Europa Park

The weeks are coming to an end and the stress is starting. I was originally going to write about the stress but I decided it would be boring. To make things more boring, i'll write about one of my highlights.

Europa Park

Europa park is the biggest theme park in Germany and can accommodate for over 50,000 guests per day. It's nothing like Lunar Park, it is bigger and better. Entry costs around 40 euros for a day pass but this allows you access to every ride without any higher costs. Not only do you get to choose from the 48 rides but there are amazing shows which are also great to see. You can travel through Europe in a day, there are 12 countries and each country represents their culture. The park has 5 resorts which are absolutely amazing and so well built, it also has camping resort, I wouldn't call it camping though.
  'Silver Star' is the biggest roller coaster in Europe and my favorite one at Europa park. The tallest point is 73 metres high and has a speed of 130km/h. The feeling you get can't be described but it has to be experienced one time in your life time. Another highlight is 'blue fire' which isn't as big but you get a shock when the train accelerates to 115km/h in 2.5 seconds.
If your ever visiting Europe, Europa park is a must see. Something you wont experience anywhere else. I was lucky and visited the park twice in 5 and a half months.
Enjoy some photos (not taken by me)

  Silver Star

        Blue Fire 

One of the hotels 

Another visit to Portugal

Last time I wrote about my time in Portugal it started with 'Portugal. A place which I can't quite work out even after spending a week there'
Nothing has changed since, I  still can't work it out. I saw a different part of Portugal this time and that was the city, it was beautiful. A little bit like Paris with the atmosphere being full of life, the buildings were similar, the metro and all the tourists. The week was spent at my host families holiday house with another family who were staying nearby.The days were spent relaxing by the pool and on the beach. The water was still way to cold for someone from Australia but I managed to go swimming nearly everyday.  We arrived in Lisbon (the capital of Portugal) late in the afternoon on Saturday and spent one night there as we were flying back to Germany early the next morning. It was amazing to see how much life there is late in the night. We watched Germany vs Ghana in a pub (I have to say its pretty good being 16). Here is a photo of what it was like in the pub:

Every single night I had problems with mosquitoes. It was the most annoying thing ever, I would wake up to a buzzing in my ear between 12:00-3:00am  and spend an hour trying to kill the stupid things. Sometimes I managed but other times I went crazy and gave up. After a week of living with the stupid insects i came to the weird conclusion that they have personalities. Some of them were REALLY annoying and wouldn't leave me alone but other ones would buzz in my ear, maybe bite me and then leave.There were hungry ones which weren't too annoying, they just bit me on my face or hands and then left. There were also sneaky ones which hid under the bed so I couldn't find them when I turned the light on and then they would come out again. One night I went crazy and took a photo of one of the bites because it was so itchy, I looked at the details of the photo and it was taken exactly at 2:46am.I have no idea what I was thinking but here is the photo (it's pretty disgusting): 

And here is a video of someone we listened to on the street. He had an amazing voice and deserves to be recognized.  Sorry about the quality,I'm not the worlds best filmer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIUyPwqdG0&feature=youtu.be

 It was a perfect holiday to end my stay here. I am not in a writing mood so I'll post more pictures instead. The months are coming to an end and now its only weeks, I can't believe it but that will be in another post still to come.

The pool at the holiday house 

I thought it would be cool to get a photo of someone surfing with the view behind
them but unfortunately the waves weren't very good.  

This was a spot on the beach which was out of the sun and also out of the wind. 

Here is Lisbon

Another photo of the swimming pool 

And lastly these cool statues we climbed on which was also in Lisbon

12/06/14

I can now delete my last post, my laptop has decided to be nice to me.

"You don't need to pack summer clothes, you wont be getting a real summer and it's not going to hot." Said the mother as her daughter left for Germany for 5 and a half months; 6 weeks being in summer.
so, what did I do? I packed one down jacket, one woolen jacket and another jacket. As well as over 5 pairs of long pants, what was I actually thinking?
The past few days have been horrible, it has been between 35-40 degrees Celsius. Luckily there is a public pool close by and its perfect for a nice cool down. It's hard to work out if people are in a bad mood from the heat or the amount of French people who take over the place, i'm thinking its a bit of both.What annoyed me most were the people smoking, just sitting there surrounded by kids and the smoke is blowing in everyone's faces. It's such an issue here but it doesn't really get to many people.  Its so great to listen to the Germans complain about the French. Breisach (where i am staying) is right on the border of Germany and France, so as you can imagine there are plenty of French. They all shop here because its cheaper but not only do they do that, they only speak French. When Germans go to France they speak French but when French people come here they speak French and don't attempt German.

