Finals!

Well just thought that I would send out a quick blog post to say not to expect anything from me for a little, due to the fact that I will be doing nothing exciting because I am studying for exams. Most of my exams are oral, which I have never done before. Needless to say I am a bit nervous, not only because they are oral, but because it is in another language.

Also I thought I would share a funny discussion with my professor today. She told me that she heard that one of the candidates for President is Mormon and then became really concerned "What will happen when a president cannot drink any alcohol? No champagne or wine or beer?" ...only a German would see this as a problem

Edinburgh

Edinburgh, wow, this was honestly one of the best days of my life being there. I know I said I would write the blog on Sunday, but life got in the way, as happens sometimes, so here is my 26 hours in Edinburgh:

So after getting to Edinburgh, the public transportation took me right to my hostel's door, so it was a breeze to get in. After putting my stuff in a locker, I decided to try to look up a haunted tour, as recommended by Rick Steves, but unfortunately it was too late and I had just missed them, but the castle was right across the street, and since I needed to get food anyways, I gave myself my own haunted tour. So Edinburgh, I learned, is considered the most haunted place in Europe. It was the largest Medieval city, and actually had the first skyscraper in the world. The old part of the city is still very much that, old. The buildings all date back to as late as the 1600s, and because it was built on kind of this cliff-thing, there are all of these creepy alley ways and narrow passageways called "closes." Black death also hit this city very hard, and the peasants were kept underground so as not to contaminate the noblemen, therefore the haunt people still in these closes. 

So the next day I woke up to a completely non-cooperative camera. So I used my cell phone instead:

So you can see some of the buildings of the old town in the right of this picture, and then the valley-ish thing used to be a Loch, but it was so polluted with trash and human waste and carcasses during the middle ages that they drained it. So after I took this picture, I went to a 3 hour tour of the city. This was one of the coolest things about Edinburgh, they really want to make the city available to all people of any budget, therefore all of the museums were free. And my tour was also free! Talk about a good value! My tour guide was really entertaining too, as you can see from the video   

Here is the Edinburgh Castle from one of the sides. It is clear why someone would want to build a castle there back in the olden times, it is literally unattainable except for one side because there is literally cliffs on 3 of the 4 sides. When I went inside the castle, it was pretty cool to see the Scottish Crown jewels, most importantly being the stone of Destiny. It has a pretty interesting history, especially in recent years, so I encourage people to look up the story if you dont know it. Queen Mary also lived there, as well as King Edward VI, who was born there. I found the Scottish history to be quite history, and I found it interesting how oppressed both the Irish and the Scottish were throughout history, something that I had never really thought about before.

So admittedly a big reason why Edinburgh was so attractive to me was that it is where Joanne Rowling, aka the author of the Harry Potter series, lives. Although I knew that she had written all of the novels in this city, it really was astonishing to see bits of the Harry Potter world in real life. My first taste was when I went to get a coffee and a small coffee shop across the way from where her flat had bin circa Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, there was an item on the menu that was a name of one of the sweets in the books. I thought to myself, "thats really cool that they made something on the menu Harry Potter-ish".... but then it hit me, Rowling had probably been here several times, and maybe it was her that borrowed this word, not the coffee shop. Also right underneath her former flat was where they used to do the public executions (pleasant I know), and my tour guide told us a story of Maggie Dickson (look up the story if you are interested in a shocking tale), and basically she had been sentenced to hang to death, and after being pronounced dead and sent to the cemetery, the wagon driver heard a knocking on her coffin. After opening the coffin, he discovered her to be alive. The way my tour guide told us the story of old Maggie, also known as"Half-Hangit Maggie Dickson” it really reminded me of the Gryffindor ghost "Nearly Headless Nick." It is also said that Rowling took strolls in the cemetery seen in the video above, and there is a Hermione, a Mr. Granger, and a McGonagall.... but as seen above, I am standing next to the most important one, yes Tom Riddle =) (aka Voldemort)

Above is me in the Elephant Cafe, aka the cafe where Rowling wrote the first two Harry Potter books. She had a deal with the cafe that she would be able to stay there all day, only buying one cup of coffee. It was cheaper to do this than to heat her apartment.

The Castle from down below!

Edinburgh from the Castle! 

Scotland in all its glory!

So I just had to see Dolly the clone sheep! who can say they saw that? 

