Six Days in The Eternal City

It’s official! On Sunday, April 17th I am flying to Rome for a six day vacation! Brenna and I are flying on Swiss Air, stopping over in Zurich, and continuing on to Rome late Sunday night. We have a hostel outside of the city center, a tourist book, and grand plans for our Easter holiday. Naples, Pompei, the Sistine Chapel, the Coliseum, Vatican City, the Trevi Fountain. Cannoli’s and gelato, pizza, penne pasta, Italian wine. I never knew that I could be so excited about Italy – I didn’t even think twice about visiting before but now I can’t get it out of my head! The travel bug has definitely bitten, my friends!

Of course, none of those pictures are mine but I can’t wait until I have my own! Too bad my good camera is still broken. Boo! Although, I will mention that Brenna and I are going to do the Angels & Demons of Rome tour, following the plot from one of our favorite Dan Brown books of the same name. Yay!

Munich’s Spring Make-Over, Adventures in the English Gardens, Starkbierfest, Vacation Dreams, and Shameless Self-Promotion

Remember when I used to be really good about writing updates about my life? Those were the days. Ha. I promise you that I’ve been thinking about it – there just hasn’t been a lot of doing. I have so much to catch up so I hope that I can do it justice. This may be a fairly long update but I have a feeling that you won’t mind. :)

The best thing about my life in Munich right now is that SPRING IS HERE. And I don’t mean like, maybe spring is kind of deciding to show up… the season has done a full on, head first somersault into spring and it’s absolutely GORGEOUS. The trees started turning green sometime late last week and there’s no stopping them now. I imagine that sometime next week, Munich will be bathed completely in green and we will be in business. The weather has been absolutely breathtaking as of late – high 60’s, low 70’s for temperatures, blue skies, sunshine, cloudless afternoons. Lately I’ve been spending my days in the English Gardens, laying out in the sun with friends, picnicking, listening to music, and thoroughly enjoying the new season. I’ve gotten a few sunburns already – two or three – and as painful as they are, it’s always nice when you can say you got your first sunburn of the season in late March!

Here’s some pictures from our lay outs in the English Gardens that I graciously stole from my friends Facebooks and some that I stole from myself. Spring! Yay!

Spring Has Come to the City, Beer Fests and Dirndl Season (Again!), and Vacation Plans

It’s been over a week since I last posted to this blog. My apologies – I haven’t been very inspired by my life to blog about it. That sounds much worse than reality, trust me. Life in Munich is wonderful, as always, I just haven’t been doing a lot of ‘blog worthy’ things. There has been a lot of weekend partying but who wants to hear about that? My friends and I realize that we have less than three months together and we’re making the most of it – judgments be damned! We do, however, have a moral conscience and we recognize the moments that our behavior gets out of hand. We make mistakes – we try not to make them again and sometimes we fail. But, ah, c’est la vie! As happy as I am to be here and enjoy these final weeks in Munich, I am looking forward to being home and taking a serious detox from my crazy party life. It’ll be nice to slow down and grow up a little bit. Until then, I fully intend to be young and carry on living my wonderful life.

The best thing going on in Munich right now – SPRING! It’s official – winter is OVER. We’ve had sunny, blue skies all week and temperatures have hit mid to high 50’s. The trees are sprouting green buds and the birds keep singing at all hours of the day and night. The beer gardens are back to their triumphant state – tables spread out and beer drinkers enjoying the sunshine and good company. My girl friends and I spent almost the entire afternoon last Sunday at the English Gardens, basking in the deliciously warm sunshine. It was a beautiful, beautiful day!

There is a beer festival going on in Munich yet and although we have yet to enjoy it – we still brought out the dirndl’s this past weekend to celebrate. We always have fun in our dirndl’s, especially when no one else is wearing them and we get all of the attention. We walked around Munich forever trying to find a  location for the starkbierfest but we failed. So we ended up at one of our favorite hostel bars where craziness ensued and Fio, Brenna, and I had one of the best nights in Munich thus far. We’re still talking about it – almost a week later. Fio’s 16-year-old cousin was in town for the weekend, too, visiting from Ireland and that girl definitely got a good taste of our crazy life. She was absolutely wonderful – we all loved her and hope to see her again before we all leave.

Anything can happen when you wear your dirndl!

At the moment, I’ve got my window wide open – clean clothes drying all over my room, and a blessedly beautiful day ahead of me. I’m babysitting the girls tonight – again. I’ve been doing this a lot lately. My host mom is on a bunch of museum committees and there are a bunch of museum openings lately so I’ve worked three to four nights out of seven for the last two weeks. It’s been okay though – I don’t have much money because of my trip to Cologne – and the nights that I did have off, I made the most of them. The week ahead should be good. We’re actually attending Starkbierfest this weekend (I don’t think I’ll like the beer much, honestly) and next week I have less babysitting responsibilities.

And hopefully I can start planning a trip to Italy over Easter vacation. I mean, I’ve made the plans – I just have to finalize them. I’m hoping for Cinque Terra and Venice but we’ll see! It depends on how much money I have and can manage to save. Ideally I’d love to fly to Pisa, take a train to Cinque Terra, hike one of the trails, get back to the train station, take a train to Venice, spend a weekend in Venice with the girls, and then get back to Munich. We’ll see!

Until I figure all of that – I’m going to continue enjoying spring in Munich! I love it!

I always stick my tongue out when I’m trying to concentrate.

Happy spring!

“Spring Break” in Cologne: Part II

Saturday in Cologne started around 12:30, seeing as we didn’t get up and out of bed until then. We had a late “brunch” and then headed into the city, intent on enjoying a bike ride adventure. It was a nice day – blue skies and a gentle breeze and warm weather! Everything Munich wasn’t. It took us a while to get through the city and find the bike rental station but eventually we managed. We only paid 5 EUR for a three hour rental – it was perfect. We got our bikes and headed out. Fio had done the bike ride before so she knew what she was doing. We had an hour down the right ride of the river and then we’d find a little boat that would take us to the other side. From there, we could ride down the opposite bank and get back to the city. The bike ride, each way was about 10 kilometers or 6 miles! So we rode about 12 miles on Saturday. But it was awesome and so, so, so beautiful. It was probably the best thing that came out of the weekend. I had such a good time and enjoyed the weather and scenery of Cologne from the seat of that horrible, malfunctioning bike. Sigh. Haha.

Six Days in London, Four Days with Lauren, 162 Days Left in Munich

Okay, I’m not really counting down the days until I leave Munich but, to be fair, it’s really hard to come back to my normal life after I’ve spent two weeks on vacation. And what an amazing vacation it was, too. I really needed it. After spending four incredibly boring days alone in Munich with nothing to do and no one in town to see, I left for London to spend six days with my friend, Fionnuala, and her lovely family. I was treated to some proper Irish hospitality by her mother and I really enjoyed all of the homecooked meals and conversation. Fio and I ventured into the city everyday and had the perfect New Years Eve celebration on Friday night. And remember when I posted my list of London resolutions? Well, I met almost all of them! Also, my best friend from college, Lauren, came to visit me for a few days while she was in England visiting her boyfriend and it was like nothing had changed – except that we were in a foreign country and she refused to learn German and speak it at Starbucks or the bars. Ha. I had so much fun seeing her again and look forward to the summer when I’m back in California and can see her (and all of my other friends) more often!

Now… for the pictures…