Happy New Years Everyone!
I promised to post some pictures of the holidays around Aix-en-Provence so here ya go:
This is the christmas tree that we have in our house. And by have I mean we still haven't taken it down even though its january 5th and it is long dead. :-P We made all of the decorations. I made the angel on the top and santa and his eight reindeer under the tree. It was good fun. We made them while drinking eggnog that I had made. :-D
This is the main street in Aix called the Cours Mirabeau. All of the little buildings on the side had a lot of little gifts and things in them. It was awesome.
This is the vin chaud. We actually made some tonight at home as well since the buildings are now torn down because Christmas is over.
While I was takin pictures of the holiday festivities, I also took some pictures of my favorite fountain around here:
The last couple days before school got out for me we had a few parties in class. For
one of them I made a cake. The problem was, my roomates were making cakes too so I had to use a different pan to make mine in. The result was this:
And the adventure begins...
On the Saturday after school got out, Alex and I woke up early (before the sun was up) and caught a bus to Marseille. The next step was supposed to be to catch a train to Nice and then a flight to Berlin. However, as we were about to board the train for Nice, Alex turns to me with a concerned look on his face and says "I think I forgot my passport..." I started cracking up and didn't stop laughing until we had taken the bus all the way back to Aix and walked all the way back home and found his passport that had been next to his bed. It wasn't a big deal because our flight out of Nice didn't leave until 6 pm so we had plenty of time. After we finally got to Berlin, my dad's cousin Nancy met us at the airport and took us to her house. After a little refueling, Alex and I went out and met my cousin Eric and his friends and had a fun night.
The next couple days were filled with shopping and touristy things around Berlin. I bought some boots finally and I got to see some parts of Berlin that I hadn't seen the previous time that I was there. It was also really great because it was Christmastime so there were a whole bunch of Christmas markets set up with food, gluwein (hot wine in German), and a bunch of candy and trinkets. There was also a giant windmill type thing. My mom has a miniature of it at home so I thought it was really cool. Here is Alex and I in front of it.
Eric showed Alex and I around this Christmas market and I got to try some German food. I got a pita type thing with some meat in it and I also tried this candy that is chocolate on the outside and some time of marshmellow filling inside. It was really good, and only 50 centimes! (50 Euro cents). The people we were hanging out with all got some gluwein to taste but I decided to try the hot chocolate instead, which was very tasty. Around this Market, Christmas music was playing, which was awesome because I hadn't heard Christmas music all year because for some reason the French don't particularly care for American Christmas music while the Germans do. :-D
Alex and I did some exploring around Berlin ourselves. I knew a little bit of the city so I showed him where I had been along with some new places. We went to Checkpoint Charlie, which was a main crossing point between East and West Berlin. There were people dressed up as soldiers, which was kind of creepy.
We followed the path of the Berlin wall for a little while and passed another Christmas market, which we obviously had to walk through because we were on a search for 1/2 meter long sausages. Unfortunately we did not find these sausages and ended up getting smaller ones. However we did get to watch some kids go down a man made snow hill in intertubes, which made me really jealous. It was way too cold to be near the snow though. We then got back on track and continued along the path of the old wall and visited the Brandenburg gate, Holocaust memorial and the Reichstag. It was my second time at the Reichstag so I wanted to go up in it this time, but it was closed because we visited on Christmas eve and when we went back on the 26th we didn't want to wait in line because it was freezing cold outside.
Eric joined us for some of the touristy things one day as well. We walked around randomly for a little while. Well at least Alex and I thought it was random. Eric knew where he was heading. At one point we went to a huge cathedral. We were going to go inside but it cost money and none of us wanted to pay :-P.
Next to the cathedral was the biggest section of Christmas markets that we had seen yet. There were even rides!
We continued and saw the site of the Nazi book burning, next to which, ironically, was an ice skating rink that had been set up for the holidays. It was also weird to watch the people walking around the plaque and the window and trying to figure out what had taken place here, Eric said that a lot of people were confused and did not know that they were walking through the place where this giant book burning took place.
The window in the ground with the empty book sheves symbolizes the books that would have been if they had not been burned.
We also visited the East Side Gallery, which is the part of the Berlin Wall that is still standing and has been painted on. There was a lot of graffiti on it from people over the years as well. My favorite part of it was this:
The most famous part of it was this:
They also had a part that still had both sides of the walls up. That was cool to see.
For Christmas we had a nice Christmas dinner of ham and a potato dish. We opened stockings and gifts and hung out all day. Jenna, Eric, Alex, and I went to an awesome playground with a zipline! German playgrounds are so much better than any I have ever seen.
The next step along Alex and my adventure was Amsterdam. We took a night train from Berlin to Amsterdam that took about 10 hours and was highly uncomfortable.
But in the end we arrived in Amsterdam, met Saqib there and the fun and debauchery began. We checked into our hostel then walked around a little. The whole time we were there we tried to go to the Ann Frank house but there was always a really long line, so we never did. We did go to the Van Gogh Museum, which was ok. For New Years, we hung out with some people at a hostel and set off some fireworks and then left early in the morning to catch a train home, which was an adventure in itself. We left Amsterdam at 7 in the morning and didn't get back to Aix until 11 pm. It was a very long day and we were all glad to finally be home in nice warm beds. Here are some pics from Amsterdam:
Me and Saqib in a shoe, the trademark of Holland.
Alex and I in front of the beautiful canals.
The canals themselves:
All in all, Amsterdam is a beautiful city and I will definatly go back in the summer when it is warmer!
