. I'm a half hour away from Hamburg and an hour and a half away from Bremen(which are two of the biggest cities in the country). So, I will not be lacking on things to see. The main reason why the Americans here do the "aw, that's too bad" is because cities like Hamburg and Bremen are usually day trips for us here. It's kind of like living in Toledo and going to Cleveland for the day(except way better since I'm in Germany!)

And that's why I'm not upset about sticking around here for a week. I'm in Germany!!!! Which will also pay off in a week since most students are traveling to other countries and won't be speaking German every day. It's insane how much your language skills can drop when you don't speak it everyday. That's the other thing I am crazy excited about... one solid week without any other Americans around. One solid week of nothing but German(which is just to fantastic to put into words).

In other news, I just drank tea that tastes like Vick's vapor-rub.

Never again. A friend gave it to me because she didn't like it.

Now I know why.

Anyway, so my plan for Spring Break is to go Castle and Library Hunting. I've never been to a true blue castle before and I love the smell of library books, so it sounded like a plan to me. I'm also going to try to go to concerts and museums in the region. Also, going to travel part of the "Fairy Tale Route", which is the cities where some of the Grimm Brothers' Tales take place('cause I'm living in the same country that stories like Rapunzel and Cinderella originated. Seriously, all the time... awesome!) And since I will be ending up back at my place every night, I will try to get pictures up and stories of each place everyday next week.

Which means I need to get the places I've already visited up in the next two days.

And that brings me back(since I never forget my topics ;) to Hamburg. Hamburg is where I flew in to and probably where I will leave from. It was one of the cities that was heavily bombed during World War II and as a result, there are many many new buildings. I went with my entire group the second week I was here and we did a good majority of the "touristy" things that I usually wouldn't do. The most awesome of which was St. Nikolai Kirche(St. Nicholas Church) which I will talk about later.

First, the Rathaus. I'm fairly certain this did survive the war and we didn't actually take a tour or anything, we just looked around and then went out into the courtyard which had an incredibly intricate fountain that I can't wait to go back and see when it is warmer and running. A lot of the pictures I took inside were attempts at the gorgeous stain glassed windows(if you enjoy stain glass windows, Germany is the place for you. Walk into any government building or church and you will be amazed for hours. I was in a church at sunset one night and it was one of the most remarkable sights I have ever seen!)















We then went to visit one of the coolest, but most depressing things I have ever experienced, St. Nikolai Kirche. St. Nikolai was destroyed during the night bomb raids on Hamburg and all that remains is the tower and steeple. It was once the highest church in Europe(maybe the world) and I quite possibly one of the highest points in Germany before the war. You can still physically see the scars and marks of that on this empty skeleton. It is blackened and dark almost everywhere you look. You can not walk too close of certain sides because chunks of it are still falling down, but it has been reinforced so you can take an elevator up to the top and get one of the best views of Hamburg possible(it's either 70 or 170 meters up...or somewhere in-between, I honestly can't remember).

But this space has now become an anti-war memorial and has a museum devoted to the education of the raids on Hamburg and the horrors of World War II. It was one of those experiences that you can never fully explain, but I know will always stay with me.




















After the church, we went down to the pier and took the ferry around the city. It was an incredibly cold day in January, so not the best for sitting on a boat on the water, but it was still very nice. There were huge hunks of ice on the water and the boat kept colliding with them, so we all felt like we were on the Titanic. We then went to the Hamburg Museum, which is basically as museum about the history of Hamburg. We spent a really long time in about two rooms with a woman who had substantial English skills but a very large fear of public speaking, so it made the entire thing feel much much longer.







The other pictures are of things that are around, like the Burger King. So, this Burger King was once a public bathing station for Hamburg and then was turned into a library or something and then the city couldn't afford it anymore and they were going to destroy it, until Burger King bought it under the provision that the outside had to remain basically the same. So this very old historic looking building is actually just a Burger King. It's kind of depressing to see the modern world plastered on such a gorgeous piece of architecture, but then again, it is pretty funny. There is a statue of naked people right in front of a Burger King.








And this was my first pretzel in Germany. It took me over a week to find a place where I could buy a pretzel. Most bakeries do not make them so I was so excited I took a picture. And yes, pretzels look the same in Germany as they do in America, I had just gotten 1/3 of the way through this one before I realized I wanted a picture.