Iceland!

Hello from Iceland! It looks like the moon here. Pictures later, the internet is painfully slow here. We left at 4pm and got here at 4pm because of the time change. I'm currently talking to Eric, a PHD student from Ohio that is also staying in our hostel. It's fun, hearing a midwest accent!

Home in 5 daaaaays! I miss it quite a lot. It has been a stressful week, the lack of blog updates due to a horrible incident that happened to my roommate here. More updates on the previous days later.

See you soon!

Birthday in Italy!

I'm going to just glance over the past week in Germany. It was relatively full of school, and trees, and something called a fish ladder. Doesn't that sound like a fantastic swear alternative? "FISH LADDERS!" I will show you some pictures from our trip to the Stuttgart Wilhelma Zoo and Botanical garden. Otherwise it has been more of the black forest and not much that I found interesting.

Oh, but on the 4th it was a wine tasting! That was very fun, even though I only tried three of the six because I am not a fan of wine generally. The wild sauer kirsche likour at the end was fantastic though! That translates roughly to wild sour cherry liquor.

This was from the fish hatchery. These little toads were everywhere.

So there were forests and wine involved, which was fun, minus spilling wine on my shirt, cleaning it off, then losing the shirt somewhere.

Then I got invited to go with a group to Florence on my birthday. Which is where I currently am! Yay Italy!

Meet the Duomo! Absolutely gorgeous!

So we got free birthday lemon shots from our Italian waiter named Antonio. He also wanted us to meet him at a bar afterward, and gave me his number, Hahahaha. That's one for the scrap book.

Today we had a lot of success shopping! I found scarves and a really warm hoodie for iceland. We also got to do laundry since everything smells like hiking boot, which is disgusting.

Tomorrow we're going to go see the statue of David!

More blog posts on Italy later, I'm getting tired. We did a lot of shopping today, and I'm almost done getting souvenirs!

Home sick

Well, the free weekend was absolutely lovely. I spent time with Tina from couch surfing and her family, and they helped five of us coordinate a trip to the Wilhema Zoo in Stuttgart on Saturday. It was a stunning botanical garden as well. We accidentally went during a giant pride festival though so the hotel cost a little more than we anticipated originally but bus and train tickets were cheaper so it evened out. I spent a little more money than I wanted to over the weekend but it will be worth it to not have stayed at the castle the entire time. Sunday was spent navigating the train system to get back then Tina and her Mom were kind enough to pick us up in Altensteig and drive us back to the castle. I got invited to go to Florence with Joelle and Shelly so that’s what we’re doing for the next free weekend.

Today was rather…interesting. We cut down spruce trees to make habitat areas for a large bird called the capercale. Someone cutting down a large tree was not watching and I got hit in the head. I’m certain I swore in several languages and Pat was kind enough to walk back to the car with me to get advil. Luckily my head is used to abuse and it really doesn’t hurt anymore, it’s just a little sensitive. In the afternoon we went looking for deer browse evidence and it was relatively boring, especially because there was no bathroom break until we got back to the castle.

Then my luck increased, haha. Europeans are fond of these one inch steps for doorways and I forgot the placement of one. I took off about a quarter of my toe nail and about as much skin with it. Simply not my day, my roommates were joking that I am no longer allowed out of the room. I’m hoping my luck changes, because I would like to not be stressed/injured on my birthday.

Homesickness has definitely set in. I’m having nightmares, one including Reid and have woken up in a cold sweat twice now. I thought talking to my family for 2 hours on Saturday would have helped, but it really just realized the fact that we are only halfway done with this trip and I won’t see them for over two weeks. Reid decided to be in the Colorado mountains while I was trying to call him so I haven’t heard his voice in over 2 weeks. I’m missing everyone so much, and with my luck today all I want to do is sleep and wake up in Wisconsin. I know this trip is generally marvelous, and I should be grateful I can be gone for so long, and afford to go, but all I want right now is some Wisconsin mac and cheese and to cuddle with my boyfriend and watch a movie with my family and my dog. I want to go to Noodles with Jess and kung fu with Simone and strawberry picking with Britni. I want to go to coffee with Rachel and Larry and have a movie night with Hannah Mankowsky.

Speaking of dogs, I got an offer to work at a new dog day care. Two days a week starting, then 5 when business picks up. I have no idea how this will work out with Resnet. I do not know what days, or pay rate, or anything of the like yet. I’m thrilled because the more I think about it the more domestic animals seem like a career path I’d like to follow, and I’d also get some farm experience helping Renea. One day at a time, I suppose.

Tomorrow we go to Freiburg, where we may or may not have enough internet access for me to upload this.

Catch up

Well! It has been a ridiculously long time since my last post since we have one internet connection and 42 people who want it. So, here's some quick updates.

