Paragliding

So today I went para-gliding!! The experience was unbelievable!! The views were breathtaking and it is the first day since I've been in Austria that the weather was beautiful. I chose to ride with the owner of the company because as my scardy cast self was about to do this I figured he would probably be the safest to ride with.

What you do is put this backpack seat on your back and they strap you up to the thing and you run 3 steps down a mountain (aka the ski slope during winter) and the wind picks you up and you instantly feel like you are floating.

BMW Factory

So I wake up 100% still drunk from the night before, awesome. We board the bus and I immediately pass back out for 2 and a half hours which is probably the only thing that completely saved my day. I woke up as we arrived at the BMW Factory, again still drunk. But I forged through and was able to see the whole 2 and half hour tour that completely showed us a car is built at their factory. All the way from the spare parts, to painting the car, to testing the car. Pretty amazing.

During this tour I realized through conversation that one of the girls from Stetson Law was Brads high school girlfriend, Becky. Seriously, the smallest world. What are the chance I'd meet her in Austria?

Then we moved on to Mike's Bike tours of Munich, which was absolutely amazing. It has me sold on bike tours for the rest of my life. It is a four hour bike tour that takes you complete around the city and stops in the beer garden for a drink. While we were there the owner of the company, Mike, came to talk to us about how he had become successful in a foreign market. Well, he is the biggest asshole that I have ever meet in my entire life. Lacy made a suggestion to him on how to better market his company and he looked at her and said " I have been called a marketing genius and I have a 20 something year old telling me how to run my company? I doubt it." If he thinks that he is a marketing genius I truly feel sorry for him because he is nothing NEAR a genius.

Other than that Mikes Bikes was amazing and so was Munich!

Opening Dinner

So the first day of class was rather uneventful, just like any other class. But, after class we had the Innsbruck city tour which was only slightly entertaining. Nice to be a little more familiar with the city though.

After the tour was the opening dinner at a restaurant called the white horse. We are having a traditional German or Austria meal that includes Shitzil and Frites which is just fried pork chop and french fries. Lacy, Brett, Evan and I sat at a table together and had so much fun at dinner just laughing and talking about dumb stuff!

After dinner everyone went out to the Hofgarden which is this large outside bar in the middle of a park downtown. We proceeded to take the most digusting shot of my life. It seriously tasted like rotten bublegum throw-up. Needless to say I threw it up but sallowed it again, in true Emily style. After dancing and drinking at the Hofgarden we went to the Irish Pub which is all quite a blue. Which gracefully leads into my next post about the BMW Factory tour.

Castle Tour

So I think that I'm going to break these down into seperate blogs instead of having one whole big one.

So the castle tour was pretty amazing...lots of gold everywhere. It was a nasty day outside but somehow I still managed to walk up and down and up down these crazy mountains to get to these castles. I had a lot of fun though and started friendships with people immediately, which was SUPER nice.

I still dont understand why anyone would ever need the amount of space that these people had in their homes. They have beds and dressers and chairs made out of gold and to me that just seems extravagent. Especially back in the day how was this even possible? Obviously they took the people's money to live in such "style". It almost is sad that people now or even then think that living like that makes them more important that someone else.

Beautiful, but definitely opens your mind.

Okay, so I haven't updated in a week and I need to do that when I get back from Barcelona. I am thinking that I may even write the blogs while we are travelling and then just type them up when I get back. But here are the things that I need to talk about so that I dont forget anything:

1) Castle Tour
2)First day of class/Innsbruck Tour
3) Opening dinner and out afterwards
4) BMW tour and Mikes Bike Tours of Munich
5) PARAGLIDING
6) Trip to Barcelona

Okay so I will start working on this and upload one at a time maybe? Otherwise it would be one HUGE long post. And of course I'm going to upload pictures. It bothers me that I can't so I'm going to figure that out on Sunday! :)

Adios from Barcelona!

Longest Day and Saddest Day

Today has been a little bit of a trying day for me.

Last night instead of going to the Blues Festival we went with one of Nick's friends, Aaron to this cute little outside bistro thing and ate dinner and drank for literally 5 hours just talking and laughing and drinking. By the time we got home it was almost 4 and we were suppose to leave for the airport at 5. So, I changed my flight to the one at 3pm so that I wouldnt have to deal with all of that.

Well, with that being said, that means that I was no longer meeting the group at the airport and thus traveling all the way from Brussels to Innsbruck alone. I had high hopes for myself but it turned out to be much harder that I orginally expected. How do you go to the bathroom with both of my bags and a purse? I couldn't go anywhere, in no stores, nothing. So, I never went to the bathroom the entire day and I never ate anything because I couldn't leave my bags to do anything. Very frustrating. Not to mention that it is VERY difficult to lift one of my bags and I had to figure out some way to pick it up and put it on the train, there is a gap between the landing and the train and the first time I tried it my bag got stuck. Really uncool and I looked like a tourist much more than I originally should. haha

It is also very frustrating not to speak the language AT ALL. While I was in Belgium, I met a local girl that is friends with Nick and she is fluent in 5 languages. I wish that I could do that. I am struggling to even read the German words let alone know what they all mean. Hopefully that will change.

