Koblenz, Gamescom and Real,-

Mang-Git and I anticipated a restful weekend in Koln, but these past few days have been anything but!

On Friday, we made our first trip to Germany's supposed "American super store" called Real,-. Yes, the comma and dash are necessary. It was so weird, because I felt like I stepped into Meijer or a Target Greatlands because they had everything - produce, office supplies, clothing, furniture, etc. It's been a while since I've been to a one-stop shop, it kind of made me start to miss home

On Saturday, we took a day-trip to the city of Koblenz with 7 of my wonderful co-workers :) We got schoenes wochenende tickets, where basically you pay 37€ for a ticket that can be used for up to 5 people to go anywhere within Germany (on the slower-moving trains, though). So for 7€, I got to spend the afternoon in a new city with good company. The best sight of the city was Deutsches Eck ("German Corner"), which was where the Rhine and Mosel rivers meet:

On Sunday, Mang-Git and I woke up bright and early to go to Gamescom, the world's largest gaming convention, which was conveniently held 1 U-bahn stop away from our apartment. We originally intended to go and play some of the not-yet-release games, meet the guy who does Mario's voice, and get free T-shirts. But even after getting there only 30m after Gamescom opened their doors on Sunday morning, the lines were so ridiculously long that we just ended up walking around to all 4 exhibition rooms collecting free stuff and watching other gamers game. The most worthwhile part was getting our money's worth in free Vodaphones (4 of them, to be exact):

Buggying in Bansko, Bulgaria!

So anyway, back to Saturday! Mang-Git and I high-tailed it over to the other side of Bansko to a horse/ATV/buggy rental shop since it was our last night in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, we didn't end up renting ATVs or horses like we originally planned since we only had an hour before the sun set. Instead, the shop owners took me and Mang-Git on a buggy tour! It was amazing, here's our video and some pictures:

When we got back home, we had to rinse our mouths twice to get the sand and grit out from in between our teeth. We even considered showering with our clothes on because they were so soiled. All in all, definitely a worthwhile experience :)

Our trip home today was rather uneventful... except for the fact that I was pleasantly surprised by our ability to talk the check-in counter lady into letting my 55-litre camping backpack onto the plane as my carry-on! Oh, and also, we found out that there is a fully-stocked supermarket in the Dusseldorf airport, which I thought was really funny. I've never done my grocery shopping in the airport before.

That is all. I still need to recover from this past week.

Excursions in Bulgaria

Wow, what a crazy day.

This morning, we boarded the buses at 9am and we drove a few hours outside of Bansko to visit the American University in Bulgaria. We mostly just took a tour of their new library and some of the other buildings on their campus, which were all brand new and very Western-looking. It was interesting, but at the same time kind of irrelevant since AUBG only offers undergraduate programs and most everyone in FISI had already graduated from uni. Nevertheless, the campus was still really nice:

After that, we had lunch at a traditional Bulgarian restaurant (read: never-ending servings of potatoes and watermelon) which was situated right next to a farm/petting zoo/animal reserve type place:

The last thing that we did was the coolest - we visited a small church Dobarsko village, and it had a beautiful garden. We were serenaded there by some old women who sang traditional Bulgarian songs, handed out corsages and served us their local yogurt drink (apparently made the previous day with milk straight from the cow's udder. yum.). I'll let the pictures speak for themselves because I'm freaking tired. More about this day later.

Fulbright in Bulgaria

Greetings from the beautiful mountain ranges of Bansko, Bulgaria! This week, I used what's left of my vacation days to do a 5-day study abroad program in the Balkans. I'm happy to report that so far, the Fulbright International Summer Institute has been an incredible experience.

Before coming, I had no idea what to expect since I had never been to Eastern Europe. I figured that things would be cheap and that I wouldn't be able to read any of the signs (damn you, Cyrillic alphabet!). That much was true, but I was also pleasantly surprised by the hospitality of the locals and much-needed change of scenery - the Western European cities have all been meshing together into my mind as a giant clusterfuck of Roman Catholic cathedrals and dirty rivers cutting through major metropolitan cities.

To start off, Mang-Git and I arrived at the Sofia airport on Sunday afternoon and from there, we took a 3-hour bus ride up to Bansko. According to our program coordinator, Bansko is especially popular during winter months because of its reputation as a ski resort town. Bansko also just recently started hosting an annual jazz festival, which has also attracted a lot of attention to the area during summer months. Luckily, the week of FISI that I was participating in coincided with this year's jazz fest, so there was plenty to do after classes ended for the day.

In recent years, there has been a lot of development in the area (which is why FISI only just moved over to Bansko, because there was so much construction before this year), but because of the economic downturn, a lot of the building projects have been abandoned. On our bus ride up the mountainside, we saw a lot of nearly-finished hotels and resorts, but they were missing windows and obviously hadn't been touched in months. Hopefully things will start looking up soon, it looks like a really promising tourist spot.

I took 2 classes during my stay here: Projects Writing & Management and Bulgarian Culture, both of which were taught by professors from Sofia. What's really cool is that the classes are made up of students from all over the world, so we have a different languages and global perspectives constantly flying back and forth in the classroom. During lectures, we also often heard car stereos blasting 7-year-old American pop music and horse hooves hitting the pavement as they passed by the classroom windows. Some of the Bulgarian students joked that since the country was a communist state up until 1990, they are still in the process of catching up on American pop culture (which explains why Des'ree and Jewel are still perceived as "cool" here).