Poland Day 7:

We toured Krakow today. We saw several beautiful churches, and I got some lovely photos of the city buildings. I’ll put a few of them below, though I am pressed for time because we are leaving for Altensteig in 20 minutes (delayed blog entry, I’m actually in Germany). We had a lot of free time for shopping and great Italian food. I hurt my foot somehow, but it isn’t too bad. Just pulled the muscle a little or something. The next few weeks will be short, random blog entries and email responses because there is little internet access. I may have internet in Freiburg and Rome next week, we’ll see.

Germany Day 1:

Hallo aus Deutschland! We had a 6am flight this morning which meant waking up at 3 to get to the airport and through customs on time, and that was cutting it close. So now we are at Hornberg castle in Germany. It’s a very pretty area; though there are three showers with no separators and 3 people in a dorm sized room.

I did some exploring and took some photos of butterflies and bees, see below. I also found a lovely secluded reading spot since alone time is rare here.

Short blog entry since I haven’t done much yet. They will be sparse from here on out since there is no internet at the Castle.

Germany Day 2:

We had some lectures this morning and then had a tour of Altensteig this afternoon. Altensteig is pretty little, and a 6 km walk down, up, then down hill again. I really hope we don't have to walk to it again. I picked up some food for this weekend, which involves far more nutella than it should. They make nutella cereal, it's like little wheat pillows filled with nutella. I also bought a wrap for my foot, because I pulled a muscle or something in Krakow. Other than that, it was a relatively chill day.

Germany Day 3:

Today we went on an absolutely beautiful hike through the black forest. It was misty and VERY cold, but there were stunning views and a lake that we went to. In the afternoon we saw an area that a massive storm had passed through. It looked similar to the tornado area that I worked in this summer. 

Germany Day 4:

This morning we went to the Schmalz vacuum industrial plant. The green tactics they use to run everything are amazing. The plant has it's own wind, water, solar, and biomass power plants so they don't need to use any oil for heat. The owner came and talked to us for a while, which is impressive considering he has 600+ employees to look after. We also got free keychains of little suction cups, it was funny to watch college students act like 5 year olds with a new toy.

Then in the afternoon we did more old forest touring and learned about a lot of forest management. I thought I would get bored of all of the forestry but it has actually been fascinating, they have such a different view point than us. They cut down only the largest trees, no more than new growth compensates for, and only cut down the trees that have natural regeneration around them. They cut down the worst quality first so their kids can have the best trees. I wish we had similar habits of forward thinking in the US.

We had a Schnapps tasting this evening, but I spent most of my time at the distillery petting the horses. The cherry schnapps tasted like pepto bismol. The vanilla and chocolate were fantastic though.

Germany Day 5: (Thursday)

We went bird watching in the rain today, and thoroughly pissed off our professor. We were cold and the tour guide spoke too quietly for all but the people right next to him to hear. So I asked him permission to go take pictures and he said yes. The professor just thought I was being rude and wouldn't listen to my attempt to explain that I had permission. He has been cranky ever since, and it is very annoying that the leader of the group gets to be so petty. 

We went to a nature center in the afternoon, which was very cool. It was a school of ornithology, and was fascinating. Our tour guide was a 20 something from Kentucky and we were all confused when he started speaking. He answered all of my questions and gave me his email so I can ask about internships for next summer.

Then we went to the Singen station and dropped off 3/4 of our group so they could go to other cities/countries. 

Germany Day 6:

Today was arguably one of the best days of the entire trip. This morning, Tina Kling was kind enough to pick me and Heather up at the castle. I met her on a website called couch surfing, essentially you find people in places you are travelling to host you in return for offering to host other people yourself. She offered to take us to see the town, and was an absolute sweetheart. She even took us to her house, which was gorgeous. It even had two ponds in the back yard, complete with cattails and lillies. Her parents came back laughing as we were attempting to catch a newt in a net when they returned. We had to explain that we were wildlife majors (Joelle and Bob had joined us at this point, we picked them up at the grocery store and spared them the walk home) and they talked to us for a long time about what Europe used to be like. 

I have never met more hospitable people. Tina is a sweetheart, she gave us a tour of the old town and interpreted at the pharmacy for us. The pharmacy people gave us free sore throat meds and cough syrup when we bought the industrial sized pack of cold meds since Bob and I are both sick. Tomorrow her family is offering to drive us to Altensteig so we can go to the train station and go to the Stuttgart zoo.

I fell asleep at 7pm and woke up at 6am on Saturday, oooh geez. You know you are sick when.

(Pictures are taking forever to upload, I'll try it on a different internet connection later.)

Day 6: When we were supposed to go to Auschwitz.

Let's start off by mentioning it was a high of 91 degrees in Krakow today, and the bus had no air conditioning or windows. It was easily 100 degrees on it. This is a very key point for later in the post.

We started the day with lectures and a tour of a desert/forest/tree plantation. It was too hot and rather uninteresting. Except they have a giant dump for heavy metals like lead and arsenic that we got to see.

Nothing like giant hills of poison to start the day! But it only gets better. A girl started to get sick on the bus. She was crying, and turning bright red, and had trouble walking. So we had to pull the bus over and take her outside to lay down and cool off. In the mean time, some passerby called the cops on us saying there were "kids playing on the road" so a Polish cop comes up, breathalyzes our bus driver, and asks Kasia a lot of questions about why we didn't call the Polish 911.

