First week

Ok, so I guess I should start with our arrival in Deutschland and go from there. Frankfurt: Lexie and I decided to go to Frankfurt two days before the program to be able to see Frankfurt instead of just flying through it. We booked the Frankfurt Hostel because it was relatively cheap (€23 a night) and it was next to the Frankfurt central train station (Hauptbahnhof if you will). They definitely failed to mention on their website that they were in the middle of the red light district. That was an interesting first experience for our first night in Germany. Also our first hostel experience staying in a four person room with two random people - everything went smoothly though. The rest of our time was spent wandering the town, going to the Deutsches Filmmuseum where they had a Charlie Chaplin exhibit, sampling mustard at a mustard gallery (yeah, that's a thing), and walking through a street market. All in all a great way to start the trip.  Bonn: Bonn was a great town. It was small enough to manage the public transportation for those of us that were new to it, but still a busy college town. In Bonn we visited an organic farm (Gut Ostler), went to the House of Experimental Therapy where they do animal experiments (mostly mice), heard a lecture on homeopathic medicine that was very interesting, visited the Center of Integrated Dairy Research, and went to the Haus der Geschichte (house of history) with the program. On our break time we hiked to the Drachenfels ruins (which took a lot more effort than we thought it would) and went to the Haribo store - imagine an entire store of gummy candy - it was overwhelming. Also in Bonn we got caught in a hail storm in the middle of May which was quite odd for all of us when we're used to it being in the 90s in May.  Koeln:  Our day in Koeln (Cologne) started very early, at 5:30 in the morning. We took a train from Bonn to the Koelner Zoo, where we got to come in early and go behind the scenes with the elephants and see the keepers feeding, training, medicating (foot abscesses and broken tusks), and generally caring for 15 elephants. It was an amazing experience. After the elephants, we got to wander the zoo until lunch and got to see a raccoon (Waschbaer) exhibit, which was very strange to us - the Germans were all very interesting in seeing them. After lunch we got to see the Koelner Dom (cathedral). Despite all the pictures I have seen of that cathedral prior to this trip, I could not believe how stunning it was. The day we went happened to be the Ascension/Father's Day, so there were people everywhere celebrating the holiday. When we went into the cathedral they were just starting mass and hearing the organs start up in that cathedral that survived the bombings from WWII gave me goosebumps. We decided to climb to the top of one of the spires (probably not the best idea after just climbing to Drachenfels the night before) - 533 circular steps later we got to enjoy the view from the cathedral, which was stunning.  That was our first week of the program - an amazing whirlwind adventure - and I'm so glad to have 3 more weeks to go! I'm exhausted from our weekend in Rome, so I will blog on that later.