I figure that this is a good forum to let people in on what my general summer plans are. My parents fly out of Frankfurt on the Monday the 31st of May, and after that I am traveling independently until July 11th when I fly out of Dublin to begin my journey home. For those of you who are not so hot at math: that’s about 6 weeks. I currently don’t know exactly what my schedule will be from day to day, or even week to week. I have destinations in mind and a Eurail pass that will take me almost anywhere on the continent. My plan is just to “wing it” as much as possible and live out of my backpack in either Hostels or by Couchsurfing. This is a foreign concept to me and most everyone, but I’m a fast learner and I’m sure I’ll have it all figured out in a week or two. I’m also not traveling with a computer (too much weight) and will have to do thing the “old fashioned way” by booking things by phone or just going hostel to hostel until I find a place to stay. If all else fails I have friends who will be in Brussels, Freiburg, Oldenburg, Dublin, and Italy that I can stay with for a bit.
The general plan is to head north from Frankfurt, hit the Cologne/Rhine area, then swing over to Brussels for a few days to visit IES folk, then head back into Germany to visit my friend Lexi in Oldenburg (near Hamburg and Bremen). From there things get a little less planned. I’m thinking Denmark and Norway before heading for warmer waters. I have heard good things about the fjords in Norway and want to see those. Then I will head southeast, probably hitting Berlin again for a few days, hopefully stopping off in Prague again as well. I’m hoping from there to see Austria, Croatia, hit some other parts of Switzerland, the French Rivera, and then the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal). Once I get that far I will probably be close to the end of my time and have to head back toward Ireland. I’m planning to have a few days in Great Britain and Ireland too before I leave, and get re-acclimated to English.
As I’ve already said before I will probably be quite unreachable for the most part. I’ll have occasional access to computers in Hostels or whatever, so drop me emails and stuff! I will also have my telephone on me. My German number will be my primary contact until I run out of minutes, then it will be back to my American number.
I don’t really know what this summer holds, but I’m sure whatever it is it will be quite the experience. I look forward to seeing everyone when I get home (and before I head to Oregon for a family trip).
04 June 2010
So this is how it ends
I am posting this from a hostel in Hamburg Germany.
Well the semester has ended. It feels weird that it is all over – almost as if it has just begun. I can’t believe that these 4 months have flown by and created such memories. I’ve had some great experiences and made some great friends. For this post I’ll go through the end of the semester and talk about my general recollections about everything. Hopefully I can say some things that will be interesting or inspire others to study abroad.
In Conclusion:
I returned home from Rome with more to do in the following two weeks than I had really planned for or anticipated. In the next 6 days I had 5 finals and 2 papers to complete. Immediately after that I was to start Model EU (our culminating mock summit meeting) which lasted for 3 days. Then on May 17th my parents were arriving to being our 2 week journey through Europe. Every spare moment I had was spent organizing, planning, and packing.
I won’t bore you by talking about finals, that would be silly and like reliving a bad nightmare for me. Instead I’ll tell you that I think I did alright, but my hand hurt from hand-writing at least 15 pages in those few days (every class had an essay test, no multiple choice). However it felt really good to have everything done. I also wrote a 15 page paper on Turkey for my European Integration class and a 14 pager for my Muslim World class. This required quite a bit of effort as that much writing is obscene. I pulled out all the stops and used all my ‘patented-paper-lengthening-techniques.’ This included rambling incessantly, using headings, larger font faces, footnotes, citations, and I may or may not have messed with the margins ;-).
After all that was over I got to start with Model EU, which turned out to be quite the experience. The first day I was just there to look pretty, foreign ministers didn’t have to speak, but then IES took us out for cocktails at Kagan, the 17th story club in Freiburg, fed us dinner, and set us lose on the town. It was a good time and we were all plenty warm on the inside. We danced the night away, though it was an early night by German standards, I was home and in bed by 1am.
The next 2 days were all for business. As the Foreign Minister from Finland I wasn’t expecting to do anything too exciting or really need to have much of an opinion (officially Finland has its own ideas, unofficially – they just follow Sweden). However it turned out that a large proportion of the people in the foreign minister room weren’t big talkers and didn’t understand how these meetings were supposed to work. Therefore, I ended up talking a lot – drafting tons of proposals, suggesting amendments, and being generally argumentative. It turned out to be a really fun time (for me, lots of people sat there bored for 2 days) and taught me quite a bit. I really would have liked to have some more information leading up to the summit about how the procedure was supposed to work – as we spent large portions of the meeting trying to figure out how things were supposed to be done, who could make/second motions, when majority voting was okay or if unanimity was required. Overall the meetings were an okay time and it was a good way to end the semester for all of us.
