Eating Yummy Germaaaaan food YAA!

In case you didn't know, Strasbourg is legitimately a hop skip and a jump away from Germany. So the other night we decided to try our luck across the border and go have a wicked heavy, huge German meal, with German beers to go with it. We didn't really know where would be a good place to go, so we just went to a little town on the map right across the border, not the best town in the world....but we found some GREAT food!

Here is the German beer that they were advertising, so naturally we all had to try it!...note the little doily around the bottom and the HUUUGE head of super crazy thick foam!

All the Girls with our GERMANN beeers. We were the annoying americans saying everything in the completely overdone German accent. It made everything taste better though I swear! and really got us in the spirit of Germanyyy!

No idea what my meal was called! Couldn't even pronounce it or try and retype it here even if I vaguely remembered it. All I know was that it was roasted pork with the best gravy/sauce I've ever had with mushrooms and tomatoes...and SPAETZLE! Spaetzle is so good! and soo German!! My meal was everything I ever could have wanted out my German meal..it was sooo good!

Here are the other girls food! Cammie had German sausages...great choice! and the other girls got a traditional farmer's plate served on wooden plates with yummy pork and veggies. We all had a little potato soup too and as much as I love Panera, this potato soup owned Panera's! But on a different note I do miss Panera, and iced coffee more than I could have imagined!

After we sat for like twenty minutes and attempted to digest the monster meals we had just ate we decided to top off the night with monster desserts! We got gelato but it was more like ice cream, but still amazing none the less! Cam got a crepe, I didn't manage to get a bite before she had finished it haha but as you can see from the picture below, it looked amazing!
 

That's my giant sundae with more whipped cream on top than I've had in my entire life. Homemade, thick creamy whipped cream to be exact. Three scoops of deliciousness later, none of us could move and we went home with huge food comas! Great experience though! And next time in Germany we'll go to a biergarten and hopefully not eat as much food!!

On a completely random note, when I am not eating out in Germany, I am cooking more at home than ever. We have two hours everyday for lunch because almost everything here closes from 12-2! So it forces us to come home and make food. As I mentioned earlier I've been living off ham and cheese sandwiches, tunafish, eggs, sausage, pasta and salads. But don't be fooled and think these are stupid American foods that are not special at all. We've been making great salads with egg and ham like they do in France, and the sandwiches are on delicious French bread that we buy fresh that day. The cheeses are obviously better than anything I've had in America. What I'm trying to say is that ALLLLL the food here is soo good! Even the stuff that I cook at home, I swear it's ten times better than whenever I make anything in America. Maybe I'll come back an awesome chef specializing in French food...doubtful but I'll definitely be a specialist in tasting european food!

La Petite France

There is a little place in Strasbourg that is called La Petite France. It is the oldest part of the city and it is located on all these little waterways. On Friday we decided to check it out because we'd heard so much about how cute it was! Here are some picturesss

Not exactly the best weather...it hasn't been nice weather since I've been here. It is officially never sunny in Strasbourg...the sun tries sooooo hard to come out, I've seen a piece of blue sky once. I'm keeping my hopes up though! "the sun will come out tomorrow!!!"

This is one of the parts of Strasbourg that we see posters of. These are like some type of watchtowers I think? I know there is some story behind them and there is definitely a better view of them I just didn't find it! 

This is me Cammie and Kelsey in front of some old building in Petite France. Turns out we thought we were in Petite France and at some point we had wandered out of it for most of the day. At this point though we were still there! Seriously walking around was like walking around Disney..the buildings didn't look real at all! I felt like I was back in Epcot or something, it was soo cool. We're planning on going back and staying longer, seeing more, and eating at a restaurant we found online that is supposed to be like unreal. So stay tuned for that update!

Tapas

They were right when they told me that you can find a party every night in Europe. I'm used to being pretty low key mon-thurs in the states...I mean those are school nights! and ever since I was in middle school it was almost taboo to do anything on a school night! That didn't really apply at BC but I still usually limited my going out to Thur-Sat but that doesn't apply here at all. Every night there is something going on, some barathon or themed party or something. This week I laid pretty low because I'm getting used to my class schedule which is basically non-existent. I almost never have class its really weird but welcomed!  Anyway I went out to Tapas with Chelsea Kelsey Cammie and some other international students. It was great! We had delicious sangria..i didn't realize how much I liked sangria! We made a huge failure of an attempt at making sangria in walsh last year and let me tell you it didn't taste anything like this! haha Ordering tapas was a bit of an ordeal because they were all on the menu in spanish..but their brief descriptions were in French and we're all speaking English. Lets just say by the end of all that translating we had noooo idea what we were ordering. Even the things we thought we knew what they were didn't turn out being what we thought. Everything was good though and we got to try some random new food. They had like motz sticks but they were balls haha and basically taco meat with corn, bread with like meat on them and mussels in marinara. In the end we all got some pretty good food! Adventures of this weekend still to come!

