Author Archives: lvc5188

Wandering through the City of Diamonds

This past weekend I traveled to Amsterdam in Holland. The one piece of advice I would tell anyone studying abroad in Europe is to visit Amsterdam. The whole city is a culture shock and the pulse there is beating quickly. When walking on the street, one will hear many different languages at any given time. The streets are crowded with lively tourists exploring along the rivers that cut through the city and between the modern buildings that seem to be slanting in a little.

Having packed our backpacks the night before, the five of us practically sprinted to the Marburg train station after our last class on Thursday. After an hour train ride to Frankfurt then a four hour train ride to Amsterdam, our crew arrived in the city by midnight. Being ecstatic about finally arriving, we wandered around the city for hours convinced we can just check into our cabins at 10 in the morning and be ok. This lasted until about 3 a.m. then it started raining…

Luckily we found a hostel and were able to bargain the price down from about 40 Euros to 20 Euros. After some sleep, we bought tram and bus passes for the weekend and made our way about 30 minutes out of the city to the cabin area. Our cabin had two bunk beds and one single bed. The beds did not have sheets so I slept in my jacket. The bathhouse located in the middle of the village had a few showers that cost a euro for six minutes of barely warm water that turns ice cold after about a minute. But the cabin was perfect for us.

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After dropping our backpacks off we escaped into the city and explored for a bit then went to the Van Gogh Museum. If you really enjoy art the museum is pretty cool but crowded. On Saturday, we went to the Botanical Garden. The garden seemed magical. There was a beautiful caf� with high white brick ceilings and abstract paintings along the walls. There were outside gardens and four large greenhouse all connected by bridges. Each greenhouse had a different theme including African jungle, Asian jungle and desert.

            That night we decided to walk along the Red Light District. This was a huge culture shock for me. The part of the Red Light District where someone could purchase a prostitute is a pretty grimy area. The river going through this area has very shallow, dirty water that smells. The women who are working are place in a small room with a glass door. They are normally in underwear (sometimes topless) and either sit and wait for someone to walk up or will actively wink and tap on the glass trying to get a customer. It is incredibly different from the United States. It’s raw and not hidden. The part that hit me the hardest emotionally is how the Red Light District is a tourist attraction. Majority of the people there were not there to have sex but to just stare at these women in their cages like animals at a zoo. It was uncanny.

Amsterdam was a wake up call about the na�ve feeling of safety I have. Marburg is a VERY safe city and I feel extremely comfortable here. But Amsterdam definitely possesses a different vibe. I held my bag closer to me and never let my guard down. My friend was almost pick pocketed during our trip. We the caught a man with his hand in her bag and luckily he did not take anything but the experience snapped us back to reality.

My favorite museum we went to was the Eye Film Institute Museum (https://www.eyefilm.nl/en). The museum is very small but it showed about five different types of films and a collection of pictures. The films are not traditional films but each made a statement about the world. The museum also has a caf�/ bar with high ceilings and windows that over looks a river. (Warning: the drinks are expensive but good and the museum only accepts credit cards, no cash.)

After this trip I have been thinking about whether Amsterdam is just an incredibly honest city or an exceptionally superficial city. Everything about the city is focused on pleasure: sex, drugs, food, art, beauty… it is all there completely available. But I do not know if this is exposing the truth of human beings and accepting how the species is or just letting people become obese on superficial happiness.

 


Location: Amsterdam, Holland

Settled in and ready to travel

Finally here is the second part of my first official post. The second and third week was a little less hectic than the first. I really started understanding where everything was in the town, which is a lot larger than I anticipated. After settling down and exploring Marburg, I started taking day trips to different areas. The school provides us with train tickets that make it free to travel within Hessen. (And with the student ticket grocery stores, some restaurants and museums all offer student discounts.)

A group of students and I traveled to Wartburg which was three train rides away and hiked up to the castle. The castle is where Martin Luther translated the bible into German and hid out from the Romans. We also went to Frankfurt for the day and Heidelberg. Although Frankfurt is not an extremely pretty city, it is fun to walk around and see the historic district. There is music playing everyway and farmers market selling cheese and bratwurst.

Heidelberg also has a castle but it is mostly in runes. Although it is a beautiful, lively city, I am happy just to visit because there is a lot of tourism. The streets were completely filled and I heard at least five different languages while I was there. With tons of shops, art galleries, restaurants, the city is also host to a university.

I have reached the part of the semester where all the course work piles up. I have six hours of classes each day and this includes a four-hour language course and a two-hour cultural course. Every Friday I have a test on the German language and I have four essays for the cultural course spread out until April 15. This is a lot more work than I expected; yet I do appreciate the intensity because I am finally starting to understand German.

 

Here are a few differences from the United States I noticed in the past few weeks:

            Jay Walking: Germans don’t do it… at least not in Marburg. When waiting at a cross walk, the Germans will wait for the pedestrian light to turn green if there are cars coming or not. We talked with one of my teachers about this and she said that it is true. Whenever she is with Americans she gets left behind on the sidewalk because she waits for the light while the Americans just walk.

            Smoking: I smell like an ashtray and I don’t smoke. People can smoke cigarettes almost anywhere and the people do. All my clothes reek of cigarette smoke constantly. 

