We've got fitness

Two weekends ago (March 4-6th) I was able to finally live my dream of seeing the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany.

 I went with Cassi and our friend Trevor. We left Thursday night and arrived in Munich around 5:30. We had to make our way to the city center so that we could get to our hostel, which was just around the corner from where the main train/metro station was, and then we hopped onto our tour bus (it was a double decker) that took us through the Bavarian countryside to see the Linderhof and Neuschwanstein Castles. They were both built by King Ludwig II. His favorite castle, out of the 4 he built, was the Linderhof Castle, where he spent 8 years of his life.

It had snowed a couple days before we got there so everything was covered in snow. In the Spring there are gardens and a fountain infront of the castle, I saw pictures of it and it's absolutely gorgeous, I would love to go back to see the gardens someday.

Unfortunately this is the only picture I was allowed to legally take inside the castle. It was the most over the top decorations I had ever seen. Everything was covered in gold and there wasn't a single wall that hadn't been painted and lavishly decorated with some kind of china. The best room was the Hall of Mirrors, there were mirrors positioned so that when you looked into them it felt as though the room went on forever.





After the Linderhof Castle we were bussed to a little town so that we could buy some souviners and then we were off to the Neuschwanstein Castle! I had been wanting to go for forever and it was on the top of my list of things to see while I was here and it most definitely was not a let down. It was like a fairytale, infact Walt Disney must have thought so too because the Sleeping Beauty Castle is an exact replica.

To get to the castle you have to hike up a hill, our tour guide said "it's a 30 minute walk if you have fitness and 45minutes if you don't." I suppose we must have fitness because we made it up there in about 25minutes. It was completely worth it though, I was so excited when we finally reached the top. 

We got to have a guided tour inside the castle but, like the Linderhof, we weren't able to take pictures inside.

The whole day was absolutely perfect.

The day after the castles we went to Dachau and did a 3 hour free walking tour. The walking tour was really great because we learned a lot of history about the city and our tour guide told us a lot about Hitler and his revolution, she also took us to some of the exact spots he had walked. I enjoyed it because I learned a ton of things and I got to see it/walk through it myself instead of sitting in a classroom trying to learn about it.

Dachau

I know it looks like just a wall but actually it's a pretty important place for many people. Can you see the square left on the top middle block? There used to be a sign that was hung there by Hitler, everytime someone walked by it they had to salute it. As you can imagine there were plenty of people who did not want to do this because they weren't part of the Nazi Party.

To avoid the sign people began "dogging" it, they would turn a street early just so that they could walk around the sign. Unfortunately the guards that stood by the sign to make sure that people saluted weren't dumb and figured out what the people were doing so they began to keep track of the people going down doggers alley and if they were caught going that way too many times they were beaten and humilated infront of people. Throughout the city there are streets with gold cobblestones (like this one to the right) to commemorate those who dogged the sign.

I didn't get the best picture for this story but there are 2 lions in the middle of the picture, the building to the left is a governemt building and the one on the right is a church. The lion on the left has it's mouth open to represent that you can always speak out about your government and the on the right has it's mouth closed to represent that you shouldn't speak against the church. On the steps between the lions is where Hitler gave some of his speeches.

Other than learning about Nazi Germany our tour guide also showed us some other things:

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The most expensive street to shop on in Munich

Hofbrauhaus, one of the oldest beer halls in Munich.

This is a statue of Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), if a man is having problems with his girlfriend/wife he is supposed to bring her flowers and rub her right breast. As you can see someone must have been having some relationship troubles, hopefully it worked out for him.

The tour ended at the May Pole. If a guy likes a girl he is supposed to go cut down a huge tree and put it infront of the girls house, she has to then figure out who he is by the clues he put on the pole. Once she figures it out and if she likes him too I guess they would work that out but if she doesn't like him she sets beer out infront of the pole. Also, if a town steals another towns May Pole the town that had theirs stollen has to put on a big party and pay for all of the beer and food for the other town. I guess the airport has one and the Munich police stole it so the guards at the airport had to throw a party for them, atleast that's what our tour guide said.

Ok, one last thing to top off a great trip to Munich... See the bathroom picture below? It was the cleanest and most expensive bathroom I have ever used. When we walked in we were hit with a blast of lemony fresh scent and also a 2euro charge.

Anyway, I loved our weekend and Munich and I would definitely like to go back sometime.