Pizza..the Alsatian way

Qu'est ce que j'ai fait ce weekend?.. I ate delicious Alsatian pizza. After the discotech on Thursday, like I said eariler I pretty much slept my life away on friday. But I did get up to go to a big dinner with the Eramsus (international) students at Cammie's school. It was all you can eat/drink pizza and beer. I wasn't really in the mood to drink so I stuck to water that night but I ate more than my share of pizza! The pizza was soo different than what we're used to. It was on really thin flatbread, and instead of red sauce they use like this creamy kinda cheese sauce. But don't get me wrong it was soo good! We had mushrooms and ham on them. I have never had more delicious ham than I have here, and I almost never eat ham. So now I'm like obsessed and want to have ham cheese and butter sandwiches everyday. Ya the butter sounds gross but they put it on the sandwiches and I had to try it and I must say I loved it. Don't think I'll be whipping out the land o' lakes at home, but while I'm here I shall do as the French do! For dessert they brought us the same pizza with the creamy stuff on it but instead of cheese they put chocolate chips on them! This was a dessert after my own heart..sooo good!

The rest of the weekend was just going to bars, found a good new dance club...
Sunday BC paid for us to go to the movies and go to a cafe after. I saw "Pas si simple"..which was "It's Complicated" with Meryll Streep but dubbed in French. Not going to lie I didn't understand it all. A lot of jokes and sarcasm come too fast for me to catch them so all the French people in the theater were laughing while me Cam and Chelsea were a little lost. From what I understood, the movie was cute and I'll watch it here online sometime so I can get everything that happens. At the cafe after was the best. I had my first thing of MOUSSE CHOCOLAT since i've been here and it was amazing! I really don't know how all the French people aren't huge fat tubs of lard because the desserts are sooo good here! Last night since French TV is so bad I shamelessly started  watching Vampire Diaries online. Not gunna lie i'm addicted now and that's all i have to say about that!

Yaaaa da Discotech!!

So this weekend was pretty sweet and started out in GERMANYYY. Turns out Germany is a hop skip and a jump from where I am...legit I can walk there in 20 mins which is about the same as it takes to get downtown :). Thursday we went to a discotech called K3 in germany with the international program here (aka the party planning program here). It was supposed to be themed as "rep your country" so all us USA girls had tshirts with typical US stuff on them, like southern stuff or Red Sox and Superfan...turns out not too many people cared about the theme and they all looked really cute when we met to meet the bus at my school. Lucklily my apartment is 30 seconds from my school so we ran home and changed and no one was the wiser! When we got on the bus everyone started singing!..not too different than us BCers!..they were singing all these songs in French that I blatantly didn't know the words to but it was still fabulous! Then one kid got up and lead a song to the Remember the Titans tune..I loved it..so here it is:
"Everywhere we gooooo....People always ask us....Who we are...Where we come from...So we tell them...We are from Strasbourg...Sexy Sexy Strasbourg...Merry Merry Strasbourg..." and i think there is more but I don't remember it all.
 Anyway the singing on the bus was really fun and the club was wicked cool too. DJ +dancing +discounted drinks =success in my book. One of my goals for the night was to get up on the DJ platform and do my thing...so naturally I made it happen...I'm pretty badass sometimes haha..they even let me wear the headphones!

They played a bunch of funky german and clearly international music but they also played american jams! Lady Gaga has infiltrated the entire world...thank god! gotta love her and a dance party just isn't a dance party with her! On our ride home from Germany the Irish girls had facepaint and branded most of us americans with the irish flag. Chelsea had it on her face, cammie and sarah had it on their coats, I was the only one who made it home unscathed haha. All in all a great Thursday night, and no class on Friday lent itself to a pretty good recovery.

A Few Random Thoughts...

1.Picked my classes...picked 8 classes...but don't have class on Mon or Fri...pretty sweet deal :)
2. It has been snowing for 7 days straight..nonstop..a light flurry that is just super cold and annoying. I'm gettin a little sick of it Mother Nature.
3. Hey Strasbourg...when it snows you're supposed to plow the sidewalks and the streets and basically all the routes of transportation in your city! Slush is unacceptable.
4. French dogs are everywhere! and soo well behaved!, they never have leashes on but they just walk casually down the streets..in restaurants, cafes..its cool. Although with dogs, comes poop, and apparently the pooper scooper doesn't exist in France. Gotta love slushy slippery mine covered sidewalks!
5. I LOVE French bread and croissants and cafe and everything...and it seems to be all i eat (no complaints here)...but it's going to make me fat if i keep eating like this and French people are NOT fat!
That's all for now

First Strasbourg Pics!

