IES has a few really cool trips that it offers over the course of the semester, and one of the first was the ski trip last weekend. We went to Radstadt, a place in the Austrian Alps, where we spent two full days skiing. As someone who grew up skiing in New England, I can safely say that the Alps are in a league of their own. Every time we turned a corner there was a new beautiful view.

While we were there the weather was amazing and it was actually pretty warm, which was wonderful.

A couple weeks ago, a friend came to visit and while we were going around do the touristy things, I realized that it was actually the first time I had really seen a lot of the big Vienna sights.

While he was here, we saw the Belvedere, Schönbrunn Palace, ice skating at the Rathaus, and a variety of museums that I hadn’t thought to go to since I had been living here.

Just spent a lovely week exploring Germany! I went with 7 other IES students, and I was able to hang out with some people I don’t usually hang out with, which was really cool. On the trip, we went to Weimar and Dresden. In between cities, we saw the historic Wartburg Castle where Martin Luther translated the Bible and we also visited the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was a really moving experience to say the least. I took tons of pictures of the castle, but I didn’t feel right taking photos of Buchenwald.

The last week/week and a half has been packed. It seems that every day has been crammed with its own unique adventure from class related things like homework and projects, to extra-curricular activities like museums, and castles. This is only a photo blog so check out the pictures & captions below!

I’ve been on trips with my biology classes back in the US before; last semester, I’d travel with my Marine Organisms class to the Maine coast to collect samples and observe various ecological phenomena every few weeks, so when my Mediterranean Ecosystems professor here in Spain told us we’d be going on a 2-day excursion to the field, I wrote it off as just another “outside-of-class-learning-experience.” Big mistake.