Today in class we got to take home our own flexo plates, and this saying is one of the things I chose to put on mine!
Anyways, I promised myself a nap today - instead finalized plans to spend the week in Italy starting on Sunday (worth it, right?)! We’ll be flying to Bologna (heheh…bologna.) and flying back from just outside of Milan. That leaves 4 nights in between to travel wherever we desire! So far we’re thinking Florence, Pisa, and somewhere on the seaside. There’s 8 of us total (Tamas, Thomas, Hanna x2, Jitske, Sandra, and Davy…plus ME) who will be backpacking and hosteling, spending each night (give or take) in a different city!
CANNOT CONTAIN EXCITEMENT! Just three classes, two photography projects and a small homework assignment standing in my way.
Oh, and HAPPY MAY 2-4 CANADA (…or is it now belated? …sorry was that a touchy subject?) haha miss you guys oodles! xo
1:34 pm • 22 May 2012
München. Was. Cray.
I don’t think in my life I’ve ever been in the midst of a bigger party than I was in Munich yesterday…..
It was the Champions League Final, Chelsea vs Bayern Munich. IN MUNICH. All day Davy and I were stuck with this nut, wearing his Chelsea jersey. Heard a lot of German insults throughout our travels and luckily we had no idea what they meant. Rowdy train number two of the day, making friends (well…peace at least) with Bayern fans.
I forgot my camera..probably for the better..so I snapped a few with my blackberry ooooof course. I wish you could see how much Chrissy stood out in these pictures, absolutley hilarious. SOMEHOW we stumbled upon a side street with all of the Chelsea fans, I wish I took pictures there. This place was literally my happy place. The sun was shining (it was a perfect 26 degrees..a strong influence to my mood), a two cold beers in my hand, people speaking english (ENGLISH I TELL YA) and everyone was in a jolly good mood.
We moved on to the Englisher Garden, where there was a public viewing of the game beside the beer garden. We actually had to hop the barricade (so badass) to get close-ish to the screen.
I feel like every single picture doesn’t quite capture the size of this epic spectacle. Such a WiLdDdDd atmosphere, on the for real. We found our way to the unofficial Chelsea section and parked it with some blokes from the UK. I could barely see the screen and therefore ended up on someone’s shoulders, but then I felt bad for blocking the people behind, so that didn’t last long. Basically, everyone was just really drunk and I’m 100% positive I knew the least about either team/I had the least emotional investment in the matter. Luckily for Chrissy, CHELSEA WONNNNNNNNNN:
Just so happy that his shirt had to come off?
The celebrations were a bit too wild for me to capture… A while after the game ended, managed to take this. Buddy on the right just LOVING LIFE.
Absolute madness!
The trains home were a complete nightmare. Between full trains and trains that went to the middle of nowhere, it took us all day. I could go on forever about our travels back to Stuttgart, but let’s just say that we did a lot of adventuring ;)
5:55 pm • 20 May 2012
screenshots from skype dates of the past
My computer froze with this image……d’awwww
Another time my screen froze
Life is good! Since coming back from drupa, we’ve had summer temperatures of 26, and then back to jacket/scarf/wish-i-brought-my-mittens breezy hail storms. A couple rooftops, some drunken nights, a few of my favourite skype dates ever, and even a bit of class too. Thus far, the month of May has been good to me! And it owes me from last year. Had a difficult skype sesh with momma bear on mother’s day,
buuut absence makes the heart grow fonder (Shakespeare)
or how lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard (A.A.Milne)
or my most recent favourite:
it’s a lot easier to buy a plane ticket than to bother with missing someone (Davy Owens)
…whatever floats your boat, haha! xoxoxo
10:19 am • 17 May 2012 • 2 notes
Düsseldorf & drupa & Köln
The view from my hostel room window!
I don’t even know how to sum up how much fun I had this week. Forrrrr the most part, the GCM drupa team knows how to party! It was so nice to have a taste of home for a few nights! When we got to our hostel, we bumped into our Belgian friends Jitske and Thomas, who happened to be our hostel roommates!
