My Semester Abroad: April 2012

So it's been about two months since my last blog entry. Sorry it's taken me so long! A lot has happened in these two months. I have about 3 weeks left of school before Mom, Dad, and Colton come to visit. It should be really fun. My classes have been going really well. They're not too difficult, which makes it easier to travel since I don't have to spend my weekends doing homework. Since Venice, I've mainly just been hanging around Milan relaxing and getting a feel for the city. I've discovered this thing called Panzerotti, which is like this dough that is filled with different things and then deep fried. I love the spinach and ricotta one. It's so good. Of course the gelato is amazing as well. A few weeks ago I went to Belgium to stay at one of my roommate's houses while waiting to meet up with my friend/roommate in Germany. In Belgium we saw her town, Liege, and then went to Brugge, which was a nice town with some canals and cool architecture. I flew into Maastricht in the Netherlands before going into Belgium, and we spent some time there. It was a cute little town with a really cool bookstore.

After leaving Belgium, I met up with my friend, Katie, and we took the train over to Berlin. We got in in the evening so we went to this authentic German restaurant before going to sleep. It was really good and such a great change from pasta and pizza. We spent the next two days sight seeing and exploring the city. We also went into a few museums on Museum island and saw some cool artwork. We also ate classic German things like pretzels and currywurst, which is amazing. Berlin is a huge city with lots to see, so we probably could have stayed there longer, but we wanted to see other towns as well. From Berlin, we took the train to Nuremberg. There's not a ton to see in Nuremberg, but we made our way around town, went to a museum of terror about Nazis and then ate another amazing dinner that was kind of like scrambled eggs, cheese, pork, and bacon. It was really good. The restaurant was a brewery so we also tried some really good beer there. I'll put up pictures of these things. From Nuremberg we then went to Freiburg on the train. Freiburg is a really cute little town. Right after we got into Freiburg, we stumbled upon a little street fair/farmer's market where we got the most delicious bratwurst/hotdog things. We then went to the hostel, rented some bikes and rode along the river. We had more German food that night. The next day, we went up into the Black Forest and hiked around a bit. It was really pretty and really nice to see some nature. So, that's my trip to Germany. It was really fun and I liked Germany a lot.

This last weekend, one of my friends and I went to Barcelona. We were only there for 2 days, but we saw as much as we could and were even able to get to the beach before we flew back to Milan. It was a really pretty city with interesting architecture. I enjoyed Barcelona as well. I will post some pictures of all of the trips below.