The Cookie Debloggery

Last week I successfully completed my first week of school, my first out of country trip (not so successful), and my first stab at baking in the Czech Republic (half failure half success).

I'll start with school. Basically school is school, I'm taking WWII, Czech language, Communism vs. Religion, and Art and Architecture.We have class Monday-Thursday and classes are either two times a week, a one hour class and then a two hour class, or once a weeks, three hours all at once. It would be hard to sit through a three hour class at home where I can understand my teacher so being here and trying to sit through one that is three hours long with a professor that has an accent and can't completely understand what your questions are is extremly difficult but I'm sure after a couple weeks it will be easier to understand them. Also, the class sizes are extremly small my largest class probably has 16ish people and the smallest  is 4 people.

After our first week of classes Cassi and I went to Bratislava Slovakia with some of our friends in the program. They had planned the trip and we decided it would be fun to go and get out Prague since it was a cheap trip and neither of us knew anyone who had been we thought it would be fun. Although the company was great the trip was not exactly a success. Basically, atleast during the winter, there isn't really much to do in Bratislava. We were supposed to stay Friday - Sunday but it was so cold and boring that we bought a bus ticket home for Saturday afternoon.  I know it sounds pathetic but trust me it isn't fun to walk around in 15 degree weather with high winds and only a days worth of things to see.

Even though we came home early there was atleast one thing I really liked about Slovakia and that was...

the FOOD!!!! I didn't eat a bad meal while I was there and it was pretty cheap. The Slovak Pub (see picture below) was the first place we ate, our hostel suggested it to us, and for a bread bowl w/soup and fries it was only 3 Euro and tasted so good!



The picture below is just of one of the main squares, they had an ice skating rink up for the winter time and it looked like fun but I don't know how anyone was enjoying themself with the freezing weather.

Randomly placed under a walkway was this circular thing which was really cool after I found out what it was. In the middle is a compass and along the outside ring are major cities and how far it is to them.

HOME!

Around the city they had a bunch of different statues randomly placed. We went on a free guided tour and our tour guide told us what this guy was there for but all I remember about him is that his head has been knocked off a couple of times so to prevent that from happening again they put up a sign next to him which just had a picture of the statue on it, I don't really know if it will help but the guide seemed to think that the sign would definitely prevent him from any future decapitation.

Cassi and I did not finish the free guided tour because it was ridiculously cold and I had a terrible cough, which has presisted, so we decided it was best to break away from the tour and we spent about 2 hours in a cafe. When we went back to the hostel we met back up with our friends and by that time it was just about time for us to pack up and head back home thankfully. 

Since we came home early Cassi, Trevor, and I decided we wanted to try and make chocolate chip cookies on Sunday. We went to the store and bought what we thought were all the right ingrediants but when we got home we found out that the brown sugar we had bought was actually wheat flower so we ran to a potraviny (grocery store) and bought what we once again thought was brown sugar. When we got back to the apartment we realized it wasn't but decided we would try it anyway because even though that seemed like an obstical our biggest challange was actually the fact that we didn't have any measuring cups. Due to all of the complications we had we still managed to make the cookie dough though and bake it.

The recipe called for 3 cups of flour and the only thing we had close to a measuring cup was a coffee pot and for the rest of the measurements was eyeballed them.

This is just the mixture, before everything was mixed in.

The first sign that there might have been something wrong with our cookies was the dough was too thin to role into balls and have them stay that shape but we ignored that and decided to make a cookie cake.

This is what the "cookie" looked like after just 3 minutes of being in the oven because it was literally boiling, not only until after I skyped with my friend Lisa did it dawn on my that our oven is degrees celcius so we cooked the cookies at over 500 degrees farenheit.  We decided that we would let it cool off in the oven and then see what it was like. Luckily even though it looked super nasty it tasted wonderful! We spooned it onto ice cream and it was awesome!

This is what our cookie ended up being used for instead, a delicious topping for our ice cream. So although the cookies were a complete failure they were also kind of a success.

Also last week we finally finished booking all of our trips!!!

Febuary 25-27th - Munich

March 4-6th - Budapest

March 11-13th - Berlin

March 18-21st - Paris

March 25-27th - Brussels

April 15-23rd - Santorini

There is also a trip to Vienna but I can't remember when.

Assault by an angry Czech woman

This past week has been so amazing!

