I lied. Like definitely lied. Sorry guys. I'm a liar.
In case you don't remember my lie, it went something like this: "let's pretend this month will be the one I post every Sunday." Fun fact - there are no more Sundays left in October. Whoops!
In all fairness, two Sundays ago I was amidst midterms and couldn't muster up enough lying power to pretend I was enjoying midterms. Last Sunday, I was in Germany. This past Sunday, I really wanted to watch TV.
Rewind!
Seriously, nothing exciting happened that first week I missed. I went to class, aced some midterms, and returned home to do work. I did make my first trip over to Sweden that Saturday though, which is surprising because Sweden is only a 30-minute train ride away. We visited Malmö and Lund, which aren't huge cities, but they have really cool architecture and urban design.
Malmö is split between an industrial half (which is completely devoid of people on weekends) and a more cultural half (which had a really cool fountain and a fake Chipotle). Lund is a younger, more lively city because of the university it houses, but because of the overcast weather, we gave up on trekking around and ended up in a nice cafe for some cake to top off the fake Chipotle.
The following week contained even more midterms and I think the only notable thing I did was check out the Rosenberg Castle in Copenhagen, which houses the crown jewels. Before you ask, no - I did not create a master plot to steal them. But thank you for asking; I appreciate it.
Alright, now we move into my awesome week in Germany. As I've mentioned before, this trip was to Berlin and Frankfurt with my core class, Video Game Development. There's 18 people in my class, plus our professor and academic director to round out the group to an even 20. We were gone early Sunday morning to late Friday night and we had a ~*blast*~. Seriously though, it was awesome.
We visited both gaming companies and cultural stops. I don't want to bore my interested readers with talk of nerd stuff, but some of these companies were unreal. Some produce video games (which is what I've been doing this semester), some create video game engines (which are then used to produce games), and some do 3D graphics and only do minimal gaming work. It was really cool to meet artists, animators, programmers, and everyone involved in making this industry worth billions of dollars.
As for cultural visits, Berlin held way more in store for us than Frankfurt did. Berlin visits included a city-wide bike tour, the Berlin Wall (multiple parts of it, including the amazing one with all the murals), the Berlin Philharmonic, and the Reichstag dome. A lot of people talked Frankfurt down because it's "boring," but my whole class thought Frankfurt was beautiful and well-designed. However, we didn't do many cultural visits so there's not much to talk about on that front.
Now let me just spend one paragraph talking about how unreal this food was. I cannot emphasize how luxurious this food was. Like wow. Who made this. Our study abroad institute paid for one group meal a day and they spent about as much money as it would take to feed me for a whole year. And I am not complaining. Pork this, duck that, lobster something. Tearing up just talking about this because I'll never eat that great again.
After we returned to Copenhagen, a few of my friends studying abroad in Dublin contacted me to let me know that they were visiting for the weekend, so I spent the past few days being a tour guide and food critic. I may just have a knack for one of those things. Scratch that, I may just have a knack for walking around and eating food.
Okay, I've thoroughly depressed myself with all this talk of deliciousness. I'll be headed to Amsterdam this weekend for Halloween, but I'll be back next week to start off your November right. Only seven weeks until I return home.
I'll be back soon. Mark your calendars - and mark my words!
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