My room is pretty cute. I'm going to take pictures and I'll post them when I figure out how to do that. I'm not quite that sophisticated with this blogging thing yet, but I'm getting there slowly but surely.

On a happier note, I am looking forward to going to Barcelona this upcoming weekend. I know that will be a super happy trip and something that I will remember forever! :)

Well, I'm unpacking now and trying to be a bit happier! :)

Aachen Germany and drunken nights

So its been awhile since I have last posted so I'm going to do a long one on the last three days that I have spent in Belguim.

On Wednesday we went to Aachen Germany which is about a 45 min drive from Bree, where Nick lives. It is the cutest town! It's not touristy but perfect. There is a super old church/town hall that still sits in the middle of the city, and part of the brick wall that use to surround the city during the Communist reign is still in tact as well. It was beautiful. I ate my first Belgian meal there which consisted of Lamb, green beans wrapped in bacon and potatoes. After that we traveled to Shinnin where Nicks military base is so that I could see what that was like. Just like America only in Belgium. It was cool. We came back home and went to this bar/restaurant and I had the best tomato mozzarella I have ever had. Then came back to Nicks and played beer pong.

Which leads me into Thursday which we did NOTHING b/c I was too hungover to get off of the couch. Last night after I had slightly recovered we went to this very nice restaurant for dinner where I again had lamb, some kind of vegtable casserole and potatoes which was VERY good. After that we went to a college town that is about 45 min away and went to this Irish Pub that has karoke on Thursday nights. That was REALLY fun. We didn't leave to come home until 4:30 in the morning. Crazy that they stay open for that long.

Tonight is my last night here and we are going to a Blues Festival that is the next town up from Nicks town. I'm looking forward to it!

Next time I write, I'll be in Innsbruck!!!!!!

RED LIGHT DISTRCIT

Amsterdam.

Thats pretty much all that I can say. There are a few facts that I found interesting about Amsterdam and I will list them below:

1) It is so dirty (not that i expected anything else...I mean pot and prostitution is legal)
2) There is an Argentinian steakhouse on literally EVERY corner.
3) The prostitutes are TERRIBLE looking.

I think that I will first address #3 as it seems to be the most shocking to me. There is a prositute in every single window in the entire Red Light District. They are literally wearing next to nothing and stand in the window posted up and dancing to the beat of whatever techno music is playing in the background. There are alley ways that have drag queens available as well as every single type of woman you could ever imagine. I saw several men take up their offer and they literally open the door, the guy comes in, and they pull a curtain over the glass door so you cannot see in. It is unbelievable..like nothing I have ever seen before.

The other two shocking items are pretty self explanitory.

So today, we rode the train to Amsterdam, stopped at a Belgian version of Hooters for a beer and immediately went to the Anne Frank house. That was quite an experience. To believe that those people lived like that for as long as they did is unbelievable. I bought a book so I could remember it better.

Then we walked to the hard rock cafe, taking in the Amsterdam secenary as we went. I will post a picture as soon as I get my pictures uploaded...hopefully tomorrow.

I need to go to bed, I'm pretty exhausted. I'll write more later.

Brussels Cont

So yesterday in my state of complete and utter tiredness....I failed to mention two important things that happened to me yesterday.

The first is that I ate a belgian waffle....A real one. Apparently you are suppose to eat it with ice cream but I'm not really into that so I just asked for a plain waffle with butter. hahaha...so American.

We also went to this bar called Delirium. They serve over 2004 different kinds of beer. They literally have a laminated book that they plop down on your table with beers for you to choose from. To make our selections we just opened the book to a random page and stuck our finger down and whatever it landed on is what we drank.

Both things that I left out I thought were pretty damn important.

Little Red Roofs, Curvy Roads, and Sheep

So this is my first post. I'm gonna see how it goes and I may need to make some improvements to my writing skills but here goes nothing.

The first thing that I see literally when I look out the window is a mass of red roofs and curvy roads. Exactly what comes to my mind when I think of Belguim. I also then notice that EVERYONE has sheep in their backyard. hahah...this is a strange concept to me, as no one is the states keeps things in their backyards. I'm not sure why they keep them in their backyards....for pets, to shear, for food...who knows.

After I got off the plane (the Brussels airport is one of th easiest I've ever seen to navigate...literally straight and then you show your passport and luggage there....VERY simple) we went straight into Brussels with a short stop for me to change.

Brussels is an interesting city...very European but I didn't find it quite as old and amusing as some of the other cities that I have been to over the years. I did take quite a few pictures, none of which I know what it is. Before I come back to the States when I have some down time I'm going to figure it out though. It can't be that hard. I will post some pictures once I get my camera all set up for my computer.

I've only slept a few hours here and there since I woke up Sunday morning to fly here...so I'm a little beat. I took about a 2 hour nap and now its 10:30 here and I'm going to try to go back to sleep. More to come...Amsterdam tomorrow and maybe while I'm sleeping I can think of some more interesting things to say about Brussels.