Well I can’t sleep, so I thought this would be a good time to finally update on a bit of what I’ve been up to the past few weeks.
These past two weeks have been the autumn school holidays, so two weeks off! I think one of the bets bits about school were the breaks. Except for when you come to the end of them and you wonder where all that time went… I’m getting that familiar feeling about now as we’ve got to be back in school on Monday!
These past two weeks have been ridiculously full of travelling – I’ve visited Muenster, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Amsterdam and tomorrow I’m going to Bonn and Cologne! Despite Nordrhein-Westfalen not being my first choice when I had to pick the areas I wanted to go to on my Assistantship application, I feel really fortunate that I got placed here. I felt lucky when I found that I’d been placed in a city, but now that I realise how many great places there are to go to in NRW, I feel luckier still. Mind you, I didn’t spend that much time in NRW last week…
I’ll start where we started the school holidays – over in Muenster! Beef and Gravy are living in the same place now, just 20 minutes drive outside Muenster city centre. I FINALLY bought a camera at their local supermarket, so I can finally take pictures of the places I’ve been! The night out in Muenster was really, really mental. We went to this club called Heaven which was inside of a warehouse on Muenster marina. I got a bit homesick walking towards it, because it reminded me so much of Cardiff Bay!
The next day we got to a little (hungover) exploration of Muenster city centre… I couldn’t believe how pretty Muenster was! Cobbled streets, old timey buildings, old timey font on the signs… It’s definitely a lot prettier than Dortmund is.
Beef told us that Muenster was rebuilt to look like its former self after it was bombed in the war. I found it to be quaint, almost like something out of a storybook (though that was before I visited Heidelberg, but that’s another blog post). It wasn’t all quaint and cute though. Something freaked me out about St. Lambert’s Church in the city centre.
It’s a shame it was such a dull day, I’m sure Muenster is stunning in better weather. Anyhow, looks like your standard church right? Look again.
See the three cages? These are the remains of the Muenster Rebellion – which wikipedia tells me ‘was an attempt by radical Anabaptists to establish a communal theocracy in the German city of Münster.’ Basically, three of the most prominent members of the rebellion were caught, tortured and executed and their remains placed in three cages on the church. As you can see, while the remains aren’t there anymore, the cages still are… how creepy is that??
We only really saw the Old City, had to take shelter in an Italian restaraunt because it started pouring down with rain. We’ll be returning at some point I guess, specially as that’s where Beef and Gravy are living!
