Cologne

This is us walking to the Chocolate Museum. In the background is one of the several great churches in the town.



The main treasure to the Cologne Cathedral is this Golden Shrine to the three Magi. It was made around 1200, and it is absolutely breath taking as you can see here!



Inside of the Chocolate Museum was this chocolate fountain of a golden coco tree. They would dip in vanilla wafers into the chocolate of this fountain and give them out as samples. It was so so so good!



A part of the museum had several workers demonstrating different parts of the production of Chocolate. It was neat to watch each one do their individual jobs. There was one lady who was hand wrapping this huge hallow chocolate Santa in his aluminum wrapper.



Our delicious treat in the cafe of the Museum. Jessica could barely finish either one of her items because it was all so much! But it was really good! This museum was a lot of fun, maybe the highlight of the day!

Pictures from David's Birthday!

We had a great 2 days celebrating David's Birthday! We really love going to museums and experiencing new places together - which is why I felt this town was a perfect place for us to go! Right when you walk out of the main station you see the Cologne Dom. Then right behind that Church are 2 museums, and just a short walk father down the river is the Chocolate museum! It was a lot of fun! And since everything was so close, it worked out better then we could have imagined!

This is during David's birthday dinner. We went to a more traditional German restaurant that is just right down the main street from us. It was really delicious, and a great time!



This is beautiful Cologne! This shot is from across the river showing the Dom at night time.



Up close to the Dom. This church was HUGE, it seemed even bigger than the Notre Dame.



We climbed over 500 steps to the top of the front towers of the Dom! And here is a great shot showing the museums right under the church and the city.



This is where we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner! There were some groups with actual full Turkeys there. But a Cheese burger and Veggie burger were the perfect alternative for us!

Happy Birthday!

Today is David's Birthday and we have had a great day of celebrating!!

We started the day off with Breakfast in bed (for David) and a beautiful (if I do say so myself) handcrafted birthday card.

Then German class. But it is an enjoyable class so that is good.

After class David opened his first gift which was a scarf that I have been knitting during this semester. The colors in the yarn, length and size all turned out to be perfect! And it looks awesome on David!

Next both had to go to our lessons. Both went really well.

Then at 6pm we finally met up again and got ready to go to dinner.
We went to a small restaurant right next to where we live known for their huge portions of meat. David got a Sirloin steak and I got on of the 6 vegetarian entrees offered. Both meals were delicious and it was a great dinner! During our dinner David got to open his final gift which was. . .

A surprise Day trip to Cologne (Köln) Germany! This great town has a huge Gothic Cathedral and several wonderful museums. It is not to far away and it will be a great way for us to spend our Thanksgiving together!

We will update this blog with more information when we get back. And post up plenty of pictures! :)

It was a great day for the both of us! And we are both excited for our little adventure tomorrow!

SNOW!!!

Another Christmas Miracle! It started snowing yesterday when we took a trip to Ladenberg. There, our professor and his wife cooked us an amazing lunch and then took us around the town. Today it really started to come down though. It was so much fun to play in the snow! Nothing like snowball fights and snowmen to bring in the holiday season!

What we have been up too

The semester is now coming to an end. So much as happened since we have been here, we have gone on 3 trips, several day trips, gotten our ways through 3 academic classes and worked very hard in all of our lessons.

Our German class is still going well. The subject matter is starting to get a little big confusing. When it comes to learning a language so much of it simply is memorization. And when you do not put the time in the memorize if a noun has a male or female article it can start to get a bit over whelming. But we are glad to say that we have still managed to work our way through and at least get to the point where we feel really confident going out to restaurants and getting our food. Usually the waiter/waitress would know that we only spoke English before we even said a word. For the past few weeks our whole ordering experiences have been only in German! So that is pretty good! But of course we catch on right at the end! At least if we ever come back - we will be just fine.

Another course that we are both taking is our German History class. I think this class by far has been the best for us both. Although the course title is "Hist 121" our Professor is teaching us out of his 500 level history course! So it has been great to have that challenge. Growing up in main stream public schools, neither one of us has learned a bit of German history, so it all has been new! The class has taken us from the very first writing about the Germans by Julius Cesar all the way to the end of WWII. Learn about all of the different political influences on the country and even all of the influences this country has had on the world as been really fascinating! I think if we both had the option to take another course from our Professor Luft we would in a heart beat!

Both of our lessons have been going good. Jessica has been working hard to get all of her literature for her Senior Recital under her fingers. That has driven her to work hard and accomplish all of her goals for this semester. David's clarinet teacher has continued to push him and challenge him. Also, they realized that they both share a love for coffee Cappuccinos. At the beginning at every lesson his teacher greets him with a wonderful home made Cappuccino. His composition lessons are also going extremely well. His teacher is unbelievably talented and is pushing him in musical directions that he has yet to explore. (Although, he does stress out about these lessons a lot!)

As you can see, we are both loving our time here. It has been a lot of fun and a lot of hard work for both of us. Now we are starting to plan for our final trip to Italy!!!

Oh and David's Birthday is eight days away!! And I think that I (Jessica) am more excited for it then him. . .

We hope every one back at home is doing well!
Love you all!

Some favorites from Paris

Us in Paris

Getting ready to jump on our train to the city!



Jessica's mom recommended that we had to try the ice cream here. So our guide book recommend this little place has become well known in all of Paris. And it was no surprise why. The ice cream here was unlike anything we have ever had. The ice cream didn't melt and it was full of flavor!