Here are my first pictures from Strasbourg! There are some of the cathedral we climbed up and some of the cute shops..just random pictures of the city!

by hneeven


Last night we went on a "pubathon" throughout Strasbourg. It was a mix of international students and french students. It was soo fun! We went to four different bars, with discounted drinks at each one. One had a "metre" of shots for ten euro..its ten shots for ten euro...obviously we split it with a bunch of ppl but it was sick because they were so cheap! Some of the french students did them alone, or just split it with one person..they're wayyy bigger champs than I thought over here! The last bar we went to was in the bottom of a boat on the river..it was soo cool! like a huge dance party in the bottom of a boat and the french students said that there are a bunch of bars and clubs like that on the river and they're some of the best places to go. I had soo much fun! the pubcrawl was awesome  too because we were so intermingled with all the french kids and other international ones..I met soo many awesome french friends. It was cool to speak french to them and they understood what I was saying ( and i could even understand them!)...some of them were pretty impressed with my french! I'm not as bad as I thought, its all coming back thank god! Going to Germany tomorrow for a "rep your country" themed party...I think I'll wear my red sox shirt to represent! haha I guess the clubs in germany are ever sweeter then here. I'll let you know! Gros Bisous de France!

I Love Touristy Stuff!!

Today I was a huge Strasbourg tourist with Chelsea and Sarah. Our classes don't start until tomorrow so we took today to get some errands done in the morning and then explore Strasbourg a little. We went to the theater and checked out what plays were showing and then to the opera house and did the same. Apparently students a get a discount on like EVERYTHING over here. Its sweet..like the train system and the TGV and everything we get awesome discounts. Like to see a play would only be like 5 euro. We went to an old "bath house" like im pretty sure it used to be where they had huge public baths..but now its just like the French YMCA. There was actually a sign there that said no swim trunks allowed..you had to wear speedos hahah. umm no thanks i think i'll skip swimming with speedo clad frenchmen!

Then we followed the tram lines downtown. They have the best public transportation system here ever! its like so fast and smooth and its above ground with huuuge windows so you can see everything that is going past. And 90% of the time you can get on for free because you validate your ticket outside on the platform before you even get on but not in a place that you have to go to. You can just get on without a ticket. Apparently the transportation people come on every once in a while and  check but we're american so we can just say we didn't know and pretend we dont speak french! haha..gotta love free transportation! We walk most places anyway but its a nice option. Anyway we went downtown and went to the Cathedral Notre Dame in Strasbourg center. IT IS HUGE!!! like it is sooo tall but soo beautiful. It's one of the biggest and oldest churches in France and we hiked up to the top. We took the absolute tiniest spiral staircase up to the top (about 350 steps)! it was soo beautiful and sooo cool!

Basically I've been so busy since I've got here. I've been picking classes and stuff and as soon as I have all that set I'm going to make some travel plans. Everything is really awesome and each day i learn something new and love it here more and more! Tonight there is a party at a bar for the international student and we get discounted drinks so I'm going to go and meet some new friends!! Tomorrow is an even bigger pub crawl throughout Strasbourg so I think that will be wicked sweet and I'll find some really good bars! Now that I have internet I'll post a lot more..sorry for the super long double post but I've had so much to say!! haha

Yayy internet!!!..this is what i've been up to!

I've noticed over here while it's still the first couple weeks it's all about the little victories! It was a victory to get our tiny little pay-as-you-go pieces of crap phones so that we could finally be in contact with one another. It was a tiny victory to find the supermarket and find the boulangerie and patisserie. Today's wonderful victory was getting internet!! up until now everyone here but me and cammie and our friend sam (all from BC) had internet and we have been totally disconnected from the world! Our schools kept sending us emails and we didn't even know because no internet for us! Susan..our coordinator kept telling us to wait until Camillo (another boy who is from BC and is spending the whole year in Strasbourg) got here and he would help us set up our internet. Turns out it was Susan who did his!! Luckily he introduced us to the Columbian group of girls living upstairs and they all seem super nice. They are letting us use their internet and just pay them so we all share. It works out nicely..thank god..or else this whole no internet ting would be a huge issue!

So basically what I've been up to...the first weekend was tiring but fun! Cammie and I went down to the little mini grocery store and bought some wine! We had red wine one night and then white and rose the second. The red and whites were good for 1 euro each lol but the rose was absolute crap!! I definitely won't be drinking that again! Sam went and got these beers that had 11.5% alcohol in them! They tasted disgusting...like malt liquor or something gross..I won't be drinking that either! lol  but he was a champ and drank 2 before we went out. We went out to a club called Salamande where there was dancing and stuff. One of our friends who is staying the semester in Paris, Doug Hasset, came and visited before his classes started and it was cool to have him here. We met some french kids and they brought us to another bar which was pretty chill but fun. 

