Tuesday, November 25, 2008

i'm cold...

Well I officially froze my butt off this last weekend! We went to Berlin, and it was cold! We still had an awesome time though.



There is so much history in Berlin, so it was really cool to see and experience some of the sights and stuff. The city isn't nearly as picturesque as most of the cities I have been too, but the stuff that has happened there made it really cool. For example, we stood right over the exact same spot that Hitler killed himself. Although you would think that would be some sort of preserved place, it is actually a small grassy area where locals bring their dogs to do their duties. We all found that kinda funny...

We also saw part of the Berlin wall which was pretty cool, but again, if it wasn't for the history behind it, it would just look like an ugly concrete wall.

They have free city tours in most bigger cities here, so we did it there and it was awesome! The only bad part about it was that it was freezing. At one point in the tour we couldn't even barely see because the snow was blowing so hard in our faces.

This is the square where the famous book burnings were held. The building at the far end is Humboldt University, and it's library is on the left side of the picture. For the book burnings they had people in the library just throwing the books out all the windows, then they gathered them into big piles and lit them up. Sounds like a pretty good time right..?! That school has had a few pretty famous people come through. Albert Einstein taught there for awhile before he fled to the states and Karl Marx studied there.. There were more, but those are the only two i can remember...

On sunday we went outside of Berlin to an area called Potsdam. I dont really understand it exactly, but basically it is just this little town outside Berlin where a bunch of really rich people built a bunch of huge palaces. It was pretty crazy because there were just all these massive palaces right next to each other. It would have been quite the neighborhood, talk about keeping up with the Jones'!













Tuesday, November 18, 2008

holy parlimant

This last weekend Brian, Anna and I decided to make to swing through Bratislava and head down to Budapest! It was really awesome, Budapest is one of my favorite cities so far and Bratislava was much better the second time.

We planned on going to Bratislava for this wine festival thing that was supposed to be going on, but when we got there we found out that you had to buy tickets in advance and it was really expensive. So instead we just walked around the city and kinda hung out for the afternoon. I kinda played guide for the afternoon since I had been there before so we had a lot of fun!

The next day we went to Budapest and got there early in the afternoon. Since it is getting darker so much earlier now it really limits what you can do in a day. So since we didn't have a ton of daylight left we just went down the river (the danube runs right through the city), and walked along it for awhile. You can see pretty much all of the really huge old buildings and stuff since they were all built right on the river, so that was really cool!

The next day we decided to do this free walking tour that started around 10:30. It was probably a really good tour, but it was moving a little too slow for me so we bailed after a little while and went our own direction. We stopped and got some coffee first because it was pretty cold that day, and I dont need much of an excuse to get coffee.. Then we just kinda started walking around and seeing the sights. There is tons of really awesome old buildings in Budapest, so we didn't really slow down until we couldn't walk anymore.

That night we decided to hit up the Baths that are there in the city. They are really famous and everyone says that a trip to Budapest isn't complete without a trip to the Baths, so we had to check it out. If we had anything like that back home, I would probably live there! It was pretty much just a huge oval shaped building with 3 big pools in the open air area inside the building. In the actual building there as just a bunch of rooms with a bunch of hot tubs that were varying sizes and temperatures. It was pretty cool, especially because of all the old guys flaunting their stuff in tiny speedos everywhere!

The next day before we came back to Prague we went to this huge indoor Market thing that is also really famous there. It just had tons of different booths and vendors selling pretty much anything you could need. Upstairs there was a bunch of food vendors selling pretty interesting foods, so we had a lot of fun trying different things and even more fun trying to figure out what they were! haha
Unfortunately the weekend had to come to an end though, so we came back to Prague that afternoon.

I have a math test on thursday, so I have been trying to look over that stuff a little. This coming weekend I think we are going to go to Berlin, so I am really looking forward to that too!

South Moravia Pictures



































Tuesday, November 11, 2008

South Moravia!

So this last weekend i went on a trip to southern moravia, which is in southeast czech republic. It was a blast! The trip was organized by some of the awesome people in the international student club at my school, so it was already planned out and everything. It was so nice!

We left friday morning and went to a little town called Znojmo. There we climbed up in a tower, saw the city, and toured these underground tunnels that run underneath the city. They used to just be basements, but during the war they linked them all together so that they could hide down there. It was really cool!

After that we moved on to a different town called Mikulov. This entire region is known for their wine, and Mikulov definitely holds up its end of the deal. We went friday night to like a wine cellar place where we ate dinner and tasted a bunch of different kinds of wine. It was unlimited, so I am sure you can imagine that some people got their money's worth! It was pretty entertaining though. They even had an accordian player there for us (which was cool, until someone threw up on him).

As I am sure you can imagine, the next morning most people were a little slow getting out of bed. Luckily for them though, they had a good excuse to stay in bed. It was pouring outside all morning, and since we had planned on walking around Mikulov all morning we just decided to hang out in the hostel till around noon. We all just kinda hung out and played card games and stuff.
When we left Mikulov we headed towards the area in between Lednice and Valtice where there is an awesome Chateau that is surrounded by a bunch of lakes and stuff. We spent a couple hours walking around there even though it was still raining. Then we headed for Breclav!
That night in breclav we went to a mexican restaraunt/pub and all hung out there for most of the evening. When we all left there a few of us decided to try out this local dance club that we saw on the way back. It was kinda weird, but we all still had a good time!
On Sunday we went out the this placed called Punkev where there is an awesome cave and an underground river! We hiked around a little, then got a tour of the cave which was awesome! On part of the tour we got into these little boats and went through this underground river that ran through the cave. It was really awesome, and we all had a blast with it!
On our way back to Prague we stopped in Brno, which is the second biggest city in the Czech Republic, to grab something to eat. Then we came back to Prague!
It was such a fun trip, I am really glad I went on it!

(I dont have my pictures on my computer yet, but i will post some when i do)

Monday, November 10, 2008

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARGARET!

Ok, so i know that i have been incredibly lazy about updating on here. I will update tomorrow to let you all know whats been going on.

But today is my little niece's birthday! So whoever reads this, I want you to sing happy birthday to her in your head (or out loud preferably).. I think that she will be able to feel the love!