Czech this out!

So it has been a little over two weeks since my last blog and a lot has happened. Once again I will try to cover the highlights and also try to use pictures instead of writing an extremely long post.

Lets begin with a fun evening Jack, David and I had before the 9-day trip. A while back, our RA took us to the Prater area. It resembles an amusement park and also has an old famous Ferris wheel. In the Prater area, there is a restaurant called the Schwiezerhaus. It does not use any preservatives in their beer and our RA said it is the freshest beer in Vienna. They are also notorious for serving a leg of pork. Naturally, we had to return to this place. We ordered many beers, ate some pork with delicious mustard and then went on a ride. All in all, it was a very fun trip.

We will do it!! Also, check out those beers... they are indeed as tasty as they look

Nomming away at some pig leg

It really is a lot

Feeling good after we ate it

So good in fact, we decided to do this ride

This only gives you some idea of what the actual ride is like... Also I should point out that Jack refused to get on it

Now to discuss the 9-day tour. Rather than go day by day and explain every little detail I will use some of my 300 pictures and describe one night in particular. Also, if anyone was curious, Prague was my favorite city. I guess I did not give Budapest as much of a shot and might return there later in the semester. Regardless, I found Prague to be the most aesthetically pleasing and also it had the best nightlife.

Prague at night

John Lennon Wall

Famous spot on the river where couples lock a lock on the railing representing their love and then throw the key into the river

Church in Prague Castle

Railing from which officials give speeches, also Hitler gave a speech from this balcony

Church again

In front of a mosaic I really liked

Defenestration!! Famous story of people who got thrown out of this window and survived

We climbed many steps to get to the top for some good views of the city

We decided to see the changing of the guard

And so did everyone else

Inside the church

Tomb in the church

Room for King Wenceslas

At the soccer game

Replicating a photo for fun

At this point in the trip, Jack, David and I decided to check out the five story club. In short, it is the largest club in central Europe and each story has a different theme. The top one is chill hip hop, the 4^th floor is more modern/techno music, the 3^rd floor is oldies, I forget the 2^nd floor and the 1^st floor is more of a lounge. I spent most of my night on the 3^rd and 4^th floors. Since David had showed up before us, he had already found a spot on the dance floor on the 4^th floor. The whole building was so big though that it took about a half an hour just to find him. We were also with some girls from our trip and for most of the night I had to pretend to be their boyfriends so that creepy foreigners would stay away from them. This scenario usually had two conclusions: I would either be glared at and made fun of, or given a high five and pat on the back. Jack had to leave a little early because he is a gentlemen and decided to show some girls on our program back to the hotel since they were completely lost. I should also point out at this time that Jack and I were the favorites of one of the IES employees since we were the only ones who could quickly (it took us by the second day usually) get to know a city and be able to visualize where we were and how to get back to the hotel (this will come in handy later). Anyways, I stayed at the club with David and three girls. For a while, we danced on the 4^th floor. The dance floor was basically a big empty pool and from time to time they would turn on smoke. When they did so, you could honestly not see a foot in front of you. At about 2 in the morning, we moved downstairs to the oldies music. This floor had a bunch of tiles that would light up underneath you. It was also probably 100 degrees. At 330 in the morning I decided it was probably time to leave. I walked off the dance floor and the group began following me. Right as we got to the stairs, the song “Summer of 69” came on. Naturally, David and I could not leave during this awesome song and we immediately ran back to the dance floor and jammed out to it for a while. Eventually we made it out of the club with our group of people and to the streetcar station. There we met up with some other IES students and said goodbye to David since he was staying at a hostel (he decided to shadow the IES trip to the first two cities). On the Streetcar, we maintained American Stereotypes by being loud and obnoxious. One thing that came of this is we determined who else on the streetcar could speak English. So we made friends with a 17 year old kid from Florida and a group of 5 Italians from Italy. As it turned out the Italians were staying at the same hotel as us but were completely lost. So now in a group of about 7 IES students and 5 Italians, I was the only one who knew how to get home. After transferring to the bus I realized if I screwed up I would have a lot of angry people on my hands. Nevertheless, I knew that displaying confidence would make everyone feel better. Eventually we made it back to the hotel and everyone thanked me. The Italians said I should come visit Napoli (where they were from), and I told them I would come watch a football game with them if I ever got a chance. Back at the hotel, Jack was still awake and surfing the internet in the lobby. As it turned out there was also a wedding party that night at our hotel. It had just ended but there was a group of 3 people still chatting in the lobby. I decided I already made friends with Italians why not make friends with Czech’s and Slovakians? I joined their circle and we talked for about half an hour. At one point they brought up politics in broken English and I explained to them that Bush was bad and Obama was good. They agreed on both accounts and said Obama had good socialist policies. I then explained to them that Obama was in fact a Democrat. The language barrier kind of got in the way at this point, and we changed the subject. Once it was bedtime and I decided to leave they insisted on giving me a box with all sorts of wedding treats in it. This was very kind and I ate the cupcake for breakfast the next morning. That concludes the story of one night in Prague, which was probably one of the wildest nights I have ever had. And please do not worry, I still saw all of the main sights our tour guide wanted us to see.

Wandering the streets of Prague

On Charles Bridge

Famous clock

Our Booze Cruise on the river at night

Onto Krakow, Poland! (In Poland, on the first full day my camera got low on batteries so I had to cut down on the amount of pictures I was taking)

In front of the most secure fortress in Krakow near the old town

Krakow Castle

In the castle square

Da Pope

Polish Dragon!! This thing was awesome and would breathe fire from time to time. The story goes it lived in a cave under the castle and lived off lamb, deer and virgins (our guide told us this was the reason there are no virgins in Krakow) One day someone put a bunch of "spice" in a lamb and left it outside the cave. The dragon ate it and had such a fire in its stomach it drank the entire river and then exploded.

Panels in St. Marys Basilica

Auschwitz

Wall of Death

Birkenau

Schindlers Factory, which is now a really cool Museum

Old town at twilight

Our farewell feast, each table got this much food and only one table finished it all. It was not ours though

Onto Budapest!!

Part of Heroes Square, they have 13 statues and all of them are of heroes in Hungary's history

I liked this guy, because he was the first person to say you could not persecute someone for being a witch

Other part of Heroes Square

This guy was awesome because he fought back against the Turks

View of Budapest from the hilltop overlooking the city

Monument on top of the hill

Gladiator!!

Roman ruins

Our tour guide explaining how smart the Romans were

Liters...

And Meters...

Of BEER!!! Oh my!!

Do not worry, we finished it all

Giant club we went to on the last night

Communist statue garden. They took all of the communist statues out of Budapest and moved them here

With Lenin

Wondering where Stalin's body is

Overall, the trip was great and well worth it. At the end, one of our guides told me that the actual cost of the trip was about three times as much as we actually paid. So thank you IES for subsidizing all of that cost. This week we have started classes and I am enjoying them, although I wish I was taking an Economics class. I will just have to make up for that fact by doing some outside reading. More importantly though, this weekend I am going to visit Edinburgh and Katie!