Arrived in Glasgow

Yesterday I arrived in Glasgow Scotland after quite an ordeal at the airport. The next morning I woke up at a bright and early 3am and started the trek back to the airport at 4. I guess I was becoming a pro at it considering it was my third time making the commute...lol. I showed up at the ticket counter and the guy throws me a curve ball by telling me that I was not in the system because my ticket had been cancelled at some previous time. WHAT! I have no idea how it happened or why it happened. After a full hour of crazy running around trying to figure out what to do I was able to reschedule without having to pay an "at counter" ticket. I had allready paid the fee for my bags on my ticket that had been cancelled and so they made me pay that again because they had no proof that I had paid it. That made me extremely angry more than anything. That was a large sum of money that I did not need to spend! Anyways, the rest of my flight was lovely. I landed in Glasgow safely later that day. I was greeted at the gate and wisked off to my dorm. It was really weird getting at my dorm. The bus that is driven by Uni. volunteers just dropped me off on the street in front of my dorm...no explanation of what I was supposed to do...or where to go...it kinda freaked me out when I just saw it drive away. I figured out which dorm was mine and find out how to get my key and such. I set up my room (which basically means I dumped all of the contents of all my bags onto my bed), found out where I could buy some food, and walked around the area of town my dorm is in. It was interesting but since orientation does not start until Monday I did not meet anybody or anything which is slightly disappointing. I am hoping that will change on Monday.

Germany Day 5

On Thursday I was basically in a frenzy to get ready to leave. I spent the entire morning at the Hamburg History Museum. I had gotten to briefly glance at it earlier that week but not actually look and I was astounded at how big it was! I couldn't even believe it! It is the biggest museum in Germany so I guess it would be big. There was every display from the earliest settlers of Hamburg, to the Victorian era up until the Jews and the reign of Hitler. It finishes off with a boat that they had rebuilt INSIDE the museum! It was totally gigantic and actually slightly creepy. Then it had a lot of models of boats and things like that. I just couldn't believe how huge it was!!! So that was an awesome experience.

After about 6 hours in the Hamburg History museum I went to the spice museum. It was the strangest place I have ever gone. It was up two rather sketchy stairwells in a building that is a storage center for old broken stuff. If there were no signs for the museum ever 3 feet I would have been scared for my life ;) lol, not really but it was not really the kind of walk to a museum you would normally experience. The museum itself was one room and smelled magnificent. It had over 500 displays of different spices you could smell, touch, and taste (if you like tasting raw spices...) and gave the background history to a large number of them. There were also other displays like "things we have found in bags of sugar" and in the display would be flipflops, childrens toys, a snake, a rat, things like that. It was so crazy! Not exactly the average museum. OH! And they gave me a bag of pepper as a thank you for visiting their museum...guess they were hard up for customers. I enjoyed it and I would definitely suggest it for a future traveler to Hamburg.

The rest of my day I went back and packed up my stuff. At Hamburg airport there is a cool system where you can check your bags in a day early if your plane leaves before 8am so I thought this would be a fantastic deal! I drag all four of my bags all the way down to the airport (took about an hour between the two buses and two subways I had to take), arrive at the desk that says "early check-in" and find out that British Airways is the only airlines that does not have an early check-in service. Needless to say I was disappointed not only that I wasted three hours of my day but also that I would have to drag all my bags back home and then out again at 4am. I went home and just took the rest of the day easy, quite tired from my last week of running around.

Germany Day 4

There is only one word to describe today and that would be courageous! I feel fairly confident that if someone were to put me in any spot in Hamburg I would find my way home by the days end. I used directions printed off the internet to go downtown so I could find the Brahms museum. Upon my arrival in the middle of this gigantic city I found out that the directions were wrong...uh oh...There was a very nice park right near where I was so I walked over to it and laid down in the grass for the next few hours. Then I found a map and I found out that I was pretty near to the Hamburg history museum so I walked over there. Turns out this park is like 2 miles long and the museum was at the other end so I got to see A LOT of the park. Slightly exausted when I arrived I looked around briefly but couldn't stay long because it was getting kind of late. I had free admission so I am thinking of going back on Thursday. I don't think it is possible to see the entire museum in just one day, it is by far the biggest museum I have ever been to in my entire life.
When I got back I went to Hamburgs biggest shopping mall and gosh was it huge! Hamburg makes this special icecream that is kind of like gelato so I got a fruit parfait sort of thing with tons and tons of fruit in it. It was quite amazing. I am excited because tomororw I am going to get a chance to speak to and English class about UAF, foreign exchange, Alaska and that sort of thing. I am pretty excited.