Taste of Italy

This last week many of us parted and took our separate ways. We embarked on a week of travel to wherever we desired. I went with Robert to Naples, Italy to spend a few days with our friend’s family.

Now, no trip to Italy is complete without eating some delicious food. To help describe some of the things we ate, I’ve included some pictures.

The first picture is a dish of mussels, clams, and octopus over a bed of crisp bread in a delicious sauce.

The pasta below is a potato pasta covered in cheese. It was incredibly filling and tasty.

The last two pictures are our trip to the “bar.” Bars in Italy exclusively serve coffee, while their pubs serve alcohol. The pastries were filled with delicious ricotta cheese.

We ate a lot more, but this gives a small taste of it.

Pictures From Around Germany

This is a picture of one of our meals in a restaurant in Köln. This dish is known as the Jaegerschnitzel. It’s a traditional German dish made from breaded veal cutlet with mushroom sauce. This is my favorite meal in our entire German trip

This is a picture of the wine barrel we found in Heidelberg. According to Wikipedia this wine barrel can hold up to 219,000 liters of wine.

I took this picture of a monument describing the distances of certain cities throughout the world. Djakarta (or Jakarta) is listed to be approximately 11,084 km away.

Blog Assignment #5

 

With our German class, we visited the Olympic stadium built by Hitler’s regime for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Hitler’s goal was to build a great stadium for propaganda purposes, one so great that it would last longer than the Coliseum in Rome. I had the privilege to travel to Rome one weekend with my friend Clay and see the Coliseum in person. The Coliseum was built in the area where the roman emperor Nero had the Domus Aurea built: an artificial lake surrounded by pavilions and gardens. Nero snatched up much of the land after the Great Fire of Rome in order to do this, so when his Domus Aurea was torn down for a pubic amphitheater to be constructed, it was received as a populist movement to return the land to the people. However, the construction was funded by the spoils taken from the Jewish Revolt in 70 AD and built by many of the 100,000 Jews brought back to Rome as slaves. I found this to be an incredible parallel: two monumental complexes built to please and fool the people, in the midst of the persecution of another group. It seems that when we as humans and nations always want to be remembered, even at the expense of someone else.

The third picture is a photo taken in the church that originally held Martin Luther’s 95 theses on its entrance. There was a statue hung from the ceiling displaying what appeared to be Luther taking flight. It seemed like an odd place and position for Luther to be remembered, but I figure on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, just about anything goes.

 

What’s it like?

The food here is amazing. “Bayerisches Schmankerl,” a Bavarian dish, was offered at a traditional German restaurant. Notice how it was served on a wood plate or platter. It included a kind of Bavarian meatloaf that does not taste at all like American meat loaf, 3 Numberg-style sausages and one regensburg-style sausage. The Numberg-style sausages have a lot of flavor as they are typically spiced with ginger, nutmeg, chilies and cloves. What is interesting about the Regensburg sausages is that supposedly they are made like a restaurant in Regensburg, Germany makes them that has been open since around 1135 AD. I don’t know if this is really true, but it is an interesting possibility. The meal also included fried potato slices, and sauerkraut in the front. This has so far been my favorite meal here. Continue reading “What’s it like?”

What it’s like

The streets:

In the streets of Germany you will find currywurst with fries and doner kebaps (the best street food to grace this place called earth). In the larger cities, you will find street performers and artists of all sorts. Coming across a talented performer/group on the streets is always a lot of fun. Narrow cobblestone alleys are quickly filled by our large crew.

Continue reading “What it’s like”

Life in Berlin

I am having so much fun in Germany. Here are a few pictures from our adventures.

There are way more nice cars in Berlin than back in Grand Rapids. Pretty much wherever we have been in berlin, there are always fancy cars. There are Porches, Lamborghinis, Teslas, and so much more. This is a Lamborghini from the Volkswagen museum. We were not allowed to sit in it, but it was still very cool. Made me wish Id have enough money to afford one someday.

This picture is from our singe day trip to Bremen. It is an old ship that was converted into a restaurant. It would be cool to eat there, but we did not get the chance. The funny thing about this boat is that there are bridges on each side that are too low for the boat to pass through, so its kind of stuck there.

Here is a map of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn routes though the city of berlin. We use these methods of public transport pretty much wherever we go besides school. These subways get you around the city pretty quick, if you know what you’re doing… which now I finally do. There were many times at the start of the trip where we were not sure which train to take and ended up going the wrong direction. Public transport can be fun as long as it is not crowded.

East Side Gallery

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The East Side Gallery is a large preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall. They got multiple painters to decorate the wall with their idea of what freedom meant. I think that it is a great idea to turn what was once a symbol of oppression into a work of art celebrating their freedom. There are dozens of styles ranging from abstract to realistic and all of them are beautiful.