Work hard, travel harder!

"In the end, we only regret the chances we didn't take." — Lewis Carroll

My year abroad is slowly coming to a close, I have around a month left here in Germany but my last two weeks are busy with exams so I imagine time will fly then. I must admit that I'm getting ready for home now, as much as this year has been a brilliant experience, I'm so ready for a proper routine again.



I've been extremely lucky with my timetable whilst here in Germersheim, I don't have any lessons on Mondays or Fridays so this has given me plenty of time to explore. During my second weekend into the term, I visited Strasbourg with one of my course mates. We were desperate to do a tour of European Parliament but this got cancelled do to Giles Jaunes protests. Despite this, it was a great weekend and my first time in France








Not long after this, I met up with Sarah in Zurich. It was brilliant but unbelievably cold! It was great to be able to just café hop and stroll around the city. We also did a free walking tour which was super interesting; we were shown a fountain that gets filled with wine one day of every year. My best advice for visiting Zurich would be to book restaurants in advance, we really struggled to find places that could accommodate us without a reservation and this was even a problem for breakfast. 







During the last week in May, Dale came to visit and we spent the weekend in Heidelberg. Heidelberg is home to the oldest university in Germany and has lovely castle ruins with great views over the entire town. There's also a zoo 15 minutes from the centre on the bus which made for a great day out, especially with the good weather.





Last weekend, I finally got to meet up with Rebeka! This is the first time we've seen each other since leaving Spain. We spent the weekend in Venice and it is just the most magical place. There's so much to do and we were really lucky to have the sunshine the entire time. It was fascinating to travel everywhere by boat and really weird to not see any roads or cars. We spent hours just wondering and we were really shocked by it's size; we felt like we had seen loads but also like we had barely seen anything. On the first evening we went for pizza and a wonder through San Marco's Square and by the Gran Canal.



The next day we ventured to Burano in the morning which is like Balamory but in Italy; the houses are all painted brightly and is picture-perfect. Then we made our way back over to Venice for a few more hours of wondering and drinking. On the Sunday morning we went across to Lido for a walk on the beach and an ice-cream, then headed back to Venice to visit San Marco's cathedral. It was way more understated on the inside of the Basilica than I expected but it was still very grand.

I have two more weekends of action planned during my time here. Next weekend, I'm going home and visiting my sister in Chester with my family and at the end of June myself, Sarah and Rebeka are having a few nights in Pula, Croatia. I cannot wait!

Although I've done plenty of exploring, I don't feel like I've seen that much of Germany. I really want to visit Berlin but the train journey is over 7 hours and it is super expensive so I think I'll have to leave that for another year. Hopefully, I can visit Munich after exams as I have one free weekend before I go home for good.


Annie
x


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