How nice, right?
Anna’s side. But seriously, nicer than some hotels I’ve stayed in……
One night it was just Jitske and I, the next it we also got a girl from HdM, Anna, and after that it was just Anna and I! A WHOLE BUNK BED TO MYSELF GUYS, SO MUCH ROOM FOR ACTIVITIES!!!!!
Night one: get settled into our hostel, go adventuring in Düsseldorf with Jitske and Thomas (it was FREEZING COLD PS). Find our way to the older part of the city, called the Altstadt. Being a Saturday night, the street was packed, stopped for some Schnitzel, and before we froze our arses off we made our way back to the hostel for an early night.
Thought this was cute and cool?
Our hostel was at the end of the pictured bridge, beside a sheep of fields and amidst a ritzy beautiful neighborhood.
Day two: First day at drupa! For obvious reasons, we started our day at Heidelberg with a presentation by *insert important person’s name that I forget here* and then spent some time in the ENTIRE HALL THAT HEIDELBERG OCCUPIED. Think of one of the halls of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and it being solely Heidelberg’s territory. All of the drupa days blend into each other so I can’t remember what else we did that day…..but I’m sure it was educational.
Book-binding. He’s sooooo the type heheh
Night two: We were treated to dinner in Düsseldorf, met with some HdM profs and students, and continued the night at the Altstadt.
***READ THIS***
FUNNY STORY TIME: After being challenged to chug my drink (and doing so successfully) by one of the GCMers, Matthew, bought me a drink. He had some trouble ordering and accidentally ended up buying alcohol-free beer. Not wanting to be rude or make him feel bad/awks, I drank it. When he offered to buy me another one I politely declined……however he proceeded to buy himself a total of THREE for himself. All the while he didn’t know it was alcohol-free, until Trung bluntly pointed it out. Later in the night after Matt had left, Ian decided to poke some fun at him (and me) by buying me this:
LIKE, CAN YOU BE ANY FUNNIER AND/OR AWESOME IAN !? …. I think not.
Day three: drupa’ed it up again with the GCM’ers. I started the day with a walk to the shopping area of Düsseldorf. I didn’t know what to expect, but was very pleasantly surprised to stumble upon this…
HOW BEAUTIFUL, RIGHT!? The fancy-shmancy stores are all along either side of the river.
After my little solo rendezvous, I made my way back to the fair grounds to watch my fellow GCM’er Nikita compete in the Sheetfed Offset Training Simulator (SHOTS) finals. As in, he’s one of the top 2 best SHOTS’ers in the world! His trip was paid for entirely by the company.
Unfortunately he lost, but the difference was something miniscule like $75 in awards. And the girl had been practicing for 4 days STRAIGHT at the booth. And Nikita was out all night doing actual SHOTS the night before…..who REALLY wins here, amirite.
Homegirl sizing-up her competition during practice.
Night three: Trung and I took the train to Köln to hang out with the group for the night! We started with Ian and then everyone eventually caught up. We went bar-hopping, ended up at a wicked-awesome jazz bar, and Trung and I made our last train to get back to Düsseldorf. Many heart-to-hearts were shared (one being us already dreading the moment we have to say goodbye to the group). We almost took this cat with us to live in our hostel, but eventually decided against it.
Cat that we named Nikita.
DAY OFF: We spent Wednesday walking around Köln, went to the Lindt chocolate museum (regret), walked on the bridge that leads the trains to Köln’s Hauptbahnhof which is equipped with thousands of locks <3333333333. Other things we did included walking along the Rhein river, eating things, drinking things, and looking at stuff too! By the end of the day, we ended up going to a store to stock up to drink in the hostel.
Not pictured, is the bottle of wine I regret buying. One thing led to another, and let’s just say Jason Lisi will never look at me the same again. Or country music….on this night we discovered Michelle and I had the same taste in music, and we decided to let EVERYONE IN THE CITY know. They loved it, I’m sure……..
The perfect depiction of the night.
