What's Irish and stays out all night?

Not me, but even though St. Patrick's Day isn't a holiday here I managed to celebrate!

Biggest good news/sad news: My visitors all arrived when they were supposed to (Jon and Kyle on Sunday, Joel on Tuesday night). Sad news, they left this morning. They are currently spending the weekend exploring Dublin. But we had an amazing time this week. They stayed very busy, and especially the first three days Jon, Kyle and I did a ton of walking which left us all exhausted at the end of the day. I still had class every day this week, but they found things to do in the mornings and we'd meet up in the afternoon.

Jon and I in front of Brandenburger Tor on Sunday

A quick list of the highlights of what Jon and Kyle saw:  Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag, Tiergarten park, the Victory Column, Berliner Dom, Alexanderplatz, Potsdamer Platz,Charlottenburg Schloss (a castle in Berlin), the Olympic Stadium from the 1936 Games, the Deutsches Technisches Museum (Jon and Kyle couldn't stop raving about the planes and trains and more), the Gemäldegalerie, the Gedankstätte Berliner Mauer, the Holocaust Memorial and various bakeries and restaurants.Joel saw almost as much. Jon and Kyle also came over to my host family's house on Monday, and we made homemade mac'n'cheese and all ate together. It was quite an experience, because my host siblings don't know that much English and Jon and Kyle don't speak any German so we had various conversations in each language. I really enjoyed having everyone together.


In addition we all took an afternoon and evening and visited the city of Potsdam on Wednesday! It's only about a 30 minute train ride from where I live and go to school. I was worried about the success of the day when we first arrived, because we had trouble figuring out the right tram and tram stop to get to the castle we were looking for. But it all worked out in the end, and I want to thank Jon, Joel and Kyle for bearing with me when I was starting to worry the day would be a failure. We found Schloss San Souci and took a tour with audio guides, and it was pretty cool! It was only Friedrich the Great's summer home so it isn't quite as grand as Versailles, but it was still very impressive and elaborate. I would have loved to know what it looked like when it was occupied.

TRUMPETS TOGETHER! In front of San Souci Castle

That is the Neues Palais in the background, another castle on the same grounds

Finally, after a little walking around we chose a Bavarian restaurant (there was no shortage of options!) and enjoyed some authentic German food and drink. Despite the cold and rainy weather it was a wonderful day.

The boys (Jon, Kyle and Joel l2r)

and me in Potsdam

As for St. Patrick's Day: Many of the students in our program wanted to get together for some fun in the evening, so we did just that. We came and went in various groups. I ended up eating dinner on St. Patty's Day at a Mexican restaurant with Jon, Joel Kyle and Emma, and it was delicious. We were going to check out another Mexican restaurant-turned-Irish-pub-for-the-day but it was completely overflowing with Americans, so we found a quieter bar down the street and just hung out.

P.S.: The answer to the title: Patio furniture! Credit to my mom there, it's her joke, but my friends here really appreciate puns, and I have never gotten more laughter from that joke than I did yesterday. Score.