The Paynesvile language students took a trip to Germany and Austria.  We left on March 17 and returned on May 31.  The trip was an amazing experience,  We flew into Berlin and went to the Berlin Zoo, which apparently has the widest variety of animals of any zoo in the world.  It was especially nice to be outside walking around after being on an airplane and  being in airports for close to fifteen hours.  After the zoo we went to go eat at a local italian restaurant.  It was delicious!  The food in general was one of the highlights of the trip for me.  The next day we took a walking tour of the city.  We saw so much.  Among the things we saw in the tour was Hitler's bunker where he committed suicide, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and much more.  It was so interesting to see things that we had all learned about in history class up close and personal.  We also saw the Jewish Holocaust Memorial.  The memorial was huge columns of granite.  The blocks started out barely reaching above the pavement and as we walked farther and farther through the monument, the columns escalated to eight to ten feet above us.  Even though there were many people traveling through the memorial, it was virtually silent.  The tour guide told us that it was up to us to decide what the memorial meant since the architect and designer wanted to leave it up to the beholder.  It was incredible.  We also went to the Parliament Building where it was possible to look down through the huge glass window panes to the Congress discussing things.  The idea is that that the people should be able to look down at the law makers since they work for the people. 

     Early in the morning we boarded the train to Rothenburg for a day.  The little tourist city was a big change from the hustle and bustle of Berlin.  Parts of the city dated all the way back to the 900's.  We went to the medevil torture museum which was kind of creepy to see how lawbreakers were once punished.  After the torture museum, we went to a little authentic German restaurant where everyone enjoyed trying many different things special to Germany.  We all got a chance to use our German skills a little there since the restauarant owner spoke almost no English.  A few of us also got the opportunity to go the largest Christmas store in the world; I have never seen so many Christmas lights and ornaments in one place in my life, although after a very short time an employee approached us to angrily tell us in German that we could not take pictures. Rothenburg is also had an oldest coo coo clock which was made several hundred years ago so at exactly three o'clock, we all gathered around to town square to see the same sight that thousands of people have been seeing since the thirteen hundreds.

After a day of shopping and touring in Rothenburg, we boarded an early morning train to go to Ulm and our family stay.  My host family picked me up at the train station and we went back to their house to eat breakfast.  After we had breakfast, several Americans with their prosepective German students took a tour around the city.  Several of us took the opportunity to climb the tallest Church tower in the world, climbing the 768 steps to the top.  It was a very tiny spiral staircase, but since we had been carrying all of our luggage around Berlin and Rothenburg and going up and down many staircases with our fifty pound suitcases so all I could think of was, "what if I had my luggage with me right now?!"  The view from the top was truly incredible and I got a lot of really cool pictures at the top of the tower.  Going down made me quite dizzy though and the next morning I thought I was going to die. 

     The next day was Sunday and most of us enjoyed a relaxing day with our new families.  My family took me to Augsburg for a Jazz Brunch at what is one of the finest hotels in all of Germany.  Veronika's grandmother wanted to meet me so we all went for brunch.  I love jazz so I really loved eating amazing German food and humming along to songs that I knew quite well.  For the next three days we got the opportunity to go to school with our hosts.  School in Germany had similarities and differences between American schools.  One thing that was different was that instead of the students changing class rooms, the teachers changed and moved around the building.  The school building was multi levels so there were many stairs to climb throughout the day, though not quite 768 like the steeple.  I remember going to a two hour math class and feeling so lost.  For someone who finds math in itself a foriegn language, nothing is helped when it is being taught in another language!  The french class was also mind boggling because not only were they speaking French but they were also speaking Spanish, English and German!  Apparently they had watched a movie the week before and they were able to chose what language they wanted to take notes in.  

        While staying with our host families, we also got a chance to all go to the Porcshe museum in Stuttgart.  Even though I am not particularily interested in cars, I found it to be a really interesting experience.  I will most likely never own a Porsche and it was really neat to be able to see so many amazing cars in one spot.  We also got some time to shop and see the city of Stuttgart. 

     That night after we got back from Stuttgart, several of us went to the pancake house.  The pancakes were absolutely huge.  Instead of what we would think of as pancakes, they were closer to crepes.  Mine had scrabbled eggs, ham and fruit on it.  Ariel's was covered in raspberries, ice cream and whipped cream, and Franzi's, Ariel's host student, had spinach, and eggs on hers.  I tried all of them and they were all delicious.  The food on the trip was really first rate and I'm so glad most of us were so willing to try new things. 

     After an early, and tearful on some people's parts, goodbye, we boarded another train to leave Ulm and go to Salzburg, Austria. After a semi exhausting climb up the mountain, we arrived at the castle for our tour.  After the castle we were able to see many things, such as sites from the movie, The Sound of Music.  We saw the convent where the movie was filmed and the cemetary where they hid from the Nazis.  We also got to see Mozart's birth place, and we took a tour of the local Salt mines.  The saltmines were interesting as they were what seemed like hundreds of miles underground and we had to travel though tunnels to get inside.  There were huge slides that we all got to slide down and some of us, I won't mention any names, may have been known to lick the walls on several occasions to taste the salt.  We also got to take a boat ride inside the mountain.  It was so neat because there were different lights traveling across the water's surface and there was timed music. 

See the new Paynesville High School Web Page

Maps of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/europe/germany/

http://german.about.com/library/blcolors.htm

http://coffeebreakspanish.typepad.com/mydailyphrasegerman/

http://softrat.home.mindspring.com/germanic.html#treeofge