Day five: After MISSING OUR LAST TRAIN BACK TO DÜSSELDORF, Trung and I crashed at the drupa team’s hostel and were forced to take the 7:30 AM TRAIN OF SHAME back. I wish I had a photo of this, just so I could remember it forever. We got back to the hostel, got ready and headed to drupa for the last day.
Landa being all “impressive” with their “touch screen press” PSSHHHHHH.
The Last Night Ever: As I’m sure you all know, every good thing must come to an end…..after a sub-par dinner where we got rained on, we parked it beside the river in Düsseldorf and drank and reflected on our trip together. Once the sun set and we started to get cold, we headed to a nearby brewery/bar before our nearly-teary goodbye at the train station.
This post was both too long and not long enough……I want to relive it over and over and over! Since that’s not possible, I’ll just settle for making the most of the next three months (exactly three months….. WILDwildWILDwild)!
xoxoxoxoxoxoo
Oh, and my stance on Altbier (Düsseldorf) or Kölsche (Köln) is Altbier. Sorry, not sorry Köln ;)
11:56 am • 11 May 2012
GCM does drupa!
Click the link above to see the GCM drupa team in Print Action. I’m sixth in from the left wheeeeeee! TOO MANY good times had over the past week in Düsseldorf and Köln! Pictured is the whole group, minus one of our profs Jason, taking a tour of the impressive Muller Martini booth.
11:32 am • 10 May 2012
The week that I didn’t want to share Ian
It’s excursion week so we have NoOooo0OOoOoO class! Except German. So after we came back home from Sweden, our dean from Toronto (Ian) arrived in Stuttgart from London. We started the evening at a campus pub, then made our way to the city, Ian ate the “traditional German” (blatant sarcasm) dönerkabab, went to a bar called Wurst & Fleish, ended up taking the easy-breezey last train home.
ROUND TWO with Ian on Wednesday after our German class, we walked around the downtown area and settled on a patio spot for a Maibock (loose translation - May beer). We moseyed on over to another restaurant for dinner before I left Trung and Ian to skype my mama and faja, and drop off our homework and bags.
Went back to the city and continued our night of bar-hopping. My friend Simon came along with us to show Ian around the city, and he took us to a place called Mata Hari and Simon introduced Ian to what I’m gonna go out on a limb and say is Ian’s new go-to beer. Ian’s hotel is on campus. Simon works at a bar on campus. Long story short, we took a train back to campus and Simon treated us to some drinks including one he invented called the Tortooga! May I remind you Ian is the chair of my program back home. Okay? Are you able to wrap your head around how awesome he is? No? Me either.
Hey-hey to a random picture of me from the M-Benz museum!
ROUND THREE: Thursday rolls around and 12 other students and a few members of faculty from GCM arrive. We make them trek with all of their luggage from the main station to their hostel (lol we’re evil), settle them in and start our night with a traditional German dinner on Ian, followed by more drinks and more pub-crawling. After being awake for many more hours than is healthy, the majority of the group hit the hay before the fun really started. We met with our Irish besties Chrissy and Davy - and Simon came out with us all, too!
…But wait, there’s more! Friday consisted of waking up early to pick up the students at their hostel to take them to HdM. Trung and I got the opportunity to tag along for our FOUR MILLIONTH tour of the building, followed by lunch and business card making.
We made a group decision to have nap time after the long day and then Trung and I took the group to a grocery store to buy beer and wine to drink in the park before the sun went down (ROUND FOUR). Then Ian and the other profs then met up with us, and they brought along Manuel Fink who was on exchange at Ryerson a few semesters ago! Little Hanna tagged along too and met all of the Canadians! Needless to say, the drinking continued. Throughout the night I became the wrangler/runner to make sure the group stayed together/got back to their hostel in one piece. A trip to McD’s with Manuel and a couple of the other girls featured my first McRib (if I remember correctly it was delicious). Trung, Ian, Jason and I waited for the night bus, but eventually decided to take a cab back to campus.