   

Kinsale, Cork, Dublin

All I can say right now after just returning from my Ireland and Scotland sojourn is wow, just wow. Met some of the nicest people and saw some of the most breathtaking views this world has to offer. My trip was split up into three different sections. The first leg of the trip was Kinsale and Cork, where I stayed with my friend Aifric and her family (I was in Kinsale to ring in the New Year as well). The second leg I went to Dublin and met up with Paige, another friend from Bonn, and then on the final part I went to Edinburgh for a short 28 hour visit. The first two legs I actually didnt take much pictures. This was for two reasons I believe. The first is that since I was staying with locals, I didnt feel so touristy, therefore didnt take pictures of everything I saw; but the second, and more important reason is that for some reason my camera wasnt working most of the trip... not sure why, more on this later, but I did manage to take some pictures and I will look up the rest online and add in some non-christen photos. Anyways, this blog post, as seen from the title, will talk about the first two legs of the trip.

So here is the view from the bedroom that I was staying in. I know it seems so stereotypical, but it was really amazing how green everything was. And when the days were clear and sunny, the green against the blue water and sky was just out of this world cool. It didnt feel like so much of a tourist-run-around-and-look-at-everything stop of my trip, but it was a kind of lazy peak into irish living. The Campbell family was really welcoming. They raise chickens so it was cool to eat fresh chicken eggs less than a day old for the first time in my life.The food they ate was delicious, and i definitely got my fill of irish potatoes. The cool thing about Kinsale was that it was this small little town right on the harbor. One of the days I even got to go sailing with the family. As you turn the bend, you see the Atlantic ocean, and right there was the place where the Lusitania had sunk in WWII, and the Titanic had also passed through the area (landing for the last time in Cork before sinking....who knew?!) 

This bay had actually been invaded by the Spanish armada at one point. I never really realized how many times the Irish people had been taken over by other countries until I went over there. Every part of their history has something to do with another peoples taking them over. It was really cool to get to be on the sail boat and seeing all of these forts (above and below is Charles Fort) lining the side. I even saw a couple of rainbows whilst there!

(Aifric is above in red)

New Years in Ireland was a really cool experience. We went out to the pubs with Aifric's friends and it seemed like literally the whole town, young and old, had come to celebrate as well. I didnt take any pictures that night, but some other people did, so when they put it on Facebook I can put them on here if there is a demand. Although most of the music they played was "Top Charts" music, there was some of the songs that were really cool irish songs, for example:

 

A great way to bring in 2012. The thing as well about the irish is that they really are the friendliest people. I was listening to a Rick Steves podcast and they were saying how Gaelic was a spoken language, not a written one, therefore the culture is based around story telling. You can really tell that people are interested in talking and being social in Ireland, and no one is ever opposed to small talk. In terms of food, obviously I loved the potatoes, but the stew was AMAZING. This is saying a lot, because anyone who knows Christen Corcoran knows that I am not a huge fan of soup (soup Mondays in the winter in our household was not my favorite day of the week growing up to say the least), but I got two different stews (one was a vegetable I have never heard before with Aifric and the other was a potato and onion soup with Paige). The tea was not so bad as well. As a less than enthusiastic tea drinker, I was surprised to find myself drinking cups and cups of tea. In Cork we visited the English Market, which is a little (Findley Market-esque) stall shopping center, and the Queen herself had actually visited this place on her last (and only) visit.

The last night in Cork I spent at Aifric's friends house on campus. The Cork Campus is really nice and, as many people told me, was just recently shown in an episode of "How I Met Your Mother"

(picture courtesy of google images) 

Freya, one of Aifric's friends, was telling me that this university is used as a model for University buildings around the world, which I think one can definitely see from this picture. From here I took a 4 hour bus ride to Dublin, where I checked into my hostel (had two great hostel experiences) and then went to meet Paige.

We took a tour of the city, and then went for a pint:

The next day I went to the touristy places. I learned that the story of Robin Hood took place in Dublin, and the castle where the king lived is now the government building and little John's house was marked on the map. On the video, you can see the harp, which is the symbol of ireland in the tour. Also when we enter a pale green room, our tour guide told us the last person to sleep there was Margret Thatcher. It was really interesting because it was told to me that Dublin was really set up by the Vikings and English and all of the people that invaded/took over Ireland, and the rest of the country was considered savage land of the rest of the irish people, yet now that very city is the crown city of Ireland, and a place that represents Irish pride more than anywhere else. Interesting to ponder. At around 3 I made my way to the airport to go to Edinburgh!

Here is a video of Cork/Kinsale/Dublin

btw, my Youtube account was just approved to upload videos over 15 minutes, hold onto your horses, i consider that a challenge