Central Euro Trip!

Here's my sob story: The other night, while listening to Elton John and typing up some notes for class, my computer died. Seriously. It went black, won't turn on anymore, kaput, dead, finished, basta. I have since found out that this is because my motherboard crashed which is good because that means I should be able to salvage all my information from the hard drive but is bad because the cost of a new motherboard is comparable to that of a new computer. Thusly, I am computerless for the rest of the semester, which is really fantastic considering I have several papers due in the coming weeks and JCU computer lab is an hour walk away from my apartment. Looks like I'll be spending my remaining days in Rome staring out on the lemon tree courtyard and typing away on an accent-filled keyboard. I brought my computer to the JCU IT office (only open 2 hours out of the day) and they said they could only take it to a shop and get an estimate on the cost of fixing it. A few days later, I went back to the office to check up on my laptop and it was sitting in the exact same spot on the guy's desk where I had left it. When I inquired about this, the guy said, "The shop will come to pick it up sometime this week probably then a week after that I should know something." My guess is that JCU will be holding my computer hostage until I leave Rome.
Before I get into my long description of my long trip, let me just mention the soup kitchen I volunteered at. Just mentioning that I volunteered at a soup kitchen make shock some of you reading this, as I'm not really the community service type (i.e. good person), but I decided to give it a shot. It's fine and a good way to practice Italian, but today while volunteering, one of the women working there mistook me for one of the homeless! I repeat, she thought I was homeless! I was wearing Gap jeans and a blazer! Granted, one of the homeless Italian men was wearing a suit, but really! Caitlin, however, got called the most beautiful woman in the world and met a man who saved the world during the Cold War and is now on the run from the CIA. Good times.

Ok, so, sit back, relax, this is going to be long. On Halloween, I and 10 other people left for Prague in the Czech Republic. Caitlin and I were some of the last people to check in at the Rome airport, and the guy at the desk said, "Is there a gathering of Americans with backpacks in Prague?" Yep, it looked like we were headed for the annual American backpack convention." The flight itself was fine and from our windows we could see a very Halloweeny red moon. We had a layover in Bratislava. We could have had a direct flight, but Bratislava sounded cool. It wasn't really, since we ended up just chilling in the airport and buying lots of candy to celebrate the holiday, but at least now we can say that we've been there. We got into Prague late in the evening and went directly to the ATM to get some crowns/krowns? whatever Czech currency. Everyone's money is so much pretty than America's and the Czech money was especially artsy with lots of portraits and colors. It was also pretty worthless, considering 100 crowns is about 5 U.S. dollars. This was part of the draw of Prague.
The hostel we stayed in was called Emma Hostel. This was chosen mainly because one of the travelers in the group is named Emma and she is very nice, so I figured this hostel would be nice. It was, except for the lack of sheets, but all we really needed was the sketchy comforter. The bathroom was a little strange as well, since there were always naked European women in it (ew ew ew) but this is something that I'm sure is not exclusive to this hostel. We were given free breakfast, but chose to eat elsewhere, since breakfast at the hostel was just 5 pieces of bread and an ancient piece of bruised fruit. But yeah, the hostel was great!
The first morning in Prague, we took the metro to a stop near the castle (one of the biggest in Europe) and had breakfast. I ordered pancakes, which turned out to be crepes, and the CZECH MEAT PLATE. I put it in all caps because it was a lot of meat and when I ordered it the waitress looked at me like I was a crazy meat fiend who might try and eat her after I finished my order. I informed her that I would be splitting the meat plate among 4 people, but I don't think she believed me. It was delicious, as were the faux-pancakes.
After breakfast we headed over to the castle. It wasn't that cool or castley. It was kind of hard to take in because it was so huge and Rick Steves said it wasn't worth touring, so we just did a few things. We went to the cathedral, which was so cool and full of stained glass. It was a sunny day, so that made the inside even more spectacular. We climbed up the tower to the top and had a great view of Prague.
