Leeds to Mannheim

Hallo! Ich bin wieder zurück.

After a long but pretty packed Christmas holiday I am back in Mannheim for semester 2. As the semester doesn’t start till next Monday, this week I’m mainly meeting people, making plans, learning German and doing a little bit of travelling!

During the holiday I also managed some travelling to Dublin with Jordan which was great! We visited the zoo which is huge and has animals from all over the world. My favourites were the orangutans, especially one which was trying very hard to get the other orangutans’ attentions, and the sealions which were chasing a stick through the water. We also had a lovely morning at the leprechaun museum where we visited a giant’s house and heard tales of Irish faeries. And, we visited the wax museum plus which isn’t quite Madame Tussaud’s, but dos feature some amazing wax works and (surprisingly) some fun science experiments. The wax museum featured a Chamber of Horrors but after three attempts to step inside I wimped out, so we left it!

We got around Dublin on a very informative and funny hop-on-hop-off bus tour but don’t ask Jordan about it as he fell asleep every time! With the tour there were also free tickets to the Little Museum of Dublin which is well worth a visit; it’s a cute little museum covering 3 floors and tickets include a guided tour of two of them. We were lucky to be in a group of 4 for our tour so it was more personal and very funny.

After returning from Dublin to Leeds I had late birthday celebrations with my uni friends featuring Bongos Bingo (bingo in a nightclub) and got to see Frank Turner for the third time! So overall, I had a very fun break.

Despite only being back 2 full days, I have already fit in a day trip to Luxembourg. Me and Cecily set off at 6am yesterday to get a full day in the very small but beautiful country. After a change at Saarsbrucken (and a stop to get Cecily a McDonalds coffee), we arrived and were ready to explore. We spent the morning looking for sights which included Notre Dame Cathedral, the market square and Parliament. However, there was a lot of building work going on so a lot of it was hidden (especially the Notre Dame).

Before lunch we wandered down the Corniche which is known as “the most beautiful balcony of Europe”! It really was stunning; there was a beautiful view of a river running through coloured houses below the old city walls. As Cecily is vegan, we went to a vegan café called Nirvana for lunch where they did a lunch buffet of four different vegan curries and a lot of onion bhajis! It was delicious and I went back for more bhajis at the end. It was also considerably cheaper than most other eateries!

After lunch we went to the Luxembourg city museum. This is a museum with 6 floors (pretty confusingly laid out) which tells the story of Luxembourg from its rocky formations to gaining it’s independence to the European city it is today. This was a really interesting museum, despite the fact we accidentally did some floors in the wrong order, and we learnt so much about what Luxembourg has gone through and how it has grown and changed.

Once we’d seen the whole museum, we moved on to a cupcake shop that Cecily had seen on Instagram. They were doing a 2-for-1 offer so we both got a very pretty cupcake. I hat cookies and crème and Cecily vegan chocolate, they even did a vegan hot chocolate for Cecily!

At this point we had less than 2 hours to our train and decided to find the Pont Adolphe, a bridge that was featured on all Luxembourg postcards, and the EU buildings. We found the bridge first but didn’t realise until we had crossed it! It didn’t seem any more impressive than any other bridge, but it is important for Luxembourg. We then found the EU buildings; the European Court of Justice and the European Investment Bank. Currently the Uk flag is still flying there but they have put in on the end (potentially in advance of removing it).

After our quick final sightseeing hour, we headed back to the bus and, after a detour that meant we crossed the same very long bridge twice and a 20-minute train delay we got back to Mannheim 15 hours after we set off!

That makes up the whole of my return so far, however I have many more trips planned as well as a lot of lessons to go to! The only other difference right now is there is a dog in my apartment??! I came back to the sound of barks and crying only to discover my flatmate is looking after a dog for the week and she loves me! She is called Morita, but I have no idea of the breed or the language she understands. She does really enjoy “How I met your Mother” though and we have been watching it together. Hopefully Felix’s friend will let her stay!