By: Nicholas Erni May 4 & 5
Well today was an extremely long day, around 36 hours or so to be exact.
It all started at the university of Pittsburgh @ 10:00am when we boarded the bus to begin our journey to Germany. The bus ride to the Pittsburgh airport was uneventful, as well was the flight over to Chicago where our 3 house layover took place. The O’Hara airport is quite the architectural masterpiece if I do say so myself. It is absolutely massive and is in the top 3 for most travelers coming through it in the USA. After our time in Chicago we boarded the plane for a 8 hour flight to Munich at 6pm central time. The flight was not the most comfy, we were in regular economy class, so what could you expect. After about 2 hours of movies, 4 hours of sleeping, and 2 hours of back cramps we arrived in Munich.
Arriving in Germany was quite the shock, not only was it freezing, it was also my first time being in a foreign country, so hearing German spoke all around me was crazy. We went to a couple food places in the Airport where I wanted to place an order but I was too nervous surrounding the language barrier to make an attempt. We then boarded a coach bus and departed to the hotel. After settling in we went on a tour of Augsburg, with the combination of cold weather, no sun, and a slight drizzle, it was not the best conditions coming from 80 degree Pennsylvania.
On the other hand though, the tour was incredible. Dr. Feick gave great descriptions of the places we were looking at and going through, such as the Dom which is one of the premiere churches in Augsburg, the town hall which contains the beautiful gold room pictured below, and many more places which I’ll talk about in tomorrows blog.
Also, it was very intriguing to see places that we were learning about in the Plus 3 course in person. This idea pertains to one of the places that really stood out to me was the Fuggeri. To have a personal tour, and further learn all that Jakob Fugger did for Augsburg, was quite intriguing. Also, some of the Fuggeri flats were left relatively unchanged from the original designs hundreds of years ago, so being able to see that was almost like taking a trip back in time.
After this tour, we went to dinner at a traditional Bavarian Restaurant. I had dark pork dumplings which were extremely tasty and my first true german meal. The meal consisted of Pork in some type of sauce, potato dumplings, and red spincach. Personally I’d give the dinner a 8/10 recommendation to other tourists visiting Augsburg or Germany.
There after we went to the hotel and chilled out for about 20 minutes then headed straight out to a bier festival. This I can say from the first day, is something that will stick with me for a very long time. The traditional German culture I experienced there was unlike anything I had ever seen in America. To be jumping around on tables with completely random strangers was something I will treasure for a very long time. After the festival I came back to the hotel around 11:30 and jumped into bed after an extremely long day of travel and other activities.
Also I will be doing a car of the day on the blog, todays winner goes to a Mercedes Benz AMG GTS.