La fin de Strasbourg

I know I've been a complete and total slacker about updating the blog this break, but I have literally been the most unproductive individual on the planet this vacation. I now own all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls, and am currently on season five. Every day, when I've watched my fifth or sixth 45-minute episode of the day, I start to feel a little bad about myself, but it still doesn't stop me from watching more. If Lorelai and Luke don't end up together, I will have wasted a lot of sleepless nights.

Anyway, I promised I would chronicle my last few days in Strasbourg, my long trip home, and what I've been up to this vacation (aside from my new, aforementioned couch-potato tendencies). Leaving Strasbourg was actually a lot harder than I had imagined. Once I finished my exam on Thursday, I was just ready to be done and peace out of Strasbourg. I just wanted to see my family and sleep in my own bed. But I still had a lot of miles between me and home, so I had to make the best of it. I squeezed in a few more workouts at what turned out to be an amazing (and seemingly elusive) gym, which was probably one of the things that most helped me maintain my sanity. On Thursday evening, I met up with four of the Holy Cross girls at Theresa's house, and we baked white chocolate chip-cranberry-oatmeal cookies, and consumed ridiculous amounts of dough and all of the added ingredients. They have become really good friends of mine, so it was nice to get to spend time with them. They'll all be in Strasbourg for the rest of the year (HoCro only offers yearlong programs), but hopefully, if our promises don't prove to be empty, we'll be able to find a time for them to come to Spain, and I'm hoping to go back to Strasbourg for Obama's visit in April. After our baking spree, we went to a classical music concert, put on by the Marc Bloch music department. The groups weren't that great, so we scooted out as soon as we could and went to a pub. All I really wanted was a Cosmo, but of course, they don't have cranberry juice in France (silly me for even asking!) so we all got beers. That night, I got to meet the two other people from the Holy Cross group that I hadn't met yet, and I've decided that they're all pretty incredible.

On Saturday morning, my host mom took me to the train station. I had been trying to decide, for several days, how I was going to get myself and my mountainload of stuff (two rolling suitcases, a duffel and a backpack) to the train station: my phone had run out of minutes on Monday, so I couldn't call a cab, and I decided that trying to ride the tram for free with that much baggage was pretty much asking to get caught, so I gladly accepted when my host mom offered to drive me to the gare. Before we left, I gave her the odd assortment of gifts that I had found for her throughout the semester, and she gave me a wrapped gift, telling me not to open it until I got on the train because it would make me cry. I opened it when I got to Frankfurt, and, big surprise, I did cry. It was a recipe book, that she had made, for Tarte Kristen, the tarte she had learned to make for me. It had pictures and text and was absolutely adorable, and it was such a personal, heartfelt gift, so I very much appreciated it. She said a ton of really nice things about me in the car, which only made me not want to leave her even more. Once at the gare, I found my train, and nearly fell up the stairs trying to drag my two gargantuan suitcases at once. Luckily, a nice man helped me by carrying one, but I think he soon regretted his offer to help.

The first train was fine, but, as usual, it was a little bit late. I had only had eight minutes in between trains to begin with, but I was freaking out. In Offenburg, Germany, where I had to change trains, there was not a digitized schedule, only a written timetable, and it turned out that my second train was not leaving from the same platform. I ran to the elevator, which I was thrilled to see, and raced over to the other platform, making it by about two minutes (which is cutting it close for me). Everything was going well on the second train until, about an hour into the ride, the screen that I was looking at listed the next stop as Interlaken Ost (which is about three hours outside of where I wanted to be). So I started panicking. Was I on the wrong train? What was I going to do. Luckily, there must have been an error on the screen, because the next stop was, in fact, Frankfurt. I caught a cab and drove to my hotel, which was really quite nice considering what I paid for it. I lay in the custom bed and watched movies. It was really nice to decompress.

Early Sunday morning, I flew to Dublin. After a few annoying incidents in the airport (including having to go through security twice, and having to remove my riding boots twice after being told that I could keep them on; of COURSE they would set off the buzzer, they have metal clasps!), I was in lovely Ireland, and was thrilled to get that passport stamp. My hotel was downtown, about a half-hour cab ride from the airport, and my cabbie was an adorable little old Irish man, who proved to be half cabbie and half tour guide. I have him to thank for a lot of the things I ended up doing, because I probably wouldn't have known about them otherwise. Once I checked into my ADORABLE hotel (more like a B&B), which was right on St. Stephen's Green, I walked around the downtown area that wasn't far from the hotel, stopping at Dublin Castle and Trinity College (a trip to see the Book of Kells and the library upstairs that made me feel like I was in Beauty and the Beast), waltzing down Grafton Street, the main shopping street, which was teeming with holiday shoppers. I then walked over to O'Connell Street, the true city center, and then wandered over to the Christmas Market, which in no way rivaled Strasbourg's. By that point, it was pouring, so I quickly located a Starbucks and then went back to the hotel. I was finally able to reach my parents, who had been worriedly trying to reach me for about an hour- my phone never rang- and then talked to poor Kate, who was very distressed, because Dave had been due to arrive that day, but, due to a ridiculous winter storm back in New England, was stuck in Connecticut.

On Monday morning, I walked around the city for a little while longer, but was excited to head back to the airport. The airport turned out to be a major headache, because we had to go through American customs just to get into our terminal. Of course, the customs officials weren't even in their booths, so we had to wait in several lines just to get our passports checked. But before I knew it, I was on my plane headed back to Boston. Right up until a few minutes before takeoff, there was an empty seat beside me. I thought it was strange, especially given the fact that it was holiday time. But finally a guy showed up and sat down in the window seat. He's a film student at NYU, and was just returning to Boston from an amazing semester in Madrid, so our respective study abroad experiences gave us a lot to talk about. Thank God he was there, because, had he not been there, the flight would have passed even more slowly than it did with him there. I was giddy with excitement as I walked off the plane, wearing my Red Sox hat proudly in celebration of being home. However, we still had one more layer of customs to go through, meaning that my family wasn't waiting for me in baggage claim. It took me nearly an hour after landing to get my bags, during which I was practically crying, because I knew my family was just beyond the doors, but I couldn't see them until I had my bags.

Once I grabbed my two suitcases off of the belt, I practically ran past the customs man and through the double doors. I saw Tim first. He was sitting down (probably because he was about to pass out from hunger). Then I saw my dad. My mom must have been standing behind him, because I didn't even see her initially. And then I saw a mass of blond hair, and my jaw dropped. Alexandra had called my mom the night before and asked if she thought it would be okay if she met me at the airport. I was so excited to see her, and obviously appreciated the gesture more than she will ever know. Just seeing another familiar face was so nice! My parents had told her mom that we would take her out to dinner, and, after a lot of driving around and lots of protests from a very hungry Tim, we decided on The Cheesecake Factory at the Atrium Mall, a few minutes from Alexandra's house. After we dropped her off at home, we drove back home, and the hour-and-fifteen-minute drive dragged on FOREVER. I was so relieved that I had made it in one piece (Dave had finally arrived in Italy the day I got home, so it was a doubly exciting day!), and I was so happy to be with my family again and in my own house.

Okay, so, since this is getting a little wordy (as my posts tend to get), I'll write about vacation in my next post. Stay tuned!!!

Sending you my love,
Kristen