So as the title states, it’s been a long while since the last post. I know I said I wouldn’t make another huge post recapping a bunch of happenings… but here’s another one!
I wasn’t able to make posts the last two weekends because of the best side-effect of studying abroad: traveling. I’ve not been to Europe until this past month, and as a huge food and history nerd, I want to be everywhere, all at once, all the time.
In the last weekend of September, I went to Berlin for four days with my wonderful girlfriend. It also happened to be my 21st birthday! We got to see and do quite a lot during our time there, from visiting the Berlin Wall memorials, to checking out an Augmented/Virtual reality game center, to finding cool sculptures and old churches in the downtown area. Of course, we also found a lot of fantastic food along the way, namely Maximilian’s Berlin. It’s a Bavarian-style tavern, complete with great beer and amazing food. We also found that there is quite a lot of Asian influence in Germany, and thus we found a Pho place, serving a lot of my favorite dishes ever. I would 100% go back to Berlin any chance I get in the future, though it might be a lot harder without the Gilman Scholarship to help.
Just last weekend (first weekend of October), I went over to Dublin to visit with some other friends studying there. Now, since I’m a history nerd, Dublin is somewhat of a haven. There are medieval walls and buildings scattered across the whole city, and every museum is free! I went to the St. James’ Gate Guinness Storehouse for the famed Guinness tour, and I definitely recommend that anyone who goes to Dublin does that, since it really is a part of Irish culture. During the four day trip, I also got to visit the National Gallery, National Museum, National History Museum, and Irish Museum of Modern Art for plenty of amazing exhibits, including a Lucian Freud/James Yeats art exhibit, which is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibit, since many of the art pieces are privately owned, and will never be seen in public again. At the National Gallery, I also got to view an incredible Sorolla exhibit, and the famed Monet that had a hole punched through it. Truly, an awesome experience for my first time in Ireland, and again, it never would be possible without the assistance of the Gilman Scholarship.
I still want to do many more trips over the remaining two months I have here in Scotland, but the academic workload is starting to ramp up, though it still doesn’t even come close to what I would have back at Champlain. For that reason, and financial reasons, I’ll likely be holding off on any travel until November, in which I would like to get to Amsterdam and Southern Italy.
This time I promise I’ll make another post by this weekend, and it’ll be covering some of the academic stuff I’ve been seeing abroad. See you next time!
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