{"id":186,"date":"2017-02-28T14:15:38","date_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/?p=186"},"modified":"2017-02-28T14:15:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-28T14:15:38","slug":"weeks-3-and-4-hamburg-and-brussels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/2017\/02\/28\/weeks-3-and-4-hamburg-and-brussels\/","title":{"rendered":"Weeks 3 and 4: Hamburg and Brussels"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hello!<\/p>\n

It’s now been one month since I’ve come to Germany. I am becoming more and more familiar with the city of Berlin, and the overall German culture and language. In this blog post I will tell\u00a0you about my last two weekends, spent in Hamburg and Brussels.<\/p>\n

The weekend before last, some friends and I got on a bus after Thursday night classes (our\u00a0last day of classes for the week) and took the three hour drive northwest to Hamburg, Germany. It was exciting to be visiting\u00a0a new city and to have a couple days to wander around. We did not get checked in to our hostel until after midnight on Thursday,\u00a0but Friday morning after breakfast we got moving and headed into the city. We first visited the Hamburg Rathaus, walking around it and trying, to no avail, to get inside. But it was amazing to see the old architecture and all of its ornate stone carvings close-up.<\/p>\n

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After this we went to the nearby St. Petri Kirche. This church was built in 1195 and has been a Protestant church since the Reformation. I was standing too close for this picture and wish I had taken a better one, but here it is from the front:\"\"<\/p>\n

We would continue to see architecture and churches like this all around\u00a0Hamburg, and also in Brussels. After walking around the city a while longer, we walked away from the center, towards an open park on a small lake, where we walked along a long\u00a0lakeside path and back up towards a different part of the city. For a late lunch we\u00a0found a restaurant in a Portuguese Quarter and ate some really tasty fish. After this, we finally\u00a0made our way down to the large harbor of Hamburg, and took in all the activity on the River Elbe. This was a very neat place to be. It was also such a different atmosphere than what we are\u00a0used to in Berlin. Towards the evening we walked over to the new Elbphilharmonie, and\u00a0we could ascend to the observation deck for free, but we could not get into the concert hall itself. There was going to be a concert in a couple hours, and it’s become such a famous venue that\u00a0all of the events there are\u00a0sold out through\u00a0the middle of the summer. But it was cool to see the city and harbor from up in the building.<\/p>\n

The next day, Saturday, we took a transport ferry a ways down the Elbe and got off on a large residential island. This place\u00a0turned out to be\u00a0very\u00a0eerie;\u00a0there were uniform houses throughout, and there was no one out walking around. No cars or movement at all. After a walk through the cobblestone streets we left\u00a0creepy island, catching the ferry back to the main city. We then walked towards the altstadt<\/em> – old city – of\u00a0Hamburg, found fish sandwiches for\u00a0dinner,\u00a0and walked back up the main street in front of the harbor and all the ships. Later that evening we\u00a0explored the night life a little bit before heading back to the hostel. Our bus back to Berlin left early Sunday afternoon, getting us back with enough time to finish schoolwork for the next day.<\/p>\n

This past weekend, a group of friends and I flew out to Brussels, Belgium early Friday morning. Brussels, like Hamburg, is a very different city than Berlin. It’s neat to see a good mix of\u00a0city atmospheres. On Friday, we walked around all day long. We went without a solid plan for the first day and just wandered, which can be a nice way to see the city. The weather cooperated for the most part, with a mix of sun and hail. We found good sandwiches at a small cafe for dinner and eventually made it back to check in to our hostel. Our room was little more than a closet with 6 beds, 3 stacked on each side. Sort of like on a train or ship. But that’s okay\u00a0because we only slept there and it is very cheap!<\/p>\n

The next day, Saturday, we had a plan to go to the city center and see the places that Brussels is famous for. We took the public transport and walked to the main town square, which is called the “Grand Place.” It was a fascinating view, being surrounded by huge, magnificent, aged buildings. The picture at the top of this post and the one below are from the Grand Place:\"\"<\/p>\n

For lunch, we found one of the many restaurants that serve waffels, because we could not visit\u00a0Belgium without eating a genuine Belgian waffel. They were\u00a0as good as we expected. If Brussels\u00a0is famous for three things, it’s their waffels, breweries, and chocolate. In those realms, they\u00a0produce some of the best in the world. We found a very touristy, yet famous bar that\u00a0brews famous Belgian brands and offers over 2000 different varieties of beer from around the world. And out on the street, at least in the city center, chocolatiers are literally every other shop, or more. Belgian chocolate is even better than German chocolate, and there are more chocolatiers per square foot in Brussels than anywhere else in the world. So put it on your list, if you’re into\u00a0that.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday morning, Sunday, we checked out of the hostel and flew back to Berlin in the early afternoon. I do not have any travel plans for this weekend or next, because this weekend I need to work on a\u00a0couple projects due in my history class, and next weekend we are going to a soccer game at Olympiastadion. But I am currently planning for Spring Break, which covers the next two weekends after that. More details, including\u00a0where I am going\u00a0for Spring Break will be in the next post! That’s about all for now. I wish everyone back at MLC a blessed Spring Break, with safe travels, and God’s blessings on EFE experiences, choir tour, and all\u00a0other activities.<\/p>\n

Tsch\u00fcss,<\/em><\/p>\n

Collin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello! It’s now been one month since I’ve come to Germany. I am becoming more and more familiar with the city of Berlin, and the overall German culture and language. In this blog post I will tell\u00a0you about my last two weekends, spent in Hamburg and Brussels. The weekend before last, some friends and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7Lhdr-30","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/study-abroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}