cologne to kassel

i got up and decided to take a walk around cologne until my train left for kassel. its pretty cool cause i met this girl in the hostel who was doing an exchange study in berlin before heading back to grad school - she's a math major. this is why i really like hostels - for the opportunity to meet peeps from all over. there also seemed to be a stag party staying there. they went about with bleached blonde hair, wearing kilts- no shirts- and blue paint ala braveheart, oh yeah - and drinking. sorry no pics.

but anyhoo. i saw some stuff, took a walk along the Rhine, and went to a sculpture garden. pics are below. the sculpture was more along the lines of scary but its nice to see the municipality taking an interest in the culture.

i then took the train to Kassel. When i was able to keep my eyes open to observe, the country side was quite lovely. lots of farms and cute little villages and rivers and . . . just really peaceful and lovely, hence the whole sleeping thing. oh and the trains are massively comfortable and smooth riding.

am stayin at a school - primary- so things are all small and stuff. the group am working with seem pretty cool so far. will write more on the project later. there are ten of us - a couple of germans, a swiss, a greek, a spaniard, 2 polish, a bulgarian, a japanese, and a serbian. uh, yeah there's me representing Romania. you have to apply to the program from the country you live in. and am doing a good job too!! - i will eventually teach everyone how to count in romanian. those language lessons are coming in handeee.