Leeds to Mannheim

Guten Morgen!

This week has been a busy one since I started university again. However, I haven’t done too much outside of that, so I don’t have a lot to say or even many pictures!

Thursday, Friday and Sunday of last week were mainly spent organising things and booking trips for this semester as well as practising German. On Friday I did spend a few hours with the girls who have returned from last semester eating biscuits and chatting! On Sunday, I also met up with Paisley and Derek in an Irish bar near the train station and had probably the biggest burger and chips I've eaten in my life. Afterwards they came back to my apartment and we watched Forrest Gump while I cleaned!

The main event of this week, though, happened on Saturday, when I went with Cecily and Eeva to a vegan festival in Wiesbaden (the capital of Hessen). We set off on a Flixbus early on Sunday morning and were some of the first people at the festival. The event was set in a huge conference building with two halls, one of which holding the vegan event and another hosting a health and beauty event. Once inside the vegan hall we were greeted with hundreds of stands offering free samples of vegan ‘meat’, pasta, hummus, energy bars, cake and milk products. We systematically made our way through the hall trying as much free food as we could. Some of it was delicious; the vegan sausage was amazing and there were some lovely chocolate cashew energy balls and salted caramel brownie bites. However, there were also plenty of not so nice things including most of the chocolate products as they were just not chocolatey at all and some vanilla cashew yoghurt that tasted of air.

After getting as much as we could free from the festival (and accidentally dropping at least 4 samples) we went out to explore Wiesenbaden. As a capital of one of the German states we expected a lot but there was only really a cathedral, a hot water fountain (headed by natural gases) and lots of shops and cafes. There was also a palace, but this was being restored so you could not see any of it. We decided to stop at a café for a drink and Eeva and I shared a huge piece of chocolate cake. The café was very interesting and featured a signed poster from an American astronaut declaring that it had the best sustainable coffee in the world and a random bath tub.

Before the end of the day we headed back to the vegan festival to get some food. We all opted for a ‘chicken’ wrap and it was amazing! Tasted identical to chicken.

The rest of my week has been full of university classes. On Monday I started at 10:15 with my first class and ended at 6:45. Some of my classes this semester are strange as well; a lot finish before Easter so there are only 6 lectures to attend and then an exam and one of them has no lectures at all, I just have 3 weeks to write an essay and prepare an hour long presentation and then there are 2 classes in which we all give our presentations!

Tuesday was a slightly shorter day, but I also had two tutoring sessions. In the evening I went with Cecily and Eeva to a vegan restaurant where we all had a black bean burger with avocado crème, vegan cheese and roast potatoes followed with hazelnut chocolate cake. The main course was lovely but the cake was a bit weird! I don’t think I’ll be going vegan any time soon.

Fortunately, this semester I have a really busy Monday and Tuesday and then limited classes the rest of the week so I now have time to focus on writing my Economics essay and learning more German.