In between classes, we have a lot of time to just wander around Bansko. I actually walked into town on my own during the day when it's just the old people and children running in the streets, and it was so weird because everyone just stared me. I guess Bansko (or the rest of Bulgaria and Eastern Europe for that matter) doesn't really see a lot of Asian tourists. It's especially different to walk around the city in the daytime than at nighttime, like during the jazz fest for instance, because young people are more acclimated to diversity and would have the courtesy not to gawk at unusual sights (like Asian people...? lol). So for the first time while in Europe, I felt really out of place, especially when a group of 10-year-old boys started pointing and whispering about me. I have to admit though, sticking out like a sore thumb does have its benefits. Later that night, Mang-Git and I walked into town to get ice cream and stood outside of the gated jazz festival area. Just as we were about to leave, one of the security attendants whom we met on the first day to ask about ticket prices approached us. She said she recognized us from earlier in the week and asked if we wanted to watch the band play a little longer, and offered us free admission, which was pretty freaking awesome.

Anyway, just a few pictures from this week:

Classes ended today, and I'm so completely burnt out. I guess I forgot what it's like to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures since I haven't done that since December!

Fulbright is taking us on a tour of some of the nearby villages tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to. After that Mang-Git and I will either rent ATVs and check out the rest of Bansko or stay the night in Sofia since we didn't really get to see the city when we first landed.

My week off is coming to a close, I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet!

Amsterdam

Wow I am soo behind! Just one more post on my recent travels before my big, week-long trip to Bulgaria...starting tomorrow morning!!

Amsterdam (Part I)

I think that Amsterdam knocked Berlin down to #2 on my list of favorite cities to visit in Europe. I had no idea what to expect before going there and was completely blown away by everything we saw.

First of all, me and Mang-Git kept an eye on hostel prices for about 2 months prior to our Amsterdam trip but they always seemed to hover around €40/bed. Finally we just decided to split our trip up into 2 day trips since Holland is only a 2 hour train ride from our apartment.

Second of all, meet the hamster that came to Amsterdam with us! :) His name is Frederick and his bottom is permanently affixed to a stuffed, zippered heart that hangs on a string. I bought him just so I could say I brought a hamster with me to Amsterdam:

Anyway, for our first day there, we got the I (Am)sterdam card which gave us free access to a bunch of museums and coupons for a ton of free stuff. We spent most of our Saturday at the Diamond Museum, Van Gogh Museum, a boat tour of the canals, and looking for raw herring in an marketplace since we were trying to get the most mileage out of our tourist card:

Koelner Lichter

We took the 7pm train home to get home in time for Koelner Lichter, which is the biggest fireworks show in Germany (maybe even Europe, according to my manager). The best part was that it just happened to be going on in our backyard. It's a big thing in Cologne, because apparently there are ~1+ million people that come into town just for the show, so seats on boats and cable cars that night will go for at least 100€ each! At first, me and Mang-Git were concerned that we wouldn't be able to find a good spot because it was so packed. After wandering around by the river though, we hopped a fence and sat on the shore of the Rhine right across from the boat that was launching all of the fireworks.

The Germans apparently take their fireworks show very seriously. It was definitely beyond anything that I have seen in the States, even for the 4th of July. The show was divided up into 2 parts: 1 was a smaller exhibition of fireworks, and then there was a break for about 15 minutes while the big kahuna (the big boat with the big fireworks) made its way to the middle of the river to start the actual show. When the music started playing, the entire area around us absolutely lit up, but not because of the fireworks. Apparently it's tradition to hold up white sparklers at the beginning of the show, and we missed the memo, but definitely took notice when some idiot a few rows behind us dropped his sparkler into a bush and it caught on fire. Aside from that though, Koelner Lichter was incredible and definitely worth coming back for:

Amsterdam (Part II)

Our second day in Amsterdam was mostly unplanned since we had only bought the 24-hour I (Am)sterdam pass and it had already expired by the time we arrived. We ended up renting bikes and rode to the Eastern Docklands, which is right outside of the downtown-y area of Amsterdam. The Eastern Docklands used to be a major shipping port, but after WWII, things started slowing down and it turned into a wasteland. About 20 years ago, the Dutch government decided to restore it and make the area suitable for residential communities. Personally, I think they did a fantastic job. We rode our bikes around the area to check out the architecture, found a bench right by one of the smaller canals to have lunch on and a park with an awesome zipline. It was really amazing, I highly recommend dropping by the Eastern Docklands to anyone planning to visit Amsterdam:

We ended our trip with a paddle-boat rental, where Mang-Git freaked out whenever I tried to steer because he was afraid I was going to run us in to someone's houseboat. At the end, he was actually the one that rammed the nose of our boat into the side of someone's kitchen while they were cooking dinner :) Oh yeah, and we also managed to squeeze in a quick trip to a diamond factory before returning our bikes for the day.

That took much longer to relive than I thought it would. I'll save Paris for another time and start packing for Bulgaria now!