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.)
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