Well I have to go catch a train to Amsterdam! 

Tschuss!


Location: Marburg, Germany

Willkommen in Deutschland

Hallo! So I am finally in Germany! After almost two and half long months of waiting, I arrived at 5 a.m. on Monday February 24.

These past two weeks has been extremely overwhelming and much has happened so I decided to break my first official “I’m in Germany” blog post into two parts: one part about the first week and the second part about week two.

From the moment I arrived in the Frankfurt Airport, I’ve been on the go.

Right when we got off the plane and through immigration, the fellow Penn Stater and I grabbed a train into the heart of the city while lugging our huge suitcases (mine was 22 KG, one KG over the weight limit.) On the train we muttered apologizes in a mix of broken German and English (even some French) to the unfortunate people who had to deal with us blocking the isle.

Once in the center of Frankfurt, we grabbed coffee and watched the sunrise over the beautiful train station that puts Grand Central to shame. After wandering for an hour or two we figured out how to buy train tickets and headed to Marburg, which is about an hour North of Frankfurt.

Marburg has many faces. To my surprise the city is not small. I would not describe it as big but when I pictured Marburg three weeks ago it was a quaint, cobblestoned hill with a castle and medieval looking houses.

Although there is that, there is so much more.

The Oberstadt, which is the hill part of the city, possesses cobblestone streets, adorable buildings each completely unique and each probably older than the foundation of our country. There are also bars, restaurants, little shops, a Game Stop (this amuses many people) and a beautiful castle that overlooks the city. During the day the streets are filled with vendors and people shopping. Musicians play the piano, the violin, the accordion and the saxophone to Bob Marley songs.

Through this section of Marburg, there are aesthetics that correlate with the Brother Grimms Fairy Tales including a wolf waterspout, seven stone dwarfs along the walls and giant metal flies next to the clock tower.

             The area of the city around the Oberstadt has a small-city feel with tons of restaurants, shops and movie theaters. The buildings are a mix between modern and medieval architecture. A river, where students can study and eat next to, breaks through the city and a giant church called Elisabathkirche serves as a focal point of the city and the university.

The school is spread out between these two areas with classes both in the castle, the giant Elizabethkirche and glass buildings through the streets. Within the past weeks I have managed to gets lost multiple times but never felt nervous or scared. It’s an adventure and I am learning my way around. Everyone I have encountered here is very friendly and willing to help.

I have hiked almost everyday without ever really pre planning it. Last Saturday, I climbed up a tower that inspired the story for Rapunzel. The other day, fellow study abroad-ers and I just started following paths and eventually crossed through forests and fields and found ourselves in residential areas. Every time this happens, we always eventually figure out where we are and make the trek back to a bus stop to go home.

Classes started on Thursday February 27 and will be everyday for the next six weeks. I have a four-hour language course then two-hour cultural course everyday. Admittedly I was a little shocked with the course load but I have come to appreciate it. Knowing German would help this experience a lot. Almost every German person I have encountered speaks English very well but I have noticed there is a certain amount of respected given to those who try to speak German. When I talked to a German man about this he said that many times the Germans would help you along if you try to speak the language.

The school held our hands through the whole student Visa paperwork and anything else that was required to be in the country. I thought this was extremely helpful and convenient since I heard other students in other programs had issues with this.


Location: Marburg, Germany

Still in New York…

The next time I take a class at Penn State I will be a senior. A SENIOR.

This realization scares me. In a year I will be looking for a job… not just a job, a career.

Well before I go on a rampage, let me introduce myself.

My name is Lucie Victoria Couillard. But since I am going to Germany. Ich hei�e Lucie. Ich komme aus Westchester, New York.

I am a New Yorker. I am turning 21 on March 5 therefore I am a Pisces. My major is Print journalism and I have minors in anthropology and international studies. My dream would be to write for National Geographic but I am not opposed to working other places and expect it will take a very long while for me to work my way up to National Geographic.

I decided to study abroad because I want to see the world and see how other people live. Although I am excited to see amazing, interesting things that only Europe can offer, I really want to see how an average German person’s life is different from mine but also notice the similarities.

Having what my parents call “the travel bug,” I have always taken opportunities to go places but the most I have been truly away from home is two months and this was because I was at school in Pennsylvania.

This past two weeks I have been in Honduras and by the 12th day I was ready to go home. I had an amazing time and can’t wait to return but I was homesick.

This frightened me. How can I be homesick after 12 days when I will be in Germany for four months with no way to return home.

On February 23 I will be flying out of JFK airport with one other Penn Stater to spend my semester in Germany. I will be attending Philipps University in Marburg where the Brothers Grimm went to school. Apparently it is a small, beautiful college town.

Honestly right now the trip seems still very far away and very unreal. I still have a lot to do to prepare and I am having somewhat of a packing dilemma.

Since I don’t leave for a while, I will be bouncing around between Penn State and visiting friends and family. Feel welcome to keep up with my blog, I’ll probably be posting pictures and posts about my life pre-trip including fun photos from Honduras and newly learned packing tips. But the true travel blog will start February 24 after a long plane ride.

 Cheers,

 Lucie


Location: Armonk, New York, USA