My Favorite City Yet...

I don’t think I’ve ever been as immediately amazed by a city as I was when I got to London. Forrest, Micah, Satvika and I flew in on Thursday of the third weekend of the trip. It was raining when we got there, but we check into the Marriott near Regent’s Park that night and searched for somewhere to grab dinner. Alex Guilbeau had suggested that I go to the Texas Embassy for “the best Mexican food in Europe,” but when we got there we had discovered it was closed forever! Because it was late and almost all of the restaurants were closed and the pubs had stopped serving food, we ended up just going to TGI Friday’s in Piccadilly Square. It was actually a relief to have American food for the first time in forever! After that, it was almost midnight and we were exhausted, so we went back to the hotel to sleep.

The next morning we got up and bought breakfast, then headed to the Tower of London. I LOVED all of the rich history and traditions that were everywhere in this city. In the tower we got to see the Crown Jewels, a lot of historical artifacts from the city, and the execution site of Anne Boleyn and others. Then we headed just across the street to walk across London Bridge!

After that, we headed back to Piccadilly and the theatre district to see if we could get tickets to see a show that night. We ended up seeing Chicago; I had seen the movie but none of us had seen the musical, so we were all super excited. Then we headed over to the Parliament building to see Big Ben and the London Eye, and then walked across the street to Westminister Abbey. I was so excited to finally be seeing a church that wasn’t Catholic, and it definitely did not disappoint. It was so cool to see the coronation site of so many of England’s kings and queens and the burial places of all of the famous royalty that we see in movies, Charles Dickens and other poets, and tons of other famous people. It was also really neat to see where Kate Middleton and Prince William were married! We kept unrealistically hoping to see them all weekend, but unfortunately, had no luck. The abbey also had a special exhibit for the Queen’s Jubilee (her 60^th year as queen), which showed pictures of her at certain events at the abbey throughout her life. This was definitely my favorite part; once I realized that Queen Elizabeth had lived through World War II knowing that she would probably have to rule the country one day I was so mesmerized by her life.

Finally, of course, we had to visit Buckingham Palace. We couldn’t go in because the queen was there, but we saw the outside and the gardens. After that, we were exhausted, so we went to rest in Trafalgar Square before going to see Chicago, which I loved!

In front of the Tower of London

Ravens at the Tower

Picadilly Square

Big Ben and the Parliament building

The place in the Tower where Anne Boleyn and others were executed

Westminister Abbey

Buckingham Palace

Crown in the Queen's gardens to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee

Chicago in Garrick Theatre

The next day, we got up and tried to visit the Churchill Museum, but ended up just seeing a bunch of war memorials instead. Then we decided to make the trek out to Olympic Park! The entire city of London is buzzing about the Olympics—there are ads everywhere, people are preparing the tube stations for the crowds, and there is London 2012 merchandise EVERYWHERE. They were also trying to make the city really clean and making other little preparations, so it was a really neat time to visit! We couldn’t actually go in the park because it wasn’t open to the public yet, but we walked around the outside and saw the major buildings.

After the park, it was time for something I’ve been waiting for forever—the Harry Potter set tour at Warner Bros! My family is all crazy about the Harry Potter books, and movies so at this point I really wished they were there with me. They had basically all of the movie parts, and we learned a lot about the effects they used in the movie. I got to go in Gryffindor common room, Dumbledore’s office, Snape’s classroom, Hagrid’s hut, and tons of other rooms. The entire thing was magical, and definitely lived up to my expectations, but my favorite was the great hall. It’s actually a lot smaller than it looks in the movies, but it was still one of the coolest places I’ve ever been! Finally, we got to see the outside of Hogwarts castle, which was like 30 feet tall, took months to build, and stands in a huge room that they can blow snow and other weather effects into.

I loved everything about this city. The people were so friendly and obviously spoke in beautiful accents, everything was so quaint and beautiful, the rich history and traditions of the city were noticeable everywhere,  and everyone was so happy to be there.  I’ve never visited a place so far away and thought, “I can totally see myself living here one day,” but this is how I felt about London. I would love to go back for a year or two when I’m working someday—we’ll see! 

Weeks 2 and 3 in Praha

Sorry I haven’t written in a long time—it’s been an incredibly busy two weeks in Prague! I literally haven’t had any time to write, and when I do get a free second I nap because we never sleep.

