Wingin' It Berlin Style!

You know what's fun? Doing something random. Like deciding to go to a foreign country after about five minutes of thought.

God I love Europe.

So I was supposed to go to Hungary last Thursday

with two people from my trip but they both got super sick so it ended up not happening. I was soooo disappointed because my great-grandfather is from Budapest, Hungary and I would have been the first person to return there since he traveled to the United States in 1914. How EPIC would that have been?!

But alas, it did not happen...

But it's ok because I got to go to Berlin.

BERLIN?!

Awesome. :D

My friend Paul suggested a day trip since I was so disappointed about Hungary. I was so totally in!

We left Friday night and took a night train. We arrived a little before eight a.m. on Saturday morning and the awesome commenced.

It was freezing cold and we were tired, but it was totally worth it. The first things we saw were the Reichstag (the government building) and the Brandenburgher Tor (the Gate to the city). They were beautiful!!

[I don't know why these are so far apart so I'm just going to write here so as to fill space...lalalalala!!!]

After that bit o' gorgeous, we got some breakfast. Now, let me just say that had the rest of the entirely SUCKED it would have been a-ok after the struessel that I ate. Oh. My. God. YUM! My mouth is watering thinking about it...and making me hungrier for food that I DON'T have because these trips are killing me on the money front...AHHH!!! After that we walked around looking for the Berlin Wall. Well, we found the ghetto-tastic East Berlin instead. Which, honestly was ok because, hey, how else will you get the feel for a city other than wandering aimlessly around the sewage smelling parts of the city?? Right?!

For lunch we each got a different German sausage (it's not dirty...) and some beer. Mmm beer... Mine came with a pretzel! Woot! I love pretzels! How did you k

now Berlin?!

We also saw the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.

No joke. This is what it's called. I swear. If you think I'm lying I'll wait for you to look it up. :P

.........................................

Ok, now that you've proven yourself to be a silly ninny for not believing me we can proceed with my awesome adventure.

So then we decided to try to find the Wall again. Like the good little tourist that we are we went to the information center and asked for directions. They dude only gave us directions for the tram and when we asked if we could walk there he laughed at us...Meanie butt...

We took off walking anyway because we are cheap-os and plus we wanted to see if we could see some more coolness that is Berlin. And aren't we glad we did...

Pretty, right?

Anyway, we got lost. Again. Because of Paul's super awesome navigational skills...Why haven't I leaned my lesson?! After getting back on track we found it and it was wicked awesome. There is a TON of artwork on it, all pertaining to the need for peace and different dates that were important in the history of the Berlin Wall. The part of the wall that is left is about 1300 meters (or just under one mile) long and we walked about half of it. Our feet were DYING ok?!

We then rounded the day off with another authentic German meal which ended with this little ditty...

Italia!! Mucho Bella! (Is that even right?!)

Oh, Italia! You are the peanut butter to my jelly...or should I say the gelatto to my cone, or the sauce to my pasta??

Those last two sound dirty...especially the sauce one.

Florence is a beautiful city! There is so much to see, but I love the fact that you can just walk the entire city and not die.

Everywhere you look there is some sort of beautiful art work just sittin' there, waiting for you to take a picture of it. I saw so many statue butts this past weekend I don't know what to do...

We went to Florence for Anya's and Eden's birthdays and it was a blast!

On Friday, we arrived around 2 and we headed for our hostel. Which was awesome by the way. If you ever go to Florence, stay at Plus Florence Hostel. After we got there we went and got a sandwich and of course some delicious gelatto and then we headed into the city. We started with some major sites that we nearby, like Il Duomo and some other churches, like San Lorenzo Cathedral. I think almost every church in Italy is some sort of Cathedral. These Italian Catholics don't fool around, let me tell you.

On Saturday we walked around. The ENTIRE city. I seriously don't think my feet will EVER be the same. We saw some breath-taking sights. Like....THIS ONE!

Don't ask me why my hand is on my hip. I know I look dumb. Just look at the prettiness behing my dumbness.

A cool thing that we saw was a protest that was going through the city. We were going to see the only bridge that survived World War II and on our way there, they were crossing one of the bridges. We couldn't figure out what it was about until later when we saw them again, lounging outside of a church, and we saw their signs...

