Prague!

For the record, this weekend the plan is simply to sleep in for the first time in three weeks and then WORK!!!

Anyway, so the week after London was pretty short... considering we got back Monday and I was out of the country again on Friday. Hans, Matt and I met at 8:00 Friday morning at the train station for our 6 hour train to Prague. It's actually surprisingly cheap to travel to Prague... if you know what you're doing. It was a 33 Euro Bavaria day ticket for three people (11 euro each)to Pilzen (in the Czech Republic). Then we took a 95 Koruna (<4 style="font-style: italic;">that cheap. Food cost between 80 and 120 CZK, and since the exchange rate was 26.5 CZK to the Euro (we rounded down to 25 for simplicity's sake), that's 3-5 Euro.
Anyway, we got to Prague, dropped our stuff at the hostel and headed out to explore. The New Europe (free walking tour that I've been doing in every other city)tour just recently started in Prague... as in 3 weeks ago, so we got really lucky. That was the plan for Saturday morning, so instead of walking around the city we grabbed some food (A Czech Gyro... I gotta say, the German Turks do them so much better. I was not impressed) and headed down to the Vysehrad. This is pretty far south in the otherwise very walkable city. It was the original "city" and is now considered the "ruins". It's basically a walled complex with a cathedral and buildings from the the 10th century. The current city of Prague was built up around the Prague Castle (in the city center), however. Now there's a very big graveyard in the Vysehrad which includes such people as Dvorak. Hans basically came to Prague to see Dvorak's grave and thus was very disappointed when we found out that the graveyard had closed 40 minutes before we arrived. He vowed to go back the next morning. We walked up the coast of the river to the famous Charles' Bridge and then around the city to check out the nightlight. We ended up finding a nice little pub that was playing live music... live Czech music! It was a bass/violin/accordion trio and they kept us very entertained while we sipped our Budweiser (Budvar... originally from the Czech Republic... A&B stole the name) and ate our Czech honey cake. Then we headed off to bed.
Saturday we woke up and headed to our 11 am free walking tour! Like all the others, it was well worth it. Three hours around the city took us from the old square with the famous Church of our lady Tyn and the world renowned Astronomical Clock, to the new town square, to the Jewish quarters with all the Jewish synagogues, to the Powder Tower and Henry Tower from the original city wall. We saw statues concerning Kafka, the "Cubism Building" (an actual example of cubism in architecture), the Lennon Wall (a monument to John Lennon) and the Prague Castle. Prague is actually a beautifully intact city. Turns out the Nazis loved it as much as the Romans had (it was the capital of the Roman Empire for a time), so they spared it almost completely during the war... it only got bombed once a few days before the end of the war when the otherwise low-laying people of Prague decided to rebel a few days before they were liberated by the Russians. And thus their city hall was destroyed. But yeah, unlike Munich, most of the buildings are old and original!
Following the tour we went up to the castle. It's actually the largest medieval castle in the world. And it's really more of a walled city within a city on a hill. It doesn't really look like a castle... it really looks like a wall around a cathedral. Because there is a huge cathedral inside it. Apparently they wanted an archbishop in Prague so they had to build a cathedral worthy of one. Haha. Unfortunately we couldn't go up the towers of the cathedral due to maintenance so we just wondered around inside and around the castle grounds.
Then we stopped back at the hostel, grabbed dinner, and headed to an Opera! Yes, an opera! We got tickets to The Marriage of Figaro for only 10 Euro each! The Marriage of Figaro is a Mozart opera that actually premiered in the Estates Theater in Prague in 1768 (or somewhere around then...). We were seeing it over 200 years later! Actually, the importance of the Estates Theater is that Mozart's first opera, Don Giovanni, premiered there. So that was kinda cool. It was really good... mostly because they had English translations of the songs so we knew what was going on. After the opera we decided to do the one other bit of tourism/nightlight we had to experience in Prague... Absinthe.
As background, Absinthe is illegal in the States. It's a very strong green spirit and "apparently" makes one hallucinate. This has been declared a myth and while a version of Absinthe is available in the US, the original form still isn't. On the other hand, it's everywhere in Prague. I mean, everywhere. All the tourist shops have bottles of overpriced green alcohol next to the shot glasses and magnets and postcards. We found an Irish pub that looked promising (a surprising number of those in Prague...) and ordered a shot each. The other cool thing about Absinthe. They set the shot on fire. Basically, the shot is poured in a whiskey glass. You fill a spoon with sugar, slightly dip it in the alcohol so it's just soaked, set the spoon on fire, and then rapidly stir it into the shot such that the Absinthe is on fire. Then you're supposed to blow it out and take the shot immediately.
Well... all for the experience, right? Wow. It burned. Possibly partly because it had been on fire 30 seconds ago and possibly partly because it was 72% alcohol. The sugar didn't seem to do much for the taste... needless to say, one was more than enough and we determined that we had crossed that off our list and head back to the hostel for the night.
Sunday... we found an all-you-can-eat-buffet for about 5 Euro nearby the hostel. There was fruit and crepes and croissants and eggs and cereal and pretty much everything. Well, worth it. Then we headed over to the "Mini-Eiffel Tower" for a view of Prague. Built 2 years after the original (1891), the Petrin Tower is 1/3 the height of it's big brother. We took a tram to the top of the hill it was perched on and then climbed 299 steps to the top for a great view of the city. From there we headed back to the main city to peak in the churches we had been walking past but not stopping in. We also wandered around trying to get through the city the easiest way possible because there was a marathon going on. Thus it was pretty crowded and a lot of streets were blocked off. We did not take part in the marathon, fyi.
Finally, at 3pm we headed back to the train station and got on our 4 pm train back towards Munich. It was a Czech train. Let's return to my previous statement about Eastern Europe. The train scared me. A lot. I felt like I needed a seat belt. It was without doubt the bumpiest, loudest train ride I have every experienced. The writing on the seat signed August 1988 (before I was born) did not help. The ride back was not as easy. We bought a 3 Euro ticket from Prague back to Pilzen. Then we had to get off the train in Pilzen to buy another ticket to the Czech/Germany border for another 4 Euro. Luckily we were back on a Germany train after that. Then we had to hop off at the border and buy the day pass for Germany and hop back on before the train left (we had 10 minutes. We made it). We finally made it back around midnight. In all though, we calculated that it was around 30 Euro round trip by train to Prague. Considering our hostel was 30 Euro for two nights, that was a very cheap weekend trip!