So, I guess I’ll start from two Mondays ago. On the first day of our second week of class, we decided to spend the afternoon at Vysehrad, one of the old castles on the south end of the city. After a brief period of not being able to find an entrance (Stephen tried scaling the castle walls), we finally got in and saw the castle cemetery and, of course, another beautiful cathedral. The guys really liked this because they got to see the headstones of lots of people they had learned about in history class this year-but I didn’t know who any of them were. It was really pretty though, so it was definitely worth the trip out there! After the cathedral we saw the Vysehrad gardens and what I think used to be a cellar. It ended up not really being a castle (or at least not a princess castle like some of the other ones I’ve seen) but more like a fort that some of Prague’s nobility lived in centuries ago.

Cemetery at Vysehrad

Church at Vysehrad-oops, forgot to crop out my finger in the corner!

View from Vysehrad

On Tuesday the entire BHP and MPA groups hopped on a bus out to the Skoda Factory for our first company visit. Skoda is branch of Volkswagen, but its cars aren’t sold in the United States. After a very boring talk from one of the managers there about the company and how it does business, we went to the Skoda “Museum,” where we saw all of the old models of its cars from the early 1900s on. Finally, we got to go inside the factory, which was bigger than the entire country of Monaco, so we obviously couldn’t see the whole thing. We had a really sassy tour guide (so obviously my favorite so far) who took us to the warehouse where they make the engines and other parts and then the building where they assemble the cars, which was the best part of the company visit.

On Wednesday, we went to the Communist Museum of Prague, where Agnes and Jaro, our program liasons, gave us a tour. You can definitely see the communist influence in the city, especially in parts of its architecture and the attitudes of the older people.

With Courtney on the way to Wenceslas Square

Finally, of course, we went out some nights and enjoyed the city’s nightlife! They have such a variety of things to do at night here, from competition bars and clubs to simply seeing the city lit up at night, which is always wonderful.

Last weekend the plan was to travel to Budapest. Everything was all booked, and our bus (which lasted 7 hours) was scheduled to leave Thursday night at 11 p.m., so  we were just going to sleep on the bus. However, the bus wasn’t there at 11…or 11:30…so we went to ask the guy at the counter (who only spoke very broken English…but that is a definite trend here), to which he replied “it’s broken down.” Great. We found it and tried everything; the guys tried even tried to push it. We made a new friend, Rudy from Slovakia, who helped us communicate with the bus driver and even gave Holland, Morgan and I his email address in case we wanted to visit Bratislava instead if the bus didn’t work. Nice. Eventually they told us another bus would be there around 5am; that was when Holland and I decided we were just going to spend the weekend in Prague. However, they had locked us in the broken down bus and also locked us in the closed train station by this point. I ended up forcing the door open (my friends informed me later that I did indeed break the door, and the bus driver spent forever trying to force it shut again). We ran out of the station after begging a guard to open it for us and eventually took a cab back to the dorms in Prague (because it was 1 a.m. and the trams were sketchy).

So, we spent the day on Friday at the Prague Zoo! I also got like 11 hours of sleep each night that weekend, which is great because we only get like 5 max during the week. On Saturday I walked around, saw the dancing house and St. Nicholas church, and then just walked around Charles Bridge and the big castle. At night Connie, Pranitha, Holland and I went to dinner and then met some others in the square for the Czech Republic vs. Poland game, which would determine who made it to the next round of the Euro Cup. The Czech Republic won-unexpectedly! The fans on both sides were SO crazy; everyone was chanting and screaming (in Polish and Czech haha). Sunday the others came back from Budapest and we all just relaxed and did our homework for the week. 

With Holland and the flamingos!

Tiger-This pic isn't zoomed in; it was actually this close!

Dancing House-It's supposed to look like a couple dancing

Beautiful view of Prague from Charles Bridge

The end of Charles Bridge-it's like Medieval Times but the real thing!

Street with the U.S. Embassy

In Old Town Square watching the game!

Pranitha and I on a giant screen in the square

This week was super busy as well. On Monday we all studied for our finance test that was on Tuesday-ugh. On Tuesday we all (BHP’s and MPA’s) hopped on a bus to Krusovice Brewery and took a tour as a “company visit.” Our tour guide barely spoke English though, but everyone was thrilled because at the end they had endless beer for an hour, and they gave us all glasses as souvenirs! 

