Ciao a tutti. In case you didn't know, I'm back home in the good ol' USA. It's so weird to think a week ago, I was spending my final hours roaming around Rome. Between studying for finals and packing and soaking in the last of the city, I was unable to put up a blog post, but trust me, my last week was incredible. Besides one slight mishap, which I'll refrain from commenting on here to focus on the positives, my last week was full of fantastic experiences which I'll never forget. In this blog post, I'll give a brief highlight of my final days in the eternal city. Sunday
On Sunday, I was finally able to go inside the Colosseum and tour the Roman Forums. My roommate, Marree, and I were so lucky, as the rain that day had cleared up right when we got to the Colosseum. So many amazing photo ops.
The Colosseum!
View from the second level
I'm like a gladiator
View from the first level
Cheese!
Inside the Forum
Marree & I
View of the Roman Forum
Monday
This day was spent studying for my hardest final. Yes, I studied.
Tuesday
After my hardest final, I attended an AS Roma football game. Although they lost the game, I had fun sitting in the stands, immersed in the excited atmosphere.
The whole group!
View of the Stadium
The Curva
Forza Roma!
Wednesday
With my exams finally over, I got together with people from my program to celebrate one of our last nights. We had a fun night bouncing around the city and I had a delicious bomba on the way home (basically a sugared donut filled with nutella- YUM.)
Thursday
I went to the Vatican museums and climbed to the top of the cupola to see an incredible view of Rome. Emotions started running high and I realized I would soon be leaving this magnificent place. That night, the Arcadia staff provided the students with a delicious, catered meal. One final night out with a large group of people.
The Vatican Museums
The School of Athens
Secret picture of the Sistine Chapel ceiling
Incredible view
On top of the world
The Arcadia kids
Friday
I got my last cappuccino at my regularcafe and talked with my favorite baristi. After finishing up packing, a few remaining students got dinner together at a great restaurant. Since I had an early travel time in the morning, I decided to stay up all night and meander around the city with friends. It was a perfect ending to the semester.
My last cappuccino
Some of the girls with Tony from "Tony's"
Saturday
The travel day!!! So much travel. 5:45am train ride to the airport. 8:45am plane ride to Munich. 3:10pm flight to Chicago. Arrived in Chicago at 6:20pm (1:20am on Sunday, Rome time). Long. Day. But I was finally home!
Rough day of traveling, but I'm home!
I'd like to say thank you to everyone who's followed my blog or even just read an article here or there. I'm hoping to come back and go into further detail on some of these events, so check back. I had an incredible semester and it was something I'll never forget. Thank you to my parents for supporting me in so many ways as I went abroad, the Arcadia staff and faculty for acting as a second family, and to the new friends I made in the beautiful city. Grazie mille.
And to Rome, you beautiful, wonderful city: ciao until we meet again.
On Wednesday May 1, it finally hit me that my time here in Rome is limited. Classes were ending and I was staring down my last full weekend in Rome. 11 days, 10 days, one week left... Things were moving way too fast. I still have so much to do, so much to see, so much gelato that needs to be eaten!
While trying to cross things off my bucket list, I had the sad realization that a lot of my free time needs to be dedicated to studying for my finals. Oh right, I'm taking classes here... that's the reason I'm here... for school. Right. Can't forget that.
I have a final on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then I'm done with school. My flight home is Saturday morning. Crazy to think the semester has gone by so fast. I feel like just yesterday I was settling into my apartment. Whenever I talk to other people in my program, we all agree we have mixed emotions. We're excited to return to the States and see family and friends, but at the same time, not quite ready to leave this magical place we've had the privilege to call home the last four months.
In typical Allison fashion, I've put off studying to the last minute. I'm still procrastinating studying by writing this blog! No worries, though, these next three days, I'll really crack down. I was lucky to do some amazing things this weekend (like FINALLY go inside the Colosseum- blog post about that to come) and have fun things planned for week ahead.
I should probably attempt to start studying now... But first, I leave you with this. This video clip basically sums up my feelings about my last week in Rome.
Last weekend I did my last bit of traveling within Europe before I head home. Destination: Germany! Munich was such a great city, there was a lot of fun, a serious historical stop, and tents. Oh, the tents...
On Thursday, we arrived at our campground... yes, a campground. Alright, if I must explain... My friend, Dontina, her friend Brittany, and I were trying to find an inexpensive hostel to stay at and were struggling hardcore. I did what I always do in a crisis, turned to Google, did a little researching, and found this company, "Stoke Travels" that does a bunch of stuff for young people traveling throughout Europe. It looked fun and different, plus we got breakfast, dinner, and the third night for free. Booked!
Tents!
Good ole Campingplatz...
So we arrived at our campground on Thursday and hung out there for the night. The campers were mostly American students also studying abroad, so it was a nice taste of home. I even met a guy who used to go to U of I, but transferred. We had fun reminiscing our favorite spots.
Friday was a beautiful day so we explored the city. We started in Marienplatz, one of the main plazas of the city. There we saw the Glockenspiel and some guys playing the glockenspiel. Can I say "glockenspiel" one more time? Such a fun word. We did a little shopping around the area and made a quick stop of the Apple store to get some wifi. Let me tell you, it was so funny to see dozens of people just standing outside the Apple store entranced by their phone. Clearly we weren't the only ones hijacking the wifi.
