Amsterdam

This past weekend's excursion was Amsterdam. This trip was only the 4 students from Minnesota, but a bunch of other exchange students were going as well. We saw a few of them randomly in the city though. We hopped on a train early Saturday morning and arrived in Amsterdam in the early afternoon. I had been to Amsterdam before when I was twelve, and wasn't a huge fan of it. I felt that I needed to go back during my semester abroad so that I could see it again! And boy, I'm glad I did! The city is absolutely wonderful; the architecture is stunning and the city is quite unique. The majority of what we did was wander around the city. This may not sound too fun, but I'm not very into paying 10 euro for an entrance to a museum multiple times a day. So Saturday we wandered, laid down in a park, took pictures by the gigantic "amsterdam" letters, and explored the city.

We didn't have much of a plan, but we ended up seeing the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh museum, the central square, the Red Light District, and many other places. Our hostel was literally a campsite. It was a 30 minute bus ride and a 30 minute walk to our campsite...the walk was quite scary because we literally had to walk through a forest with no lights! Anyways, our 4-person cabin was about 10 x 10 feet, so pretty cozy. We were also not informed that the campsite did not provide toilet paper for the bathrooms, so that made for an awesome night for Katie and I! We got a good nights rest (as good as we could at a hostel..which isn't saying much!) and headed back into the city. We first went to the Heineken brewery museum. If you are ever in Amsterdam, this is one place that I would definitely recommend seeing! They gave us a complete history of the company, how the beer is brewed, how the beer is bottled, we rode on a ride within the museum, and were given 2 beers with the price of admission. It is definitely worth the money and I'm very glad that we did it! I also realized that the whole museum was a marketing tool...I'm finally starting to think like a Marketing Major! After that we headed out for lunch...we ate at a "fast food" Asian restaurant that makes your own "made-to-order" stirfry.

We also had that for dinner the night before; it was very difficult to find something healthier and cheaper to eat so we just went twice. For the rest of the day we wandered again. I had some fries with Mayo (Europeans are very into fries..they are everywhere!) which was delicious! Once our day came to an end, we hopped on our train back to Cologne. It overall was a great weekend and I was glad I could share it with my fellow Minnesotans.
And now classes are finally starting! I had my first lecture yesterday, "Psychology of Marketing and Advertising". All of my classes are taught in English, but I did not expect the teacher to be American, and he was! I figured that he was midwestern after he said "awesome", "you guys", my office hours are from "2-3pm" rather than "14:00-15:00", and when his computer screen displayed on the overhead projector, the time was still set to the central time zone! He is young and quirky; I am very much looking forward to this class! Besides that class, I am taking "Product Management", "Cultural Immersion", and "Transnational Social Policy". A bunch of my friends are in a "Leadership and Motivation" class so I may take that as well, it can't hurt right?! Its very weird though to think that I will only be in classes for the next two months! Its also nice having my German class over now, I have a lot more free time on my hands since most classes only meet for 1.5 hours per week!

My family is coming to Germany in 3 days! I can't wait to meet up with them, its been so long! We are going to Munich, Dachau, Salzburg, and a few other small towns next weekend. It will be action packed and stressful, but I'll enjoy every minute of it! So be prepared for an awesome next blog! :)