On Wednesday we had another company visit from the Czech Savings Bank, where we learned all about (or slept through a presentation about because it was so boring) the European debt crisis. Learning about the crisis is actually interesting, but they showed us literally 50 graphs and explained each one so we all had a super hard time staying awake.

Last night (Wednesday night also), we took a 3-hour jazz cruise around the city-which was GORGEOUS. We had a three course meal (which consisted of Duck liver, Chicken and potatoes because that’s like all they eat here, and fruit sorbet, but I substituted Caprese for the duck liver thank goodness). It started raining, but the boat was covered and we got to listen to some uh, interesting, jazz music—the singer was crazy and literally would insert screams into random places in her songs. Everyone had a great time though, and I loved getting to see the city lit up at night from the Vltava River!

Anyways, enough about Prague—just got back from London! But I need a nap, so I'll write about that later! 

South Bohemia: Plzeň and Český Krumlov

This weekend we had the opportunity to travel as a group to the South Bohemian region of the Czech Republic.  The countryside in this area is the most beautiful of any I had ever seen; unfortunately, we had all been out late the night before and left at 7:30am, so we were all asleep on the bus! On Friday we explored a bit of Plzeň. After a lunch of pizza and gelato (Italian food is much better than Czech food...we apparently can't get enough!) we went to Plzeň's General Patton museum. We were all confused as to why an American general had a museum in a small city in the Czech Republic, but at the museum we saw footage and learned a lot about his troops' liberalization of Plzeň at the end of World War II. American soldiers traveled around the Czechoslovakia, taking cities as they went, but received orders to stop 20km from Prague because the Soviet Union wanted to receive the glory of liberating the nation's capital. This probably contributed to the significant USSR control and presence of communism in Czechoslovakia over the next few decades. So, we did learn some interesting facts at the museum, but we all would've preferred to stay in Prague because we can learn more about General Patton, an American general, when we are actually in America, and there is SO much to do in Prague that we felt like we were missing out on!

After the museum tour, a group of us decided to visit the Pilsner Urquell brewery, where they make one of the most popular beers in the Czech Republic. We got to see the different steps in the beer production process, which was pretty neat because I had no idea how it was made. At one point, we tasted the raw materials in the beer (different grains, hops)...which were all so nasty! Our tour guide showed us the underground cellars of the factory where they used to brew the beer, which I thought was the coolest part because they really do have the barrels of beer that you see in the movies! Down in the cellars we tried unfermented, unpasteurized beer. Because I don't like beer in the first place (Mom: not that I've ever tried it because I'm not 21), I thought this stuff was really disgusting. However, it worked out because I had tons of friends there who were willing to finish mine. I'm so glad we went to the brewery-it was one of the coolest things we've seen so far!

The Pilsner Urquell Brewery

Waiting for the tour to start

That night was the Czech Republic's first game of the Euro Cup. They were playing Russia, so after a lot of searching, we found a pub close to our dorms where we got to watch the game with the Czechs! Unfortunately, they lost 1-4. 

The next day we got up early again, hopped on a bus, and traveled for 3 hours to the historic city of Český Krumlov (pronounced Chesky Kroomlov). The first thing we did when we got there was visit a graphite mine, which was pretty cool but really random because I don't think this country is famous for its graphite at all. We put on some super attractive mining gear and traveled into a mountain to explore the mines. 

On the tiny train down into the mine with Courtney, Satvika and Micah

Forrest and Nick

After that, we had some free time to walk around the city. Some friends and I went to an Indian restaurant for lunch (because I'm still avoiding Czech food), and then we walked around the castle of Český Krumlov before driving for 4 hours back to the city!

At the castle

Overall, I'm glad I've seen other parts of the Czech Republic now, but if I could do it again I probably would've stayed in Prague. There is just so much to do here! I'll fill in more about this week later-I'm in class right now and should probably pay attention to Chris' presentation-ha!

Finally...On to Prague!

Pre-Prague traveling was great, but we finally made it to Prague last Sunday! Our first train left from Salzburg at 6 a.m., and we had to switch trains twice on the way. In one of the stations (Cesky basdlkjfak;dj (that's what Czech sounds like, semicolon included) we only had 8 minutes between when one train arrived and when the next one left. After running from platform to platform, we ended up making it to the dorms at Vysoka Skola Ekonomicka. They are so nice! Micah and I are still roommates, and we have some pretty awesome suite mates.

