An amazing weekend

Let me start off with the not so amazing part. On Friday, my EU-US relations class (along with two other classes) had a field trip to Strasbourg. It started off pretty well, sans the 8:30am departure time. We went to the European Parliament (the other one, the one that's not in Brussels because the French need to claim part in everything) and my professor, who's an assistant to a representative, gave us a special VIP tour of the place. The architecture of the building is supposed to be symbolic of the institution's purpose. For example, many of the columns are transparent and the EP is pretty much the only EU institution that is. It was decorated in a very modern form of French interior design, which basically translates to heinously uncomfortable. Oh well. Herr Schüler's insight was really interesting.
After our tour of the parliament and some presentations, the group went out to lunch. A guy in my program and I decided not to go with them (flammkuchen isn't healthy enough for him and not vegan enough for me) so we just walked around the city for about two hours, which I'm now very glad that we did. The city is gorgeous, despite the terrible, gray weather.
By the time that we met up with everyone, it was beginning to rain. We went inside the enormous cathedral (4th largest in Europe) and had a tour by another professor, Markus. By the time we were finished, it was POURING rain outside. So, what do we do? We walk around in the pouring rain for half an hour. Genius? Obviously. The rational for this was that our bus driver wasn't going to be back at the bus until 4, so we couldn't go back to the bus. Um... how about staying in the Cathedral? Or having us split up into various coffeeshop groups? Or any of those other logical things to do when it's pouring rain? Needless to say, we were not happy. When we finally got on the bus, the driver kept the air conditioning on because he didn't want us rotting his bus or something. It was completely miserable. My shoes are still soaking wet.
When we got back, I took a hot shower and a three hour nap just to make myself warm again.
And this is where the amazing weekend part begins...
On Saturday, I woke up around 10:30 and went to a cafe to work on a 15 page paper about the EU's involvement in Afghanistan. The sun was shining and it was in the 50s, so I walked around town a little bit first. I absolutely love Freiburg when the weather is nice. People are all over the place and the mountains are all lit up around you. Even sitting inside of a cafe doing work wasn't as terrible as it could have been.
On my way home, I decided to check out a new grocery store that's on that side of town and it had the most amazing produce selection ever. I immediately got excited for dinner and came back and made myself a delicious chickpea quinoa curry while my flatmates made something else. We had a lot of fun just sitting around and chatting.
Then I met up with my boyfriend type person downtown and we just walked around because both of us had been studying all day. He's from the DRC and told me all about his country and the obscene amounts of corruption and his family's reasons for leaving. We went to a park that I didn't know existed and I rode a swing for the first time in forever. We went home fairly early and I woke up this morning to another beautiful day outside. I'm currently back at the same cafe, taking a break from my paper, and hoping to repeat yesterday's wonderfulness.
One of the reasons that yesterday was so nice was because I was finally alone and away from the constant surrounding of other people in my program. It was quite possibly the first time that I'd done that since I got here. These last few weekends will hopefully be just as good.

Luxembourg, Brussels and Paris

I returned Sunday evening from our final trip, this time to Western Europe. We left last Monday, bright and early as always. We arrived in Luxembourg a little before lunch time and had two speakers at the European Court of Justice. One was a clerk and another was a translator and they both gave us different insights into the function of the Court of Justice. We explored the little town of Luxembourg for about two hours afterwards and only really needed about fifteen minutes to see everything. We ended up spending a good amount of time in an amazing little coffee shop.
Here's a picture of Jamie, Derek, Alia and me in said coffee shop. Everyone has been questioning whether or not I've made any friends here, so I figured I'd post some with people other than me in them. The stuffed animal just happened to be there.

After seeing all of Luxembourg (except for Patton's tomb, which we found out much later is located there for whatever reason), we got back on our bus for another long ride to Brussels. Arriving around dinner time, we decided to walk around and stumbled upon a gorgeous area later coined Asia. We pretty much ate there every day because it's incredibly vegan friendly (Jamie and I being the two vegans), healthy, cheap and delicious. I think this, along with the AMAZING chocolate, really just sold me on the city. I absolutely loved Brussels and everything about it. The city was clean and beautiful and was completely walkable. I probably bought twenty chocolate bars because it's honestly the best chocolate I've ever had in my entire life. There was also ample amounts of sorbet all around. There was also a bar called Delirium that had 2,004 different kinds of beer from all over the world. I must say that Belgium can actually compete with Germany in this area.