On Sunday we (finally) went on the long awaited black forest hike. I chose to do the longer, more strenuous hike, simply because I haven’t been hiking enough. The weather was gross, with rain and general nastiness the whole time. The hike was to end at a cheese dairy in the forest where IES was giving us a final farewell dinner. Our group did however, manage to get quite lost for awhile before arriving. The dairy tour was interesting and brief (we just wanted food). However, we were slightly disappointed by the “dinner” we got. As we were at a dairy farm that also ran a pretty good pork business we were expecting pork and cheese (duh). We got both. Only problem was that our dinner was more like heavy hors-d’oeuvres – cold cheese, bread, and cold preserved meats. Most of us ended up going back multiple times to even fill up. I just felt bad for our lactose intolerant vegetarian. Poor Jane.
Of course, as we are college students, and most people were leaving Germany in a matter of days, we also spent large portions of the week end partying hard and seeing each other as much as possible before departures. We had several receptions after model EU and other get-togethers, but the waterworks really came on Tuesday night at Schlappen. Everyone came to say our final farewells and drink the last German Bier. It was sad to see everyone go but also amazing to see how closely the 60 of us had bonded in such a short time.
The memories:
It will be fun to see what I remember about this semester a year, 5 years, or 10 years down the road. I know that some of it will stick with me for life and I hope some of the friends I’ve made will last just as long. At this point though, it is hard to say exactly what my greatest memories are. The things that stick most in my head are the trips (because they were awesome), the people (because they’re like family now), and the experiences I’ve had. Below I’ve listed a few things that pop to my head right now for memories.
Living next to hippies and squatters
Spooning with 5 people on a night train from Prague
Seeing tons of churches
Walking in on my roommate “not” having sex in London
Ben consistently getting lost and arriving back in our room at odd hours of the morning
Friday dinners
Nights at Agar, Kagan, Schlappen and in people’s apartments
Getting rejected by Czech girls in Prague
Delerium in Brussels
Avenue Q in London
Skiing in the Alps – Black Forest too!
4AM Fasnacht in Basel, Switzerland
Doing Rent an American with German students
Touring Rome in a marathon day
1st annual Freiburg International Beer Pong tournament
Climbing St. Peter’s Basilica and seeing the Sistine Chapel
Church service in Westminster Abbey
SC Freiburg Football
Talking torture at the Tower of London
Doing things completely legally in Amsterdam
Getting lost in former Soviet Russia
Blacking out on a crazy Baltic Cruise
Playing with Zlaty
Eating great food from all around Europe
Seeing a 17th century ‘Pirate’ ship
Eiffel Tower light shows
Private tours of the Reichstag
Walls of Skulls in the Paris catacombs
Poorly translated menus, warnings, signs etc.
Seeing engineering at its finest in the Mercedes Museum
Learning more than anyone (except Anitta Hipper) wanted to know about the EU
Drinking too much beer, eating too much, taking too many pictures, and having more fun than I thought I could
Achieving the 10/10/10 strategy – 10 more pounds, 10% less decency, and 10% more fun by 2010
Well that is about all I have for now. Hope you enjoyed it!
I’ve worked harder than I thought I would on this blog and become really interested in trying to explain what is going on in my head this whole time. I hope that it has been as much an experience reading it for you as it has been for me to write it. I’ll do what I can to write over the summer, but my posts will be sporadic and short as any time I have on the internet I will most likely be paying for, and there are just some things that come first (emailing parents, checking facebook etc. etc.). I am however going to attempt to write a journal (on real paper with real ink!) even though I write much slower than I type. I’ll try to abridge some of that and put it online when I have a chance. I have no idea what will become of this blog after I return home – maybe it will become a continuing travel log and a place for thoughts, who knows.
Once again, thank you for reading and I hope you have enjoyed a view into my life as a study abroad student these past months!
Sincerely,
Evan Kaverman
Well the semester has ended. It feels weird that it is all over – almost as if it has just begun. I can’t believe that these 4 months have flown by and created such memories. I’ve had some great experiences and made some great friends. For this post I’ll go through the end of the semester and talk about my general recollections about everything. Hopefully I can say some things that will be interesting or inspire others to study abroad.
In Conclusion:
I returned home from Rome with more to do in the following two weeks than I had really planned for or anticipated. In the next 6 days I had 5 finals and 2 papers to complete. Immediately after that I was to start Model EU (our culminating mock summit meeting) which lasted for 3 days. Then on May 17th my parents were arriving to being our 2 week journey through Europe. Every spare moment I had was spent organizing, planning, and packing.
I won’t bore you by talking about finals, that would be silly and like reliving a bad nightmare for me. Instead I’ll tell you that I think I did alright, but my hand hurt from hand-writing at least 15 pages in those few days (every class had an essay test, no multiple choice). However it felt really good to have everything done. I also wrote a 15 page paper on Turkey for my European Integration class and a 14 pager for my Muslim World class. This required quite a bit of effort as that much writing is obscene. I pulled out all the stops and used all my ‘patented-paper-lengthening-techniques.’ This included rambling incessantly, using headings, larger font faces, footnotes, citations, and I may or may not have messed with the margins ;-).
