Quick update - Freiburg and Stuttgart

Went to Freiburg and Stuttgart this weekend with Andy and Tom. Rented some bikes in Freiburg and cruised around the black forest area, very nice. The next day we went to Stuttgart and went to what we thought was a beer festival, but actually turned about to be an attempt at a very American carnival. Still fun though. Here are a couple pics, hopefully more to come.

Me and Updates don't get along.

Sorry there haven't been many updates as of late. There are some pictures from spring break in Spain up on photos.yahoo.com/d.provost, and I will try to put up more, and photos from trips to Heidelburg, Berlin, Freiburg and Stuttgart as well. So long for now.

Update City

Sorry I haven't updated for a while, here is some text to chew on:

Aachen.
Went to this German city for a school field trip. I found it to be fairly agreeable, but nothing exciting.

Koln (Cologne).
Visited this city for a school field trip as well. It is the nearest large German city to Dusseldorf (20 minutes by train) and is nice. It's main attraction is the Dom Cathedral, which I really enjoyed, especially going up to the top. These past two trips have been part of the architectural history curriculum.


View from the near top.



Amsterdam / Rotterdam.
Next up was a 4 day field trip to the Netherlands with the school. This was great. Amsterdam is a neat town, I didn't remember it much for when I visited there in 8th grade. The architecture in some areas is really nice, very clean and modern. I also really like the canal that runs through the city, we took a boat tour on it one day. By the way, we stayed in a Botel in Amsterdam. Anyhow, we hit a couple museums, one containing quite a bit of Rembrandt, naturally, then a contemporary museum with lots of rocks, mud, and paint. Pretty interesting, to say the least. Rotterdam was equally as cool, more of the same really. Although we did have a run-in with a David Brent-esque Scottish man at a Burger King, who basically just made fun of us all and told awkward jokes. I loved it. Naturally, we shouldn't have been in a Burger King in the first place, but we needed to save some cash after eating in a floating sea palace the previous night. No pictures from these two places, as I got suckered into taking video for a promo the school is making. I should be able to get some from my comrades though.

Munich.
Probably the best weekend trip so far, aside from Cinque Terre possibly. Went with Andy, Adam, and Jason last weekend. Went to two museums, a Science and History museum and a modern art one. Both were great. The science one was possibly intended for a younger demographic, but I had no reservation with kicking 10 year olds out of the plane simulator.










The history of musical instruments was my favorite exhibit. Check out that tasty trombone. If they had that in middle school band I'm sure more kids would join.

The Pinakothek der Modern was great as well. It was agreed upon that while the 2D art was not quite as good as the MoMA, the industrial design section was better.










Yes.

The next day we went to Fussen to visit the Neuschwanstein castle. This is the castle that the Disney castle was based on. It was pretty neat, but also somewhat fake. I think my favorite part was the snowy 40 minute walk to get to the castle.










A different castle.

We went to the Hofbrauhaus beer hall / garden that night and it was fantastic German fun. It is apparently the most well known beer hall in Europe. They served the beer in giant one liter mugs.

Our train was supposed to leave 6:30 am Sunday morning, by Munich has gotten the most snow it had in 50 years, so everything was crazy delayed. We ended up leaving at 3:00 pm. Luckily Adam has is poked chips, so the time actually went by very fast.

Anyhow, that's all for now, I'll update after the Spain / Portugal spring break.

Minor note

Host sister is on the right.

Cinque Terre

Thomas and I went to Riomaggiore, Italy, a part of Cinque Terre (Five Towns?) on the coast of the Mediterranean. I enjoyed it the most of all the places I’ve been so far in Europe. The weather was great, probably around 50 or so during the day, and the sky was clear and sunny all 3 days we were there. We stayed in a hostel in Riomaggiore, which was the eastern most of the five, but took trains or walked / hiked to the other cities. They were all very small and very Italian. Apparently the beaches get pretty packed with tourists in the summer but there was hardly anyone there due to the time of year, which was nice. Anyhow, I uploaded a boat load of pictures to http://photos.yahoo.com/d.provost so be sure to check those out. Alright, off to watch Terminator 3 in the mini theater room at AIB. Sweet, eh?

Some Dusseldorf Action

The town in Germany that I am staying in is called Dusseldorf. It is about 20 minutes by train north of Cologne (Koln). I am staying with a host family that lives about 45 minutes by tram from the school I attend, AIB. They live on what is called a sports area, which is basically a rec center. There is a track and field, outdoor basketball goals, indoor basketball goals, soccer field, excerise room, and a few other things. They rent out 4 rooms in a seperate building, so that is where I and another gentlemen from A&M are staying. They treat us nice there, and run a small bar / resturant type thing upstairs. This is where we eat and have the occasional Gatz beer (local to Dusseldorf).




This is my room. The only english channel is MTV, so I've been watching a decent amount of Cribs and Pimp My Ride, coupled with some European football and handball.


One of three Frank Gehrey buildings in Dusseldorf. They are right next to each other, the other two are silver and white. I think the locals refer to them as 'The Three Drunk Brothers' or something like that. I have some philosophical differences with Mr. Gehrey but I must admit it is really nice having these neat buildings in the scenery every day.


We went up in this thing on the first day to get a bird's eye view of the city. Booya.










This is the building my school is in.


This is what I see when I walk out of AIB. Pretty swank.








Some pics of the sports area. It's set into a wooded area, I saw some kids sledding out there the other day. Anyhow, that's all for now.

Paris and Luxembourg

Pictures for Paris and Luxembourg are both up at http://photos.yahoo.com/d.provost

I don't have much to say about Paris. It was nice being back for the first time since I lived there in the 8th grade. I don't think anyone else had been there so we hit up the main stuff, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, Notre Dame, etc. I enjoyed going to the Musee d'Orcy, a museum containing mostly impressionist works. I know for sure that I appreciate museums much more now than I did back then. We also went to a concert opera in the Opera House. This is basically an opera, but it isn't acted out, just sang, and the orchestra is behind them. It was a pretty cool experience but also fairly boring.

After being in Germany for a week, some of decided to hit up Luxembourg for our first travel trip with our Eurails. Since it's pretty small and contained we just made it a day trip. I enjoyed it, and a day was definately enough time to spend there. It was a nice place to walk around in without any specific sites to see. We stopped at a cafe to get some coffee (it was pretty cold out) and the shopkeep found out we were from Texas, and kept making gun noises and shooting us with his finger gun, like a cowboy. He was a spirited chap.

Sorry these are pretty brief, maybe the pictures will tell a better story. I should start writing these closer to when they happen.

Pictures

Just a short post, I've created a photo album on yahoo and will be throwing most of my pictures up on there. I will only select the most choice ones to display on the blog. The album can be viewed at http://photos.yahoo.com/d.provost

Reminder to myself, this is what I need to discuss:

Paris
Luxembourg
Prague
Dusseldorf

I'll try to slam a couple entires tommorrow, or at least upload some pictures.