This is a little section of Bremen (Yes, just like the story "The Brementown Musicians" with the donkey and the dog and the cat and the rooster. Same city.) where there are a billion little alleyways and everything is brick or stone. The inside is almost entirely brick though so you're walking on cobbled streets that are maybe 6 feet wide, surrounded by 3-4 story tall brick buildings and can barely see the sky. Talk about surreal. It seriously made me think that I was walking down Diagon Alley. And yes, I did just make a dorky Harry Potter reference.

This is the Brandenberger Tor in Berlin. Basically, it was a huge city gate that separated East Berlin from West Berlin and so now it's a hugely ridiculous famous landmark. Like, you don't go to Berlin without seeing this. We didn't get that great of a view though because of all the tents and people in front. When we scheduled our time in Berlin, we failed to realize that it was Berlin Fashion Week. Oops! :-) I went into a Prada store and tried on a 500-Euro pair of sunglasses. Egad!

Laura, Laura, and I again, this time back in Munich. (Sorry there isn't a better order of all these pictures...) On our first school day we had an appointment to meet the Burgermeister (Mayor) of Haar, which is basically a little suburb of Munich where everyone's exchange partners lived and went to school. Since das Rathaus (the city hall) is pretty close to the school we decided to save money by just walking. Lucky for us, the second we got to the sidewalk it started downpouring. Since we were still not quite in the German mindset, we forgot our umbrellas at home and everyone was TOTALLY DRENCHED by the time we arrived. Interesting note, EVERYONE uses umbrellas in Germany. You can be in a public place and at the first little hint of sprinkling, an entire sea of umbrellas automatically rises up around you. They still took our picture with der Burgermeister and put it in the newspaper though!

Yes, this is a bicycle garage. And guess where it is? In the basement of their high school! SOOO many people ride bikes!!!

Ernst Mach Gymnasium, the high school where our exchange partners attend, decided to undergo a sort of beautification project a few years ago so they did all kinds of really intense art projects of all kinds and put them up all over walls. This lovely piece (:-)) was my favorite. Something I noticed though, is that Germans are huge fans of art that comes out at you...for example, there was another piece at Ernst Mach in which a VW Bug was cut in half and stuck up against the wall in the hallway with a driving scene painted on the wall around it. Cool.