Easter weekend in Germany
Verena and her family invited me to spend Easter weekend with their family in Germany. I was very happy for the opportunity to see them all again. I was also very glad to be out of Rome for the weekend, because as you can imagine… Rome is quite a popular destination for Easter–particularly the Vatican area where I live.
On Friday afternoon I felt to Hannover (nearly missing my flight because of all the traffic in Rome) and arrived there around 6:00 pm. Verena and her dad were at the airport to meet me. We went straight back to their house where dinner was waiting for us. It was so nice to eat German food after 3 months of nothing but pizza and pasta. And Verena’s mom is an amazing cook. After dinner I went out with Verena to a little music bar along with Mira and her boyfriend, Mira’s brother Toby, and Felix—Verena’s boyfriend. They all spoke pretty good English, which I was thankful for. We were there for a couple of hours before we left and went to Felix’s house to play a couple video games. The game was completely in German, but it was like a gameshow of recognizing music so I could play too… (most of the songs were American anyway.) Funny times.
The next morning the whole family at e breakfast together and then Verena had to leave for work. The rest of us went into Brenswick to go shopping. I didn’t have much money or space in my backpack, so I didn’t buy anything. But it was nice to walk around the city and the mall because it was such a different atmosphere compared to the cities in Italy. I don’t know why, but I was pretty exhausted by the time we got back to the house so I took a nap before dinner. When I woke up, Verena was back from work and we sat down at the table for some cake and tea. Not to much later, we had a huge salmon dinner which was one of the best meals I’ve had in months. I was still tired and really didn’t feel like going out anywhere, but Verena wanted to go play pool with some of her friends for a little while so I went. None of the people we met up with spoke any English so I just kind of sat there most of the time. We didn’t stay long though, and I got to go to bed early.
Easter morning was fun because I woke up to the table set for breakfast and Verena’s mom had put little chocolate bunnies and candies on everyone’s plates. Then everyone gave gifts to each other for Easter. I was given socks, lipgloss, a purse, a travel guide of Italy, and a few other little random things. It was very sweet and unexpected. After breakfast we got ready and then went into Wolfsburg to see the newest exhibit at the city museum. It was about architecture and sculpture. It was very interesting to see because there were models of different buildings from all over the world. Some of them I have seen in the past couple of months, and others I will get to see during my two weeks of backpacking in May. After that, we all went to the Wolfsburg Castle to have coffee and cake. (Which, apparently is a daily thing in Germany.) I felt like the entire weekend revolved around eating. We ate like every 2 hours or so. Shortly after getting home from the castle, we had tea and truffles… and a big Easter dinner came soon after that. All the food was so good though, so I ended up stuffing myself at every meal. I took a nap after dinner because I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep that night before my flight. There was a big Easter bon fire that the entire village went to. We were there until about 2:30 am talking to all of Verena’s friends, family, neighbors, etc. I had a really good time. Unfortunately for me, though, I had a 7 am flight. We had to leave the house at 5:00 am to get there on time… so I was pretty exhausted all day on Monday. I slept a little bit on the planes, but each flight was so short that it didn’t help very much.
It was a really fun weekend though. It was so nice to spend a few days with a family and not have to see thousands of tourists like I do everyday in Rome. It was really refreshing… although it made me miss home a little bit more.
I just can’t believe that we are down to the last 3 or so weeks here. It’s going to be so weird to finish school and then move out of my apartment and not see my roommates anymore. They’ve grown to be some of my closest friends. Then I have two weeks of traveling which I know will fly by too. I’ll be home before I know it. But I’m happy about that because I miss everyone a lot.
I love you all,
Jess
