Vienna

The next day Carlos, me and another friend headed to Vienna, Austria. The plan was to have the whole afternoon and evening to explore plus most of the next day...of course plans always have a way of changing. We arrived midday and went directly to look for our hostel. There was only a few problems with that...it was almost impossible to find the place. We were lacking some details but figured it wouldn't be that hard since we knew more or less where it was at. WRONG! Luckily we brought some pizza with us (dinner from the night before) so we weren't about to run out of food while we searched for the hostel.  It was just confusing because it literally was RIGHT in front of our faces...what we failed to know however was that the name wasn't on a big sign...instead it was a small post-it on the door w/ 3 different names on in...one of which was the hostel name- KOKO.

When we walked inside it looked like an apartment building...ok, so what should we do now. We were very fortunate to have a woman direct us to the bottom floor where the owners were...the ones running the "hostel." As soon as we met the family who ran the place everything went smoothly. The Korean family who ran everything was beyond friendly and the room ended up being quite nice.  It was really a 3 bedroom apartment turned into a hostel but since the rooms were huge and well taken care of it was all a great find. And to make it better, the room was for 5 people but we had it all to ourselves!

Ok, enough talking about the hostel...lets move on to ACTUAL Vienna. We set out towards the center and along the way saw tons of cool shops and advertisements. Here are my favorite ones:

this could be interesting...tomato & strawberry yogurt

I have no idea what its advertising exactly but its interesting...

I know its just German
but I love that it says "die centimeter"

this was just a shoe display

this one just struck me as a bit strange

When we got towards the center there was a plaza area with creatively made benches. Since I can't read German I'm not sure what the sign says about it but it obviously has something to do with what we saw.

The town was just really neat and only got better the more we explored. We walked by all the touristy places like the cathedral/church, some government building, a huge plaza area (sorry for lack of details, I've obviously have been traveling too much and forgetting everything).

 We were a touch in a rush BECAUSE we had an opera to head to! There's a good option for people who don't want to spend a lot of money on seeing the opera and that's what we did. So what is this good and cheap option? Stand the whole time. Now it only cost 3 euros to see the opera which is CHEAP but it does last 3 hrs so you better have some comfortable shoes on. I think the next time I go I'll splurge on the seats (which from what I understand cost upwards of 50euros) so I can sit! Plus then I'd probably feel obligated to dress up and have the "true" opera experience instead of going in jeans and a t-shirt. It really was easy to tell the difference between the "high rollers" and the cheap seat attendants. It was just a funny combo but either way it's well worth it to see (the opera that is).

The opera really was fantastic. The one we saw had 2 separate stories and both were really good although I have to say the second was my favorite. They were both about a spouse cheating on the other, the affair that happened, and what typically pursues when the non-cheating spouse finds out what's going on...or at least typical for an opera (since I suppose not all people kill their spouse for cheating). I suppose a less dramatic opera wouldn't be as entertaining. Anyhow I wanted to take pic during but it's not allowed but I did manage to get some after the show was finished.

After the opera we went to find some food since I was starving! And where did we go? A Mexican restaurant...of course.  It was pretty good but I'm still excited for when I get home and can start making my own!

The next day we got up relatively early to go see the palace. We had a little breakfast (salad and toast) in the Korean family's dining room, again, they were super nice, and then headed out. We got to the Palace, stood in line for quite a while to buy the entrances and had to wait around until our time came to visit inside (about 2 hours later). While we were waiting we checked out the gardens around the palace that are HUGE. There is literally a zoo inside the garden grounds...and they have pandas :)

We didn't make it to the zoo NOR did we ever make it inside the palace. Why? Because I lost the tickets somewhere in the gardens.  Awesome. Luckily we did get to spend plenty of time hanging out in the gardens, seeing statues, going to the lookout point and eating yummy apple strudel. So not a huge loss, although its pretty obvious that I'm gonna have to go back and visit since I missed out on a few things there...such as the palace.

After the adventures at the palace the day started to turn to chaos... at least for me. We headed into town and I still hadn't drank any water (it was about 2pm) or eaten lunch PLUS it was super hot, so I ended up getting heat exhaustion (at least I'm pretty darn sure). Always a really great thing when you're in a city you don't know and you start getting dizzy and can't even form sentences to tell people what you need. I did get food though and water which helped me to feel better. From all that drama, plus I was still a little dizzy, I decided not to go on the bike ride and Carlos and a friend had been planning. Instead I hung out and wrote some postcards...and maybe bought some pastries.

When my 2 friends got back from the bike ride we were in a rush to get back to the hostel, pick up the bags and then catch our bus. UNFORTUNATELY someone "got sick" on the metro (that's literally all they said over the loudspeaker...and in german) so we were sitting on the metro while 15 min passed by and we missed our bus. Super.

Now what are our options? That was also a bit tricky to figure out since the "bus station" was actually just a bus stop with some time listings of when the buses come. Nowhere to buy your tickets and nowhere to ask any questions. So we had to make some calls and luckily we have some friends that looked up the info for us. UNFORTUNATELY there were no more buses with seats available. Next option? Train. Ok, that works, now where do we buy our tickets? Oh we have to go to another town to get to the main train station? Alright. Strange that it's not in Vienna but ok. So we headed over there and got our bus tickets for 10pm that night. At that point I guess it was just nice to know that we were getting back to Brno that night and not sleeping in the train station (it was the last train that day and no other buses).

