Churrascaria: Where champions are made

This country is awesome. I've been having so much fun eating, drinking, and playing my way through Curitiba. We've eaten like kings and queens and seen many of the sweet sites Curitiba has to offer!

My last post was from Wednesday evening when we first arrived at the hotel. We had just met up with Kyle, and thank GOODNESS we did because we would have really struggled without him. Plus, he's simply amazing so that's nice too. Our Brazilian TA, Ana, gave us a restaurant suggestion for dinner, so we went to Maredo - a restaurant claiming to have "the best burger in the world". While it was delicious, I still prefer Terry's in Cincy. What was amazing at Maredo was their Caipirinha! Caipirinha is a traditional Brazilian drink with cachaça (sugar cane rum), sugar and lime. OMG it is FANTASTIC. Like a Marg, BUT BETTER. I think I'm in love. Dinner was great, the company was better, and the Caipirinha was THE best. Really, it's that good.

Thursday we toured around Curitiba on one of those double decker tour busses. It was a little pricey, but a great way to see the city! Our first stop was the Botanic Gardens. The greenhouse of the gardens is a really cool structure. We walked around and enjoyed the warm weather for a bit before heading to our next destination - the Curitiba University for the Environment. It's a great environmental school built with all reclaimed materials in an old quarry. There's a really cool pathway made out of old telephone poles. Also, we saw a black swan! Natalie! Then we visited the Tanguá Park which is another example of urban space being re-utilized. It had a great view of the city and we could see lavish mansions right next to shack-like houses. Interesting juxtaposition. Our last stop was a TV tower that had INCREDIBLE views of this sprawling city. The amount of high rise apartment buildings is insane! Later that evening we went out for dinner at this Italian restaurant called Spaghetto. The food was AMAZING. We've been eating so well here in Curitiba!

Friday we visited the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR) - a partner University with the Niehoff Studio. The professor at UFPR is a friend of Professor Russell and used to teach our TA Ana. It was interesting seeing how different the University is here. It's a public institution, and they have so little money that they couldn't even afford toilet paper. Kinda weird! We ate at the University dining hall and it was also very different. Most notably, they had a hand washing station right as you entered the cafeteria area - very smart! Afterward, we had a short break at the hotel, so naturally I napped. Then later we went out for dinner at a Churrascaria aka a Brazilian steak house.

First of all, let me say that this was the most awesome eating experience I've ever had in my life. And, I like to eat so I've had quite a few glorious eating experiences. This was unlike anything I had ever done before! SO MUCH AMAZING FOOD. So here's the deal... It was about an hour wait to get into the restaurant. During that time I drank a couple of Xingus (my fav Brazilian beer). Then, we get seated and are told we should go to the buffet in the middle of the restaurant. Here's where they try and trick you! They want you to fill up on yummy salads and snackies so you eat less delectable meat. But I wasn't so easily fooled! I was able to nom on the buffet food and also slam incredibly hard on the meats. There are people that just walk around with various kinds of meats on skewers and they shave them off onto your plate. OMGOMGOMG best meat ever. They had it all - steak, filet, pork, beef, even chicken hearts! I wasn't brave enough to try one, but Jordan did! My favorite meats were the filet and the pork thing. So savory! And the beers just kept flowing. OOH ALSO, there was this magical Brazilian cheese thing that was grilled and melty but also still pretty solid. Like I said, magical. And oh so delicious! So I stuffed my face with excessive amounts of food and then ended my eating experience with a fried banana covered in chocolate. Like I said, champions are made at the Churrascaria.

After the Churrascaria a couple of us went out to Schwartzwald - a German bar! It was super Bavarian style so Remo and I were quite in our element. We chatted in German all night and drank beer out of little mugs. We ordered Submarinos which were beers with a shot of Jägermeister in them... kinda gross but we got to keep the little shot glasses as a souvenir so that was cool. Sorry that this post is so text heavy. I've been having trouble charging my camera batteries so I've been slacking in the photo department. Hopefully I'll go back and add some pictures later. Until next post, ciao ciao!

