Kiwi in Konstanz: Two weeks left :'(

Oh dear well I have another whole month to catch up on! It's been a crazy final month, being the end of the semester now and filled with study, papers, presentations and exams. But it's pretty much all over now thank god! I have just a few more papers to write and that's it. My presentations and exam went pretty well I think. Well I'm pretty sure I passed everything so I'm happy about that! And I know I have at least one A as a final grade...

Fairy-tale Castle

So nearly 4 weeks ago I went to visit the fabulous Neuschwanstein castle which has always been a dream of mine! (The castle Walt Disney based his castles off). It was so amazing in real life! We also visited Hohenschwangau castle as they were right next to each other. The King of Bavaria had it pretty sweet!

Strasbourg!

The week after that I went on an excursion to Strasbourg in France for the day (it's only 2 hours drive away- I love Europe). We visited the Council of Europe and got to sit it on a live debate of the United Nations. Then we had a historical tour of the city and visited the Notre Dam cathedral (I didn't know there was more than one either) and then we had free time to explore the city. Lunch of course consisted of croissants, macaroons and all the french goodies we could get our hands on.

Besides that I've spent a lot of time in the lake as the European heatwave that came through sent the temperatures soaring to 40 degrees here. It broke Germany's highest record! It was pretty unbearable in my room especially as there's no air conditioning and the window I have only opens a crack! That made studying very difficult. So I've been keeping cool by eating loads of gelato and spending most of my time in the water- it's soooo nice- 25 degrees!

Two weekends ago we had a cool end of semester international student activity. We got an afternoon ride on a big cruise boat on lake Constance and it went for three hours right down the Rhein to Switzerland. It was so nice, the scenery was astounding! And it was cool hanging out with the big group again and having a few beers. After that my friend who me and Terese stayed with in Berlin was visiting for the weekend so we met up and went to the river for an evening swim and hung out. Then we spent the night at the lake side biergarten eating schnitzel, drinking cocktails and listening to live music. The next day was the 4th of July so the Americans put on a big BBQ by the river. That was a fun afternoon spent swimming, eating and drinking and then later we went back to party at their flat playing beer pong before heading out to town afterwards.

Evening swims >

After that weekend I really knuckled down with my studying and worked so hard which I'm glad payed off in the end. It's such a good feeling to have that all done but I'm really sad to be leaving soon in only 2 weeks! I've really made myself at home here. I'm super excited of course to go travelling, but my travel partner for the first part recently had to back out for family reasons so now I'm doing the first part by myself- for 2 weeks! And I'm going to Eastern Europe and I've never really done this kind of thing before, staying in AirB&Bs and I'll be navigating without internet (will only work on free wifi) so I'm a bit nervous... I'm sure it will be very character building! In the next post, my last one here I'll go into details about where I'm going.

Oh yeah I also went out one night last week with my Swede and American friends- we went to a hidden biergarten in the middle of the forest! It was a half hour walk away but it was so cool! It had such a wicked atmosphere- big picinc tables and fairy lights outside with massive fire pits to grill. It was a really great night. There was a random giant table and chair which I of course made everyone climb on for a pic because it made us look like hobbits!

So yeah that's all for now. I'm starting to pack up my room so catch ya next time.

~Have a whole month's worth of pictures! :

Bavaria

Council of Europe

(Random Nationality party- they only had an Australian friend so my fellow Kiwi and I
tried to turn it into a NZ one by covering the extra stars with stickers that we coloured blue.
Didn't quite work...)