One thing I do have to mention is there was one really positive part to missing our bus. I met this awesome girl, Margareth, who's bus actually never came, grrr, so had to catch a train too (really unfortunate for her was that there was no train until 6pm, big grrr). We ended up hanging out a bit since my friends and I had some time to kill before our train left. Me and her wandered around a bit looking for a place with computers and internet and had a decent amount of time to chat. It turns out she was actually really interesting and was going to be in Budapest the next day. And where was I going the next day? BUDAPEST. So she thought (and I agreed) it'd be great to meet up and hang out since we'd both be there. We ended up exchanging info and made plans to meet again in Budapest.

Anyhow, to finish with the "current" trip, we caught the train, got to Brno, literally had to run to catch the local train up to Carlos' campus and arrived around midnight or a bit later. I ended up staying in that night, it was a bit of a rough day for me, but my friends went out along with all the Erasmus people to the club(s). The next day was set aside for packing, chilling out and catching a bus to Budapest.

I can't WAIT to tell you about Budapest so just hold on tight...

Bratislava here we come

Everything is just so close within Europe so it’s easy to move around here. After spending the day in Brno in the Czech Republic the next day we took a train over to Slovakia to visit Bratislava. The train took just about 2 hrs and we were there…fantastic.

Bratislava isn’t too big so I think 1 day was sufficient although I’m sure you could easily preoccupy yourself there for a few days at least. When we arrived we just walked around the town for a bit and decided eventually to sit down for some coffee. I also got something to eat…a crepe. I thought it would be like what I’d tried before…like French crepes but it was different and actually really good. It’s a bit thicker and its even called a pancake (although it much more like a French crepe than an American pancake) and it was filled with yummy cheese and ham and topped w/ some veggies. Yum!!!

Apparently these “pancakes” are really popular in that area of Europe since I started to see them all over afterwards. Anyways, we all left the coffee place content and tummies full and began to wander some more. FYI while we're on the topic of food I should also mention that I found a restaurant named ALEXIS while wandering around...quite strange since its a greek name but I LOVE it!

The town is quite cute and a good tourist spot. There's plenty to explore and its just a "typical" European town. It was also nice because they used euros so I didn’t have to change money over again (Czech uses crowns).

Wandering around the town is pretty much what we did all day and it was great. We wandered through a cemetery, up the hill to a fantastic lookout point, over to the castle and walked just past the river.

We also found a festival going on with children of all ages dressed up in tradition costumes and doing performances (we saw one with singing and dancing). I wish we could have stayed for more but we had to head and catch our train back (the last one for the evening back to Brno). Before we did however we made a few pit stops. First to the “man in the hole”…just a statue of a man sticking his head out of a manhole…apparently it’s a famous thing there and its actually pretty neat. Then we grabbed some 1euro ice cream…not too bad of a treat on a sunny day. And the last stop was the “blue church” that is literally blue. We weren’t entirely sure why they painted it the light blue but we made some funny stories up about why we thought it was that way…they ran out of white paint at the store, they were trying to match it with the sky, etc. It was really nice though and they even had a sermon going on so we dropped in for a little bit but soon had to leave to catch our train.

We had to rush but we did make it on time, with a few min to spare and headed to Brno. And once again in Brno there were parties going on but we were pretty exhausted so it was mostly just a chill night of eating pizza and playing a card game…and only a little bit of hanging out with people afterwards :)
I wanted to go to bed relatively early however because the next morning we had another trip…and I still had to pack since we were staying overnight at our next destination. Stay tuned to find out where we went…

Au revoir Paris...ahoj a Česká republika

My bad about the lack of posts....I've been all over the place physically and also emotionally! I'll try to fill you all in on my adventures in the past 2 weeks! I'll probably have to break this post up but let's go ahead and start with where I left off....leaving Paris.

The flight was fine although I, unfortunately, was that annoying sick person on the plane that you hope doesn't sit next to YOU. Too bad, so sad.

When I arrived I was so happy to find my friend waiting for me at the airport. That’s always such a great feeling and something I never get sick of. My travels in Eastern Europe (that started in Prague) were just a whirlwind so; again, I’ll do my best to remember what happened, in what city, etc.

Prague: Carlos was so nice to meet me at the airport and we went there directly into the city. He had organized everything, which I was thankful for since I knew nothing, so when we arrived we hit the ground running. Once we got into the city we did a little bit of sightseeing while we walked to the hostel.

We didn’t spend too much time exploring at that moment since we had our bags and we were doing a tour the next morning anyhow. Once we got to the hostel we turned around and left. Oh and strangely enough we ran into a guy from Eugene, Oregon (I have fam there) staying at the hostel…small world.

Our adventures were basically just exploring the city a bit more before it got too dark…so we saw the bridge, the cathedral/church and other various “tourist” points.