Yes, that says Italy is not a brothel, and yes, I was dying laughing. :D

Anywho...on Sunday I went to mass with Paul(ey) where, even though I'm Catholic and ALL masses are the SAME, I couldn't figure anything out and I forgot the prayers in English that I've been saying since I was born and yes, I could talk coming out of the womb. jealous? I thought so. We went to Santa Maria Novella and it was GORGEOUS. Actually, I think that may be an understatement to about the nth degree. I'm sorry. I can't explain it. And I couldn't get a good enough picture before the angry Italian man started yelling at me and Paul, saying, "Excuse! Excuse! No, photo! Excuse, no photo!!"

Jerk...

Pretty church though.

All in all, a fantastic weekend. I'm pretty sure that I ate my weight in gelatto, but it was TOTALLY worth it. I would live off gellatto I think. Gelatto and potatoes. NOM.

Love for one another

One thing that I love about my job is that every week the entire staff gets together for an hour of devotions. It's just an hour to be together, connect, see what everyone is up to and how everyone is doing. We talk, we laugh, we pray. It's very...I guess the word would be comforting.

I don't know these people well at all, but they are all open and they are all interested. I've never been in a working group that opened up this quickly and that is so interested in everything that everyone is doing. They all care. It's nice. Refreshing.

Today we just sat around and talked. We got into an interesting conversation about how the world views terrorism and how it is defined. Just so you know, there is no actual definition to terrorism. It's an idea, not an entity. It's something that is personally defined, not internationally-one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. We went around the table, told each other what we were working on and offered something personal that we wanted to pray for. They have all known about my aunt because I pray for her every week. They all ask how she is and pray for her too. I can't tell you how much this means to me.

My aunt. She's my godmother and someone that I love. She drives me absolutely insane about 75% of the time, but I know she does it because she loves me and expects a lot out of me. Her nagging is her way of showing love. lol!

She helped my mom out a lot when I was growing up. She always had fun things for my cousins and me to do. We drove her nuts and she would yell, but we knew that she loved us. She has put up with every one else's crap and has helped every one that she could. She is stubborn and likes to do everything without anyone else's help (even though she complains when no one will help her). She is strong and is a fighter. She's a lot like my grandpa-which she knows, and I'm pretty sure loves about herself. My grandpa was kind of awesome...-so we all know that she won't ever give up. Losing is not an option and she won't ever let it be.

I kind of love that about her.

I know that she doesn't read this blog, but I do hope that she knows, that even though I'm not close by, I'm always here for her-no matter how much she drives me up a wall....

Hello Roses! It's nice to smell you

Ya know, wake up calls are nice. Sometimes you get an enlightened, "HELLO, STOP BEING AN IDIOT!" Or, sometimes you're thinking over and over and over again and then you get fed up with listening to YOURSELF.

Ugh...

That's a low point.

But it's also good. Because by the time that you get fed up with yourself you KNOW that others are totally fed up with you. Even when you keep things to yourself...

Anyway, I'm done just thinking and thinking about the same old crap. Life goes on and is WAYY too short to just keep thinking about things that don't matter.

So here's to the experiences of life and waking up and smelling the roses.

Feelings...BLECH!

This week was Valentine's Day and all I have to say is THANK GOD I'm in Europe. It doesn't seem to be such a huge thing here. Yes, people were buying candy and flowers, but it I feel like it isn't thrown in your face here like back home. Then again, I haven't been watching tv, so no annoying jewelery commercials for me! YAY!

But I did have that whole, Oh-I'm-single-I-miss-buttface moment. But it's ok. It lasted for only a little bit. ON MONDAY. Since then I've been thinking a lot about him. I'm a masochist. What can I say?! So I've been trying really hard not to think about him. Again. BLAH!

Funny story about Monday: I was sitting in class, waiting for my professor to come in, and I was dating my paper for notes. For the life of me I could not remember the date so I asked Alexis. She just looked at me like I was an idiot and then I was like, "Oh,...damn me." Bahahah. Ok, not so funny. Continue!

Instead on Monday I spent the afternoon at one of the most pointless meetings of my life in which I heard about what happened at the General Assembly meeting for the United Nations back in January. Sounds exciting, right? Nope. Not one bit. All that happened at that meeting was a discussion of how no one pays their dues. Well guess what?! I don't blame them! The UN is such a mess and nothing EVER gets done. They can't enforce anything and no one really truly cares about what they have to say.

Ok, I'm done being political. I'm sorry.

Yesterday was hilarious. I have no other words for it. After the longest day at work I had my economics class. We had a quiz and then our professor took us to the bar. Bahaha! I love that! It was a grand ol' time with our Kenyan born, Spanish national professor. We all came back and had drunk food together at which point he told me that buttface was a complete idiot for dumping me. LOVE IT!

Europe, you continue to amaze me.