The Adventures of The 3 C’s

Happy Halloween everyone! Yes they celebrate Halloween here too but tomorrow is the actual holiday. I am on my way to see my friend Nicole from Germany alone & believe it or not I missed my stop so I had to make a new friend from Australia to help me back track and catch my connecting train. It is always fun to make new friends lol. I will finish this post at a later after I make it to Reutlingen.

The club was awesome! First time ever being in a club although it was packed full. It was also good to see Nicole & meet her family. I love how they treated me as part of the family, it was great & I got to take in a lot of German culture by staying with them. Nicole and I went to the Lichtenstein castle & a cave in her town, the cave is called fox cave...we had a lot of fun there & got a little dirty while we explored beyond the guard rails lol. When in the cave there was a little boy about 5 years old walked up to a pretty deep hole & said "oh Scheiße" which means shit in German...I busted out laughing so hard lol. Nicole said they learn those words early like in kindergarten which is way different then the states. It sucks I couldn't stay longer but I will go back with all the guys soon to tour the castle on the inside! Over all it was a fun packed to days

Well I swung by the Netherlands just to say I was there but it was pretty dirty & I am not a fan but Belgium on the other hand was great! I really liked the atmosphere and they have really good chocolate too! The worlds best is found here...I only spent a day there so I will have to go back. The best part of the weekend was I got to hang out with my old roommate from Kettering he graduated last spring so he was in Belgium on business and we hung out for the weekend...it is always good to see old friends especially in a foreign country lol. 

Scotland was by far my favorite country to travel too! It was so beautiful and I needed a break where everyone talked English lol. If you think the UP is hilly then you have to go to Scotland my friend!
We flew over on Ryanair which we had already booked before we heard about the problems they have. Still made it there & back alive just not impressed at all with them. Cole Clint Ethan & I split from Kevin & Billy who are the other Kettering students at Ulm. We traveled north to Inverness. The goal for the other 3 were heart set on golfing where golf was born but since I suck at golf & it was expensive I toured the town sight seeing and enjoying some time alone. So I backpacked for 6 hours and covered  pretty much the whole town (15 miles). As I did this I found a big white tent that something smelled amazing so I poked my head in & found out it was a wedding so I got out of there pretty fast lol. Well I redeemed myself when I was wondering around ness island & I heard a little girl running toward me so I turn around to see the flower girl jumping on the stones when she slipped & I instinctively caught her head inches away from the rock...I looked up and the wedding photographer was on me helping her up & the groom thanked me then I told him congratulations then I left before he reconised me from crashing his wedding earlier.
The next day I tracked down my family history, found my family crest & picked up a few things for my grandpa Hamilton who has the ties with my Scottish history. I want to go back and see the castle & palaces that my ancestors built & ruled over the years.

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in my post...I have been pretty busy. Time to play catch up on all I have been up too in the last 4 weeks!
Berlin was a great city to visit, it was so full of history. Mostly dark German history but also full of dark Russian history post ww2. It was fairly late when we arrived there. As we found a hostel for the night & as you know a college kid always is hungry so we grabbed some grub before we wandered around. It didn't take us long till we found a protest which we tried steering clear of but soon found ourselves surrounded by a few thousand cops in riot gear so we decided the capital will have to wait till the next day lol. The protest was something about immigrants & there rights in Germany or something.
We saw all the famous land marks like Brandenburge gate, the Victory tower, the Berlin wall, lots of memorials & last was my favorite part of the trip. About 200 km out of Berlin sits the first concentration camp made by Hitler & this was also the head of all the concentration camps along with the SS school. The SS school is used today as the police training school as it over looks the camp to remind them of there mistakes & to help it from happening again. The camp tour I took showed me a different approach on how & why the camps were built. As my classes before just displayed them as huge slaughtering camps but the truth as I found out was much more. These camps didn't mean certain death for everyone who when to them. Most where there for talking back to Hitler and his movement, Hitler would crush them mentally in the camps so they would not speak against him. Some more interesting facts where the experiments on the prisoners. They had test from pain killers to energy shots being experimented on them to make it better for the German soldiers. They also had out side company's pay to test products there, like Adidas used the camp to test boots & sneaker products to sell. There is a lot more but you will have to look at the pictures and ask me questions.

It has been a week now since I have moved in to the dorms here in Ulm. I really like it here and love how friendly everyone is, it makes life a little easier to deal with. I am making new friends and exploring the culture. The food is different but I will stay fat & happy lol. It was a big change up but I am handling it well. We tend to hang out with the other Americans a lot just because they are in the same boat as us. Also the only Greek girl to study abroad this term is likes to go with us so she isn't alone.

Some of this past week was moving in, orientation, & setting up my dorm room...they don't do WiFi so I had to switch back to wired internet, it is not fun to always be stuck on a tether lol. Wednesday was a fun day, we climbed the tallest church steeple in the world! It stands just over 161 meters high & has a stair case to the top for a crow nest. I will say I was pretty tired that day, after all the steps up & down. The steeple is at the city center so you can see everything from it...truly is a beautiful sight from the top, almost breath taking! On a clear day you can see the Alps but it was pretty cloudy when we did the climb but next time I will do it on a clear day.

Thursday was another trip to Oktoberfest with the rest of the Americans to try and get in the beer tents. With are luck we ended up making it in to 3 different beer tents, great trip & it is crazy what they do there. Friday I went on a guided tour which was nice to learn about some of the old & interesting things about Ulm. Like it is 1 of the oldest cities in Germany & back in the day it was 1 of the safest with its city wall & army positions for the city. The Guinness world record for the most crooked house is located in fisherman's square in Ulm Germany, it is actually a hotel you can stay at & enjoy the custom made furniture so you can be flat lol. Some houses here date back to the 1500's & they still look great!

Today was a fun filled day in the Alp mountains where we did a team climbing day. Teams of 2 made their way threw different obstacles on different courses all up about 25 feet in a tree with the wind blowing & yes the trees where swaying lol. After 3 courses I said lets go do the black diamond course, the hardest course...I wont do that one again lol. At the start you climb a ladder that is like the ones in the movies under a helicopter, which is hard, 35 feet off the ground & make you walk a tight rope...I did not fall but thank god I had a safety cable! I really got nervous when I had to jump tree to tree & they are like 6 foot from each other...my heart was pounding when I jumped & the wind switched directions, while I am in the air, moving the trees further apart but I still made it! all together I am bruised, cut up & sore but I had a great time at the Alps today!!!

Tomorrow I will have a nice day off & sleep in for the first time in the dorms...hopefully I can lol. classes start Tuesday for me since they pushed them back...lucky me lol.