Visitor!

After being jealous of all the British assistants who had friends visiting throughout the year, I finally had a visitor of my own.  Vanessa, another WashU student from my sorority who is currently living in Switzerland headed up to Berlin for a long weekend and made her way over to Detmold to spend a bit of time in NRW. 

It was really really really fun having someone from WashU around, and I enjoyed the chance to be a bit touristy again in NRW/Detmold.  Saturday, we headed to Düsseldorf for the day, as Vanessa wanted to check out some art museums.  While she and Jarrett visited one, I spent the first part of the day wandering around cute little neighborhoods, getting lost, happily stumbling upon a fro-yo place and less happily getting caught in a wicked, 5-minute downpour – but what’s a week in Germany without ridiculous weather, right? I visited the second museum with them and it was great, as Jarrett has studied quite a bit of art and art history, so walking around with him left me feeling pretty well informed.  After a proper German dinner and a few Altbiere – Düsseldorf’s local brew, dark and delicious – we ran for our lives to catch a train back to Detmold, and somehow made it.

Sunday, after a ridiculously long but lovely proper German breakfast at the apartment with the roommates, we hit the Regional Museum in Detmold to check out an exhibit on art during the National Socialist regime; it was both informative and artistically great at some points.  On Monday we had to make an early start of the day, as Vanessa headed back to Berlin and I made my way to Oerlinghausen to visit Jarrett’s school…but I’ll update on that later!