Schroeder Eurotrip Part 1

As I excitedly stated in my last blog post… my parents and Trev are here visiting me in Germany!  The arrived to Düsseldorf on Saturday the 16^th and ever since then we’ve been adventuring around Germany and beyond! Monday through Thursday the three of them stayed with my roomies and I in Wuppertal, and while I was at work they trotted around North Rhine Westphalia visiting Köln, Düsseldorf, Bonn and everywhere in between.  I was able to join them for some adventures (mostly revolving around eating) after I got off work, and I was lucky enough to take the day off on Friday so we could all travel to Munich together Thursday evening.  My dad rented a car, an Audi A6 of course, and we drove on the autobahn down to Munich. 

Friday morning we woke up early with an ambitious schedule ahead of us.  We jumped into our lovely rental car and headed south, to Austria, where we found the Zugspitze!  The Zugspitze is an awesome huge gondola that takes you to the top of one of the highest peaks in the Alps. The peak also happens to be right on the border between Germany and Austria, so I was technically in two countries while I was on top of this ridiculous mountain.  The views were truly marvelous, and I even got to eat “Germany’s highest Bratwurst”.  After we spent some time on the mountaintop, we headed back down and started our drive to Neuschwanstein castle.  It was only a short trip from the Zugspitze to the castle, so before no time we joined the other hoards of tourists and headed up to the castle.  It was awesome to see the fairy tale castle in real life, and it’s no wonder King Ludwig would want to build his castle there – the landscape is incredible!

Oh hey Alps! 

On my way up the Zugspitze!

Reppin' my bearcats on a mountain top, the usual.

In the clouds!

Oh hey Neuschwanstein!

Just missing one!

 After an incredibly filled morning and afternoon we headed back to Munich to catch a public viewing at the Olympic Stadium of the Germany vs Greece Eurocup game.  As if we hadn’t done enough that day, we decided to rally and get rowdy with the Germans.  The atmosphere of the Olympic stadium was awesome, and Germany gave Greece a proper spanking so everyone left in a good mood.

German fanatics!

Saturday we woke up a little later and decided to take the day to roam around the city and sample the local food and beverages.  We visited biergartens big and small and enjoyed food and drink.  We started the day at Augusteiner brauhaus where I enjoyed some dunkel beer and German spatzel.  We wandered around the shopping district and saw the Glockenspiel.  After some more walking around, we headed to the Hofbrauhaus München where Ian met back up with us to watch the Spain vs France game.  Spain ended up winning which is unfortunate because they will be a worthy opponent of Germany, in the event Germany makes it to the final. 

Sunday we took advantage of the Bayern group ticket and all five of us headed across the border to Salzburg.  We visited the glamorous palace/state rooms of the regent princes and toured the fortress of a castle.  We got to see the room where Mozart first preformed and walk around inside the walls of one of the most fortified castles in Europe.  I wish that we had more time to spend in this beautiful city, but alas, I had to head all the way back to Wuppertal that evening for work the following week.  My family is going to keep adventuring around Switzerland and Germany until we meet in Paris June 28^th!  Schroeder Eurotrip is going strong!

The Salzburg castle!

View from the top! Beautiful!

SCHROEDER EUROTRIP!

The Schroeders are in Germany! Well... I'm sure there are already a lot of Schroeders in Germany... but as of Saturday morning there are three more!  That's right, my mom, dad, and brother Trev have invaded my apartment and are vacaying in Germany for a couple weeks!  I am so happy to have them here AHHHHH!

While I'm at work every day (bummer!) they will be exploring around North Rhine Westphalia.  Over this past weekend we battled jetlag (I considered myself also to be jetlagged because I had to wake up at 4:45am Saturday morning to pick them up!) and visited Köln and Bonn.  We just roamed around and were our usual silly selves.  I haven't laughed this much in months!  On Thursday we'll all be venturing down to southern Germany and staying in Munich (I can't seem to get enough of that city!) and over the weekend we will see Neuschwanstein Castle and the Zugspitze and of course the original Hofbräuhaus München!

