Deutschland

Well it has been quite the week! This week was my first week of classes and it was nice to finally get started!! I'm taking only four classes- an Irish language class, a class about Irish history and culture, a linguistics class, and a Criminology class. So far, they all seem like they'll be pretty interesting and not too difficult!

This coming week is what they call Freshers Week, where it's possible to join clubs and societies. I'm very excited to join one and meet some more people! Besides classes, finding my buildings, and figuring out how UCD works, nothing too exciting happened during the school week. It was after classes when the fun really started!

I mentioned that I was going to Germany this weekend for Oktoberfest, and here I am in the Berlin airport writing this blog post (pictures were uploaded in Dublin, though). I left on Thursday night for Frankfurt, but my flight was delayed for a while. This made travel very difficult as I missed the two buses I had been scheduled to take. So Thursday-Friday travel was quite cumbersome and tiring, but I finally met up with my friend from UMD, Abby, on Friday evening! Here are some pictures from my bus ride to Munich, which was quite picturesque.

Abby is studying in Berlin this semester but she and some friends decided to go to Munich for the big Oktoberfest celebration for its opening weekend, so that's where I met them. We bought traditional German dresses, braided our hair, and overall, we had a wonderful time! Have a look at some pictures from Saturday:

On Sunday, we had some time before we had to catch the bus back to Berlin, so we did a little exploring of Munich. We got to see the Glockenspiel (first picture), some beautiful chapels, the Oktoberfest parade, and then we ended up visiting the Deustchland Museum, which was pretty cool! Here are some more pics from yesterday...

And now here I am, waiting for my flight back to Dublin. Germany is a pretty great place! My limited German was able to get me around the country, and all of the people here are very kind and willing to help. The food is very good- the döner and the pretzels were my favorite, especially the cheesy pretzels! The buildings and architecture is clearly old and I absolutely loved that. Munich especially is an old city rich with history, and it was so cool to be among it for a few days.

Despite the difficulties traveling here on Thursday/Friday, it was still a wonderful trip and I'm looking forward to going on some more little weekend trips like this to other places in Europe! It's so convenient that everyone uses the Euro here, because then I don't have to exchange money when traveling.

Anyway, that's all for this week! Until next time!