So eventually she takes a taxi and we go to a nearby McDonalds to meet a new bus with air conditioning. We ate dinner, got awesome glass coke cups, and got on the new bus. It had pink curtains, and we dumped it the Pimp Mobster Bus.

When his phone rang, it was the sound of bullets. His phone was also gold bling. He wore gold chains, and there were feathers above his window and a lot of other random sketchy decorations.

So there we were, back in Krakow, having not seen Auschwitz because despite the fact that the girl got a taxi home we still had to drive the 40 minutes back instead of the hour to the concentration camp. Everyone was disappointed, but at least we got impromptu free time.

We decided to spend it downtown, where we saw these fake statues.

And a fantastic dance troupe.

And this guy with fire batons.

Overall a very eventful day. Finally got caught up with blog posts, now time for facebook and Flickr.

Oh, and for your enjoyment, I bring you a chicken in a box and the dreadlock mullet.

Poland Days 4 and 5

Day 4!

This entry is two days because yesterday was crazy. Most people climbed up a mountain, or to a lake halfway up the mountain. We took the pleasant valley/shopping route because I didn't feel like a ridiculous hike afterwards. It was pretty nice!

These are the mountains they had to climb. I liked the view from the bottom well enough.

We were in a town with my last name in it! See? Koscielisko!

We had a very pleasant day in the park until about 2pm. Then we went shopping in the town, where I picked up a few souvenirs, using Polish! The views in the park were fantastic, gorgeous rock cliffs and caves.

This was a cave about 40 feet up with a statue of Mary. If you zoom in on her waist, there is something that looks like a bullet hole.

This is me and Kasia, the tour guide/my new awesome Polish friend. Have I mentioned gorgeous views yet? It really is a beautiful country.

We had a nice long chance to shop after the hike, which was lovely. I wanted to take one of these horse carts, but they were expensive. Everyone was exhausted, hot, and sore when they got back from their climb. Then we had to sit on a bus for two hours with extremely hot and smelly people to get to Krakow.

Even with the dual day post I'm still a day behind. Sorry, updating as fast as possible!

Day 5: Salt mines!

Meet the 70 stairway hike down to the Wieliczka salt mines! It was a god send after the 90 degree weather we've been having.

This is a statue made of salt of Copernicus. There are a lot of salt statues on there. You are not allowed to lick those, but you can lick the walls.

This is a salt statue of the King. I'll be honest, I'm not sure the king of what, or why he got a statue, but I'm assuming there is a good reason.

This princess threw her wedding ring into a salt mine as a gesture of luck or promise, then it was found in the first salt mined from the one built in her town. Again, I could have the story a bit off, but that was the basic idea.

These are statues of some tourists that were lost in the 1900s. The tour guide never explained whether their bodies were found.

This is by far the coolest part of the salt mine. A GIANT underground church, where all of the decorations were built by 3 miners. Every piece of the chandelier is salt crystal, every statue is made of salt. I will just put pictures here because words really don't describe it. Plus I had to pay 10 zloty for the right to take these, though a few people chipped in.

Keep in mind that everything above is made of salt, the chandelier above included. Mmm, tasty.

So when we left the mine, Kyle left his mark, and I left mine. A long time ago Simone and I joked about leaving the Seal of Approval everywhere in our travels all over the world. So here is my beginning to it, 70 stories deep in a salt mine!

Day 3: Poland

We're only halfway through the day but I feel the need to do a blog update because so much happened this morning!

We woke up and caught a small shrew, which was absolutely adorable. Only two animals in 60 traps, don't ask me why. I guess the people who were trying to see hedgehogs at 3 in the morning had no luck though.

So this morning we went to see a castle and a dam. The castle was smaller on the inside than I expected, but very interesting. There was a guy in a hooded robe running around with an ax, I think maybe I should have worried. The view from the top was absolutely gorgeous. Have I mentioned I want to move here? There was a jail and kitchen from what I could tell. Apparently we just missed a 2000 person reenactment of a 6000 troop battle that happened at the castle hundreds of years ago.

Kashka says I am getting better at my Polish, I have memorized every phrase she taught me so far. It's a very interesting language, though tough to pick up because of how quickly people speak. I bought ice cream on my own today though, using Polish, which sounds silly but was an exciting  moment.

All of the buildings here are incredibly quaint. I feel like I am living in a painting or something.

Next we went to the dam, where a cross eyed polish man was drawing. Then all of a sudden, he pulls out an animal skin, which we figure out is a goat. Then we realize in place of it's head and feet are the parts of a very unique looking bagpipe. Fortunately for you, I have a video of him playing a goat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoMKHV2lB-Y

Then he decided I needed to try it. Then it sounded like a dying goat! I couldn't stop laughing the entire time. It was so hard to play, I couldn't see where to put my fingers on the flute part.

That was about it for that day, now time to write the next one!