Basically we've been hardcore exploring! Last night we went to dinner at a restaurant at this sweet park surrounded by gorgeous buildings. The restaurant was a little more expensive than we would have wanted and wicked nice but it was above a bowling alley that was wicked cool. I definitely would have thought a bowling alley meant yucky food but the food was good! I got this salad with bacon and stuff and there is a poached egg on top that when you break the yoke it dresses the salad..it was good but kinda just like a breakfast sandwich in a salad..kinda weird lol. Chelsea is another girl with us and she was brave and ordered "boudin avec les pommes de terres."We knew that pommes de terre were potatoes..but boudin was sort of a mystery. When she got her plate it looked like a black omlette haha..turn out boudin is "black pudding"..which is "blood of pork." GROSS!! although before asking what the black lump was we all tried it and it wasn't half bad. I guess it's really good for you but kinda a wicked yucky idea lol. I doubt i'll be ordering boudin anytime soon!

Strasbourg or Bust!!

I MADE IT TO STRASBOURG!!! woo hoo finally!! the airline totally screwed us over but we eventually got here! I completely missed my orientation which kinda sucked but the other BC girls filled me in on everything I missed. We've been exploring Strasbourg and it's been pretty sweet. The first night was a little rough but we met up with some of the other BC kids and went out to dinner so we weren't totally alone. Everyday we're settling in more, like we went to a French Wal-Mart type thing and we got homey stuff like a mirror and bath mat and shampoo and an extra pillow and stuff. After we rearranged our furniture in our baby apartment and got all the pictures up it felt a lot better. My apartment is two bedrooms connected by a door, a baby kitchen with a minifridge and a mini stove top, no oven and no counter. It's a little weird but we're getting used to it! We have a WC which is a legit water closet. It is a CLOSET with a toilet in it lol. its kinda awkward cuz it gets a little claustrophobic! haha so i still don't have any internet and that's why i haven't posted at all! I am using this kid in my building's internet but i dont get his signal in my apartment. Classes start on tues so i better have it by then. Apparently there are a bunch of columbians that live above me and I can get their signal I just need their access code, but they're all traveling right now. Hopefully I'll have internet by tomorrow and I'll be able to write about how everything is going and what I've been doing. I have a lot more to say and talk about but I have to let the other kid on the internet because the connection only lets one person on. its dumb lol. Okay well miss everyone in the US but France is getting better everyday! As soon as i have internet I will post a lot more frequently!

I HATE AIR CANADA!!!!!!

So here I am sitting in a hotel room in TORONTO!!!!!! Not on a flight to Germany to get to France where I am supposed to be going!...My first flight was running late but me and cam still made it to the gate with time to spare. We sat and waited at the gate, NO ONE had even boarded. so they finally call our row...and we give them our boarding passports and they say"come step aside over here....you don't have a seat." I was like WHAT!?! I booked my flight and personally picked my seat 31K next to cammie four whole months ago!!! Then the guy at the counter tells us that because our flight was delayed a little they weren't sure we would make it on time so the computer automatically took us off the flight!! THEY GAVE AWAY OUR SEATS! we watched our plane take off...it was the worst thing i could have ever imagined on my way to France!


So then we go to the customer service desk and I'm like "get me to strasbourg, France by 8 AM on Jan 7th...because that's my orientation and I CANNOT MISS IT!!." Tears ensued.  Basically they sucked and now me and cammie are sitting in our hotel room (with no mini bar...and the hotel bar was closed when we got here) eating reallyyyyy crappy food and looking up flights on orbitz and expedia that the stupid air canada ppl should have put us on!!! And actually found a bunch of better, earlier and much more expensive flights! So ha Air Canada! Take that! So the plan now is to wake up early and go yell at them to get us on the flights we found. Def not how i expected to spend tonight..i'm supposed to be sleeping on my flight to Frankfurt wearing my cute little eye mask and dreaming about french baguettes and nutella!! well lets just hope this is the worst of it all! Hopefully karma will work its magic and make all my other travels this semester go smoother than this one! Cross your fingers for me! I'm getting to Strasbourg one way or another!!!

I'm Not Cool Enough to Do This!!

Here it is everyone!!!! This is my attempt at blog. Don't expect it to be witty or clever because we all know i am neither of those things! haha I plan on writing in this as much as possible while in I'm in France and everywhere else so everyone will know all the trivial little things that I've been up to. I hope it's relatively entertaining because I'm sure there will be some embarrassing stories! Well I leave tomorrow at 6:30 for my flight to AU CANADAAAA!!! and then me and cam are off to France! Hopefully I'll have something better to write about tomorrow or wednesday or whenever I actually arrive. AU REVOIR US of A!!!