The other thing we noticed about Prague... a surprising number of people did not speak English. Like didn't speak any English. A surprising number did, however, speak German... was pretty interesting.
On a side note, in London we noticed that German was also extremely common. It was easily the second most often heard language outside of British English... hmm....

Anyway! As I said, this weekend I'm taking it easy. I have a paper for research that I'm hopefully going to successfully manage to write up before next Wednesday (busy weekend, I know...), because next Wednesday (countdown 7 days!) Steve arrives! And after that chances are I'm not getting much done because we have a lot planned for those two weeks. The first weekend we'll be heading down to Hall to visit Austria. The second weekend we'll be heading off to Paris and then Brussels! He flies home on June 2nd (I think?). June 8th (the following Monday), the Americans are cooking (remember Thanksgiving dinner?) again. This time we're going a little easier... the current plan is mac&cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches and apple pie... still need to find an oven for the pie though. And then, today I bought tickets for Barcelona the weekend of June 19th-22nd. So life isn't slowing down anytime soon it seems! Anyway, here are some pictures and look for a post (most likely two...) after Paris/Brussels!

Pictures:
Castle (with Cathedral) at night
Matt and I on the castle wall
View from the Petrin Tower... the city of Prague
The Old Town Square
Church of Our Lady Tyn (picture this at night with fire burning in all the spires... it looks pretty spooky)
The Astronomical Clock
Me with my Czech money

London!

So... Thursday afternoon, Tim, Kristina and I started our adventure in London. We headed to the airport over an hour and a half early even though it was an inter-EU flight... and still got to the gate only 30 minutes before the flight left because apparently the airport is really crowded at 9:30 pm... anyway, the flight was an hour and a half and with the time difference, we landed in London at 10:30. And immediately recognized the things Germany does not have. Like English. And vitamin water. Pretty exciting. Anyway, we caught a 45 minute train to a station in central London and then had to take the night bus to our hostel. It's around 2 pm when we finally get off the bus. The hostel is street number 639. We follow the directions and turn right... and find numbers in the 700's. So we turn around and go left... and find numbers in the 500's... we get really confused. After wandering around for a good twenty minutes in what we're hoping is a safe part of town, a taxi driver finally stops and asks us if we need help, then informs us we need to walk past the 700's and we'll get to 600's again. Of course. How silly of us. So we start walking. It's a good 10 minute walk. Past a graveyard. A graveyard that is falling down. As in, there was a very tall wall around it. The wall has fallen into the graveyard. The gravestones are a mess. At 2:30 in the morning... We finally got to the hostel, checked in, and crashed.

