Last Weekend in October

So after finishing all the bigger posts over my vacation, it should be easier to write some smaller posts about weekends and other events here and there. So this post is about the weekend that directly followed my break, October 29-November 3. It was a four day weekend (thanks to Halloween and All Saints Day), so we had plenty of time to have some fun and get out of the house. Friday night I decided to make an spple pie for my host family, because there aren't really pies here (and they're so American). It turned out really well, and tasted good too.

My friends Sasha, Ash, and Hannah were coming into town on Saturday, so I met up with them for a few hours, and gave them a tour of the city. It was a lot of fun, and the weather that day just happened to be amazing.

After a few hours touring the Innenstadt, I had to say goodbye to meet up with my local reprasentative (CR). Our local representatives are people who live nearby, who have volunteered to help us with our problems and to make sure everything is going well throughout the exchange. I met up with him at the Dom, and from there we visited the Herbstkirmes (fall fair). Not very much of it was open, but it was still fun.

Finally I went back home, and my host mom and I took a train to head to my host-Grandparent’s house. She was heading to a party with some of her friends from university, and I was just coming with her. The originally simple train trip ended up being quite an ordeal, started by our first train being slightly too late. Then we missed our connecting train, causing us to get a different set of trains, of which one ended up being cancelled, causing us to change our destination entirely; which overall ended up making a simple 2 hour trip take 4 ½ hours. Deutsche Bahn let us down a little.

   Nonetheless, we finally made it there and had dinner with my oma and opa (host grandparents). I went to bed, while my host mom went to her party. The next morning, we headed to the town Xanten to meet up with some family friends, whom I had met my first weekend in Köln. We had a delicious lunch of homemade falafel, before heading out to see the Archaeological Park. Xanten has a really rich history, first being colonized by the Romans in 15 BC. The city they built there was walled off, to separate themselves from the “barbarians” local people. Many of the original ruins remain there, and today are housed in one of the largest open museums in the world, the Archeological Park. Inside the historically-accurate walls, you can see the temple, arena, marketplace, and many displays on what Roman life was like.

             

   After the fun time at the Archeological Part, we headed back to Köln, where we had dinner with oma and opa. The next day was Halloween, but I didn’t do much, besides going shopping a bit for some more pairs of jeans (winter was coming, quickly). When my little host-Brother came back from school I took him and his friend trick-or-treating (“Süßes oder Saures” in German). They got plenty of candy, so I’d say it was a successful Halloween.

   With one more day left in my four day weekend, I decided to get some friends together to do something. Eventually my friends Liz, Marc, and Hannah said they would come, and we decided on the city of Wuppertal. Marc and I met at the Köln Hauptbahnhof, and bought our tickets to Wuppertal. Once there, we met Liz and Hannah. Wuppertal is famous for being the only city in the world to have a fully-functioning suspended-monorail system. What that means is that they just have a really unique and cool train system in the city. The “Schwebebahn,” as it’s called, hangs 12 meters over the river Wupper, as it winds through the city, swing around the turns. We made sure to ride it as often as possible during the day, first taking it to the Innenstadt.

    

   The Innenstadt wasn’t actually very nice though, so we headed to the Wuppertal zoo. Luckily it was open despite All Saints Day, so we spent a few hours there. It was actually a really good zoo, with a huge lion enclosure, polar bears, penguins, gorillas, and everything else. It was a really good time, and a great day overall.

                 

       

             

     Unfortunately our day had to come to an end, so we got some Döner, and headed back to Köln. And that’s about it! Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you liked the pictures. Tschüss!