I have been back in the land of reliable internet for a couple days now, so I'm overdue in writing a post to update you all! My last couple weeks have been much more eventful, so I will be breaking up Berlin into a couple different entries. Just to update you on my current whereabouts, Matt and I are staying with my exchange family from 2009 in Villmar (a tiny town near Limburg, which is a bigger town/village about an hour away from Frankfurt) until Friday morning, when we'll head off to Paris to visit my aunt and uncle. It's been so great seeing them all again! But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My last week at Park-Krankenhaus Leipzig was fairly uneventful. I did get to lead a music therapy session completely alone rather unexpectedly; one of the therapists had a meeting she'd forgotten about and asked me to lead the session while she was gone so she wouldn't have to cancel the session for the patients. Thankfully it wasn't a psychotherapy group - I don't think I would have had the language skills to successfully do that. It was the older patients, so they do a lot of listening and improvisation and less talking. It ended up going well!
On Saturday (June 29th), I left in the morning to go to Düsseldorf, where I could hang out with Matt and the rest of the Eastern group for their last weekend in the city. My train had a 20-minute delay waiting for another train, so I missed my connecting train from Frankfurt to Düsseldorf and had to go up to the travel office and ask when the next train was - luckily there was one in 5 minutes from a platform I could get to fairly easily, so I booked it over there and got on just before the doors closed! (I was also glad to have a EuRail pass - basically I didn't have to pay for another ticket because the pass is good for an entire day.)
I got into Düsseldorf around 3:30 and Matt took me back to his host family's house and then we went back out to meet up with the group and wander around the city a little bit. We ended up just eating dinner and not really doing any sight seeing, but it was nice to hang out with people!
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| The Rheintum (Rhine tower) |
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| Looking over the Rhine just after sunset |
The next day, Matt and I went to a castle - or supposedly, it had said it was a castle and that's what he thought the first time he'd been there. It was more like a manor. Definitely pretty, definitely not a castle. :) There were really pretty grounds and I got some pictures, but they all look pretty similar so I'll just post one.
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| I have a weird obsession with "path pictures". |
That night, Matt and I talked to his host parents for a while (and I made the discovery that my favorite beer is actually alcohol-free) and then we went back out to actually do some sightseeing. Got a couple more cool pictures.
The next day, July 1st, was our day to travel to Berlin. The day started out pretty successfully, but due to a normal train delay and then being re-routed due to flooding, our train came in an hour and a half late and the person that was supposed to meet us at the train station wasn't there anymore. After some calling and whatnot, we figured out where we were supposed to go and set out to get there. About halfway there, though, the bus line stopped since it apparently stops at 6pm. Long story short, we were supposed to get in to the train station about 3 and then be at our apartments by probably about 4, but we didn't get to the train station until about 4:40 and didn't get to our apartment complex till after 8. It was a long, crabby day for everyone.
I did get a picture of the Berlin Hauptbahnhof though! That train station is HUGE. The tower things you see on the side are 5 (maybe 6) stories tall. There are two sets of tracks - the ones in the upper level, and then there is a lower level where more trains can come and go. Then five stories of stores and restaurants. Pretty intimidating!
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| Berlin Hauptbahnhof |
I will update more a little later, but I'm going to go eat lunch.
Bis bald!
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