Eastern Europe: Prague, Vienna, and Bratislava

Over Christmas break I did a lot of traveling. For New Years Eve I spent the week in Prague which was very eventful. The city itself is gorgeous and I went around to Prague castle, and the various districts of Prague. We went to a Jewish cemetery in the Jewish district of Prague which was amazing. The headstones are all basically laying one on top of the other. It's basically graves upon graves and there's at least 12,000 people buried there although that particular plot of land should probably only allow for a few hundred if even. We also went to St. Vitus' cathedral which was a sight in and of itself. Prague itself was good although the service people were quite rude.


After this we went to Vienna which was surprisingly different than I expected. It wasn't very touristy at all and the historical places were placed randomly. It was a jumbled mix of modern and historical buildings. However, there were a lot of Asian restaurants which was unexpected but exciting to say the least. One of the highlights on this trip for me was the Freud museum which was actually his home. This encompassed his waiting room, consultation room, and office. We also got to see Mozart's grave which was unreal.


The last day we spent in Bratislava since we were flying out of there back to England. It was a small town (it has a population of less than 500,000) but it was really nice despite the -8 Celsius temperatures. We spent time at the castle and just exploring around the city.

I'm now back in England and unfortunately doing finals which will last the next two weeks.

Prague:
http://picasaweb.google.com/slicedbreadbox/Prague?authkey=xZBFlVmmEtM&feat=directlink

Vienna:
http://picasaweb.google.com/slicedbreadbox/Vienna?authkey=XKXZxU7QN4Y#

Bratislava:
http://picasaweb.google.com/slicedbreadbox/Bratislava?authkey=JHKbJRYQxv4#


xx

London and Liverpool

On December 12th, I went to London. My trip got off to a rocky start but thankfully I had a friend from high school there who was able to help me sort out everything. I saw her for one day while in London since she was only there for the semester. We went to CamdenTown, an area of London, that has a bunch of largely open air markets. Part of it was once an area where horses were sold. So now, the stalls have been converted into markets. It's a really neat area of town and the prices aren't so ridiculous as you might come across in London.

On my 2nd day in London, I walked around the city, seeing many of the tourist destinations like the Tower of London, London Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe Theater and the Tate Modern. The Tate Modern was not as good as I had hoped it would be but they still had some interesting, if not disturbing, pieces. I went into a cathedral at one point and happened to catch the last bit of a Finnish Christmas concert which was pretty neat. Thankfully the weather was decent for most of my trip in London. Not too much rain and it was warmer than Leeds.


On my 3rd day I continued with the tourist destinations- going to Buckingham Palace, seeing some of Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, Ben Franklin House, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, some of the Kensington Gardens, some of the Piccadilly and Oxford Circus, and a small bit of Soho. London was really nice and surprisingly, not as expensive as I had anticipated. The underground is comparable to BART in the Bay Area and it's very easy to navigate around the city. I never got lost because of the great underground system and signs all over the city.


I've spent the last week in Leeds, doing things around the town like going to the Royal Armouries and going to the Leeds version of a Christkindelmarkt. On Friday, the 19th, I went to Liverpool and went on the Magical Mystery Tour. The tour was set up really well and we saw a lot of sites including homes and birthplaces for the Beatles. The tour focused on their lives growing up and the formation of the band- stomping grounds, places they met, etc. We saw a lot of sites from popular songs like "Penny Lane", saw a cemetary that has a tombstone for Eleanor Rigby, and of course the Cavern Club.


I have a lot of pictures from the two trips and instead of the Flickr website I had been using- which has a limit as to how many pictures I can upload per month- I have started using a new website.

Here are London pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/slicedbreadbox/London?feat=directlink

Here are Liverpool pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/slicedbreadbox/Liverpool?feat=directlink

For now I'm having trouble find a direct link to the site so I will just continue to blog, giving links to the pictures everytime. For Christmas I'll be going to Ulverston, which is in the Lake District of England. I'll be spending the weekend with a retired English couple and all I know so far is that we'll be going to a Church of England service. I hope to see some nice English countryside- the town seems to be quaint and they have hens in the yard. Then, I'll be flying to Prague on the 28th to spend New Years Eve there. So, an early Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!

xx

Copenhagen

This past week I went to Copenhagen to visit a friend from high school who's studying abroad there for the semester. I went to see the Little Mermaid statue and Amalienborg, the Royal Palace, and to the Carlsberg Factory on the first day. The Carlsberg factory is nice but I actually though the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin had a better setup. Although at Carlsberg you get two drinks at the end versus the one in Dublin.

The next day I went to Christinia which is basically a hippy population that lives inside Copenhagen but they're exempt from law. They basically created their own society. So there's a lot of cannibis paraphernalia around. The buildings are graffittied but it's actually really pretty artwork. We didn't stay long though. I went to the National Museum in Copenhagen which was massive. They had a variety of exhibits so I spent a lot of time there. The displays were really well done and there's pictures on flickr.