Firstly Czech class ended (sigh of relief) and I somehow managed to get an A on the final exam!

Second I went to the John Lennon wall with some of my friends, it was a beautiful day when we went and we had a great time exploring more of the city.

It took us a little while to find the wall because there aren't any signs that point you in it's direction but after I took my chances with the man at the book store and asked him if he knew where it was, hoping he would understand anything I said only to find out that that he spoke great english, we found it relatively easy! I know that there is graffiti everywhere here but I think what makes the wall special is that John Lennon never came to Praha, the youth just used Beatles lyrics as a symbol for what their ideals were: love and peace during the communist era. The wall literally changes all the time because people are always adding new things to it. I want to go back before I leave to see how much it will have changed in just 3 months.

On of the girls in my program said that when she went just a few days before us that the little boy on the wall wasn't there.



My contribution to the wall!!!! Next time I go I'm takin a big marker (not that it will be there for long anyway).

Thirdly we went to see Don Giovanni this week at the opera house. It was really neat, it my first time to see an opera. I thought it was really cool but having to sit in balcony 2, read the translation, and barely be able to see any of the acting made it a little difficult to completely enjoy but I'm really happy that I had the opportunity to go. Seeing how pretty the actually opera house was inside was probably the best part.




We were on the top floor which was super scary, atleast for me because it makes me nervous but it was really neat to be able to see the entire theatre. The bad thing was that I was sitting on the side and because of how how we were and how the seats were situated I could only see 3/4 of the stage and to do that I had to lean on the railing, which wasn't too bad I suppose considering I think it was made for people to rest their heads on.  The railing was also good for the 10ish minute nap I took during the first act.



This is a pretty bad picture but it gives an idea of what my view was and how the stage area was set up.

Ok, now I have made it to my fourth and most ridiculous happening of the week. I was basically assaulted by a 65 or older woman and a Tesco Express. This is one of those hard things to explain when you are typing because you can use your hands to explain all of the situation, but I will do my best. Here it goes... Cassi and I were at Tesco (a small grocery store) picking up some rolls, cheese, and crackers for our lunch, however the shocking event took place in the chips aisle. Now, just so this is clear Cassi and I were the only two in the aisle and we were discussing the possible chip options. I happened to see a bag of chips on the bottom shelf that I thought could be in the running so I pointed to them with my foot which, accidentaly, BARELY touched the bag. Next thing I know a woman is yelling at me, and I'm not exaggerating, in Czech. The only thing I could understand, thanks to my speedy 2week Czech class, was her asking if I was Czech. I'm sure my look of pure shock was enough for her to figure out that I wasn't but in any case I shook my head no. Due to my answer she decided to grab my arm and push me to the side so that she could mimic me pointing to the bag of chips as she continued to yell at me. I was baffled by her grabbing me (she may have been old but she had a strong grip) so I grabbed a thing of chips and Cassi and I ran to the cashier to check out. The lady just so happened to be going to the check out too and decided that she would complain to our cashier about what I had done. The looks she was dishing out definitely creeped me out so I bailed on Cassi and ran outside. Unfortunately for Cassi she had to deal with the harsh glances the woman continued to give even after I left the store. Thankfully we left before she came outside but I must say it was definitely the craziest thing that has happened thus far.

Bones?!

Saturday was really good! We went on our first excursion with ISA to Kutna Hora, it's about an hour and a half drive from Prague. It was a really cute town and we were able to get a tour of it with our tour guide, she was basically a living history book.The Czech coins were minted there and it used to be regarded as, during the middle ages, the jewl and the treasury of the country.

This is the Bone Church in Kutna Hora. I looks like a normal church on the inside but that is not the case...



Yes...Those are real human bones made into a chandelier. It's actually really impressive and interesting to look at. When we first walked in I felt really awkward taking pictures of peoples bones but obviously I got over that.



This is just Kelli, Me, and Cassi infront of the Coat of arms of rhe house of Schwarzenberg, I don't actually know what that means but that is all the information I have on it.  I was too caught up in the fact that I was in such close proximity to human remains.

I stuck my camera through one the FOUR cages they had that contained, literally, a mountain of bones. I would say the saddest, yet, most interesting thing about the Church was that the bones belong to unidentified people. When you see how many bones are really there it's sad to think about how many missing people there are in just that one place.

