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.