Adventures in the Spiral of Life: Europe Trip Part Eins

Although I already blogged a little bit about my time in Bonn Germany I thought I'd start off my syndicated tour through Europe there. Bonn was a great city and that's it.

Our metro stop, Heussallee, always
remembered by the bright yellow
station. All the stations were
a different color.

No, just kidding. Bonn was the capital of West Germany until 1990 when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down and all the politicians decided to pack up shop and move to Berlin. Bonn however was left with a thriving international business market and many essential government functions are still in the area. Bonn to us however was our home base in Germany. We stayed in a dorm, that actually used to be the temporary residences for UN correspondents (how cool...!) and had our own kitchen, laundry facilities, lounge, and everything else. We took the metro everywhere however we could take the beautiful walk down the Rhine River into town and stop at one of the many beergardens along the way for a pint. I couldn't help but soak in the perfect weather (70 degrees, light wind, sun shining, ummmm yea be jealous) by taking a walk or running most mornings.

Our dorm room with a balcony and
kitchen on the other side.

Now of course we were there for school so we had class with the wonderful AIB crew. Our program was based on Natural Resource Management and Tourism in Europe. Our program coordinator, Ture, was super fantastic. He coordinated all of the classes and field trips and almost all of them were perfectly flawless. During our time there we were able to meet with representatives from the UN, UNESCO, German Green Party, and multiple environmental NGOs. We also had classes on park governance structure, European Union, German language, and German history to compliment the countless field trips we took to parks in the region but I'll talk about those separately.

Kolsh beer in a traditional Kolsh
glass of which one was
sent back to America and
even made it in one piece.

The award winning Weinerschnitzel

And now we get to the good stuff - beer!!! The beer to drink in the region is Kolsh, which is the home brew of Koln - only a 20 minute train ride away. And in case you were wondering, it's a lie, beer in Germany is not served warm but it isssssssss delicious. The food was amazing too. My tour de Weinerschnitzel started in Bonn and continued throughout Germany but I have to give props to Bonn for having the most delicious Weinerschnitzel with mushroom gravy in alllll of Germany. Kudos!

My roommate (Lauren...who somehow managed to put up with me for a full 4 weeks...god bless her) and I spent a lot of time eating, drinking, and wandering the streets of Bonn. We made friends with some students from Texas A&T (and boy are they a proud bunch of texans..i'm not hating...) who spoke fluent German so hanging around them made life easier when trying to find cool places to go at night or just trying our hardest not to piss anyone off.

Of course there were lots of beautiful churches to see, great shopping, and how could I have forgotten this....Bonn is the home of Ludwig Van Beethoven. LUDWIG LIVES! <--yeah, I bought the shirt, don't judge. Unfortunately all the nitty gritty details of our time there are so muttled up in my brain with all the other amazing places we visited so I'll leave with some pictures of the beautiful city of Bonn!!!!