The weekend of October 1st I was actually in Quedlinburg, for once! Seems like I'm always traveling...probably because I always am ;) . But this particular was chock full of stuff to do in town, so I stuck around! On Friday some of the other students, one of our teachers, and I went to visit Falkenstein, which is an honest-to-goodness medieval castle about 45 minutes away from Quedlinburg. Again- an actual medieval castle. Not a palace, not a 18th-century version of what a palace/castle might have been like (ahem, Neuschwanstein), a city walls, castle keep,holes-to-shoot-arrows-and-pour-hot-oil-from castle. Of course there was museum, and of course I thoroughly enjoyed it :)! There were the obligatory cool weapons, suits of armor, treasure, and ornate paintings, but the really REALLY cool part was the letter on display from Queen Elizabeth I of England...just sitting there behind a glass case on the side of the room like it was no big deal! I think I stood there for a good 5 minutes just staring...she is my favorite monarch, after all! (Yes, I have a favorite monarch. Don't judge.) The really cool part of the trip was the Medieval Festival they had going on. Apparently Germany's so lousy with history they skip right past the Renaissance Fairs and go on back a couple hundred years, because, y'know, why not? There were people dressed up, stands with all sorts of interesting foods (I got roasted walnuts and some sort of Hungarian garlic-flatbread-thingy), dudes with bows and arrows, and all sorts of hand-carved nonsense. There was a guy selling woodcut printings of illustrations from old Saxon (Sachsen, for you Germans out there) poetry; of course I bought one! Tristian and Isolde :). More pretty things for my apartment! But the best part about the whole festival; they sold mead. I got to drink hot mead at a medieval castle. (The italics are just there to emphasize how incredibly awesome I feel being able to say that!) Mead is basically hot honey wine, and was pretty much the beverage of choice back in the day. I know it was very silly and touristy of me, but it was just so cool! The whole castle visit experience was just really cool; definitely the most awesome German medieval festival at a medieval castle I've ever been to ;).
On Saturday a bunch of the other students, their host families and I went hiking. We climbed the "Brokenberg", which pretty much means "boulder mountain". I'm used to hiking with my family in Rocky Mountain National Park, so I was pretty sure I knew what to expect; rocks, mountains, streams, small animals, and a great view at the peak that you start at for about 10 minutes before going back down because there's not exactly a lot to do up there. Turns out German mountains are utilized for their tourism factor to the fullest extent possible! About three quarters of the way up the mountain the trail turned in to....a highway. You could drive up there. There were people jogging, biking, driving, etc all around us. Don't get me wrong, it was a steep highway, and I still got my workout going up it, but it was just so...paved. And at the top, there was a gift shop and cafeteria! Completely not what I was expecting. Still really fun though!
Sunday was the main event of the weekend. October 3rd is a geman holiday, celebrating the reunification of East and West Germany and called, appropriately, the German Unity Day. I'm not exactly sure what 'real' Germans do to celebrate, but my school program took all the students and host parents bowling! I proved, once again, how decidedly lackluster my bowling skills are, but I still had a blast! In the afternoon, my school put on an Opera concert as a thank-you to Quedlinburg for hosting us. There were some pretty awesome Mozart pieces! Sunday was also the day a video of me and my roommate came out of us doing tourist-y things around Quedlinburg aired. It made us out to be pretty ditzy, but oh well. Quedlinburg got some good exposure! All in all it was a really awesome, though really tiring, weekend.
I feel like as I'm writing I'm getting more and more boring, so Copenhagen (and if I'm feeling ambitious, Italy) will have to be next post!
No comments:
Post a Comment