The Glockenspiel
Next we headed to the Viktualienmark, which is a big market held everyday. There were lots of fruit, flowers, and trinkets. Dontina and I both said we felt like it was full of things we'd see in our Grandma's houses. We had lots of free food samples and shared a delicious sandwich.
Pretty Fountain
The May Pole in the center of the Market
The English Gardens was our next stop. This is a huge public park in Munich, bigger than Central Park in New York. In the park, we rented a paddle boat, were scared by demon birds, grabbed some lunch and half liters, walked through the park and people-watched, and finally came across "the wave." This was so cool, it was a man-made "wave" coming from underneath a bridge at the far end of the park where people would go to surf. The thing I pointed out which I thought was interesting is that the wave had probably been there for a really long time, so who was the guy, that one day was just like, "I'm going to go surf there." Pretty funny.
Driving the boat.
Dontina and I in front of the beautiful waterfall
Surfers!
Finally it was time to head to the place I was most excited about... Frühlingsfest! This is also called "Springfest" or "Little Oktoberfest." You could tell you were getting closer to the fest by the amount of lederhosen and dirndls people were sporting. The fest was so bright and fun and colorful. I went on two rides, swings and this really spinny thing where you have to hold on to the edges unless you want to fall off. The funniest thing is there were four German girls in drindls on that ride with me. They were sitting across the circle from me so I got a perfect view. The held onto the edge with one hand and were flopping ALL over the place. They let everything flop out and around, if you know what I mean. They kept screaming and laughing and then this one girl suddenly got a sour look on her face. Thank God she didn't get sick, because that would have been a buzzkill, but these girls were just so ridiculous. I'm convinced the ride operator made it go longer just for the sheer enjoyment of hearing these girls make fools of themselves. It ended with them singing the German version of the Spongebob Squarepants theme song. I was laughing so hard I was crying.
At the entrance
I love this picture
On the spinny thing. You can see the group of German girls in the front (blurry)
In case you were wondering what German Spongebob Squarepants sounded like...
We headed back to our campground for some (free) dinner and then back to the fest to see it at night. It was so beautiful light up at night. We were able to sneak into the Hippodrom, the big beer tent to look around a bit, but then headed outside to see the fireworks. I absolutely love fireworks. Sure, this might all sound similar to fairs in the summer in the States, but you have to remember, there were lederhosen everywhere.
At niiiiiight... (Spongebob anyone?)
Inside the Hippodrom
Pretty!
The three tentmates
That night we eventually headed back to the campsite again and hung around with our fellow campers. It was funny to just watch and observe these people for a while. It had been a long time since I'd been in a situation like this with so many American students (different than my program). Lots of great stories.
Saturday started on a serious note as we headed to the Dachau concentration camp. This was an intense stop. Among all the fun and craziness I've experienced abroad, it's important to remember that Europe is an immensely historical place as well. To get a taste of this history was heavy, but it's important to know and to share. We visited the camp on April 27. Coincidentally, the liberation of the camp by American troops was two days later, 68 years ago: April 29, 1945. That was a chilling realization.
Picture of the Liberation Day Photo
The maintenance building-turned-museum
Camp Road
Barracks circa 1944-45
Barbed wire with the camp in the background
The Krematorium
"Never Again"
After taking a beat to let impression of the camp settle, we headed back to Marienplatz to get some wifi again. (Thanks Apple!) We stopped at the big market again to get some delicious lunch. One thing about Germany that I love is that people are everywhere just hanging out having a beer. Tables were packed with people just chilling. So cool.
So many people!
Yummy food!
Our next stop was the Hofbräuhaus, the famous beer hall, to get our liters of beer. We had perfect timing too, because it had just began to rain (and hail!) on us when we got to the hall. We ended up sitting next to a group of Italian guys from Florence and talked to them a little. We also talked to people from Munich (again- I love how this is just what people in Germany do!) and they taught us how to say "cheers" and the song that goes with it. The whole hall went crazy when the band played it. I felt so content. Also, we walked out of the beer hall with our mugs. Free souvenir!
The Hofbräuhaus
Got my liter!
The rain had stopped so we headed to Springfest one last time. One more time in the Hippodrom, one more time seeing the beautiful Ferris Wheel, one more time getting some delicious treats (we had had nutella pancakes, waffles, funnel cake-but it was called something different).
Outside the Hippodrom
After the fest, we headed back to our campground and packed up. We had a super early flight Sunday morning, so we figured it best to get closer to the city center before heading off to the airport. After wandering around a bit, we finally made it to the airport and back to Rome. My last trip had ended.
Germany was one of those places I was like, "Yeah, sure, why not?!" When you don't have expectations for a place, the trip always seems to be so fun. Not that any of my trips haven't been fun. I've loved each and every one of them, and again, I am so blessed and lucky to be able to experience all of this.
I love taking pictures. Not a shock to most people, right? Being abroad is giving me the perfect excuse to whip out my camera for every and any little thing. However, sometimes the picture doesn't turn out the way you wanted. For today's Friday post, here are some candid/funny pictures that hadn't made the final cut... until now:
On the coolest moving walkway at O'Hare in Chicago
Irish Pub for lunch
No shame.
Gotta love reflective aves B)
Selfie with the inner duomo wall in Florence
Hardcore cheesing
Look! I'm the only one at the Louvre
Mirror pics in Versailles
Bamboo in Barcelona!
Silly face in the Sagrada Familia
Hope these gave you a good laugh! Have a great day! :)
