May 17, 2012
Making it to the train station this morning with no trouble
I find my train and somehow manage to find my seat as well. It was my first
time on the ICE train so I was a little confused on where my seat was. However,
I somehow manage to find it without having to make too big of a fool of myself.
This train isn’t to uncomfortable, but for whatever reason I just can’t sleep
so I spend the majority of time attempting to shift from one position to
another without disturbing the guy sitting beside me. At the first switchover I
almost miss my train because I have no idea which one it is, but manage to make
it on with barely five minutes to spare. Next time I go to a foreign country I
really have to learn their language. It’s very hard not knowing what they are
saying and not understanding what you are reading. The next switchover goes a
lot smoother because my train actually has a number on it and I can easily
identify it. So after five hours of being on a train and running on about 30
hours without sleep I make it safely to Paderborn.
To be honest at this point I am about ready to crash on the
ground, but I only have a few days here with Lena so I push aside the tiredness
and go exploring with her and Eric in downtown Paderborn. It’s actually a very
quaint city and has the more small town feel to it that Regensburg had. We go
into a few of the churches in Paderborn, which are all gorgeous. There are so
many churches in each city that it amazes me. I thought the bible belt in the
South was bad, but it has nothing on these German cities. We find the “three
hares” at one of the churches, which is apparently a famous sculpture on a
window, another story that I am going to have to look up since I cannot
understand the German sign next to the sculpture.
After going through downtown we hop a bus to a castle that
is by Paderborn. This is the first
castle I actually have a chance to go through and explore. It’s very
pretty and is complete with a moat surrounding it, another first for me. As we walk through the castle I am completely
fascinated by all the ducks that are in the moat, including these ducklings
that are so freaking adorable. I’m pretty sure I stood there for about an hour
just watching them. There was this one particular duckling that was trying so
hard to be independent of his parents and kept swimming away and looking for
his own food. As I was watching him, he surprised a fish in the pond and it
jumped up and grabbed the duckling’s beak for a second. The poor duckling was
so surprised he swam back to his parents as fast as he could. I practically
died laughing at that point.
When I was through being fascinated by the ducks we went in
back to the castle grounds and discovered that there was another beer fest
happening. Wondering through the festival, we initially weren’t going to try
anything there, but then Lena and I kept seeing people with this red beer that
came from Grimbergens. We opted to try it just for the heck of it. Worst
mistake ever. We have become addicted to it. It turned out to be this cherry
beer that they make and it is so good! I
wanted to guzzle it down, but at the same time wanted to savor every drop.
Definitely the best drink that I have had here yet. Eric ended up getting this
huge stick of meat with a roll on the end. It looked like something that
would’ve come from the middle ages, but apparently was extremely good. We
finally leave the festival and head back to the apartment in Paderborn.
Finally getting back to the apartment I am so tired that I
am ready to crash right there, but I’m also starving so we decide to go grab
some pizza. There is this amazing pizza place right down the street from Eric’s
apartment and we have this delicious Mexican pizza. I can barely taste it at
this point however because I have been up for 36 hours. I stay up for a little longer though so I can
have a quick skype date and then crash
in bed. Takes me about two minutes before I am dead to the world for the next
ten hours. J
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