The rest of the day we just kind of walked around and explored. We saw the Charles bridge, which goes over the main river of Prague and went to Wenceslaus Square. We walked through Old Town, which has this really famous astronomical clock that was supposed to do something really spectacular when it chimed on the hour. Everyone lined up in front of the tower, cameras ready, and when the hour changed, 12 little apostles peeked out through a window and then a bell rang and it was over. Really anticlimactic. I guess I was expecting pyrotechnics or something, but it was cute anyway Later, we stopped by the Jewish quarter, but were too late to go in anything except some souvenir shops. The people at these shops were so pushy and annoying and kept asking me where I was from. Since no one knows Ohio, I usually just say Chicago or New York or if I'm feeling really adventurous, California. One souvenir salesmen was especially obnoxious and kept offering marriage and his soul to the girls in our group. When all the girls had successfully avoided him and gone away, he said to Dan (one of the boys of the group), "What is wrong with those girls? Are they virgins?" Not really knowing how to answer this, Dan simply said, "Yeah" and proceeded to hear about the sexual history of souvenir man. He also warned Dan that he'd better get a girlfriend soon because in 10 short year, he would have nothing! None of this enticed any of us to buy souvenirs.
That night we had some great Thai food. Prague doesn't really have its own special food (except pig knuckles and grog) but it does pretty well with other people's food. Later that night, we went to a 5 story dance club, each floor having its own theme (for example, rap on floor 4 and 60s pop on floor 3). It was a good time involving a lot of awkward dancing and conversations with Europeans in broken English. It was also an amazing accomplishment because all 11 of us stayed together the entire time. Go team!
The following morning, we had a fantastic, though a bit American, breakfast of coffee and bagels. We went to the Jewish quarter to see some synagogues and a really old cemetery, which was pretty neat. It was a pretty chill day of just taking in the city.
Prague itself is kind of hard to define. It was very strange to be in a place where I did not know the language at all, but most people spoke English. The city was nothing like Rome or that type of Europe, but it had colorful buildings and different architecture. It was very cool and I definitely liked it, but it is really hard to describe and define its character. This could be because I was only there for 2 days. The Czech language is kind of confusing and from what I can tell, it involves taking English words and adding a "y" to the end. I saw words such as "miniatury", "bagely", synagogy", "republicky", and "dezerty"
We had all planned to meet at the hostel at 4:00 for our 7:00 flight, but once we got to the hostel and got out our confirmation emails, we realized the time of the flight was NOT 7:00, but 17:00. Military time is so very tricky. After a couple seconds of frantic scrambling, it became apparent that we would not make our flight, so we rushed off to the train station and thankfully caught the next train to Vienna. The train ride was only 5 hours and not that expensive, so it wasn't that bad. Actually, that is probably the smoothest a missed flight has ever gone in the history of missed traveling. We got into Vienna and crashed at Wombat hostel (that's right, Wombat). Wombat has a chain of hostels across Europe and it is pretty hip and very clean. In the hostel is a WomBar, which I unfortunately never checked out, but the high bass music and fun looking arrows pointing to it did look enticing.
Our first day in Vienna was spent at the Hofburg Palace. After another great breakfast at Cafe Hawelka (recommended by my dad via the Travel Channel--he recorded the program on Vienna and held the phone up while I listened) we headed on to the Spanish Riding School to fulfill a lifelong dream of mine--seeing the dance of the Lipizzaner horses. My official story for loving these horses is because I owned horses and use to ride blahblahblah but the real reason is because of the Angry Beavers. That's right, a Nickelodeon cartoon inspired me to go to Vienna to see the prancing Lipizzaners. To really go into the explanation would take too much time, and you would really just need to see that specific episode, so I will refrain. In any case, I was the most excited out of the group and was probably considered the crazy horse girl for dragging everyone to morning exercises at the Spanish Riding School first thing in the morning, but it was worth it.
Our next stop in the palace was the Imperial apartments, the Sisi museum, and a bunch of rooms full of royal dinnerware. There were a ton of plates and really food-specific dishes (example, asparagus holder and duck squeezer). The Sisi museum was super cool and was all about the legend of Princess Elizabeth of Austria. The Imperial Apartments were so extravagant and made me want to be a royal. It was all very cool and enjoyable and not Renaissance art, which is always a plus in my book. After the palace, we walked outside and found a park with autumn leaves. This was a big deal, since Rome doesn't really have any parks or trees, so we hadn't seen any signs of fall. As soon as we came upon a pile of leaves, we all degenerated into 5 year olds and had a leaf fight right in front of the Hofburg Palace. Once we picked the leaves out of our hair, we headed onto the Belvedere gardens, but not before stopping at a Wurstelstand to get some bratwurst. It was filled with cheese and so very good!