Moulin Rouge once again!



Nothing like a crêpe infront of the Eiffel tower!



This picture was one of our favorites from the trip! We had to stand in the middle of the street quickly as we walked across the cross walk. It was worth the "danger"!

Paris

Moulin Rouge

The Louvre Museum and its Pyramid

Arc de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower (Tour Eiffel in French). At night the whole thing is lit up like this. Then on the hour there is a light show where white lights flicker all over it - its great!

Notre Dame

Even more paris pictures

All of these amazing pieces of art work are self explanatory! These are all found in the Louvre Museum and the Musée d'Orsay. Both of these places are filled with thousands of art. It is crazy to see the actual original creations that we have grown up learning about. They had collections of Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, Picasso, Di Vinci, and many other artist you can dream about seeing. It was GREAT! We were both so excited to experience all of these timeless works.
This first painting is of the Coronation of Napoleon.

Paris again!

One of the most beautiful things that both of us have ever seen would be the Stained glass in the La Sainte-Chapelle. The name translates to "The Holy Chapel" which was built during the Gothic period. 3/4 of the windows are original and each one was breath taking! It was such a blessing to be able to see this Church! Truly an amazing sight!



Another breath taking sight was this monument to all of the French lost in the Holocaust. It was located right across the street from Notre Dame. This shot of the monument is of a small sliver in the center of it that is in contrast to the rest of it. Here you have 200,00 small pearls that each represent a person lost. The whole thing really made you speech less.



These next three pictures are all taken at the Opera house in France! While there we went on a 90 minuet tour, which turned out to be a great experience. This first picture is of the most elegant of all the rooms there. It is where all the men would go to socialize during intermission. The room is covered in Gold embellishments and the ceiling is covered in beautiful pictures of the Greek God Apollo and his lyre. The opera house was amazing! And our very energetic tour guide did an amazing job explaining the history and passion that went into building it!

Paris Pictures!!

One thing that David wanted to make sure we saw were some of the main cemeteries in Paris. A few of them were outside cemeteries and the others were Crypts under churches. One Crypt where several great minds of France are is inside the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a huge building that in French history has gone back and forth from a Church to a Burial site - and now it is a Burial site where several great minds rest.



This is the grave within the Soldiers Chapel to Napoleon! That is right, "the" Napoleon. This whole chapel was built just for him and it is huge and beautiful! He is buried in seven different coffins and the last is this HUGE marble one. On the walls all around the circle is engravings of all of the wars he had won and great civil accomplishments for their country! The whole place was very grand!



These next two were with in the Pantheon. Another surprise that we found here was that Pierre and Marie Curie (Both dedicated their lives to the study of radioactivity) were here. In these pictures we have first Voltaire and second Rousseau.



This is the site of a famous Pianist and Composer who has written a few of David's favorite pieces. So it was really neat to see him!



Finally, best for last! We saw Mr. Adolphe Sax! The man who invented the Saxophone (David's main instrument for those who do not know :) ).



It was amazing to see the graves sites of the different influential people on our lives. And where they rest is on average nothing special, nothing over done - they all just blend into the one next to them.

Paris!!!

Well our trip to Paris is finally here! We are leaving tomorrow morning at 8:30! We decided to take the train into the city which turned out to be the best option. The train ride is only 3 hours, so we will be in the city walking around by lunch time tomorrow.
The past few weeks David has been busy planning out every hour of our trip. We are all going to be running around the city trying to see everything that there is to see! We quickly realized that there is so much in this city to see. And we are determined to fit it all in!

We have been listening to these 20 minuet long Podcasts on itunes that teach you a little bit of French. We are hoping that we can get through this weekend with our extremely limited knowledge of the language. But I am sure we will be fine!

We will be back on Sunday night and we should have pictures and stories on here soon!

All that is left to say is - "s'il vous plaît"

Mannheim Concert

We took a little day trip out to Mannheim to see a great concert. Mannheim is only a few miles away from Heidelberg which made it pretty easy to get there using street cars. The concert was a must see for David which made the night rather perfect. The concert was of David's two most admired contemporary jazz artist: Joshua Redman on tenor sax and Brad Mehldau on piano. Usually they play separately with their own quartets but this evenings concert was a one time only collaboration between the two of them. So, as you might imagine, this was a special event.




The concert was held in the Christ Church shown in this picture. The Church was beautiful on the outside and the inside was quite different from the other churches we have seen. The ceilings were covered with impressionist style paintings. It surprised us to see something different - but it was a really cool to see something different the the rest of the Churches.



Before the concert we gave ourselves some time to walk around the town of Mannheim. This picture is taken from us standing on the Wassertrum (Water tower) looking out to the Freidrichsplatz. Behind us is a main street which is filled with several shopping stores.



This picture we got as we where heading to the concert. It shows the Water tower and another building. The sky was so beautiful this day, we have never seen the sky look so blue and beautiful.

Finally, here is a shot that we sneaked in during one of their three encores. Just know that playing three encores is very very unusual. Normally only one is played - so playing three might show you how outstanding this concert was!



After the concert we waited around and David got to talk to Joshua. He was a really nice guy who genuinely seemed curious why two Americans were seeing him play all the way out in Germany.
The concert was great, and we really enjoyed seeing the town!
Hope you enjoy the pictures :)