Last full day with the Family

Boxing Day Video

Christmas Day Video

Guest blog: #4

Name: Alexis Marissa

Favorite Excursion: Konigswinter. The weather was the worst, but I liked the adventure to the dragon fortress. I was let down when there was no dragon there, but the town was very ideal old German and the bathrooms were free: yay.

Favorite Weihnachtsmarkt: This is tough to answer because we saw Bonn so much more than the others. I guess if I had to choose, it would be Bonn. I like the combination of live music, shopping, and delicious smells.

Favorite food: Backfish sandwich with garlic sauce from the Bonn Weihnacht's market

Favorite Dessert: Do our hotel's cookies count? Just kidding. The plain chocolate printen from Aachen.

Favorite German Word: tschus

Biggest Surprise about Germany/Europe: How early everything closes. Most food places (bakeries, butcheries, etc.) close at 6ish.

Final words: I really like the European aspects of Germany. I'm very jealous of their public transportation system. I've told my father many times that it would have been so nice not to always rely on my parents or siblings for a ride, but instead just hop on a bus and go to a friend's house or spend the day in another city via train. Another thing I like is that vendors/store workers don't hover or walk up to you and ask if you need help. It was especially nice since I don't speak the same language as them. I will definitely miss that when I go back home.
*Attached is a picture of me climbing to the dragon in Konigswinter

Guest blog: #3

Name:  Mom

Favorite Excursion  Getting to see Bonn up close and personal

Favorite Weihnachtsmarkt Bonn

Favorite food Bratwurst

Favorite Dessert Mandelhorn

Favorite German Word  Yah Farhten

Biggest Surprise about Germany/Europe still has that old world charm

Guest blog: #2

Name: Brendan

Favorite Excursion

Aachen

Favorite Weihnachtsmarkt

Bonn

Favorite food

Currywurst

Favorite Dessert

Sachertoerte

Favorite German Word

Hauptbahnhof

Biggest Surprise about Germany/Europe

A lot of people speak English

clean, friendly, city of the world, city of the people, city of Germany, hilly, long walks, next to the Rhine, lots of churches

Guest blog: #1

I am letting each member of my family have one guest blog, they will all answer the same questions at the beginning and then have been instructed that they can write as much or less as they would like afterwards:

Name: KJC

Favorite Excursion  Aachen...very cool to see a cathedral from Charlemagne's time...almost no damage from WWII bombing.... 

Favorite Weihnachtsmarkt:  Siegburg....medieval theme....though all were great fun...

Favorite food:  the <<brot?? had been fantastic everywhere....

Favorite Dessert:  all

Favorite German Word: danke und bitte

Biggest Surprise about Germany/Europe:  the <<bicycle culture>>  it has been impressive to see people of all ages using bikes, and how bikes fit in to the car and pedestrian world

T'was the night before Christmas with Christen

Christmas with Christen, Friday

Christmas with Christen, Thursday

Christmas with Christen, Wednesday

Here is the video taken on the Wednesday of the visit:

Christmas with Christen, Tuesday

So I decided to try something different this time around. rather than blog, I just took videos each day, and then later in the week I will have the family guest blog about what they are liking/seeing/eating etc.... so here is the video from the first full day the family was here:

Christmas in Bonn (pre arrival Corcoran clan)

Today I woke up to hear the ringing of church bells, and a sound Im not used to yet in Bonn: shovel

scraping the floor. Yes, snow has come to Bonn, not very much I will add, but snow all the same. Not enough to prevent an important flight from landing tomorrow (knock on wood), so it is kind of exciting for the international community of Bonn. Lots of Facebook statuses "First snow ever" etc... people wanting to make snowmen (dont think they know it needs to snow more). Didn't think the first snow would be as exciting as it was, but it has inspired me to do a little Christmas blog pre family arrival.

So I am assuming that every knows what the Christmas markets here are, but in case not I'll explain. The whole center of Bonn right now is decked to the max in Christmas decorations and filled with stalls selling food or homemade crafts or rides for children or.... gluehwein (more later). 