After all that was over I got to start with Model EU, which turned out to be quite the experience. The first day I was just there to look pretty, foreign ministers didn’t have to speak, but then IES took us out for cocktails at Kagan, the 17th story club in Freiburg, fed us dinner, and set us lose on the town. It was a good time and we were all plenty warm on the inside. We danced the night away, though it was an early night by German standards, I was home and in bed by 1am.
The next 2 days were all for business. As the Foreign Minister from Finland I wasn’t expecting to do anything too exciting or really need to have much of an opinion (officially Finland has its own ideas, unofficially – they just follow Sweden). However it turned out that a large proportion of the people in the foreign minister room weren’t big talkers and didn’t understand how these meetings were supposed to work. Therefore, I ended up talking a lot – drafting tons of proposals, suggesting amendments, and being generally argumentative. It turned out to be a really fun time (for me, lots of people sat there bored for 2 days) and taught me quite a bit. I really would have liked to have some more information leading up to the summit about how the procedure was supposed to work – as we spent large portions of the meeting trying to figure out how things were supposed to be done, who could make/second motions, when majority voting was okay or if unanimity was required. Overall the meetings were an okay time and it was a good way to end the semester for all of us.
On Sunday we (finally) went on the long awaited black forest hike. I chose to do the longer, more strenuous hike, simply because I haven’t been hiking enough. The weather was gross, with rain and general nastiness the whole time. The hike was to end at a cheese dairy in the forest where IES was giving us a final farewell dinner. Our group did however, manage to get quite lost for awhile before arriving. The dairy tour was interesting and brief (we just wanted food). However, we were slightly disappointed by the “dinner” we got. As we were at a dairy farm that also ran a pretty good pork business we were expecting pork and cheese (duh). We got both. Only problem was that our dinner was more like heavy hors-d’oeuvres – cold cheese, bread, and cold preserved meats. Most of us ended up going back multiple times to even fill up. I just felt bad for our lactose intolerant vegetarian. Poor Jane.
Of course, as we are college students, and most people were leaving Germany in a matter of days, we also spent large portions of the week end partying hard and seeing each other as much as possible before departures. We had several receptions after model EU and other get-togethers, but the waterworks really came on Tuesday night at Schlappen. Everyone came to say our final farewells and drink the last German Bier. It was sad to see everyone go but also amazing to see how closely the 60 of us had bonded in such a short time.
The memories:
It will be fun to see what I remember about this semester a year, 5 years, or 10 years down the road. I know that some of it will stick with me for life and I hope some of the friends I’ve made will last just as long. At this point though, it is hard to say exactly what my greatest memories are. The things that stick most in my head are the trips (because they were awesome), the people (because they’re like family now), and the experiences I’ve had. Below I’ve listed a few things that pop to my head right now for memories.
Living next to hippies and squatters
Spooning with 5 people on a night train from Prague
Seeing tons of churches
Walking in on my roommate “not” having sex in London
Ben consistently getting lost and arriving back in our room at odd hours of the morning
Friday dinners
Nights at Agar, Kagan, Schlappen and in people’s apartments
Getting rejected by Czech girls in Prague
Delerium in Brussels
Avenue Q in London
Skiing in the Alps – Black Forest too!
4AM Fasnacht in Basel, Switzerland
Doing Rent an American with German students
Touring Rome in a marathon day
1st annual Freiburg International Beer Pong tournament
Climbing St. Peter’s Basilica and seeing the Sistine Chapel
Church service in Westminster Abbey
SC Freiburg Football
Talking torture at the Tower of London
Doing things completely legally in Amsterdam
Getting lost in former Soviet Russia
Blacking out on a crazy Baltic Cruise
Playing with Zlaty
Eating great food from all around Europe
Seeing a 17th century ‘Pirate’ ship
Eiffel Tower light shows
Private tours of the Reichstag
Walls of Skulls in the Paris catacombs
Poorly translated menus, warnings, signs etc.
Seeing engineering at its finest in the Mercedes Museum
Learning more than anyone (except Anitta Hipper) wanted to know about the EU
Drinking too much beer, eating too much, taking too many pictures, and having more fun than I thought I could
Achieving the 10/10/10 strategy – 10 more pounds, 10% less decency, and 10% more fun by 2010
Well that is about all I have for now. Hope you enjoyed it!
I’ve worked harder than I thought I would on this blog and become really interested in trying to explain what is going on in my head this whole time. I hope that it has been as much an experience reading it for you as it has been for me to write it. I’ll do what I can to write over the summer, but my posts will be sporadic and short as any time I have on the internet I will most likely be paying for, and there are just some things that come first (emailing parents, checking facebook etc. etc.). I am however going to attempt to write a journal (on real paper with real ink!) even though I write much slower than I type. I’ll try to abridge some of that and put it online when I have a chance. I have no idea what will become of this blog after I return home – maybe it will become a continuing travel log and a place for thoughts, who knows.
Once again, thank you for reading and I hope you have enjoyed a view into my life as a study abroad student these past months!
Sincerely,
Evan Kaverman
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