Soest

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Friday began a short trip after finals before going home.  I took a train to Manchester, a plane to Frankfurt-Hahn, and a bus to Frankfurt, arriving at 2 am, dead tired & trying to find my nice hostel two blocks from the station and eerily located in the red light district.  It was not a problem & the police there were really nice.  (the european city centers I’ve seen are really alive with partiers, police, and normal people late at night.)  I found it no problem & the hostel was really nice and safe despite its location.  In the morning I met up with Thomas & his girlfriend & we drove to Soest (on the autobahn!).  I stayed with family friends who we met through an exchange program.  They were really great hosts & showed me all around North Rhine Westphalia.  We took a stroll around a nearby park and dam.  It holds important drinking water reserves.  The surrounding area is pretty & populated by small villages which look really quaint and charming to someone who’s never been far from a McDonalds or WalMart.  The city center is very old and many of the buildings are still classic half timber, which is cool.  The churches are made from a unique green sandstone, setting them apart from all the other churches I’ve seen.  We ate dinner at a restaurant serving traditional German food.  I had a schnitzel with mushrooms & I tried some local spiegel (white asparagus) with hollandaise sauce too.  The schnitzel had great flavor, and the spiegel was very soft & had a more subtle, gentle taste than green asparagus.  The beer is made in-house & is great.  It’s smooth, like Guinness, and the bubbles are not harsh.  It was all very filling.  (photos, more photos)

Reflection on Easter Break

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In the time since Easter Break I have been compiling a list of the things that went well and the things I would change.

With regard to studying abroad:  

  • Bring extra passport photos for things like school ids.

  • Bring a bank statement for customs (if you are staying for a long period of time). If you travel outside the country you are studying in bring all your documents with you as you will need to get back in this country. I forgot my University acceptance letter, it was not a problem but it worried me for a while.

  • Apply early & plan early. This goes for study abroad programs, applications for credit cards, activities, day trips. To apply and plan early has almost become a life goal.

  • Bring your own sheets and pillow. My school provided ones were thrown out over break & they weren’t replaced. No problem because I brought my own.

  • Don’t worry about a cell phone. I was, but prepaid phones are cheap. I got a phone with a qwerty keyboard for £20 and spent £10 a month on 100 minutes and 300 texts. No big deal. Also prepaid phones can be topped up at gas stations. They print a receipt with a code & you top up with your phone, real simple.

  • Wire transfers take a week, plan accordingly. I didn’t know this & was late with my housing payment. Thankfully English people are very nice.

  • Bring an external harddrive or have cloud storage. I took so many photos and videos that my harddrive is full, even after deleting my 30GB music library.

The following are more related to travel:

  • Book flights and hostels/hotels in advance as this will serve as the framework of the trip.

  • Email your bank and credit card companies. I did this but forgot one card & it was frozen for a few days.

  • Have more than one card and keep them in separate locations. I brought one ATM card and two Credit Cards. (Capital One cards dont charge for international transactions, the card from my bank charged 3%. Luckily my bank doesn’t charge ATM fees so I always just paid the exchange rate).

  • Get travel insurance. I missed a flight & lost the cost of the ticket, not a fun day.

  • Bring a pad lock and key to lock lockers in hostels. Bring two keys.

  • Bring extra electrical adapters, more than you think you need (I brought 4). I had a computer, phone, camera, video camera, iTouch, all that needed to be charged.

  • Do not get a Eurorail Pass (it’s too much money & the flexibility afforded is still not that great & booking fees still apply as well as restricted travel times). Take the extra time and plan point to point travel.

  • Get the most comfortable walking shoes you can European cities are made for walking.

  • Save money by eating at markets and grocery stores and ask concierges for local places to eat. The food is better and enhances the experience of the location. I ate breakfast and lunch from markets and grocery stores and spent more for dinner.

  • Cheap bottled water is in the back of grocery stores at room temperature. I got 4 liters for 52 cents in Spain.

  • Try new food. This is key to being in a new culture. How can you enjoy the local atmosphere if you are eating a BigMac? I’ll admit I did have American food every now and then but that was when we got to a city at midnight and everything else was closed.

  • Also do not get to your next location at midnight. I tried to get the most out of one city before going to the next but if you arrive too late things are closed & it is difficult to get settled.

  • Send a complete itinerary to you family or friends (this should include flights, hostels, addresses, people you will be staying with). You want family and friends to know where you are. Also, email often as emails have location data in the header of the email.

  • Bring your own over the counter medicine. I think medicine at home is stronger than medicine here. I took some antihistamines in Spain and they hardly did a thing.

  • Send post cards home. People love snail mail & it’s a cool way to share your experience.

  • Save room in your luggage for souvenirs.

I hope this list helps you with your adventures.  I’ll be referring to it next time I travel.  Best of luck.

Semester End

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The hall I live on is vicious when it comes to people leaving their doors unlocked.  It’s an invitation to mayhem.  Most of the time it’s facebook posts (why don’t people password protect their computers when they sleep?) or flipping posters.  This one is over the top.  (it’s not my room but a friend’s)  It’s a pretty intense prank, even the drinks in the fridge were wrapped.  He left for a whole day or two so there was tons of time.  On facebook he said he was more impressed than upset, so thats good.

On a different note I’ve been planning my sleep schedule to accomodate sleep cycles so as to not wake in the middle of a cycle.  That way I’ll wake fully refreshed in the morning.  Each cycle is 1.5 hours so sleeping for 7.5 or 9.0 hours is ideal even if it means waking up half an hour earlier.  It’s working really well & helping me get morning revision done for finals.

York

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It’s looking more like spring here.  The weather is very nice, though I’ve heard we are going through a drought still.  I’ve been taking the opportunity to read and run (not at the same times) in Wollaton Park.  I’m now reading Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson.  It’s an easy read but full of great information about how Jobs thought & operated, & created an awesome company.  I’m running to get in shape for RAGBRAI.  Iowa is flatter than home (we laugh at their hills) but it’s not pool table flat & the wind is not always at your back.  At Wollaton, there is also a golf course.  It’s private, but looks fun to play.  (York, campus, Wollaton)

Back to work

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With finals coming up, now is the time for revision.  Our lecturers provide us with the topics we really have to know for the final.  My finals will offer a choice of questions & I’ll answer the one’s I’ve studied for.  At home the professors expect us to know all the material for the final, here we can choose what we are strongest in.  I’ve gotten a few grades back & the results are good.  Some places I need to study more.  Thats why having multiple assignments constitue my semester grade is good;  I have time to revise where my knowledge is lacking.  I the UK school system the average grade is a 50%, and 40% is passing. Anything above a 70% is a first and anything over 90% is publishable.  I like how the grades are shifted lower in the spectrum of percentages.  This allows truly remarkable people to be exposed.  At home we only use less than half the scale (60% and above), doing a wonderful job of differentiating people who are failing.  Where is the sense in that?  On the other hand, if you miss half the questions, do you really know the subject?

Plitvice Video

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This is the video of Plitvice National Park Croatia.  Highlights include the cave, both the one we explored and the one on the water, the views when I’m eating an apple are the views of where we ate lunch, and the myriad of waterfalls toward the end, these make up the end of the park and the last waterfalls.  Walking along the boardwalks is really the best way to see the park.  It made me slightly anxious, both because I had all my electronics and because the water was a few degrees from freezing (or so it felt).  Without any handrails I felt close to the park, like I was just walking in the woods (and on water), making the experience so much better.