Continued

So a few weeks later we had the equivalent of Spring Break (Pfingstferien), which literally means Pentecost Break. Yes, they have Pentecost Break. So that was the first week of June (and the last day or two of May).
First I went on another StudIT trip (much better planned this time). This time it was a day trip to Basel, Switzerland. It was about a 3-hour bus ride, and the city was beautiful. Since it was mostly people I didn't know I kind of had to randomly pick what group to hang out with, and I may have picked the wrong one, i.e. the one that walks around with no goal in mind and stops at random little stores that are not even interesting. But it was fun anyway. And it made me look forward more to my next trip.
The next day I left for a 3-day (plus travel) trip to Hamburg, by myself. You might think traveling alone sounds horrible, but it was actually pretty nice. I mean, I could go see what I wanted, and I can be myself more when I'm alone than when I'm with people that I'm not close to, so I'd rather travel alone than travel with someone random just to have a travel buddy.
I ended up in Hamburg through an option with the discount airline germanwings called Blind Booking. Basically you choose a theme and there are 8-10 possible destinations. You pick your travel dates and everything, eliminate up to six of the cities (for 5 euros each), and then after you finish booking and paying and everything you find out where you're going. The advantage to this sort of booking is that it's cheap--around 50 euros round-trip. Also, as I found out, you can end up going to amazing places that you would never think to go yourself. I would probably not have picked Hamburg out for travel on my own, but I'm really glad I went. I really like the city, and it had some wonderful things to see. It was cool to see a different part of Germany, to see a port city, and it was just overall a beautiful place.
I went on a walking tour with a group on the first day (a cool company, English-speaking tours whose guides work on a tips-only basis, so you pay what you think it was worth), and then went back to some places later. I of course went to the harbor, where they also have all sorts of little souvenir shops and restaurants along the water. I visited some churches (a standard stop in Europe), the Reeperbahn (the nightclub strip, and by visited I mean took a picture from the edge), the St. Nikolai WWII bombing memorial (the skelton of a bombed cathedral), and a really nifty place called Miniatur Wunderland--it's the world's largest model train and has like 5 rooms filled with miniature landscapes, everything from Switzerland to America to Scandinavia to Hamburg itself.
Here is a picture of me in Hamburg:









You can see part of the extensive canal system (Hamburg has more bridges than Venice and Amsterdam combined!) as well as the steeple of the Michel, one of the churches and also a famous part of the Hamburg skyline.