On a much lighter note this is a square in Kutna Hora. It was really cute, just like every other place I've seen thus far. They have really preserved their town. Our tour guide said that what the people do to the buildings is cover the original sandstone with plaster because plaster is a soft stone and wouldn't stand up for the amount of time that the buildings have stood.

The above picture is just of the small statue on the corner because I thought it was neat how, way back when, they used to know people's addresses by what symbol their house was and they have preserved that in Kutna Hora.

We spent all day in Kutna Hora so of course they had to feed us. We ate in a really cute pub, we had a 3 course lunch (they like to eat a lot at lunch time). Now, the real reason I put this photo on here is because I just had to show everyone a typical Czech meal. They absolutely love their meat (the chicken) and potatoes (the cute little dumplings). It's really an obsession they have and one that could stand to be a little updated, not that I don't enjoy it sometimes, it's just that it's really heavy on your stomach and I miss my vegatables.

Like I said earlier Kutna Hora is famous for the Czech mints which you can go see in the castle type building that is there but honestly that was my least favorite part of the whole trip. What I did like was this room (the above picture). I guess I didn't realize there were no cameras allowed...oops.

Another unauthorized picture. The entire room was coved in really outrageous wallpaper, that's pretty much why I liked it so much.



Just a look at some of the town!







St. Barbara's Cathedral! It was really gorgeous on the outside and even pretty inside.

There were a lot of things to look at around the enitre building and even though I loved looking around I was freezing inside! Just like every other church I've been in here it is always so much colder inside than it is outside! It actually felt warm outside compared to how cold it was in this building, you could see your breath is how cold it was inside.

After our tour of the town we headed back to Prague! I slept the whole way back and spent time with friends later that evening. Basically it was another successful day.

Sparta!

Thursday...was GREAT! We had school (not so great) and then lunch with our respective teachers, we went to a cool pub and I had the goulash (the traditional czech style), then Cassi and I took some money to pay for internet and instead of going back home we decided to walk around New Town, Old Town, walk across the Charles Bridge, and see a little bit of Lesser Town. What really made it awesome, though, was all of the snow we got! It started snowing around oneish and then snowed the rest of the day basically. The flakes were monstrous, naturally the first thing I did when I went outside was try to catch them in mouth and I was successful it took very little work. But other then the fact that the flakes were conveniently big enough and numerous enough to land perfectly in my mouth I thought the city was gorgeous. I thought it was impossible for it to be anymore amazing but the blanket of snow on the ground even better!

We took a bunch of pictures while we walked around, I'm sure that if anyone was questioning our Americaness the touristy pictures were a dead give away.But it was really worth it. It was our first time to walk across the famous Charles Bridge and anyway you turned there was something picture worthy.  I really hope it snows at least one more time while I'm here.




Old town square! It was so beautiful with all of the snow, not like its not when there isn't but it definitely makes it EVEN better!

This is just a postoffice, you can find them all over the city! Soon I will be sending postcards from one these! If anyone wants one I just need addresses! 



This is one of the school buildings, my professor went to school here but this isn't my building. Our building is a little way away and doesn't look as cool.

This was the best view I saw the whole day! I couldn't stop taking pictures of it!













Our first time on the Charles Bridge!!!!!!!!!! It was soooooooo beautiful! The snow made everything even better than what it looks like usually (I know I keep stessing this but it's true).

Just another fanastic view of the Charles Bridge! See the person selling pictures? I wanted to buy one from him but those people don't mess around, they want a good amount of money for them so now I'm on the search for one that I'm willing to pay for.



 After we were done seeing some of the sights we went back to our apartment to study Czech. We didn't end up studying as much as we had planned but we did make a really great salad and a pizza for dinner!

Friday...I went to a HOCKEY GAME!!! It was a lot of fun, hockey is the Czech's number one sport I believe. I didn't stay the whole game though, we didn't want to mess with the crowd after (it was hectic enough getting in).

Obviously this is the arena, there were a good amount of people there. We had the cheap tickets but our seats were still in a pretty good spot!

I guess, from my understanding, there is a league just made up of Czech teams and there are 2 teams from Prague. The game we saw had one of the Prague teams, Sparta, playing and another team. Unfortunately this Prague team is the not so good one, hopefully later this month we'll go see the other team because they are ranked a lot higher so they might make the playoffs.

This is just some of the people in my program, it was really fun to have all of us at the game!