Carlos, the history buff that he is, told me tons of interesting facts and stories about the town. Of course I forgot mostly everything but I did retain a few fun facts such as…

There’s a point on the bridge where there’s a metal “sculpture” and 2 parts of it are really shiny. Why? Because people go there to touch it for good luck…it has to do with the king and being jealous and killing a priest (or some religious figure) because he wouldn’t tell the king about the confessions of his (the king's) wife (history lesson in 2 sec). The funny thing is that only one of the spots is actually what you touch for good luck. The other one was just a prank by some kids that came by in the middle of the night, poured some acid on another part of the “sculpture” to make it shiny…then all the people only assumed you should touch there too.

Hope you enjoyed that. So again, we just explored the town until we got hungry. We headed to a recommended spot nearby and boy were we right to go there. The ambience there was what one should and would imagine in the Czech…lots of old photos, large “barrels” where they stored the beer that they made there, a man playing the accordion, the waitresses that spoke almost no English yet seemed to understand everything we wanted…and the food. It was great, very “home” like as if you walked into a local’s kitchen, grabbed some food and took a seat. I actually felt pretty adventurous and had some wild boar (delicious), yum. We also tried some of their famous natural beer which is quite different from kind I’ve ever had before.

fish eye....

...makes everything more fun!

Another fun fact: the natural beers that they made have to be consumed within a certain amount of time (just a few hrs) otherwise they go bad. They also don’t have much alcohol in them meaning you could probably drink 2 LARGE jugs and it would be the equivalent of 1 small can (in terms of alcohol).

After food we headed to the hostel because we were gonna have to get up “early” to go on the tour. So…sleep, wake up & get ready…

Tour: We went on a Free Walking Tour of Prague (they don’t charge and you just tip what you want to pay…like 5-10euros roughly, depending on how they do). The tour was really interesting and we saw pretty much all the tourist points (on one side of town) with all the historical explanations.

Something you may not know about Prague is how romantic the city is. Everyone says how romantic Paris is but really I don’t necessarily agree with that…instead I really think its Prague. It’s just a typical small European town with a LOT of charm. Maybe that’s why we saw 3 brides in the main plaza area within the period of 2 hours…

It’s worth it to travel there and there’s TONS of sightseeing to do even though it’s a small town. Unfortunately we were only there from the late afternoon the day before until about 2pm the next day…not enough time so I’ll have to go back.

We had to BOOK IT (literally RUN) from the where we ended the tour to our hostel, grab our stuff and then to the metro to get to the bus station! It was a bit fast but we arrived with about 5 min to spare…but we did arrive (huffing and puffing).

Next stop: Brno

I’ll keep this one in the same post since Brno is still in Czech Republic… so why did we go there? It’s where Carlos is studying! There’s a large Erasmus (exchange students within Europe) community but not much else. So once we arrived there (it’s only a few hour bus ride from Prague) we headed where? STRAIGHT to a pub crawl. We didn’t even have enough time to drop by the residence to drop off our bags; we just left them in some lockers at the train station (next to the bus station) and headed right to the meeting point of the pub crawl.

I’d never done a pub crawl so I didn’t know what to expect but I quickly learned...so in case you don’t know either, I’ll explain. There are teams, in this case teams of 4 people (I was the tag along 5th person) and you have to go to a series of bars. This time it was 8 bars, and at each one you have to drink X amount of beers, at this one it was 3 beers at each bar for the whole team…So 4 people sharing 3 beers at 8 different spots. Not only do you do this but you have to be the fastest…what does that mean? Well how do you get somewhere faster? You RUN. And of top of that you’re trying to drink the beers as fast as possible in order to get to the next place faster. Oh and it’s also you’re responsibility to make a strategic plan of what bars to hit first so you can be the fastest (since the bars are all over the city). ALSO you’re not allowed to take any sort of public transportation so running really IS the only option.

As I’m sure you can imagine…after a few bars people start to get tired…and tipsy…so the running slows down, you drink slower and talk more to the people at each bar. In the end everyone is happy (and probably sweaty) and you all meet up to celebrate…with more beers.

It was definitely “college” experience but I had lots of fun meeting new people from ALL different countries.
The next day was quite relaxing…since everyone had been out so late. We had a BBQ and chilled out in the sun.

OHHH and something else important to mention is the weather change…As I mentioned in the last post, while I was in Paris it rained a lot and just wouldn’t stop. So I only assumed that it would be even colder in Czech Republic…hence why I brought plenty of layers. BUT I was pleasantly surprised to find that as soon as I arrived to Prague the rest of my travels in Easter Europe would be done in the least amount of clothing possible…because it was SO hot. The entire time I was traveling it was between 25-30 ⁰C (roughly 77-86 ⁰F)! What a wonderful surprise! Seattle has taught me well, always travel with layers! Otherwise I would have been burning up in just sweaters.

As I mentioned we had a BBQ and it lasted most of the day. At the end I was pretty exhausted…being out in the sun for hours. That evening was more fiestas at the residence hall…I don’t know how they do it all the time! I guess it’s just something you get used to…or don’t. I think I would die of exhaustion hahaha

I only spent 2 more evenings in Brno but during the day we took trips to nearby countries so let’s end this post here and start with the next!