Spur of the Moment--let´s pretend to be Heidi

Last weekend I decided to jump on a plane and head to Germany. My friend Ashton, who is in the American program, and I decided that we wanted to go to a central European country for the weekend, and booked our flights two days before we left. Actually, I booked the flights, which is why we ended up where we did. Being on a budget, we generally fly to the airports on the outskirts of cities, so I opted to fly into the Frankfurt-Hahn airport--big lie. This airport is over 2 hours away from Frankfurt, luckily we found this out the morning before we left, so we didn´t make any boarding reservations in Frankfurt.

Instead we headed out to Trier, the oldest city in Germany, founded in 16BC. We arrived in a soft snow fall, it was perfect. Finding a hostel however, was not. Though we had been practicing our best German accents, we were entirely unable to communicate in German, and sadly very few people spoke English. Thus, finding a hostel for the night was an endeavor. Luckily for us, there were only two hostels in the whole city, so people had heard of the one we were looking for. After we found it, we managed to hand motion enough that we wanted a place to sleep for two nights, sadly they only had space for one night. I say sadly, because this was the best hostel I´ve stayed in yet. They gave us a private room, double beds, and down comforters. Amazing. After we put our things down, we wanted to do a bit of exploring, so we ventured out, bundled in the winter attire. The only place that was open was the mall, so of course, we headed in. Spain is not known for big store, they prefer the style of buying your shoes in the shoe store, skirts in the boutiques and so on. Germany functions a bit more like America with BIG department stores. We even found the equivalent of Walmart--but much more entertaining.

Since the city was shut down for the night, and we could only explore so many stores in the mall, we headed in back for an early night, knowing that we´d get an early start in the morning.

8am we were on the road, or sidewalks rather. We boycotted all public transportation and decided to get our exercise by walking everywhere. Our first stop was the Palace of Trier which hosted fantastic gardens lined with statues and vine covered stone walls. The architecture looked a bit French, but we accepted it for what it was. We strolled over to the Roman forum which houses the Roman baths. If I had not titled my pictures on my computer, I easily could have slide these into my Rome photo album. Trier was one of the main cities during the Roman Empire, and the history is most certainly still visible.

Since it was a bit chilly, we wanted our next stop to be inside, so off to the Cathedral we went. It is the oldest Cathedral in Germany, built by Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, and now holds regular Catholic services. It was impossible to miss the Cathedral itself, as it looks like you are approaching a fortress. Constantine is the same man who started places for St. Peter´s Basilica in Rome, if that gives you any idea of how impressive this piece is.

Then main street was filled with street market vendors, selling mainly edibles and flowers; therefore no good gifts to pick up. This road led us to the Porta Nigra, which is the city gate built soon after the death of Jesus.

We found ourselves on a leave-crystallized sidewalk next to the river, which was one of the best landscapes that I have seen since my arrival a few months back. Germany´s mountains and trees easily could be labeled New England, all in all, I felt home. This road led us, after a few detours, to the birthplace of Karl Marx, who resided in Trier for the greater part of his life.

I hadn´t realized how bustling with history the city was, as before last week, the city had yet to reach my radar. Despite having slept in the airport all Saturday night, as there were no available hostels, the weekend was fantastic. I came back to Bilbao in time to read a book for class and write two papers--I´m finally getting the hang of this. Next stop: Sevilla on Friday.