Leeds to Mannheim

Guten Morgen

Since I have just about got settled in Mannheim again, I thought it was time to leave so this weekend I headed to Italy! In fact, including this week, in the next 3 weeks I will only be in Mannheim for 10 days. I still have a packed schedule here however with exams coming up soon and lots of farewell events. This week I also found out that I got the Welcome Assistant job in Leeds and I have been elected as Vice President of the ESN society!

On Thursday morning, I woke up early to get the train to Stuttgart airport. This was probably one of the first times all my Deutsche Bahn trains have been perfectly on time, so I was really pleased. We got through airport security with no issues and were sat by our gate ready with an hour and a half to go before our flight to Verona! However, this soon turned into 3 and a half hours... The trains may have been perfectly on time, but the French had gone on strike meaning delays for all flights that day!

Despite arriving later than planned, we were not in a bad mood and myself and Derek both went immediately to check in to our own accommodations. I was in a hostel and he was in a hotel in the city centre. The hostel was the nicest that I have stayed in with only three people to a room, a very clean en-suite, comfy single beds and breakfast included! After check-in we got our first gelato of the trip (I went for biscotti) and went to the Arena/ Opera House which is nearly identical to the colosseum in Rome, just smaller. We ate our ice cream in front of it before moving on to explore further.

The streets of Verona are all beautiful, with lots of colourful, narrow back alleys lined with all sorts of different flowers. We first walked to Juliet’s balcony, taking lots of details to explore the tiny streets on the way. The balcony is quite nice, but it is just a balcony, there is a statue of Juliet in front of it which many people were having pictures with. Apparently, it is good luck to hold Juliet’s boobs, I’m pretty sure a man made that up.

Once we had seen the balcony, we moved on to other main sites including the bridge below San Pietro Castle and the Scaliger tombs. The latter are golden tombs, held up high in front of one of the churches. As we hadn’t eaten since before the plane, by 5pm we were quite hungry. We didn’t really want to go to one of the main tourist places, but other sites didn’t open till 7 so we went for it. We ended up in a restaurant in the main square which didn’t seem too expensive. We both ordered a lasagne but when they arrived, they were cold, so we sent them back. The next ones were warmer and actually really nice, however, when we got the bill there was a cover charge that came to one third of what we had paid for the meals! To get over this we had more gelato (Dulce de leche and oreo)

Friday started with an Italian breakfast in the hostel. I had a small bowl of muesli, bread with cheese and ham and a warm croissant, then walked to meet Derek at his hotel. We decided to walk up to Castle San Pietro before it became too warm but, on the way, we found a church that Derek wanted to see. Derek really likes cathedrals and churches and there was a special price to see 4 big ones in Verona, so we bought that ticket. Each church came with an audio guide which made them a bit more interesting, but they weren’t really my kind of thing. After the church detour, we headed up to the castle. The castle itself is in ruins and you cannot see inside it, but you can still see all the outer walls and turrets. The views from up the hill were also incredible, you could see all of Verona and the river winding through it.

Afterwards, we headed towards Juliet’s tomb. We stopped once to go in another of the churches and then again for lunch as Derek was hungry. This time we ate in a restaurant that had been recommended to us and it was a lot better despite still having a large cover charge. We both had salmon tagliatelle. Once finished we completed the long walk to Juliet’s tomb. The tomb itself was a bit disappointing as it’s just a tiny room down some stairs with an open stone block in it. However, it is interesting to think that Shakespeare might have been there and got his ideas for Romeo and Juliet from that place. The ticket to the tomb also included access to a small art museum. This was more interesting as all the artwork had been saved from the walls of buildings and the exhibition explained how they could remove whole paintings from brick!

After this, and a third church, Derek decided he didn’t want to see any more churches that day and also didn’t really want to walk any more. We got another gelato (Oreo again) then walked to a park and sat in the sun for an hour. By then it was basically teatime, so we went to a market stall in the old square for takeaway calzones. These were nice and considerably cheaper than the restaurants but I’m not sure they were entirely authentic as the owner just warmed them up in a toasty maker! We ate those in the park and had another walk through the streets before heading back to the hotels again.

