Small Trip: University and Pink Buildings

Alright, my third post about my small trip in Europe.

This time, the highlight is a small town called Mainz.

And again, you're maybe wondering, what is Mainz's significance so that I just have to visit it?

Well, back to the reason where I want to know basically everything about my hostsister's, Lisa, life, Mainz is a big part of her life.

Lisa goes to University of Mainz, or nowadays they call it Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

The university is huge. Lisa told me that they actually have more than 30.000 students, which is more than three times the size of my own university.

They have every major that you can imagine. From engineering to cinematography, from science to theology. Lisa, herself, is taking 2 majors: Anthropology and Philosophy. (I think it's supposed to be 1 major and 2 minors: culture anthropology with biological anthropology and philosophy)

Later on my small trip, I met people with the most interesting subjects: Philosophy, Theology, Social Work, Education, Languages, Renewable Energy, and so much more.

Meeting very interesting people with very interesting subject to study made me think about my long-lost dream: what would I take if I can afford my own university tuition? what would I study about?

Unfortunately, despite all of the above, I don't think the university is very nice. They have ugly-boring buildings, the same ones which you can see in most universities. Tall, square, dull colors building.

There are basically two types of classes in the university. There are big classes, with 200 people there and a lecturer talking. There are also small classes, called seminar, which was the place for students to talk.

The thing that I found very interesting was that they actually have some work or exams to do during summer holiday. For example, Lisa had to do one long paper (20 pages) during the summer for one of her classes. My other friend, an Indonesian studying in Germany, said that he actually had exams during the summer holiday.

That way of learning in university I consider to be a mood breaker.

I mean, you're in the middle of summer holiday and you have to worry about papers or exams? man! that sucks!

Anyway, enough about university, I guess.

The thing is, I am always interested about the education system in other countries. I like to compare the system that other countries have with the Indonesian one.

You know, I even have a tiny wish that I could be an Indonesia's minister of education and change the whole system. Well, maybe not the whole system, but great part of it.

So, after the university, Lisa and I took the bus to go to the city center.

Below are the pictures of the city center. It's basically a plaza with a bunch of buildings around it. The special thing about this plaza was that it is called a carnival plaza. The reason? well, look at a picture of a statue that I took. The statues around this plaza shaped like a bunch of people going to carnival put together. funky looking and all that.

Walking around the city center, I found the city market.

The picture below is a glimpse of the market.

Walking around the city, I found that the city was not as boring as Lisa said. There are a lot of shops and old buildings.

Lisa also took me to the best ice cream in town.

Unfortunately I didn't take any picture of the ice cream parlor, or ice cream, or us eating ice cream.

The ice cream flavors were very fancy. Some of them I never heard before. The flavors were rich: all kinds of nuts, chocolate, fruits, liquors, syrup, and many more. I literally had to ask Lisa about every flavor and we each took at least 5 minutes before we decided what flavor we wanted.

Plus, the ice cream was very cheap. I think for two scoops of ice cream, it cost me not more that 3 euro, or something.

Talking about building, though, there is a highlight of the area that I haven't mentioned.

The PINK color!

I wonder if you notice it or not, but from the southwest of Germany, this pink colored buildings are the typical old buildings.

The pink color was from the stones they were using.

And as you can see them on the pictures below (and from previous post), a lot of buildings' color was pink.

It may look (somewhat) 'normal' to you, but when I was there and was looking at these pink buildings, I felt weird. It was almost corny.

Aside from the pink buildings, churches was also the highlight of my small trip.

Below is the picture of one of the churches in Mainz.

The picture shown the church pipes and the stunning details of the reliefs on the wall.

On my trip, I went to a lot of churches and it is very interesting to see the different styles in them.

Another amazing thing about churches are the echo and the amazing acoustic system in the room. The amazing pipes also help a lot.

I usually pretend to cough to hear the echo, which was very fun, since you're supposed to be very quiet inside a church.

So, I'm finally done with my third post.

I should kick my lazy ass harder and write more.

Well, all in all, the short period of time in Mainz gave me the urge to go back.

especially for those wonderful ice cream! *wink wink*