Reflections on the past before I go forward

While booking my last flights to Dublin and Scotland I can't help, but to look back on the last weeks and the lack of blogs about them. I last stopped in my writing about Amsterdam and luckily there has been better adventures ever since. After a week away from the Luxembourg I was relieved to come back to a regular schedule, but not ready for the homework load in front of me. It was the last weeks before midterms and our sociology class was coming to a close. Like alluded to in previous posts sociology took up most of my time and continued to do so until the end of October. It was a thorn in my side those last weeks and made my outlook on Europe a little gray. 

The weekend following our mini field study tours seemed like a struggle for everyone. I remember leaving the chateau on that Friday only a couple hours before Katie, Lizzie, and myself were off to Zürich, Switzerland and the air within the place seemed stale. People were a bit more snippy than normal and you could tell that we all needed a break from studying and traveling. Our girls weekend did end up great though and just what we needed. We walked out of the train station looking around for the Marriott where we were so graciously invited by Kim Armbruster (my mom's work friend) to stay the night. As soon as we exited through the train station and weaved through the rows of bikes there it stood nearly 30 stories high with the bright red Marriott sign proudly on top. It was perfect. We had dinner and drinks, slept in a hotel not a hostel, and watched tv. Sometimes it is the simple things that make the night perfect. We followed the night with a morning of shopping and getting to know the old city. Kim had to leave us for a meeting and from there we hopped from one store to the next. Zürich was beautiful and we had another one of our famous curiosity stops. While walking up a stone cobbled, narrow European-style street we made it to the top to find a park and a one-of-a-kind view of the city. I could have sat there for hours. While exploring Zürich we found the perfect restaurant to indulge ourselves with, but first we had to find our way to our Saturday night hostel, which ended up being quite the interesting place. It was above a club in a town away from the city called Winterthur and was surrounded by little thuglets. Our room was perched on the top floor and Katie and I got to cuddle in our bed because there were only two instead of three...and yet this was the most expensive "hostel" so far. 

Heading back to Zürich for the evening we decided on Swiss fondue at this adorable restaurant. We were able to sit outside in one of the main pedestrian streets chowing down on our fondue with a glass of excellent white wine in our hands. Tip from Let's go Europe is to always eat swiss fondue with a glass of white wine or tea because otherwise you could form a decent stomachache. We sat there for what seemed like forever catching up on everything. It's funny how you think you may know nearly everything about someone and then they can surprise you. This dinner was full of that. A couple glasses of wine and a full stomach from the bread and cheese we moved on to an ever infamous Irish pub. Before this weekend all we could focus on was the relaxing weekend following it in Luxembourg City for the 40th anniversary celebration, but now looking back I believe that the weekend in Zürich was much more so. 

Back to the pub situation we sat in a corner booth and carried on our conversation from dinner. The place was packed with people our age, but somehow we only really met this guy from Canada. Katie saw him from across the room and noticed he was speaking English to some other people sitting around a table. "Guys we have to talk to him," she kept saying. I was not about to go over there out of nerves and neither were the other two so after about an hour he made his way over in a rather comical fashion. He looked as if he was about to walk out the door when he did this quick juke-like move and jumped back to our table saying, "Are you guys from America?" Now since he was English speaking too I wasn't too hesitant to tell the truth, but had he not been I would have thought twice. I always debate if I should shed light on my true heritage or not, but now that Obama has won, things are easier over here for us. Before that every conversation went right into what do with think of Bush. 

Once Canada (I don't remember his real name) opened his mouth it was quite hilarious to see Katie's disgust. He talked to us for quite some time and was completely egotistical. Lizzie and I gave him the business asking him all sorts of questions and Katie sat there hilariously still. Once we escaped back towards our "wonderful" abode in Winterthur the first thing out of Katie's mouth was,"That was such a disappointment." We laughed the whole way home about all the stupid stuff that came out of his mouth. We arrived back to our club of a hostel and even though we were five stories above the bar on the bottom we heard the thumping of the base until nearly 5 in the morning. What did we really pay for? 

The weekend following Zürich was one looked forward to for the past couple of weeks. When we first got here it was all about traveling every weekend, but as the Lux weekend got closer it was amazing to see how much we wanted to stay home. The whole week was full of festivities. On Tuesday we attended the Academic Seance where all the professors were in their graduation garments and several awards were given out. We capped the night off with a reception complete with hor' deovres (sp?), Bofferding (the local Luxembourg brewed beer), and wine. It is still strange to think that Miami paid for my alcohol. Other than Friday's dinner and dance I was most excited for the concert that week, but was seriously disappointed once the night came. I was picturing a small band playing with us eating, drinking, and being merry, but that did not end up being the case. We were to plop down in these chairs for two hours of in Lizzie's words: bad middle school band music. It was a "Medley of Europe" with songs from nearly every country in the EU and became almost comical at times. There was a group of older people sitting near us and during the Great Britain section of music they burst out laughing at one of the transitions. We didn't mind so much fooling around after they did that. Again the evening was followed by a wonderful reception where we got the chance to talk to professors and the President Hodge and then made our way to Das Boot (typical). 

Friday finally came and it felt like the day of the Christmas dance at Cathedral High School all over again. A couple girls came over to our house and got ready then we got on buses looking pretty and were shipped off to our first destination, the cruise on the Moselle. The boat was beautiful and huge. We sat down at a table then we started hearing rumors of it being a dry boat. The worst was true (sounds a bit alcoholic). Nicole, the person who organizes all these kind of events, said that in years past the students had gotten a bit out of control on the boat so decided against it for this year. We were to spend 2/1/2 hours on this boat, but the most exciting part of it all was when it turned around to come back to the dock. Some euchre games got going and some titanic-style dancing on the top deck occurred. Yet everyone was ready to get off once we docked. Next was the dinner and by this point we had our doubts about the evening, but this time it did not fail us. We arrived in a beautiful ballroom, champagne at the door, and all of our professors there to greet us. We knew that we had some time before dinner to hang out, but we never expected that time to be 2 hours long. We shoved the food down our throats so that the imminent dance floor time could begin. We went crazy. It was a mix of the new and our old. It reminded us of our first dances in sixth grade and then bounced back to the music currently played at the discoteques.