Germany Week 37 - Bratislava/Vienna

Only about 12 weeks to go now and I will be back home in good old Covington, Kentucky. While I do miss home a lot, my adventures continue on. And of course the videos do too! This whole week's video was dedicated to our trip to Bratislava and Vienna. It was Trez, Janne, Kelsey, and I that went on this trip over our Easter break. It was nothing short of epic. During work before I left on my trip, we spent every day filming for an advertisement. You guys will be able to see that in next week's video because I didn't want to omit the footage that I had from our 4 day trip. I really didn't know what to expect from Bratislava, I was honestly a bit afraid to go there. I barely knew what it was or where it was, and much less about its culture, its people, and its cuisine. I was thoroughly surprised. In the 24 hours that I spent there, I came to love that beautiful city. I hadn't realized how rich its history and beauty was. It seems that although I spent only a day in Bratislava, it has about as much footage as Vienna did! The food was quite enjoyable and Slovakia is home to many different castles. We had bought bus tickets from Bratislava to Vienna. We saw an advertisement for Twin-City Liners. It was a high speed boat that ran between Bratislava and Vienna. We quickly decided that that was what we were going to do. We hopped on the ship on Saturday afternoon and off we went!

We arrived in Vienna about an hour and a half later. The sights that we saw along the way were absolutely gorgeous, and the ship that we took was extremely fast for being such a large boat. We arrived in the Donau canal in Vienna and hopped on one of the local U-Bahns to our apartment. The city of Vienna is huge. One cannot simply walk the entirety of Vienna. During our time there, we went out to several bars and clubs, ate some local food(and some not local food). One of those foods included 2 pieces of schnitzel the size of both my hands and a bowl of fries. Needless to say, that was a filling meal. We saw the many sites in Vienna including Hofburg Schloss(Castle), the Rathaus(Courthouse), and Schloss Schönbrunn. The city of Vienna is rich with culture, internationality, music, and history. Within the 2 1/2 days that we had in Vienna, we had barely scratched the surface of seeing what it was all about. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves to the fullest! We arrived back at the Hauptbahnhof in Dresden on Monday night. Monday, April 21st was my 21st birthday. That's right, biggest American birthday that there is. To my surprise, Falk, my host dad, was waiting for all of us to give us a ride home. The whole host family was there and set out a nice dinner, cakes, and presents just for me. That was so sweet of them and I was not expecting it at all. We ate and drank and were merry together. It was a great week!

Germany Week 36 - Everyday is an Experience

This week was quite an enjoyable one, of course Wednesday was again at the Vogelstation. I absolutely loved my work there on that day, feeding a baby bird and baby raccoon and going to the airport, it was an awesome day. On Friday we were actually filming at the office where I work at. That was quite convenient. I was actually the boom operator which meant that I actually got to do something, yay! On the weekend I was visited by a PPPler and friend, Nancy. We explored the city of Dresden, even I was able to see more of it than I had before. We enjoyed ourselves at a club later on on Saturday night. It was a fantastic week.

Germany Week 35 - Shaping Lives

This week was again spent in Meissen Porcelain Manufaktur. Well, of course not the entire week! We were again in a separate part where they were doing clay mock-ups of the various body parts of a 2.8 meter high porcelain woman that they are working on. Porcelain dries much too fast for it to be sculpted from scratch in such a large scale. I was also able to do the audio work at a place we filmed with my company. It was neat to actually be able to contribute this time! On Friday, I had heard about a famous bridge in Dresden with a couple bars right down on the water next to it. Trez, Janne, and I decided we would go there to visit it. It was very pretty down there and the bar/restaurant was pretty cool. We had a few visitors to Dresden this past weekend, Michael, Scott, and Allison. We hung out on Saturday and had a nice walk around the city and went to a bar later. It was cool to have visitors in Dresden, and again, anyone that wants to visit us is welcome!

Germany Week 34 - The Soft Side of Roughness

This week was started off with another awesome trip with the camera crew to Meissen Porcelain. This time, as you can see from the main picture of the video, we were filming an American artist named Jen Ray. She is very talented, although she said that sculpting porcelain was something that she has picked up within the last few years. This overall project will be explained more in the video, just know that it is going to be an amazing of lavish, garnished porcelain tools and weapons with what Jen said: "have a romantic side to them." The day was filled with this interesting project. I'm sure that we will be going back there many times to film its progress. No news really from the Vogelstation, most of it was spent hacking up weeds... long, thorned vine weeds. Skipping to Saturday which was having a beer with Trez, Kelsey, and Kerstin at Freiburger. It was more of a chilled out weekend, only 3 more weeks until my birthday and our grand trip across the country of Austria, and mostly within Vienna!

 

Germany Week 33 - The Finer Things of Life

This week was not quite as packed with events every single day to pass the time. The days that were filled with those things though, wow did I see a lot! On Wednesday was a day spent at the Vogelstation, caring for animals and a little baby rabbit, it was all quite enjoyable that day. Thursday and Friday were spent at the factory of the oldest and finest porcelain makers in all of Europe, in Meissen. The whole camera crew was treated to wonderful meals at the restaurant they have there. It was probably a couple of the nicest meals that I have ever had. Meissen Porcelain is truly a thing of beauty, completely unmatched by anything that I have ever seen. Saturday was a weekend day spent relaxing, going to a burger restaurant, watching movies, and drinking wine together. It was a great week, and hope to see more of them!

Meissen, Home of the Finest Porcelain in All of Europe

This post especially goes out to my Grandma who I know who really enjoy these pictures!

Here is a look at the famous Meissen Porcelain. Meissen Manufaktur was started in 1710, they were the 2nd manufacturers in all of the world to manufacture porcelain. The Chinese were the first, and the Germans, the second. I was there with the film crew from my internship to film the Meissen porcelain painters. Their master painters are some of the best porcelain painters in all of Europe. It was a great honor to be able to see and watch them work.

 

Germany Week 32 - Prague Round 2

A bit of a filming break was taken early in the week, I do apologize for that. Though this weekend is still packed with videos from the 5 star fish restaurant "Kastenmeier's" that I went to with the film crew to film a presentation over Meißen Porcelain. And for the weekend, as the title might suggest, I went to Prague for the 2nd time, ROUND 2 IN PRAGUE! I went with Trez and Mike, both PPPlers. We met Janne there, that poor soul had already been there for 5 days on his own. Luckily he survived. The weekend was filled with mistakes, mishaps, dangerous Czech trains, beautiful sights, beautiful architecture, a pub crawl, and much more. Prague is a really neat city, I appreciate its beauty and would recommend anyone to go there at least once. Twice is enough for me I do believe!