If that wasn't enough to make you jealous, next weekend we're heading to PARIS!  Where we will adventure around the beautiful city of love and eat delicious food and drink delicious drinks.  Oh, and Ian and I will be attending the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS concert there! ONLY JUST MY MOST FAVORITE BAND IN THE WORLD!!!  Needless to say I've got a lot of look forward to these next two weeks, so I'm sorry if my blog is a little neglected!  MIA might be MIA for a lil bit!

Berlin!

Every time I tell people I am living in Germany, they always ask “have you been to Berlin yet?” Finally I can proudly answer yes!  My friend Barynia and I travelled to Berlin to visit a couple of her friends, Amanda and Isabel, who happen to be studying abroad there.  I took advantage of another glorious German long weekend and headed to Berlin by train (expensive ticket, but I couldn’t find a Mitfahrgelegenheit) on Thursday afternoon.  B and I met up with her friends at the Berlin hbf and we headed out for dinner and some drinks.  We had a big day ahead of us on Friday, so we called it an early night.

Friday morning, B's sister Nathalia flew in from the states to visit for a week or so.  After gathering Nathalia, and taking a little nap, we all headed out to the city to find somewhere to eat a nice German lunch.  We didn't find anything super authentic, but we found a reasonabily priced place where we could eat outside!  I had delicious Currywurst and potato salad and a Bohemia Dunkel bier to wash it all down.  Quite delicious!  After lunch, we were right around the corner from the Berliner Dom so we headed over there to check it out!  This cathedral is super gorgeous, and has undergone many renovations since it's time of establishment in the 1450s.  (It's still hard to wrap my mind around simply the age of things over here).  We toured around the inside, saw and heard a massive organ, and eventually climbed our way up some rickety stairs to the observation deck where we were rewarded with an awesome 360° view of Berlin!  Then we headed back down and had to go through the crypts on our way out.  I'm not a huge fan of crypts, they're creepy and smelly.  After some lounging on the grass in front of the Berliner Dom, we began making our way to the Schloss Charlottenburg.  This baroque palace and the huge palace grounds were really breathtaking.  So much European beauty in one day!  We topped off the evening with delicious burgers at Kreutzburger!

 The "TV Tower" and me and my Bohemia Dunkel

Museum Island really is an "island"!

Me out front of the Berliner Dom! 

The insane organ inside the Berliner Dom!

View from the top! 

Schloss Charlottenburg

Bearcats in Germany!

Breathtaking!

On Saturday we got up and headed to the Brandenburg Gate, where we were meeting up for a free city walking tour.  These free tours are great and they are available in every city I've gone too!  On our 3.5 hour tour we covered: Brandenburger Tor, Pariser Platz, Reichstag, Holocaust-Denkmal, Potsdamer Platz, Die Berliner Mauer, Checkpoint Charlie, Friedrichstraße, Gendarmenmarkt, Bebelplatz, Staatsoper, Unter den Linden, Neue Wache, Museumsinsel.  We did A LOT of walking. I did A LOT of picture taking. Behold.

Holocaust Memorial 

Me in front of a rather unexciting section of the Berlin wall 

Where Einstein and the Grimm brothers studied! 

War memorial

Our tour ended around 3 and we headed back to where the tour started, the Brandenburg Gate, because we had seen a HUGE public viewing being set up for the Germany vs. Portugal Eurocup game.  What better place to watch some Fußball than on a jumbotron in front of a historic monument with thousands of screaming Germans?! Our thoughts exactly.  I had a bit of a brain-fart though because when I looked online to see when the game started, I somehow saw the time in EST aka we were 6 hours early to the public viewing.  Not a huuuge problem, but we could have checked out a few more cool Berlin sites.  Instead we drank beer and befriended Dutch people during the Netherlands vs. Denmark game that was showing before the Germany game.  Fair trade, since the Dutchies bought us beer.  The Germany game was like a giant party.  Screaming, whistling, chanting, beer, brats, blow horns, fireworks, you name it!  After the victory, we celebrated the night away!

And this was only the beginning... see the Brandenburg Gate in the background?

