Leeds to Mannheim

Herzlich Wilkommen!

After deciding this week would be a work week I have ended up having a different activity every day! However, I survived my presentation yesterday and I have had enough time to revise for my exam on Friday.

On Wednesday evening last week, I went to see a showing of the film ‘Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri’. It was put on by one of the student societies here and is a very good film but I do think it should have come with a pre-warning because I was pretty scared walking home alone afterwards! The showing was great though because they had managed to turn one of the lecture halls into a proper cinema screen complete with popcorn, drinks, dimmed lights and trailers.

Most of Thursday and all day Friday was spent on revision so I decided to go for a meal with some of the girls on Friday night (only the second meal out I’ve had in Mannheim). We went to Azteca, a Mexican restaurant, which I was very excited about because I miss Mexican food a lot! It was a really fun evening, we all got chance to talk and the food was delicious (but not spicy enough).

The main “event” this last week was Strasbourg. Strasbourg (which is definitely in France) is an incredibly beautiful place, made even more stunning by the very blue sky we had that day. After a 2 hour bus ride from Mannheim we arrived and headed straight to the canal for a boat tour. This was m favourite part as we got to see a lot of the city, hear about its history and even go through some lochs so that we could access higher and lower parts of the canal! The most beautiful part of the city is Le Petite France which was originally the area where they treated American soldiers for syphilis and is now the area people go for romantic getaways…

After the boat trip we had a walking tour of the city. This was actually pretty disappointing as we were only shown the Cathedral (which you couldn’t really miss), a shopping street and the beginning of Le Petite France. It was also the shortest walking tour I’ve been on so far as it took less than an hour! So, after the tour me and Elena set off to find the rest of the city on our own. This ultimately led to us first finding a market with cake (chocolate tart) before heading off to look inside the cathedral. We also visited a few shops because Strasbourg has two huge shopping centres. Most of our afternoon was spent taking pictures and admiring the surroundings (with a large portion spent doing this while looking for a relatively cheap restaurant).

For our tea we ended up back at the market where we had cake earlier. We both went for a tarte flambee because it seemed traditional! Unfortunately, most of my first tart flambee ended up on the floor as they handed me it pre-cut on a flimsy paper plate and anyone who knows me knows that is a terrible idea. Fortunately, they were really nice and cooked me a fresh one for free (and they only spoke French, so I’ll never know if they were being rude about me). The next one was handed to me on a wooden board which was much easier to deal with! The food was worth all the problems though and after finishing we were left with just enough time to look round the souvenir shops before getting the bus back to Mannheim.

Sunday was again mainly a revision day, but I had also promised to teach Raina some HTML and CSS, so she could start designing her own webpages. We met in a café on Sunday morning and I taught her most of the basics in 2 hours. She picked it up really fast and by the end of it was solving problems on the page herself. In return for teaching her, she bought me a blueberry muffin so ultimately it was a good day for everyone!

Last night I went to an American comedy show with Paisley. This was an interesting show. It was advertised to start at 8:30 and end at 11 which seemed really long. However, it actually started at 8:40 and ended at 9:45 so wasn’t that long at all. The comedian was clearly really tired, a bit fed up and couldn’t really be bothered and towards the end he kept checking his phone to see if he really had to go on much longer. Despite that, he was relatively funny with most of his jokes but I can see why he’s not a big name in comedy.

I have a few more things planned for the rest of the week but I’m most looking forward to my parents coming at the weekend!