Part of the City in the Rain

Classes started on Monday with "Business and Central and Eastern Europe." Professor Halik, our one Czech professor, is definitely a character. He's really funny, and on the first day of class (we have class 9am-1pm Monday-Thursday), we pretty much just watched Youtube videos the whole time. He also has all of these really cool stories because he lived in the Czech Republic when it was controlled by the Soviet Union, so we've been learning a lot about the consequences of communism. We also have finance class on Tuesday and Thursday, and I've learned that I actually really enjoy finance, which is great since it will probably be my major.

However, the really exciting part of this week was all of the sightseeing and just getting to experience Prague. On Monday after class, I walked with a bunch of girls down to Wenceslas Square, one of Prague's central plazas, where we went shopping! That night, a few of us decided to go to a famous jazz club that Halik recommended. The jazz music was great, but we had to be quiet, which is not something 10 college students are very good at. The trumpet player kept making these really subtle passive aggressive hints at us, saying things like "Thank you all for listening and enjoying...and for being really quiet." We all thought she was really talented for being able to play the trumpet and glare at us simultaneously.

On Tuesday after class we took a 3 hour walking tour of the city, and it was very cold and rainy, so we were all even more thrilled about walking around for so long. We did get to see all of Prague's famous sights, though, and it gave us a great idea about what we want to go back and see in detail. We also had this great tour guide who looked like a Czech Julie Andrews.

On Wednesday, Courtney, Micah and I decided that if it was going to continue to be cold and rainy, we needed to go buy some warmer clothes. After shopping, we went back to the dorms to relax and do some homework (it's quite unfortunate that we have school haha). Shopping is great here because most things are cheaper than they would be in the US!

Thursday was the best day this week. After class we went to grab lunch and and then some of us went to the Communist tower, the most unique/ugliest building in the Old Prague skyline but from which we had the best view. The Soviets built it a few decades ago, but it is still used today to provide TV for the city.

The communist tower...Look closely at the things climbing up the sides...

They are indeed babies...how creepy is that?!

Micah and I at the top of the tower

Catholic Corpus Christi mass at the beautiful St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague castle. The ceremony was so different from anything I had ever seen because it was led by Archbishop Dominik Duka, and it was all in Czech, so we couldn't understand a word. The few Catholic people in our group that came knew a tiny fraction of what was going on, but other than that we were completely lost. It was fine, though, because I was happy just looking at the inside of the beautiful church! After mass was the "procession," also led by the archbishop, intended to rededicate the city of Prague to Christ.

The inside of the cathedral from where we were sitting...it's also where all of the coronations were held in the past in the Czech Republic (before it was actually the Czech Republic)

The procession: The archbishop is under the tent.

After that ended we went to get crepes for dinner, and then it was time to rest before going out at night. Basically the whole group went to supposedly the "number 8 best club in the world" (it was really fun, but I probably wouldn't say it was the number 8 best). It was a great time though; we definitely showed the Europeans how to dance ;) hahaha.

With Morgan and Holland

On the way home, at around 3am, we couldn't figure out the tram situation, so we ended up walking most of the way back to the dorms. By this point I was just really tired and irritated. However, then someone had the idea to start singing Disney songs, so we ended up parading through the streets of Prague singing Mulan ("Let's Get Down to Business"...classic) and other super awesome songs. By the time we got back to the dorms I was exhausted, so I hurried to bed, only to be woken up at 7:30 a.m. to board the buses to South Bohemia (another region of the Czech Republic). Sleep isn't really an option here; there's too much to do! More stories to come later. Missing everyone back in the States! Also, I'm impressed that you made it all the way to the bottom of this super long post, so thank you so much for taking the time to read this! I'll post better pictures soon. My camera broke on Wednesday so I lost all my pictures from the beginning of the week!

The Hills are Alive....a few days in Salzburg!