It is now holidays for two weeks which is good in a way but on the other hand I have had to cure my boredom for the past week. Everyone seems to go away in these holidays instead of the summer holidays because its not so busy.  I'll go to Portugal on Friday so no more posts for a week but I am thinking of writing a day journal so i'll see how that goes and then post it when i get back.

you can be jealous, I'm sure most of you are sitting home freezing

Yesterday I decided to cure my boredom by going for a two hour bike ride. It was extremely hot but I wanted to do some sort of excise. I had no idea where I was going but I just decided to go straight and see where I would end up. I didn't end up in an interesting place because I was dying of thirst and had to turn around but I decided to take a photo:

Talk to you all in a week, goodbye for now :) 

Due to technical difficulties (also known as my laptop being a total shit) this may be my last post for a while.
I am very sad about this and I apologise but these things happen. There may be some posts but not as many as i was hoping for in my last month in Germany.
Goodbye for now and hopefully I can write again soon.

The weekend started nicely on Thursday; a long weekend was just what I needed. It was a busy long weekend but one of the best so far.
Thursday and Friday were just normal days to relax and do a few things. On Saturday I had my very last soccer game here: I don't think I've ever been so sad about a game.  It didn't matter if we lost or won because we would come second on the ladder either way. Winning would obviously be a good note to leave it on so that is what we did. The end result was 3-1, I had to score three or more goals to get my goal count on 10 or above but unfortunately I only managed two goals. I am so happy that I got to play in Germany, it has definitely helped me feel comfortable in this rather unfamiliar place and, of course, my team was great and will never be forgotten.

Number 9 is my lucky number- 9 goals. 

Saturday night my friend Marlene and I had a sleepover, which was great, and we went on a really nice walk down to the river Rhine in the evening. I didn't want to make a big deal over my birthday so the day was very relaxed and in the evening I had a few friends over for dinner which was really nice. Turning 16 is here is a big deal because you can legally start drinking (beer, wine, etc.No heavy things), but to me it was just another birthday. I have six weeks to live it up and then I'll have to wait another two years.
Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday and for all the kind messages I received- and of course the presents.

sunset

 

Mistakes

We all make mistakes, its part of the human nature and it can't be stopped. When learning a new language, of course mistakes happen more frequently but everyone just forgets and moves on.
I make mistakes very often but thats alright, its all part of it. I am going to write about one of the mistakes I made yesterday, it was more of a miss understanding. If you don't get it the first time you may have to read over it again.

We had just finished writing a 3 hour long German test and I was still a bit overwhelmed by it all. The next lesson was biology, not too hard just another lesson where I pretend to understand everything.
 Anyway, the teacher said, "draw a stick man on half of the page". So i drew an ugly man, not too hard I thought. The next thing the teacher said was, "draw the same stick man with closed eyes".  So I thought a little bit about how I would draw it and came to a nice plan in my head. Before i started to draw it, I looked around at some other peoples and they weren't drawing the face on the actual person. The first thought that came to me was, is it really that hard to draw a person with shut eyes? Then I thought maybe it was a German thing to draw stick people like that. I sat there for a little bit and then realized how dumb I really am.

A weekend in Switzerland

A short description of my weekend in Switzerland (1 week late) 

1/5/14

Sitting on the ICE (InterCity express) and watching the mountains and green grass go past in a blur. I won’t complain and say I had to wait for over an hour for this train to come because I was very well entertained. People watching and free WiFi is a fun thing to do for an hour. I really am not German at heart because I didn't mind waiting for an hour.

As I was drinking my four Euro small hot chocolate from Starbucks, I was watching this lady have a conversation with herself. She obviously thought she was really funny because when she came inside she could hardly walk through the door because her laughter was taking over her body. I thought maybe it was time to go before she came and sat next to me.

I arrived in Interlaken Ost (Switzerland) a few hours later and met my dad’s uncle and aunty. They have a holiday house in Beatenberg which looks over the lake and mountains. It was such a shame I had so little time because it was simply beautiful.

The rest of the day was well spent catching a bus to the end of street and walking back. No, it wasn’t just a normal street; it was the longest street in Europe that goes through a village. When we got to the end we walked the 7km back, taking in the beautiful view along the way. 

3/5/14

Bern is a bit like Canberra, not in looks or the way it feels but it is a forgotten capital city. No, Zurich is not the capital of Switzerland and Sydney is also not the capital of Australia.

Bern is a beautiful place filled with lots of life but also very relaxed.  At the end of the main street is a bear enclosure, it was weird seeing bears in the middle of a city but also understandable. I thought it was pointless at the time but I studied a bit about Bern in one of my German assignments... who would have thought it would come in handy?

Bern is definitely a place I will visit again. You could almost say it is a flawless city because the flaws are so well hidden. Switzerland is a ‘must see’ and should be visited at least once in everyone’s life time.   

Bern

The bear enclosure 

The walk along the lake side