Köln (x2)!!

In the past 2 weeks, I've gotten to go to the beautiful city of Köln twice! I'm pretty sure I could go to that city every week and never get tired of it. The two trips were completely different, but both amazing in their own ways.

The first trip was with my Kunst (Art) class on Thursday, September 24th. After arriving at the Köln Hbf (the always-bustling arrival point for pretty much any great day in Köln), we sat down in front of the Kölner Dom to draw a portion of the cathedral. Unfortunately we only had 10 minutes to complete this task, so my drawing came out far from perfect. Lets just say that speed-drawing isn't exactly my forte. :P
From there, we walked a bit through the busy shopping district, before arriving at the Käthe Kollwitz Museum. Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist who documented war in the first half of the 20th century through painting, sculpture, and print making. We visited this museum because we have been studying art in the time of war. We had a guided tour of the museum, but unfortunately I did't understand everything that was said because it was all in very fast German. We also visited another church of the Romanic style. We had the same task, to draw a portion of the church, but this time we only had 5 minutes. I probably would have needed at least 25 minutes to draw it...if not 45. Oh well, I did my best. Once we made it back to the vicinity of the Kölner Dom, we had about 20 minutes to explore on our own before heading back to school. I ended up going to Starbucks with a couple girls from my class. Let me tell you that if you think Starbucks is expensive in America (which is kind of is), never try going to a Starbucks in Germany. I'm pretty sure the prices were close to twice as high.

So, now onto the second trip to Köln. The one that was pretty much as far from similar to the prior trip as it possibly could be, but also absolutely amazing in it's own way. This trip took place from October 3rd to the 4th, with the main activity being a party put on by my exchange organization (GIVE) for returnees and current inbound students.
I left the house by bike at approximately 10:40 am, in order to make my 11:06 train. I rode for 3 minutes (one stop..yes, just one stop) and then got off at the next station. Due to a complicated situation with living right near the border of two different transportation districts, my train ticket to Köln was significantly cheaper by getting off there, buying a different ticket, waiting 30 minutes, and then getting on the next train. I was actually happy to do this though because I got to see a cute little town that I hadn't been to yet. It was a national holiday (German Reunification Day), so all the shops were closed, but it was still absolutely adorable.

Starbucks by the Dom. :)

By 12:16, I arrived at the Köln Hbf, which was as busy as ever. I had been texting some of the other CBYXers that would be arriving in Köln for the weekend, and we planned to meet in front of McDonald's, because none of us could think of any other landmarks in the hbf. Well that turned out to be a sort of bad idea, because upon arrival I realized that there's more than one McDonalds in the train station. After a little confusion, and 5 or so minutes of texting back and forth, Ashley and I found each other. We waited for about 30 minutes until a whole bunch more people arrived, and then we all headed to the U-Bahn stop. It turned out that in addition to the group of us from the Düsseldorf language camp that planned to travel to the youth hostel together, a couple of the Aachen language camp CBYXers coincidentally joined us. :)
When we got to off the U-bahn, we realized that none of us really knew where to go. In the end, we decided to follow a group of other teenagers and hope that they were going there. Luckily it turned out that they were all German exchange student returnees who were going to the party, so following them worked out well. I couldn't believe how many people were in the lobby of the youth hostel when we got there. I have no idea number wise, but it felt like a never-ending sea of people standing shoulder to shoulder waiting to check in. Once we finally made it to the front of the line (well not really line, but you get the idea), we signed a couple of papers and got our name tags and  room keys. I got to share a room with 3 of my amazing friends from language camp, so that worked out really well!
Eventually, once everyone had arrived and gotten settled into their rooms, we all decided to go take a little walk and explore the area. First, all of us Americans started out as one giant group. Eventually we broke into smaller groups, and so Alida, Ashley, Brianna, Jonathan and I ended up walking across a bridge over the Rhine to find gelato. We nearly got run over by bikes while attempting to make a vlog, but luckily we jumped out of the way just in time. :P In honor of the werbung (advertisement) that Alida and I made for "Kinder Bueno" Chocolate during our first week of language camp, I decided to get Kinder Bueno gelato.

No idea what this is for, but it was fun to take pics with. :)

Gelato!

The beautiful Rhine. 

When you attempt to take a selfie in front of the Rhine with 5 people. :P

Another pic by the Rhine. :)

Once we finally made it back to the hostel, we sat outside with a bunch of our other language camp friends for about half an hour before going inside for dinner. Now, you may be thinking, since this was an event made up of about 90% German returnee students, that we were spending an awful lot of time with just Americans. Well in the dinner line, a few of us got talking to a couple of really nice German girls (Shoutout to Eva and Leonie, you guys are awesome)! and we ended up sitting with them for dinner. We did our best to speak German with them, despite the fact that they speak pretty much perfect English. They even helped us learn a few new words! We talked so much with them that our group ended up being the last ones in the dining hall...oops!

Dinner buddies :)

At this point we headed back to our room, and decided that it'd be a great idea to shut the curtains and attempt to take a 20 minute power nap before the party. I don't think anyone slept, but it did feel nice to rest for a bit. Just after 8:00, we headed downstairs to find the party. Not much was going on when we got there, but it got going pretty quickly. The rest of the night was spent dancing, talking, taking sporadic breaks to go play cards, and having an overall amazing time. We were also lucky enough to meet and get to know Katharina, another amazing German returnee student who spent last year in the U.S. :)

Exchange student party!

Group pics at the party. <3

On Sunday, we had to check out by 9:00 am, and breakfast went until 9:30. We got to sit again with Eva, Leonie, and Katharina, which was really nice. At 10 or so, I headed out with Alida, Jonathan, and Katharina to explore Cologne until we all needed to leave. We went by U-bahn from the hostel to some place a little closer to downtown, and then we walked around for a while with no real plan of where to go. We ended up getting to see part of the Köln Marathon, which was really cool. We were all reasonably tired, so we ended up deciding to go to a cafe, buy some tea and pastries, and sit down to play cards for a bit. After this we walked around some more before heading back to the area of the Dom and Hbf. As I was attempting to use my gorilla pod to set up my camera with a timer, to take a photo of the four of us with some sort of big sculpture/modern art thing, a whole bunch of the other CBYXers that had been at the party walked up. It was great to see them again, and a bonus was that they could take some pictures for us! We walked with them towards the Rhine for a bit, and ended up stopping to watch a guy making all kinds of interesting bubbles.

Set up the camera on a sculpture to take this photo!

Sculpture? Modern art?

Miss them already. <3

Bubbles!

That's all for this post! Hopefully sometime soon I'll find the time to post about everything else I've been doing. :) Right now I'm already on a two week vacation from school. How cool is that?!?