Saturday was the best day of the trip as we went to Venice! After another Italian breakfast I headed to the train station (which was fortunately very close to my hostel) to meet Derek. We were on the train for an hour and a half before finally pulling in and seeing Elena waiting for us. It was so lovely to see her, and we had plenty of time to catch-up while walking through Venice’s maze-like streets. The first place she took us was Rialto bridge which is a huge bridge with lovely views of the canal. We then moved on to St. Mark’s square, which is also nice, surrounded by beautiful buildings, but also so full of other tourists and pigeons that we didn’t stay very long.

There were so many streets to get lost in that we decided to just wander round and see what we could find. Everything was beautiful and every few minutes you cross another amazing bridge with perfect views of the canals and gondolas. Although a gondola trip may have been nice, we decided against it as they cost at least £70!

We continued our walking for a few hours before sitting down for a pizza. Me and Elena both went for vegetable pizza as I felt that veg had been seriously lacking in my diet for the past days. The pizza was lovely, probably one of the best I’ve ever had but Elena said it wasn’t like the pizzas from her region which are better! After eating we set out a plan of where to visit that afternoon. It started with the library from Indiana Jones which is actually a church with an art exhibition inside (we didn’t go in); followed by a walk down the grand canal and into the Fondaco dei Tedeschi shopping centre which has a terrace with views of the whole city. Unfortunately, you are now supposed to book to get onto the terrace and there were no spaces available for us to go! The shopping centre itself is very nice though although everything is designer and so far, too expensive to actually buy.

Walking to those places had actually taken a really long time so we decided to sit at a small café by the canal whilst Derek drank and Aperol Spritz. We then moved on to our final view of that day, a book shop. The book shop, Libreria Acqua Alta, is famous as it keeps a lot of its books in canoes for when Venice floods. The shop itself is full of second-hand books and also tourists! The shop is quite small with very narrow aisles and everyone has to follow each other round in a one-way system. I am surprised that they ever sell any books because it’s actually really difficult to look through the stock!

Since that was our list of sights finished, we went to find some proper Italian cake/ dessert. We ended up in a rather expensive but nice café and I tried cannoli which I had been looking for the whole trip! Elena told me off as it’s Sicilian so not from that region, but it was delicious nonetheless and much more interesting to me than cheesecake. We decided that after that we had seen all the main sights that we didn’t have to pay for, so we sat by the lake next to the main square and watched the gondolas for a while before starting the long walk back to the station.

Sunday was then mainly a day of travelling (but with no delays this time). Fortunately, we arrived back mid-afternoon, so I had plenty of time to get stuff done and relax ready for uni on Monday. University wasn’t too bad either, but the day was made much better by Eeva and Cecily who I met for lunch in between classes. We went to a vegan place called Heller’s. It’s a kind of café where you choose little bits of different dishes and then pay by the weight of your plate. I was very cautious as I didn’t know how much it would cost but I got to try a few different salads which were all delicious. We followed the salad with some vegan cake which comes in huge slices! I had a cherry pie.

To try and overcome all the carbs eaten at the weekend, and the cake from earlier in the day, I went to Zumba Strong on Monday night. This is the class before my regular Zumba class, and it is more based on fitness/ HIIT than dancing but is still done to Zumba music. It was much tougher than the regular class as the start was based on body combat and the end was mat work such as push-ups, sit-ups and planking. It was horrible whilst doing it but I felt really good after and could have stayed for the next class, I plan on doing that next week! This week I couldn’t stay however as I had offered to volunteer at a clothes swap at the university. Whilst there I swapped a top and leggings for a dress and crop top!

Yesterday was my busy day, as always, although one of my classes is now finished so I do have a brief break, but I spent it learning German grammar. I also had to enrol for my modules for my final year at Leeds which is stressful as it’s first come first served. Fortunately, I got on to all of them that I wanted! After my classes and tutoring I went to the stretch and tone class again and the straight to pres for the final VISUM party of the semester. I decided I wouldn’t go to the club so just stayed with the group until they went and then headed home but it was still lots of fun!

Now I have to focus on German grammar for my exam on Monday as well as prepare for my trip to Hamburg this weekend!