The Train Ride

Sightseeing in Europe is absolutely wonderful. I can't imagine many things that are cooler than getting the opportunity to see all these crazy awesome places. On the flip side, the actual traveling part? Not so much fun. Our train from Venice left around 9 p.m. on Thursday night, which meant that we would arrive in Salzburg, Austria at around 4 a.m. on Friday morning. It was basically an overnight train, because we didn't want to waste a day of sightseeing. We got to the train station in Venice pretty early because this was our first international train, and we weren't sure how the process worked. We were hoping that since our train was to Salzburg, which isn't an incredibly popular tourist destination like Venice, it would be empty so we could spread out and lay down. We should have known that was too good to be true when we hopped on the train and saw that the ONLY other people on the train so far were a really sweet older German couple, sitting RIGHT in our compartment (the trains in Europe are so awesome; they have compartments like in Harry Potter, so I feel like I'm on the Hogwarts Express-unfortunately, minus the magic and chocolate frogs). This couple was really nice, but they had already taken their shoes, off, so the whole compartment smelled like feet.

We would have been fine with this, except we discovered once the train started moving that the air conditioning was broken. Summer in Italy is already hot, but about 30 minutes into the ride, when we were all sweating like crazy and trying to cool off, we found out that the heat was also on, which made the car about 10000 degrees. The next time someone came around to check our tickets, we asked them to turn it off, so about 3 hours into the 7 hour train ride it finally cooled down.

I slept for most of the train ride, thank goodness, but no one else slept much. Finally, we arrived in Salzburg at around 4 a.m. We couldn't check in until noon, so we decided to camp out in the train station for a few hours until breakfast places opened. I called my parents, since it was 9 p.m. in Southlake!

Chilling out with our luggage at 4 a.m. in the train station

I was finally dozing off in a random corner at about 7 a.m., when I was suddenly awakened by shouts. Standing above us were three security guards yelling at us in German, which was really scary. When they discover that we know about 4 words of German, they ask for our ticket in English, and after seeing that Salzburg is our final stop, scream, "OUT. OUT. OUT." And that is the story of how we were kicked out of an Austrian train station. Did I mention that it was freezing and pouring rain?

DAY 1

After dropping our stuff off at YoHo and eating breakfast at a yummy pastry shop (where we basically had to point at what we wanted because we didn't know how to order in German), we started walking around. It was still raining, but at this point we were just so ready to sightsee!

Salzburg in the rain

We went and saw Mozart Platz (the german word for plaza) and a few of Salzburg's biggest/oldest cathedrals because they open early in the morning. Then we went and saw Mozart's birthplace and Mozart's house:

Mozart's Birthplace

After stopping to grab sandwiches, we headed back to our room to nap! Since I slept for awhile on the train, I wrote my Venice blog entry instead. It was a nice three and a half hour break, but by the end I was ready to go out and see more! Nick and Micah decided to stay in the room because Micah wasn't feeling well, so Mukul and I walked around, got some coffee since it was still cold and rainy, went in a few shops, and ended up at a music festival, where we stood and watched some bands play for a bit.

Then we went back to the room to pick up Nick and Micah, and the four of us went to a fantastic vegetarian restaurant, where we made friends with our waiter who had worked on a cruise line for awhile and had been all over the world. Finally, we walked around Salzburg for a bit, bought some chocolates for dessert, and then headed back to the room to get some sleep.

DAY 2

Yesterday was a wonderful day! Unfortunately, though, Micah still wasn't feeling well, so she slept in for awhile while the three of us went on a "Sound of Music" bike tour around the city. The Sound of Music has always been one of my favorite movies, so I had definitely been looking forward to this for awhile. We saw a ton of places and learned a lot both about the movie and the real Von Trapp family and their story (cool fact; the family didn't actually escape into the mountains of Austria, but instead headed by train to Italy. The day after they left, Austria closed its borders. The movie is ironic because when they climb the mountains, they are actually heading towards Germany!)

About to start the bike ride

The fountain Maria splashes in when she's going to meet the Von Trapp family

The view from the Abbey in the movie/the church where the real Maria and Captain were married

The back of the Von Trapp house in the movie (the front is a completely different house!)

After the tour we came back to check on Micah and were so happy to hear that she was feeling much better. We went to lunch and then went to Hohensalzburg, or Salzburg castle, which is what Micah had been looking forward to the most. This is the best preserved castle in Europe, and it overlooks the city!

The castle

View from the castle

Inside the castle

Another view of Old Town

Overall, it was a great stay in Salzburg. Our train left at 6 a.m. this morning for Prague! Auf Wiedersehen, Austria!