The town hall in the city center.
CHOCOLATE!!!

Unfortunately, though, we didn't have all that much free time in Brussels. Although there was enough time for a quick visit to the chocolate museum and dinner at various sushi/thai/vietnamese/chinese restaurants, they really kept us busy with meetings. Unfortunately, only a handful of (randomly selected people) were able to go to the European Parliament, so I missed out on that institution entirely. I was able to go to the European Council and Council of Ministers and a very influential agricultural lobbying firm, though. We also had an American NATO speaker. They kind of overloaded us with speakers and a lot of it has blended together, but overall I definitely learned a lot from the speakers. For example, at the lobbying firm, we heard a guy defend the Common Agricultural Policy, which is what the majority of the EU's budget goes towards and is supported heavily by the French. Most of what I had previously learned about CAP was negative in that drastic changes need to occur. But after hearing the best lobbiest ever, it seems a lot less obvious. If the EU is going to have higher standards with the environment, GMO foods, etc., there's a lot of added costs that go into that for farmers in Europe. Why should Brazilian farmers who have no penalties for destroying the rain forest be able to compete without added tariffs in Europe? Interesting. The speaker also brought up fruitarians (people who only eat food that has fallen from the trees naturally.), which I found particularly amusing. At the Council. All of the flags of the 27 EU member states. The current decor is done by Slovenia, who holds the current presidency.

On Thursday morning, we left (rather grudgingly myself) for Paris. The program gave us a lot of free time in Paris and we only really had two meetings. One of them was absolutely terrible and it's very possible that somebody's secretary's secretary was the one giving us the presentation. It was word for word off of a powerpoint, which was word for word off of their website. Then, people in my program basically tore her apart by asking questions that she should have known the answer to. No need to talk about that anymore.
After the first speaker at a European Security and Defense advising organization (which was basically a reading of three people's resumes, unfortunately), they made us walk for 45 minutes to show us where our next meeting place was going to be. The majority of the girls, myself included, were not wearing appropriate shoes for such a (cobblestone laden) journey. My feet became so blistered and my feet and lower back so tired from this that I (and a few others) was pretty much cranky for the rest of the trip. Perhaps I can blame this on my dislike for the city of Paris, but perhaps that's only part of it. Going to the various museums (the louvre and Musée d'Orsay) and seeing the necessary sites (the Eiffel Tower, Champs-Élysées, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, Sacré-Cœur, etc.) was amazing, but the general feel of the city wasn't. It was dirty, the people were generally unfriendly (except at more Asian restaurants where they'll happily speak English with you), and it just felt unnecessarily snooty. Walking down Champs-Élysées (the high class shopping street) was incredibly annoying for that very reason. So much mindless consumerism and pretentiousness. It also didn't help that on our last day there, Sunday, everything was closed and my lunch consisted of an apple and a couple dried apricots (after a breakfast of plain cornflakes) and dinner wasn't until we got back to Freiburg at 10pm because the only place open to stop on the way was McDonald's. I also spent days having a dressing-free salad for lunch and not eating dinner until very late after hours of walking around. Not a very happy Emily.
But, I have pictures. IES took us to a fancy French restaurant, explained below.

I'm not even going to bother saying what this is.
The LouvreMe, Leslie, Jamie, Jessica and Derek at the fancy French restaurant
I asked one of our program coordinators to explain to the waiter what a vegan was and to ask them to prepare something special for me and Jamie. Watching the waiters face might have been the most amusing/horrifying expression ever. What came out was a plate of vegetables, including ratatouille. Pretty delicious. Let's just hope a rat didn't make it.

Now I'm back in Freiburg and realizing how quickly the semester is coming to an end. I have a 15 minute presentation auf Deutsch next week, two 15 page papers due in a week and a half, a 20 page paper due the week after, and finals in about a month. Don't expect much updating from me, unfortunately. On Friday, my EU-US class is taking us to Strasbourg to meet with the other European Parliament, so expect updates about that.