Sunday morning we woke up (slowly) and headed to the Flohmarkt am Mauerpark.  We didn't have nearly enough time to give this flea market justice.  It was HUGE and so overwhelming that I didn't buy anything except for some freshly squeezed OJ. Which was delicious by the way.  B and Nathalia had to catch a flight to Barcelona (how glam) so they headed to the airport around 1:30.  Amanda, Isabel and I grabbed some lunch and then I waited for my Mitfahr back to Wuppertal.  And I waited.  Annnnd I waited.  And after about 1.5 hours and numerous phone calls I finally gave up on my Mitfahr and ponied up 78€ for a train ticket back.  I can't really complain though because I saved a lot of cash by having kind hosts and not having to stay in a hostel, but being stood up was kinda like a rotten cherry on an otherwise scrumptious sundae of a weekend.  I wanted to use a Berliner metaphor instead, but I'm not that wordsmithy.  In any case, I had a great weekend and I highly encourage visiting Berlin if you get the chance!  It's got so much interesting history and it's still growing, changing, and expanding!

Brussels

My friends. It seems I've caught the travel bug because I can't stand the thought of staying home for a weekend and not going anywhere. Yes it's exhausting both physically and financially, but I'M IN EUROPE! And since I don't know when I will return to this awesome continent, I've gotta make the most of my time here.

Germany is sweet because it is surrounded by 9 different countries; bordering Denmark in the north, Poland and the Czech Republic in the east, Austria and Switzerland in the south, France and Luxembourg in the south-west, and Belgium and the Netherlands in the north-west.  I'm trying my hardest to visit all of them, but I don't know if I'll make it! This past weekend I visited the beer loving, waffle eating, chocolate obsessed country of Belgium and stayed in Brussels for 2 days.  It was another haphazardly planned trip i.e. we planned it about 3 days in advance.

I was joined on this adventure by Ian and his co-op friend Julio.  The two of them Mitfahr'ed to Wuppertal on Friday night, and we left for Brussels on Saturday morning.  Like the USA, we had a long weekend too! But ours wasn't for Memorial Day, it was due to another religious holiday, Pfingsten or Pentecost.  The three of us split a North-Rhine-Westphalia group pass (37 euro) and travelled to Aachen where we caught a train to Brussels! Took us about 4 hours total travel time.

When we arrived in Brussels we weren't entirely sure how to get to the hotel we were staying in for Saturday night.  (Since this was another last minute trip, there were no hostels available for both Sat and Sun nights, so we had to find 2 separate places to stay).  I found that people were slightly less helpful here and way more reluctant to speak english.  Luckily Julio had some data on his phone so we could Google map our way to the hotel.  We stayed at the Housing Brussels Hotel and it was SUPER nice for only 29 euro per person.  Our room was actually an apartment. Two bedrooms, full kitchen, living room, and full bathroom. Absolutely ridiculous.

Saturday night we chilled at the Grand Place and took advantage of the free jazz festival going on throughout the city.  The Grand Place is a big square surrounded by beautiful baroque buildings, cafes, and chocolate shops.  Later that night we headed to Cafe Delirium, a bar that boasts over 2500 different types of beer.  It was a really cool place!  A lot more laid back than a lot of the european bars/clubs I've been to.  I sampled some local beer and was not disappointed!

Sweet square with free jazz music!

Awesome architecture!

Yummy beer!

Cool bar!

Sunday we had to get up to check out of our hotel and check into our new hostel, Centre Van Gogh. Apparently Van Gogh worked for a year in the building where the hostel is located.  It wasn't as luxurious as our first place, but it was still very nice!  Sunday day we wandered around the city and found the botanical gardens, parliament, parks, waffles, Manneken Pis, the Royal Palace, and many other Brussels wonders.  We ended the night at Celtica, and Irish Pub/Disco Bar.  There we encountered a group of America study abroad students from Clemson. They were frat-tastic to say the least, and became louder as the night went on.  They even sang the Clemson fight song.  Monday we woke up and started our journey back to lovely Germany.

The Palace!

Delicious Waffle!

Been pissin' since 1619!

Me and Manneken Pis!