We spent a lot of time in the Belvedere gardens because they were really big and very pretty. While strolling through the botanical gardens, we spotted a woman standing very still between some trees. She was in a very awkward pose, but upon further investigation, this was not the strangest thing about her. She had a tail. She was cat woman. We walked a bit closer and (thankfully) discovered a film crew and a shirtless meatloaf-esque large man with really long hair. The hairy man kept chasing cat woman around and I have no idea why. Weird, weird, Austrians.
Austria is a very classy place and maintains its classical background despite its modern look. Mozart is everywhere and street performers play the piano (don't know how they get it onto the street). To stay in line with this classiness, we decided to go to the opera. We waited in line for an hour and a half for £2 standing tickets, got some cake and coffee at the Mozart cafe, then went to the opera. Outfitted in our NorthFace jackets and travel-worn jeans, clutching to our cheap tickets, we looked like uber-peasants. Everyone else was dressed very nicely and the opera house was quite fancy. We went to our standing area to claim our spots among the other peasants, but could find no good vantage point, so this was mostly a listening experience. The opera was Tosca and it was indeed incredible to hear. There were little computer screens that gave translations in various languages, which was pretty cool. We stayed for the first act and then left.
After that classy event, we went to the most Euro trash carnival in the world! We meant to ride this really old ferris wheel, but it was closed, so we stumbled upon this weird, random carnival with a couple rides and a casino. It was all lit up, but almost completely empty. It was a very strange atmosphere and it felt like something straight out of the setup of a bad horror flick. We rode the new, neon ferris wheel, which went right along with our theme of acting like children in Vienna. Once our enjoyment settled into creeped out, we headed back to the hostel and had dinner at a cafe nearby. A few of us ordered bread dumplings to go with our soup, expecting something gnocchi-like or perhaps some actual slices of bread. Instead, we got a giant doughy lump of bread with parsley sprinkled on top. Why anyone would actually intend to order this, I have no idea. It was literally, just a ball of bread!
The next morning we went to another famous cafe--Cafe Demel--which used to serve cake to the royals. The streudel was excellent and went very well with the Starbucks latte I purchased. That's right. Starbucks. The inside of the Starbucks looked exactly like every Starbucks I have ever been in, which was a little surreal, since we were in Vienna. It was a little comforting, though, being instantly transported to America.
On Sunday in Vienna, everything is closed. Well, I guess restaurants and museums are open, but I was really hoping to shop, and every single shop was closed. So instead, we went to the Stephensplatz cathedral, which was ok, but kind of unimpressive. I guess at this point I am just spoiled by Roman churches.
We headed over to the Museum quarter to check out what it had to offer, but none of them really appealed to me, so Dan and I headed off to explore Vienna. We went to the University of Vienna and sneaked inside. It was pretty basic and boring, just a school, but still neat to see another university. Afterwards, we just walked along the Danube. It was a very scenic area with sweet fall foliage. Vienna itself is a very cool city and I liked it a lot.
Before leaving Vienna, I found a souvenir shop (one of the only things open) and bought a winter hat and a pocket watch. The pocket watch doesn't really keep time and has an elk on the front of it. For some reason, I thought a pocket watch would be the perfect souvenir from Vienna, especially since I was heading on a train. I was very correct.
On the tram ride to the train station, a New Yorker noticed my new hat and asked if I was in Vienna to ski (stupid misleading hat) and then decided to strike up a conversation with me. In theory, talking to a fellow American should have been pleasant, but you are forgetting that I attract crazies. I don't know how I manage to not give off a more judgmental vibe, but crazy people seem to look at me and think, "Now there's a girl who wants to hear my life story!". This New Yorker introduced himself and instantly told me about his recent divorce from his Austrian wife. He has two kids, but according to him, they are old enough and don't need him anyway, so he should just go back to New York. He also shouldn't have to pay child support since he'll have to start his life over in New York and that will be costly. Not wanting to start a ruckus on the crowded tram, I just agreed and feigned sympathy. And that is my last event in Vienna.
On the train, we had 3 compartments of 4 beds each. The beds were actually pretty nice and after a couple of hours of talking, we all fell asleep and slept most of the 13 hours back to Rome. Before we left, we had bought a ton of food, which was completely unnecessary, so in addition to our giant backpacks and bags of souvenirs, we also dragged bags of food onto the Rome metro. After 5 long days of traveling, we were quite the group of ragamuffins. The whole experience was very disorienting, because it was like a vacation, but instead of returning home at the end, we went back to Rome and, for some of us, straight to class. It was good to be back in Rome, however, because even after this much traveling, it is still my favorite city and the best place to be.




I am done writing now so you can be done reading now.