On my last day we went to the canal and saw the Christmas market. I went to the Danish worker's museum to see some WWII/Nazi exhibits that I had been wanting to see. Unfortunately these exhibits were all in Danish and German so I didn't know exactly what I was looking at for most of it, although I was able to figure most things out.

Overall, Copenhagen is a really nice, but expensive city. They're also a bit more modern than I expected. Once you go outside Copenhagen though, it's all countryside and smaller towns. This coming weekend is London and then in a few more weeks, Prague.

xx

Edinburgh: Take Two

This past weekend I went back to Scotland for the study centre's Thanksgiving. They put on a Thanksgiving for the UC students in Edinburgh. I went up early Friday morning since I don't have classes on Fridays. I ended up taking the day to check out Glasgow.

First thing when I went to Glasgow, I stopped at a Starbucks to get directions and I met a girl from the SF Bay Area who actually coached at a rival high school. I went to the Glasgow Cathedral and Provand's Lordship- the oldest house in Glasgow. I randomly found the Glasgow Necropolis and explored there. It's right by the cathedral and up on a hill so you get amazing views of Glasgow. Luckily it didn't rain and it wasn't too cold when I was there either.


Since it gets dark around 4pm now, I just took the opportunity to walk around the city centre and look at all the Christmas lights. Scotland in general is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Glasgow seemed to have more of a modern feel to it, reminding of San Fran with a Starbucks on every other corner. But, if you walk less than a mile, you're surrounded by history.

The rest of the weekend was spent having Thanksgiving dinner and hanging out with UC friends. Unfortunately the dinner was only mediocre but they had Ceilidh which ended up being a lot of fun. The hostel was fun too and we ended up making some new friends.

This week my friends and I plan on having our own, more traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Hopefully that goes well...it should be interesting to see how the turkey turns out! Next week I'll be going to Copenhagen!

xx

Dublin, Ireland

This month has been pretty busy for me, what with elections, gigs, papers and traveling. It's been a good month though. I went to see MGMT on the 5th, not realizing when I had bought my ticket back in the States that the 5th is bonfire night. I did get to see some fireworks though. The fireworks went on basically all week.

On the 6th I flew out to Dublin, Ireland late at night. I got in around midnight and just went straight to my hostel- which was pretty nice actually. I had to go up about 6-7 flights of stairs to get to my room and I had a 10 bed female room. Everyone was pretty courteous of each other though and it was a good first hostel experience. I was there until the morning of the 10th. A friend of mine from the study abroad course went as well. We ended up going to the Dublin Castle, the archeology museum [where they had actual preserved corpses!], the Guinness Storehouse, a medieval church [from the 12th century that had one of the original city walls around it], and to Kilmainham Gaol [the old, unused prison that was used during Easter Rising]. We went on an Irish musical pub crawl too.


Dublin is actually pretty expensive, and cold, but it was a lot of fun. The Guinness Storehouse is really nice and I was actually able to pull my own pint after going through the tour. Afterwards, they let you drink your pint up in the Gravity Bar, which is one of the highest points in Dublin, if not the highest, and it has a 360 degree view of Dublin. Unfortunately not too long after we got up to the bar, it started raining so I couldn't get as many good pictures. It was really nice though.


The pub crawl was really neat too. It's led by two guys that are professional musicians and they sing traditional Irish music. I took a few videos, mostly for my Dad, and they're dark but the sound is okay. We frequented Temple Bar which was pretty expensive and touristy but it was a lot of fun. Everyone seemed to take really well to us in Dublin too. I suppose it was probably because of the election results and we were there the weekend after. We had several people ask if we were American and when they found out, they just proclaimed their love for us. Everyone wanted to discuss politics and Obama too. They seemed really pleased with the outcome though.

Pub Crawl 1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=gX6TfhSIBwg

Pub Crawl 2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=109aiKw3ohI&feature=related

Pub Crawl 3
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iTL2ZyEJhx8&feature=related

Pub Crawl 4
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=A9zYk7w7S5o&feature=related

I came back to Leeds and then I had a couple of papers due. I went to a venue in Leeds, The Cockpit, to see Ladytron on Friday. I went last night to the same venue to see an LA band, The Airborne Toxic Event. That went really well. I talked to a few of them and they took to me since I had seen them quite a while ago and I was a fellow American.


This weekend I'll be going back to Edinburgh since they're hosting a Thanksgiving event for the all of the UC kids. Since I'm getting there early on Friday, I'm going to take the day to go up and explore Glasgow.

I also found out that I'll be spending Christmas with a host family in the Lake District, not too far from me. It's a really small, quaint area and it looks almost farm-like. Their description said they had a dog, two cats, some goldfish and some hen in the yard. And then my flatmate invited me to Madrid with her since she's from there and will be going back for break. So, I might go there in January.

xx

Does it Offend You, Yeah?