Here is an example from Muensterplatz. It is impossible to go through the city at all right now without being slammed with Christmas cheer. Last night I heard Minuet in G Minor (Suzuki coming back to all of us) pouring from the tower of the Muenster Cathedral by a small band being illuminated in yellow. The big hub-bub of the Weinachtsmarkt is the Gluehwein, which is really strong mulled wine that they make in different flavors here. It makes the whole town smell like cinnamon and Christmas.  

The other Wednesday, to get in the Christmas spirit, me and my friends had a little wacky-tacky-christmas gathering to get in the Christmas mood. We watched A Charlie Brown's Christmas and made Gluehwein and ate Christmas cookies, here are some of the... interesting choices in wacy tacky

you can see lipstick on my cheek because I got mistletoed =O

Yesterday I went ice skating with the irish crew on the museums meile

Put us into the Christmas spirit even more! And in stereotypical German fashion, they had a bar on the ice rink ;)

Tonight someone organized a little Christmas dinner for the dorm with chicken and potatoes and everything delicious (which surprisingly enough for me actually includes sauerkraut, which I have had pounds and pounds of since coming to Germany, who would have thought?). But anyways I am excited to celebrate Christmas with my Bonn family once again before I have the chance to celebrate it with my real one. 

This could be para... (para) Paradise!

This blog may be under the "to the interest of Future Christen only" but hey we will see! Just warning beforehand that people (especially you old farts reading this) may not be super interested, but it is my blog so my say! Last night after taking my last midterm-ish-test before winter break, I rushed off to Cologne, taking a train, an U-Bahn, and an S-Bahn  to get to this place:

To see Coldplay!!

So this concert going experience was a little different that the one that I am used to. The website said that the doors open at 6 for the 8pm concert, so I got there around 6:30 and people were kind of hanging out in the lobby because the doors were not open yet to get into the seating area. People, of course. were drinking Koelsch and just kind of milling about until the doors finally opened. So since I was seated about an hour beforehand, I was basically people watching. The demographic of the Coldplay concert goers of Germany was much different than I expected. The couple to my right was about 60 years old and the couple to my left was a tattooed mid 30s pair who had to leave for a bit during "The Scientist" because the girl was sobbing uncontrollably. It was quite astounding how widely ranged the ages of the fans were. The opener was rather good, although didnt talk very much, and then after her there was about 40 minutes to Coldplay where they were just playing random songs. The most hilarious part about this for me was when they played "99 Problems" by Jay-Z directly before Coldplay came on (lyrics for all you old folks who may not know this rap song "If you're havin' girl problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one") and everyone went absolutely insane. Everyone started dancing and (trying) to sing along. Anywho, then Coldplay came on and sang "Hurts like Heaven" to start it all off:

What are all those lights around the stadium Christen? Are the multi-colored camera flashes? No! When we all came into the stadium, we were given these watch-looking-bracelets. As soon as Coldplay started singing, to the surprise of everyone in the audience, all of our bracelets started lighting and flashing (one of the lyrics to Coldplay's upcoming single "Charlie Brown" is "We'll go wild, we'll be glowin' in the dark" and I think this was a homage to that). It was one of the coolest things I have seen. BTW my seats, although high, were not that bad at all, I felt like I was up close and center. The stadium was about the same size as the Cintas center just to give a perspective. 

Second song that they played was "Yellow" (hence the light)

Chris in the middle of a confetti explosion! (I believe it was during "Hardest Part")

another confetti explosion

One of the funniest parts of the concert was Chris kept saying "Danke schoen" and at one point he even said "Wir sind gluecklich, dass wir in Koeln sind" which just means we are lucky to be in Cologne, it was really cute I though and I, not being German by any means, thought it was really cool that he was trying at least to speak this language.

They had these bulb-ish things all over the stadium where they would project the concert, it was cool because they were like floating above everyone

Here is the band singing "Up in Flames" 

This is Charlie Brown, and it was one of the coolest songs of the whole concert. It is clear that it is one of the band's favorite songs of the album so they really pulled out all of the stops for this one. Everyone was dancing to this song with their bracelets on so all of the little lights looked like they were dancing too.

Okay I decided to take a video of Viva La Vida, and I may or may not be singing the entire time.... you have been warned! It is a Christen/ Chris duet. But the cool thing about this song was that everyone sang the "yelling" part I guess you could say "ohhh ah ah ahhhhh ah" and since it was not words, even the non english speakers could sing along. People were singing this to encore the band as well.