Seeing that group of Clemson study abroaders really made me realize how different my ICP experience is from a typical study abroad.  Most study abroad programs send students to a foreign country with a group of students from their university.  Though it would be nice to have friends right off the bat, I'm happy that my experience forces me outside my comfort zone and makes me really feel like I'm in a foreign country.  I'm glad that I'm not just partying with my same friends in a different place.  I'm glad that I'm being forced to use a different language on a daily basis, and that I'm travelling and learning about countries outside of Germany.  Most importantly, I'm happy that I've made some awesome new friends here in Wuppertal that make me feel comfortable outside of my comfort zone.  

München & Freising

This past weekend I took my second trip to southern Germany and visited my dear Ian.  This trip was my first trip to Bayern, the most stereotypically German state in Deutschland.  Typically when people think of Germany, they think of beer halls, lederhosen, castles, and mountains, and all of these things can be found in Bavaria.  I got to Munich by way of Mitfahrgelegenheit (see Greenservations 4 for more about that experience). 

I arrived to Munich rather late on  the night of Friday May 4th, and then took a short train ride to Freising where Ian lives.  Friday night we went to the Hofbrauhaus Freising which has been around since 1160, no big deal.  We spilt a smorgasbord of Deutsch delicacies and drank some tasty Weißbier.  We spent the evening catching up on each others lives and feasting away.

Nomz.

Deeelicious!

München Fruühlingsfest!

Saturday we took the train into Munich and spent the day wandering around the beautiful and lively city.  We saw awesome  live street music and even stumbled across an “Irish-Bayerish Festival” where we saw some sweet dancing and drank some Guinness.  Saturday night I donned my Dirndl and Ian put on his Lederhosen and we headed to the München Frühlingsfest.  It was an awesome time!  Very similar to the Stuttgart Frühlingsfest, except this time our seats were very close to the back.  We met up with some of Ian’s other co-op friends from Texas Instruments.  They’re a cool international mix of people from places like Russia, Mexico, Brazil, and Italy.  I’m pretty jealous of my friends co-oping at big companies that have dozens of other interns.  I think Wupperverband has maybe four or five other interns, but I have yet to meet them. 

Wandering around Munich

Sunday we got a bit of a late start, but we still wanted to try and go to the Dachau memorial of the first concentration camp.  We ended up being too late to see the memorial since it was a Sunday, so we just hung around Munich again.  Ian and I decided to see ‘The Avengers’, so we found a movie theater that plays movies in their original language.  We tried to do a ‘self check-out’ to buy our tickets and ended up accidentally buying tickets to a German version.  We didn’t realize it until we walked into the theater and saw Samuel L. Jackson talking with a dubbed German voice.  Luckily we were able to exchange our tickets and see a later show in English!

I didn’t leave Munich on Sunday because coincidentally there was a huge, international water and environmental services conference there!  The timing of my trip worked out perfectly because Inka had two extra tickets to the conference for Monday and Tuesday.  I was able to stay with Ian for two more nights and attend the HUGEST international conference I have ever been to.  The conference is called the IFAT Entsorga (http://www.ifat.de/en) and was hosted at the Munich international conference center or ‘Messa’.  The Messa used to be the Munich airport, so the thing is HUGE.  I’ve been to international conferences before, but nothing like this.  Every single exhibitor had an extremely lavish display with delicious snackies and BEER.  I mean, I know we were in Bavaria, but I couldn’t believe that nearly every exhibitor had delicious beer on tap starting around 11.  I was able to try Weißwurst, a Bavarian specialty, and more Weißbier at no cost to me!  

Me at the conference, at a mini Biergarten

After the conference, I headed back to Freising and Ian took me to dinner at the Weihenstephan, the oldest brewery in the world (http://www.weihenstephaner.de/index2.html?lang=eng).  It’s been continuously functioning since 1040.  TEN-FORTY.  It’s almost a millennium old.  Unbelievable, and of course the food and beer were deeelicious. 

Tuesday I spent the day at the conference and listened to some speakers about waste water treatment technologies.  Then I spent the afternoon wandering around throughout the vendors, scoopin’ up freebies and checking out the outlandish displays.  Then I had to head to the Munich Hbf to catch my train back to Wuppertal.  This weekend was fun and relaxing.  I had an awesome time in Munich and Freising checking out the Bavarian scene and enjoying the company of an amazing person.