Traveling to Innsbruck
Today started nice and early. I had to meet several classmates for an early breakfast because Kennedy selected me to be a “firm” in class. As “Firm Bauer”, I had to pick several associates (classmates) to help me pair up cases based on their similarities, or on elements that distinguished them from each other. Everyone who volunteered in class yesterday, suddenly had beer plans last night and could not help… the point being… Today started nice and early with a breakfast meeting. We talked and argued and ultimately I left with all of the cases I paired together last night by myself. When I arrived early to class, Kennedy was waiting at the front of the room. He read over my pairings and told me that I should write them on the board. Above my list I should write, “Kennedy/Bauer” as I had his same pairings. I was the only “firm” to correctly pair all of the cases. This was great! Until he started class by pointing out that the Firms of Kennedy and Bauer clearly had the same pairings for the same reasons… and what were those reasons he asked of me…. I actually had answers for him. It was really fun, and I will either have earned the respect of my classmates or their wrath for being “in with Kennedy”
The class mainly focused on the 4th and 14th amendments. This is search and seizure and our protections against unlawful searches and seizures. Kennedy has actually asked us not to discuss the class on the internet or the materials that we discuss as he is speaking to us for education purposes, thus I will not go into great detail on his questioning and responses to students.
My second class for the day is Problems in International Criminal Law. More specifically, we discuss genocide and the development of International Tribunals and the International Criminal Court. The class is very interesting, but to add to the stress of the day, I had to “prosecute” a war criminal on charges of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. Luckily, we ran short on time and she did not have time to grill me as she did other students on my theories of responsibility and the like.
3:30 and I was finally out of my first week of class. I ran back to the dorm, where Jen met me and we packed for our weekend trip to Innsbruck. We walked the few blocks to the train station and boarded a train to Innsbruck. We were able to find a cabin all to ourselves. We spent the ride playing Gin Rummy and looking out the windows at the amazing countryside. (This is very different from how I spent train rides with Colin in Europe 13 years ago.) Jen and I constantly were pointing out the window and forcing each other to strain into one another’s position to see the sun, hills, church, mountains, cows, etc. We finally arrived at the train station and Jen showed off her wonderful navigational skills by leading us on a 30-minute walk to the first hostel. I am truly impressed by her ease of getting us around. I say first hostel because they were full, and we had to walk 10 minutes, in the direction from which we had just come, to the next hostel. The second hostel came complete with no keys, no locks, no storage trunks for our stuff, and no shortage of roommates. On the plus side, the hostel owner that if we were thirsty we should just come to him, which we did and grabbed some beers. After that, we bunked down with our roommates, two sets of sisters from the Midwest. We’re looking forward to exploring Innsbruck tomorrow!
– Kendra
