When I arrived, the girl whose house I was staying in picked me up at the train station after I said my goodbyes to the rest of my group, which was headed back to Koblenz. We went straight to her place, and then went back out to do some walking around the city. Cologne is a beautiful city, and I just got a little tour through the university and one of the main bar-heavy streets. Then we went back and I pretty much fell asleep instantly because I was so damn tired. Next day, I would be meeting up with Luisa, another AIESECer from Cologne, who would be giving me the proper touristy tour of Cologne.
I hoped to wake up around 11, but I didn't move a muscle until 12:30...at which point Luisa had already called me twice. Oops...but oh well, after this we walked around the old part of Cologne, where the Cologne Cathedral is located. This thing is...well...huge. Largest cathedral I have ever been in by a mile. We decided to go up all the way, so we paid and headed up the stairs...
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| Think this...533 times over |
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| Vini, vidi, vici! |
...so many of them...but finally...we made it! 533 steps. The worst part was running into tourists who would say "You're almost there", when in reality, you weren't. Eventually we made it all the way to the top and the view was amazing! We took some pictures, took in the view, and then proceeded back down. All the way back down the same 533 steps. Now it was my turn to tell people they were almost there. :)
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| All the way back the down we went... |
After this, we moved to the delicious Chocolate Museum. This was...omg so good!!! The place itself is nothing too special. They show you where cocoa comes from, blah blah, then they show you how they make it into chocolate, and then you get to the back and BOOM! Machinery! Chocolate flowing everywhere...delicious, yummy chocolate. And then...KAPOW! Chocolate fountain glory!
Seriously, if I could I would dunk my face in there and start chugging. The nice lady with chocolate covered wafers was great enough to give me like 6 or 7 wafers (being nice gets you places), so I had a good share of chocolate. Then, it was time to head back to the real world, where Luisa had to go home and I had to get my ass back to the other girl's place to get ready for the fireworks show that would happen later that night. Dinner happened somewhere in between all that. Nothing too special...hehe. Oh yea, and I got lucky by rubbing the nose of these two statues. No big...
Many much fireworks!
The end of my stay in Cologne involved a super cool fireworks show on the Rhine. It's an annual show called Kölner Lichter, which means Cologne Lights. Kölner is the possessive of Köln (Cologne), so it's intended meaning is something like "The Lights of Cologne." We got to the riverside around 10:30pm, and we sat down with the rest of the people from AIESEC who were there. It was a wonderful show! It must have been even better for the Cologne people because all of the music was from artists from Cologne, and the songs were about Cologne, and it just felt like a very city pride huge deal. They say pictures are worth 1,000 words, so I'll let the pictures do the talking for this part, 20,000 words' worth of it.
Imagine this for an hour and a half! Impressive, right? :)
It was time for some hanging out after the fireworks were over, but we were too tired for clubs so we hung out at the apartment. Finally went to bed at 5:30am, and then spent the next day watching TV while I waited for my ride to call me. Instead of taking a train I talked to one of the Koblenz students who lives in Cologne to drive me back on Sunday when he went back. Roberto - 1, the system - 0. I win, and I don't pay for the train.
Summer Academy Wine Tasting
After a week of hard work, the following weekend arrived and we had a wine tasting event planned for our students. Since the Summer Academy event planners handled this event, I had no idea what we were in for. I'm quite lucky that I decided to wear shorts because the weather was pretty hot and we were going to be walking around 15 km. We had to walk along the vineyard to stop every once in a while to try different wines. I may or may not have had a little bit more than expected, which resulted in a very happy Roberto who was talking to everyone (so basically normal me except twice as happy and twice as excited about everything). I've always said wine gets me in the best moods out of all kinds of alcohol (vodka and Jägermeister are at the bottom...which is why I refuse to drink them), so it was a nice little walk back to town, and then we got on the boat that would take us back to Koblenz (we came in by train). The boat ride was very nice, except for the fact that my camera died while we were there, which is why I have no more pictures since then. I have continuously forgotten to buy batteries...so no more pics from here on. I need to get some from others. All in all, good day, except for the fact that wine from the Rhine is mostly white, and I'm a red wine kind of person. Oh well...I'll have to open a bottle of red sometime soon.
It's the Final Countdown!
The final week of the Summer Academy is finally here. I would have to say that the program itself can be divided into two parts: Pre-Brussels and Post-Brussels. During Brussels I feel like I got to know a lot of the students very well, so after we got back we really bonded and now I have to say goodbye to them. We had the goodbye BBQ on Friday, and it was a great time because everyone was there. At 10pm we closed up, and everyone went to the bars around 10:45pm. Since I had to clean up I couldn't go, but one of the students stayed with me and he told me we could go to the bars after. We went to the local Irish pub, and a group of about 30 people was there, a combination of international and German students. It was great! We kept hopping to other bars, and before we knew it, 4am had arrived.
I have a gift. It involves befriending restaurant/bar owners and getting everyone to buy more drinks after the bar is closed. At the last bar we were in, they had last call around 3:30am, but one of the guys decided to do a round of drinks after this. I told him "don't worry...I'll find a way", and I talked to the bartender, who directed me to the owner. One minute later, and the round was mine, as well as 2 more rounds that I got on the house. I got 3-4 drinks and I paid for 0 of them. :) Sweet talking people really does get you places...I need to do this to get myself a job next year. Oh, and talking about my job...my boss said I am done officially on Tuesday. This means I get a full week of hanging out in Koblenz, sleeping, packing and doing some last minute sightseeing in the city. Life is good.
However, as happy as I am about this being over, I am having very mixed emotions at the moment. I am very happy because I talked to a lot of the students and they were incredibly happy with both the work I had done and the Summer Academy as a whole. I am actually pretty proud of the job I have done, and I definitely would love to do it again if I had the chance. Maybe I'd do some things differently but I would do it again. On the other hand I'm really sad at the fact that I'm now all alone in Vallendar again. The first two months I got used to being alone on the bus, reading and listening to my iPod, but then the students arrived and I saw them every time I got on the bus. I barely had times when I had no one from the Summer Academy around me, and now for one more week I'm going to have to get used to not having them around once again. This is sad, but at the same time I am very happy that I got to meet them all. The whole point of exchange through AIESEC is to further develop individuals, and if what I have gone through these three months isn't development, I don't know what is.
What's left? Just two more days, in which I have to create a report about the Summer Academy. Not many of the feedback forms have made their way back, but at least I've talked to many of the students and I have good action steps that can be taken by next year's team to make sure the experience is even better. The final report will probably be posted here...we'll see once I finish. But for now...let's rejoice in the good things! I'm about to start thinking about this report...kinda crazy about going home in 9 days.
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