January 2007

On December 30 Michelle and I travelled from Krefeld to Hamburg where we spent four nights. We checked out the city on the last day of the year before heading to the Reeperbahn, Hamburgs famous red-light district for the New Years celebrations. We ate dinner next to some elderly German ladies who took a liking to us and bought us each a beer. Then we headed to the port, firecrackers in hand. Midnight struck and I believe there was no official Hamburg fireworks show or, if there was, it wasn't evident in amongst the chaos that was the individual fireworks displays of the entire population of Germany's third largest city.

In the New Year we made a day trip to Schwerin, Wismar and Neubukow. Schwerin is a pretty city on a lake and the capital of the state Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania. We lunched there and poked around the city, checking out the castle before heading on to Wismar. Wismar is a quaint port city which was Swedish for a long time - it still shows in the Scandinavian architecture and canals. Neubukow is a tiny town with nothing more than a post office and a couple of bakeries. I wanted to visit because it's the area where some of my Mum's ancestors are from but the rain, wind, cold and darkness soon turned us around and we headed back to Schwerin for dinner before returning to Hamburg.

After Hamburg we took a marathon (12 hour) overnight bus to Heidelberg where we caught the train back to Freiburg - it was nice to have Michelle back in Freiburg for a couple of days and we relived memories there before I headed back up to Krefeld/Düsseldorf with her for her return flight to the states.

After a weekend in Freiburg for a uni-requirement weekend seminar I took off on the 20th on an excursion into Switzerland to Bern, Lausanne and Neuchâtel. After arriving early and waiting for the bus at 5:30am, I realised I had forgotten my passport and had to borrow a bike and cycle frantically to pick it up from home. Nice way to get the adrenalin pumping just when you were looking forward to a couple of hours of shut-eye on the bus!

Bern, the capital of Switzerland, is a quaint city set in the loop of a river, but I found it a little grey. It's name comes from the German Bären, which mean "bears", and this city symbol exists in the flesh with bear pits on the city edge. Lausanne, on Lake Geneva, is in the French part of Switzerland and much prettier altogether. Both the lakefront and the city centre are beautiful with spectacular views across the lake to the towering Alps. By the time we got to Neuchâtel it was dusk and after a quick tour and some dinner and drinks we boarded the bus tired and ready to return.

Just four days later and I was buckling up in a Ryanair Jet to Pisa. I'd booked cheap flights there and back to visit Maria Giulia "Margie" Rancan and Stefano Maestrelli, my Italian friends from the Summer semester, who study there. The whole weekend was loads of fun including a trip around Tuscany (San Gimignano, Monteriggioni and Siena) with Stefano, a guided tour of Pisa, including the best Italian food I've ever eaten, and a trip to the coast at Viareggio and finally Lucca.
San Gimignano and Monteriggioni are both walled cities set on hilltops in the picturesque Tuscan countryside. Siena, significantly larger, has more of an Italian city feel with scooters, bustling pedestrian traffic and extravagant architecture.
Pisa, apart from the leaning tower and adjacent cathedral, doesn't have too many attractions and although many people find it a dirty city, I was fond of the busy student atmosphere, the university buildings, the cafes and bars and fantastic food.
Viareggio is not the nicest of beaches, and the weather wasn't hot (though the whole time it was much nicer than in Germany), but I really enjoyed walking along the beach, stopping for lunch with Margie and Stefano before heading on to Lucca. Lucca was about my favourite city in Tuscany with its very colourful buildings and narrow streets. We spent a few hours of the afternoon there before heading back to Pisa.
It seemed that my time was over before it started and it was so nice to see Stefano and Margie again - especially on their own turf!