Part of the encore was this song, I thought Brendan would especially like it since we were talking about whether or not Chris would since "Christmas Lights" or not  (their Christmas song last year).

There last song, of course, was "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall"

I said it last night, and I will say it again, this was one of the best experiences I have had in Germany yet. So glad I found out about this before the tickets sold out.... they are coming to Berlin and Frankfurt next week, maybe take the family on a road trip?

Best E-mail!

Dear Christen,

Congratulations!  It is a pleasure to inform you that your application for admission to the Bonn Sommersemester 2012 Program has been approved!

You can see above in my blog description that the needed changes have just been made. Christen is a happy camper 

(Angela Merkel is happy too)

Heidelberg....a blast from the past

Today I made the sojourn to Heidelberg along with the rest of the international gang. It was really interesting for me, as I (somewhat) described in this blog title, because this was the first city I have revisited in Germany from when I came here as a freshman in high school.... it was cool to see what I remembered and how my feelings changed. I remember coming to Heidelberg as a Freshman and deciding that I really really wanted to study there, being one of the best schools in Germany.... 7 years later, here I am, maybe not in Heidelberg, but I would say Bonn has exceeded all of my expectations. 

Here is the Schloss Heidelberg. The different parts of the castle were all built in different time periods, so one can really see the influence of Baroque and Gothic all throughout. This part (above) there are many different people carved into the castle. It was built by the same family that built castle Neuschwanstein (the Cinderella-looking castle that is super famous). Our tour guild pointed out that one of the people that was depicted was Kaiser Karl, who wasnt related to this family at all, but since there were no libraries or "Ask Jeeves" during the time, rulers could just make up the history. 

Here is me March 2006 in front of the same castle.

  

One thing that Schloss Heidelberg is known for is the huge wine barrel. It was seen as a since of wealth for being able to have such a huge wine barrel, it has only been completely filled twice, and the wine wasnt very good since it had to come from something like 12 different vineyards, but it was a way to boost to the other prices how grand life was. 

 I tried to take a picture here exactly where I took one in 2006 as well, here is a view from the castle overlooking old Heidelberg... its funny how the days seem to be similar cloud coverage as well

We visited the Heidelberg campus, and one of the more legendary things we got to visit was the old students prison. The university was founded in the 1300s, so before Heidelberg really had its own police system, they had their own jail. Now it is filled with centuries old graffiti, political or otherwise. It stopped being used during WWI when people decided to enlist and drop out of school

 It was a short day, but all in all it was a really interesting one for me because I felt like I was going to a place that I remember wishing I would. Its really crazy how I am halfway around the world, but still finding familiar places.

World Headlines today....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/tens-of-thousands-evacuating-german-city-as-experts-defuse-massive-british-wwii-era-bomb/2011/12/04/gIQAiqDMRO_story.html


This city is about a 45 minute train ride from where I am.... kind of eerie.

BIMUN Conference

As some of you may know, I am participating in an international Model United Nations conference this week, it is  really, really fun; however there is things to do literally all day long into the night and the debates are actually quite taxing. So far I am having a lot of fun, and I will write more about this experience later when I have a bit more free time, but I am posting two videos in which I am in.... the second one is more making fun of me than anything.... the people on the media team are my friends so they thought they would put in my blooper reals instead....

Noway or Norway

Like I said, I stole the pictures off facebook from Conor and Bruna so here they are:

You may ask yourself why so many of the boat pictures are only me or Conor, in otherwords.... where are the other tourists.... well it was a bit nippy this day so everyone stayed in the warm cabin of the boat including Bruna and Miguel, but Conor and I stayed on deck.... Im glad we did though because it really wasnt too cold and there was beautiful scenery all around.... like this picture for example (one of my favorites)

So for this one above, it may look very plain/uneventful but the first night we were in Oslo and the biggest building in the whole city happened to be a hotel with a giant glass elevator on the side. We snuck into the Hotel and searched everywhere to find how to ride the elevator.... we ended up sneaking past the bar on the top floor to find this employees only room and it had THE elevator in it..... we were so thrilled, and we got to see all of Oslo on the way down.