Woche Eins

So I'm in Europe! It's still hasn't really set in; everything's been moving so fast I think it's going to take a while to really realize it. It is ridiculously beautiful here and also hasn't gotten above the 60s since I've been in Austria, which is slightly different than what I'm used to in the South. But I'll start from the beginning. This is going to be a long blog so bear with me. It's the first week and a lot has happened, and I'll try to post more regularly from now on.

So Thursday, September 11 (lucky day for flying), my journey to leave the Shire and conquer Middle Earth, or something like that, would begin. Sarah and I flew out of Atlanta at 5:30 pm and we met two other people that were also going with our AIFS group. Let me just tell you that it sucks trying to sleep on an airplane overnight, especially when it is an airline that is about to go bankrupt like Delta that has really uncomfortable seats and has your knees jammed into the person in front of you. And also the screen in front of me with a free movie was a little distracting, so I enjoyed Forgetting Sarah Marshall instead of sleeping for very long and arrived in London Gatwick airport at 7:00 am their time, 2 in the morning my time. Sir (for RH peeps)!

It took us an HOUR AND A HALF to get from the airport to our hotel in downtown London (which is a MASSIVE city) and by that time I basically felt like a zombie, except not as awesome. I couldn't take a nap though, because the only way to kill jet lag is to make yourself stay up until London nighttime and then, after being up for like 2 straight days, go to sleep. Apparently you can't stab it in the heart with a wooden stake, which surprised me. We were staying right across the street from Hyde Park, which is a huge green space right in the middle of the city, maybe bigger than Central Park. We quickly found out that we were going to have to choose carefully what we spent our money on, because the dollar is terrible everywhere else in the world ($2=1 pound). We met some of the other people in our 46ish-person group from all over the US at the hotel and got some breakfast, wandered around Hyde Park, and walked around some cool London streets. There's not skyscrapers everywhere like New York so it feels a lot smaller, even though, as previoiusly said, it's not. Top that off with a lunch of fish and chips and dinner at a pub with some English cider and we'll call it a day.

Brace yourself for my next day; I'll try to paint the picture as simply as possible so as not to overwhelm you:

1) Bus tour of London. Buckingham Palace. Awesome. Tower Bridge. Sweet. Streets where Madonna is seen driving her kids to school. Who cares. Drury Lane. Holy crap, but no muffin man. Parliament while not being blown up on November 5 by a masked avenger. Pretty cool. I literally cannot remember everything I saw because London is packed with too many amazing things to even begin naming.

2) Went inside Westminster Abbey. This was truly amazing, just to see hundreds of years of famous people I've read about in school (Bloody Mary, Isaac Newton, William and Mary, etc.), but even more so because I saw some of the most elaborate, beautiful architecture ever, and I'll never be able to show you because cameras weren't allowed. Oh well.

3) Went to a festival, sat on a field by the Thames and the London eye, listened to a swing band, and ate authentic Jamiacan food. Slightly strange, but really cool.

4) Toured the Tower of London. This is a 1000-year old castle that has guarded the village/town/city/metropolis of London for an entire millenium. Part of it was even originally built by the Romans. It had some pretty sweet swords, spears, maces, suits of armor, and other stuff like that. Not to mention the crown jewels, which I'm sure are worth so much they're basically priceless. There's too many stories to tell from there, but one I thought was particularly awesome: one king back in the day thought he'd dig a moat around the castle and connect it to the Thames river. He thought it was a genius idea because they could dump their human waste products over the walls into the moat, and when the tide went out the river would carry all of their feces out to sea. Too bad the moat was deeper than the river and the castle just ended up being permanently surrounded by crap.

5) Avenue Q at West End. Yes, we saw a play starring puppets that is set in New York while we were in England. London is a hoppin' place at night.

So we got up at 5:00 the next day and flew out of the huge, new terminal at Heathrow airport to Munich. British Airways was so much better than Delta. Nice leather seats, a mushroom, bacon, and egg sandwich (what the crap??), and an awkward British pilot who would just stay on the intercom for far longer than he actually had anything left to say ("Well...I believe we will be having fortuitous weather upon arrival...a light rain...maybe some clouds..........we plan on landing on the runway, after lowering the wheels, and not, as you might think, nose diving into the ground, creating an explosion rivaling those of the Battle of Britain...") you get the idea. He didn't really say that last part, although he would have gained my respect.

We got on a bus to Salzburg there and met the directors of the study abroad program. And it was actually freezing, cloudy, and rainy, unlike what our knowlegeable pilot had told us. Welcome to Europe. Even with all that, the Bavarian countryside is beautiful: rolling, green hills with little villages every once in a while. It's amazing how lush everything is here, and how every piece of ground without trees has the greenest grass I have ever seen. Our group split up in Salzburg to dorms and homestays all over the city. My roommate is the same guy that I met in Atlanta and stayed with in London: his name is Andrew, he's from Tennessee (one of the few Southerners woot) and goes to Rice.

This blog is getting long and I'm getting tired. I'm getting up in the morning to hike Untersberg with some friends (the tallest mountain in the area...it's even got snow on top!!), so ich gehe zu schlafen. I'll tell about Salzburg later...it deserves it's own post. Just think fortress on a hill, Mozart, Alps, and a language I don't understand until then.

And as for the people, they all seem really nice, although I haven't gotten to meet all of them since we're split up everywhere. It's hard to be away from Auburn during football season and being away from friends I love, but I'm trusting that this will be an amazing experience. More later.