Also, I haven’t mentioned that the weather has been absolutely TROPICAL. It’s fantastic. I’m so glad all of our visitors were able to see Stuttgart at it’s best!
Also, here’s one of my prof’s blogs that he started a few days ago - there’s some nice pictures to look at, and he’ll be updating it with DRUPA info, too!
Also, the GCM kidz have a blog too!
And now, it’s time for DRUPA and the end of the four-day bender! I actually just bought my ticket yesterday, yikes! I left it last minute as usual - WHATEVS EASY BREEZEY GUYS!
I finally got a chance to go through all my letters that Sandra so graciously packed along with a thousand other items my mom thought would be necessary (love her for it though). Trung and I are both ecstatic to be able to use our face wash from home, and I am SO VERY HAPPY TO HAVE THE SNACKS THAT CAME WITH THE PACKAGES! My family/second family are simply the best!
Not only did I get KD mix…..but also PRESIDENT’S CHOICE WHITE MAC AND CHEESE MIX! I literally don’t think I could be happier!
I just can’t even with this picture.
And now, off to Düsseldorf/Köln! Auf Wiedersehen!
4:04 am • 5 May 2012 • 1 note
Stockholm/Linköping-tingz
Aaaaand we’re off! Train number two en route to Karlsruhe airport to visit Alyssa in Sweden!
I was pretty stingy with the pictures this weekend, and my camera ended up dying on our third day, but I still managed to steal some snaps! After hours of planes, trains and automobiles, we arrived in Stockholm on Friday with enough time to start exploring the city! Alyssa met us at the bus station and we began our adventure.
We wandered pass this spot (I don’t know the name of it) but I recognized it from a flash mob video on youtube, hehehe and Trung was even able to identify it as an MJ song too!
After taking a few group shots around the older island of the city, we stumbled upon the changing of the guards at the Royal Apartments. We saw a crowd of people gathering, so we tagged along (travel tip: follow crowds).
This is the main square of Stockholm. In many of the gift shops you can buy each building and make your own at home!!!
We kept wandering around, Alyssa bought me ice cream, we moseyed back to the central station and took the train to Linköping (pronounced Linksho-ping, much to our surprise).
After some great breakfast, we walked to Alyssa’s campus (EVERYONE RIDES BIKES THOUGH) and saw what Linköping University looked like before heading into the city. When we got there we stopped for a ‘fika’ which Alyssa told us is sweedish for coffee/sweets break.
Accidentally snapped this photo of a woman breast feeding…..awks….
Another exciting thing we stumbled upon was a Bach tribute in this beautiful church. It was really, really interesting (I may have dozed off…..TYPICAL ALISON AMIRITE).
Later we walked by the river and randomly came across this race of small teenagers. Not to brag, but I totes chose the winner of this race well before the halfway point. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t bet money on it.
LULSSSSSSSSSSSS
The most domestic person I know, Trung, made this fabulous meal for us.
His cooking face. PS we’re basically married, as pointed out by Alyssa. And Alyssa’s kitchen is crazy-large, and her rez is crazy-nice and she was crazy-hospitable to us all weekend. On Sunday we headed back to Stockholm to see more of the sights and enjoy the gorgeous weather.
We walked through the pedestrian-friendly tourist zone full of gift shops and boutiques and of course 7-11s.
Made us chuckle.
Our casual lunch spot. JE SUIS CONTENT! One of my favourite moments of the trip, for sure.
I really enjoyed my time in Sweden, I would definitely live in Stockholm if I haaaaad to y’know? ;) Everyone was very accommodating and overly nice. We were continuously inconveniencing people at ticket booths and on busses, but everyone just smiled and helped us out (in ENGLISH).
After two bus rides, a plane ride, another bus ride, and three trains…..we finally got back to Stuttgart.
BIG HUMUNGOUS THANK-YOU SHOUT-OUT TO ALYSSA FOR BEING THE BOMB-DIGGITY ALL WEEKEND. Here’s her post about our four days!
4:28 am • 2 May 2012 • 2 notes