The past week has been fairly busy so I've slacked off on the blog. Last Thursday I ended up going to a Spanish bar in Leeds with my Spanish flatmate since a friend of hers was dancing flamenco. There were so many people that I wasn't able to see much of it. It was alright though, I was able to see flamenco when I went to Spain in 2005. Then Saturday ended up being my first pub crawl.

The popular pub crawl in Leeds is the Otley Run. Technically, it's about 20 pubs and you go to each one and are basically expected to drink at each one. This pub crawl only lasted about 13 pubs though. It was "P" themed which means you dress up as anything that starts with a "P." There were priests, prisoners, perverts, etc. It was a lot of fun although it was weird to start at 4 in the afternoon.

The next day we went out to a pub for Sunday roast. Apparently, Sunday roast is like a mini Thanksgiving and it takes place every Sunday. It'll consist of a choice of meat [usually beef or lamb] with Yorkshire pudding, potatoes and vegetables. It ended up sounding a lot better than it was but I'm sure that with a home-cooked one it could be really good.

During the week I just kept busy with school work and the like. I signed up to do the HOST program which means that for a weekend in the near future, I'll be living with a family in the UK. I'm not sure where yet- I won't find out for a while. Hopefully somewhere more in the country. I here a lot of people like to go to Scotland- which would be nice but I've already been there and I'm going back next month. One of the weekends I put down was Christmas, since I won't be coming back to the States for it. It'd be neat to have a traditional British Christmas- preferably somewhere where it would snow.

On Thursday, last night, I went to the University Union and saw a band, Does it Offend You, Yeah? perform. The show was really good. The lead had a broken leg so had to sit for the show but he powered through and I feel, was even more animated than he was at Coachella. I took a video at the show and uploaded it to YouTube last night and the band actually used it in a bulletin they sent out to all their fans!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FhKqpqwHlE4

I haven't posted any pictures to my flickr account lately since I'm only allowed so many per month. When I get more allowance, I'll upload more. Not all of my castle pictures were uploaded but you can also see them here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003662&l=6f195&id=1066170070

and here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003663&l=e71b2&id=1066170070

I probably won't upload all of the castle pictures to flickr since next week I'm going to Dublin so I'm sure I'll have a lot more pictures to upload. Also, I'll be back in Edinburgh for the EAP Thanksgiving they organize for us. Last night, I also booked a flight to Copenhagen for the first week of December. I have a friend studying abroad there so I'll be visiting her. I'm really excited for it- and where I'm flying into- the first Legoland is there! So I might take a day to go see that :]

Castles and things

So this past week I've been keeping pretty busy. Thankfully, my cough has gotten a lot better. On Monday, I participated in an experiment and then learned exactly what my first task will be as a research assistant. For now, I'll be pulling data for the professor I'm working for. In a few weeks when the experiment really gets going I'll be doing something slightly more complicated. The professor actually lived in Canada for 10 1/2 years but she's from Greece.

Tuesday I gave a presentation for my Imperial Germany class. It was about Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany. It actually went a lot better than expected, thankfully. I was nervous about the professor since he's pretty intimidating but he enjoyed my presentation and gave me a high grade.
My flatmate had invited me out to a pub that night since she's studying abroad [from Madrid, Spain] with Erasmus. I guess they were having a gathering at a pub on campus. So I went along to that with a few other people. When we first got in, a football match was on so the place was fairly busy and everyone was pretty animated about the game.

I ended up meeting another kid from Spain. We talked a while- he was thoroughly interested in the States. He was saying that in Spain, they pay about 400 euros per school year and that's it. Ridiculous. I met another kid from Sweden. Over there, they don't pay for school at all. I'm not sure how the system works then- if they just apply to particular schools and hope they get into their choice. But they don't pay! Also, with the Erasmus program, the kids actually get grants to study abroad. So they're essentially being paid to do it. The Swedish kid was really interested in the American elections so we're all supposed to get together to watch the post election results somewhere.

Today I went to Howard Castle. It was in Malton, which is just outside of York. It's about an hour train ride from Leeds. It was a bit of a journey getting out there but it was worth it. The castle is more of a private residence than anything but it's incredible. It sits on 10,000 acres of land. There's a masoleum [although that unfortunately wasn't open to the public], a few lakes, stables, etc. We walked around the grounds of the house and went in to view the rooms. We were allowed to take pictures, which usually doesn't happen at places like that, so I took well over 150 pictures. I'll be posting those on flickr later this week.

The rest of this week will be really busy too- tapas and flamenco, a pub crawl, Sunday roast, potentially covering a gig for the student newspaper...and then in two weeks I'll be going to Dublin, Ireland! Hopefully I'll be going down to Cork to see and kiss the Blarney stone too. A couple of my friends mentioned going to Prague for New Years as well so I might look into that. Exciting!

xx