Opening Tour

I am obviously slightly behind on my blogging (I finally got around to creating this thing yesterday) but I really want to give everyone an idea of what opening tour was like, so I am going to start from the beginning anyway. I’ll try to be brief but bear with me if I’m not!

BERLIN
Okay, so I left Seattle at 7am on Sunday Sept 4th and arrived in Berlin around noon on Monday Sept 5th. Long day! We stayed in Berlin until Thursday, and the whole experience was kind of a whirlwind of tours, jetlag, and making new friends. The weather was very cool, I had to buy a jacket because I didn’t have enough warm clothes with me! (My bigger bag was already in Florence) On Tuesday we had a bus tour of the city. Berlin is a beautiful city but very modern, so I didn’t really feel like I was in a European city. It’s so different than everywhere else I’ve been! Seeing the Berlin wall was amazing, and later that day we visited the Jewish museum. The architecture of the museum was so unique…it was a very interesting but unsettling visit. The next day we all toured Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp just outside of Berlin. The experience was incredibly disturbing but it is something that I think everyone should see once in their life. That night we had dinner with the entire group (all 200 of us!) at a restaurant in Berlin. The next morning (Thursday) we were up and out of the hotel by 8am and en route to Prague!

PRAGUE
On the way to Prague we stopped in Dresden, Germany. Even though the weather was dreary and drizzly I loved this city! It was very small and the streets were all cobblestone. Dresden has made a huge effort to rebuild buildings that were destroyed during WWII, so it felt so historical and had so much personality. We had a walking tour through the palace in the center of the city and then went to the open air market for lunch. Our tour guide was the quintessential European man: very well dressed, carried a satchel, sparkling blue eyes, great accent, nice shoes. He was so adorable! Anyway after lunch we got back on our buses and finally arrived in Prague at around 8. Just in time for dinner! On Friday we had a walking tour through Prague. Prague is such a beautiful city and the weather was perfect too. Trolleys are the most common form of public transportation, but they have a subway system as well. We took a trolley up to a castle and then had a tour past the castle and through the church (both on the top of a large hill) then we walked down through the city and had lunch in a big square. I wish I could explain the city better…ill try to post pictures. We had a buffet dinner in the hotel and then at least half the kids on the program went on a Pub Crawl. It was lots of fun…I’ll leave it at that ☺

BAD KHOLGRUB
The next morning (Saturday) we got back on the buses and headed to Bad Kholgrub, Germany. We stopped in Nuremburg for a tour and lunch. Nuremburg was just like Leavenworth! It was so cute and soo hot out too. We just happened to be there at the same time as the Red Bull National Championships…so the city was absolutely packed with tourists. I would have liked to see it on a day where it was less crowded, but it was cool to see the events too. There were jumps set up throughout the city and bikers would whip down the streets and do crazy tricks every couple minutes. Sidenote: I had the most delicious sausage sandwich of my life here. And it was only 2 euro! Yum. After lunch we got back on the road and arrived in Bad Kholgrub at around 8 at night. Everyone’s faces when we pulled into this city were priceless. Keep in mind we had just come from Prague and Berlin where the nightlife was amazing…so when we realized that there were more cows in this tiny mountain village than people most of us were not exactly pleased. Especially because we were spending 4 days there. But Bad Kholgrub surprised us all and I had the most amazing time there!

Sunday morning was the first morning since opening tour began that I was able to sleep in until 10, and I took full advantage of this. The group was split up into 2 hotels because we all couldn’t fit into one, so that was kind of inconvenient but it worked out. Before going on the optional hike this afternoon I walked into town with a few friends. Town was about a 10 min walk from the hotel, and it was so quaint and tiny. Nothing was open because it was Sunday, but there were a few restaurants, a convenience store, a tourist center, and an awesome mini golf course! I chose to do the hardest hike; it was so fun but also pretty intense! We hiked to the top of a small mountain and the view at the very top was absolutely amazing. We were definitely in the middle of the countryside but it was so beautiful. Green fields and rolling mountains as far as the eye could see. There were also TONS of cows up there. Who knew that cows could climb mountains?! After we finally made our way down we were all exhausted but a bunch of us decided to go swimming in the hotel pool until dinner. Apparently someone from the group was resourceful enough to find the only pub in town, so naturally that is where we all headed after dinner. This pub definitely didn’t know what hit them. I don’t think it will ever be that full again, but I had so much fun. At one point during this night I was sitting at a table with men wearing lederhosen, drinking a stein, and singing German drinking songs. Definitely the most German moment of my life thus far. On Monday a bunch of my friends and I rented bikes in town and decided to bike to a lake that didn’t seem too far away. Getting there was an adventure: we biked along a rolling highway with cars rushing by, no sidewalks, and of course they didn’t give us helmets! This was by far the most scenic bike ride of my entire life, the views of the mountains and fields were absolutely amazing! We somehow arrived at our intended lake and spent the day swimming, playing beach volleyball, eating, and drinking beer. The bike ride home was uphill almost the entire way so that was rough but definitely worth it! I had such a fantastic day, maybe my favorite day of the whole opening tour. The next day we had a tour of the Castle of Neuschwanstein, which is the castle that Walt Disney based the Disney castle on. The guy who designed it was a little bit insane (actually) but he was very talented. It was the most beautiful but over the top piece of architecture that I have ever seen. His favorite animal was a swan, if that gives you any idea of what the décor was like. Once we arrived back in Bad Kholgrub everyone ate dinner and then went back to our favorite pub one last time before heading to FLORENCE the next morning. Finally! And there you have it, opening tour 2011.