Days #259-266

Am I counting these days correctly? Questionable... But we'll pretend they're right. In any case, it's somewhere around day 266 or so.

KAYLA!

For those of you who don't know, Kayla was my roommate last year at Umass and has been studying abroad in Japan for the past academic year. On her way back to the states, she stopped to visit me in Germany!!

The first day she got here, we explored downtown Heidelberg and had döner and gelato, obviously. Because that's what you have to do.

The next day we headed to Brussels with a bus layover in Köln (better known to English-speakers as Cologne) where there happened to be a Star Wars convention/exhibition/something going on, which was obviously not a coincidence.

In other news, we survived our 8 hour bus ride!

The next day we day-tripped to Bruges, which is gorgeous and old and has a river and the Blood of Christ and delicious Belgian waffles and chocolate. 

Nope, that's not a postcard. (But if you know anyone who would want to buy it off me to make it into a postcard, I wouldn't say no....)

We got back to Brussels around 6pm and since it doesn't get dark here until roughly 10pm, we explored for a while, including the royal palace and some gardens.

And may or may not have had another Belgian waffle.

Our last day in Brussels we went to the cathedral, downtown market area, saw some famous statues, and were asked to participate in filming a commercial for backpacking since we were carrying our backpacks.... Just a normal day in the life.

We bus'd to Düsseldorf, where we met out couchsurfing host and I headed the Baguette Brogade, warranting me a giant stink eye from watching children.

The next day in Düsseldorf we explored the Altstadt, did some cartwheels (because apparently that's how they celebrate things there), drank delicious hot chocolate, and saw a statue that definitely depicts the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings- just a casual day of exploring.

And then we headed back to Heidelberg!

I had classes Wednesday, so Kayla day tripped to Schwetsingen while I studied. We got pasta for dinner and she met some of my friends to prove that she's real. Unfortunately she left yesterday, but not before she, Tom, and I hiked Philosophersweg and got one last Döner Box together.

Days #248-258

Hooooooo-kay so I'm gonna break this baby up into comprehensive pieces so that you as well as I can understand this long stretch of time during which I have neglected to update this blog. These two sections are going to be "Pre-Kayla" and "Kayla".

Pre-Kayla:

Exciting news! I have booked my transportation and accommodations for both Copenhagen and Berlin! Long bus rides and student-prices flights, here I come! 

In other news, my friends know me very well:

I also explored Bergfriedhof, the mountain graveyard for which my tram stop is named. It's actually very beautiful, and a nice hike when you don't think about the dead bodies slowly decaying below you. Or maybe you think that sort of thing is kind of symbiotic and beautifully poetic in a starving artist kind of way. 

My brothers loved me, as per usual:

I went to a few coffee shops with beautiful coffee art to do homework and found a cool yellow house, both of which I promptly instagrammed:

My friend Heidi and I explored the Heidelberg castle and climbed a billion stone steps to get to the top of the mountain behind the castle and see all of Heidelberg from above, but more importantly, we successfully used the self-timer on my phone to capture our High School Musical jump:

Later that day, Tom and I used the paella recipe we got while in Barcelona to make 4 heaping frying pans of paella for our friends. It was rather challenging, as the recipe had no measurements, exact times, proportions, or numbers of any kind. That being said, it tasted delicious and we actually managed to eat all of it!

 

And that's what you missed on last week's episode of Where in the World is Kim Brown, tune in for the next update soon! 

(No, really)

(It'll actually be soon this time)

(I promise)