We woke up at 8 the next morning to go on an 11:00 am city tour. First we got to experience the hostel's free breakfast. Which basically was really soggy cereal and white toast. No, sir. We're not in Germany anymore. But we're not sure we're happy about that... Of course we got to the tour an hour early (but we'd had no idea how long it would take to get to the meeting point) so we took a nap by Wellington Arch. The weather loved us. It had just started raining in Munich when we left. London was blue skies and sunny. All three days. We were really lucky. This is London! We started our tour- the same free walking tour I've done in Amsterdam and Berlin. It was the "Royal London tour" so she took us by Buckingham Palace in time for the changing of the guard, then to the Palace Prince Charles and company occupy (he drove in right as we got there!), then past Hyde Park, around to Trafalgar Square, to Churchill's WWII bunker, St. James Park (where the pelicans eat pigeons), past the guards with funny hats, and finally over to and ending at Westminster Abbey, the house of Parliament and, of course, Big Ben. Following the tour, we grabbed lunch and waled back to Trafalgar Square, which has "climbable" sculpted lions that look semi like dogs as the artist modeled them after his cocker spaniel(?). Granted the two times we tried to climb them, we were shooed away. Oh well. We then walked back down to Big Ben after stopping to pose with the guards, and then crossed the Thames and walked over to the London Eye. The Thames is a very brown river, fyi... though apparently that's the water the city drinks. Eek. After a quick dinner we posed in the red telephone booths, and then walked over to where we were meeting the pub crawl. The pub crawl is offered by free tour group (it's not free, but saves you a lot of money on entrance to the bars/clubs). It took us to 5 different bars/clubs in London and showed off the different areas of night life. There is quite a nightlife in London. It was a lot of fun. Specifically because WE SAW A CUBS GAME at the first bar. Could not believe it. Definitely not in Germany anymore. That was pretty cool. After we got to the last club (12:30), we left pretty quickly since we had to get up the next morning. Still took a while to get home with the night bus though. Even on Fri/Sat, the subways stop running at midnight... even Munich is better than that! Seriously!

The next morning, however, we did not end up going on the second tour like we thought. Tim thought he lost his passport and by the time we searched everywhere and finally went down to ask the front desk if he'd left it there (it turns out he had... but our front desk was not the brightest. "Why would you leave your passport here?" she asked, very confused.... well, obviously he didn't leave it on purpose. She then proceeded to tell us that she did not have the passport. Then looked down and asked what country he was from. When he said, "USA", she said, "Timothy?".... "Yes...." Turns out she did have it....) we were too late to make the tour. Instead we loaded up on about 8 pieces of white toast and jam (yummy) and decided to reverse our plans. So we started off in search of Abbey Road. Yes, from the Beatles cover. We found it, and got eyerolls from the residents of the neighborhood as we excitedly snapped pictures of the street sign and walked across the crosswalk. Then we got lost finding our way back to the subway. Eventually we found it again (People in London are very friendly we found out... speaking English probably helps) and then took the subway up to King's Cross and found... yes!... Platform 9 3/4. King's Cross is right by an "alternate" market that had been recommended to us so we walked through it a bit (touristy stuff mostly... but they were also passing out free boxes of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch style cereal.... which we grabbed several of for breakfast since the toast was getting a bit old...) and then decided to try the typical "Fish and Chips" for lunch. Um. Eww. Not for me... though I prefered the chips to the fried fish. We did our tourist shopping after lunch, then headed back to the hostel for a bit to drop stuff off before heading down to Hyde Park. We detoured to see the Kensington Palace (where Diana lived), as well as her memorial fountain. Then we took a nap in the park. Rather than going out, we headed to the supermarket for dinner (the front desk couldn't figure out what a supermarket was initially... and then informed me it would be closed on Saturday. Said supermarket was 3 blocks away. We went at 8:30 pm. It was very much open... so we bought two frozen pizzas and some fruit tarts and heated up dinner in the hostel oven. By that point we were pretty exhausted from walking around the city and opted to stay in for the night.

Sunday morning we woke up late... turns out that happens when you don't set an alarm. Specifically we woke up at 9. The tour started at 10. It was at least a 50 minute subway ride away. So we grabbed our cereal boxes and raced to the subway. We got to the meeting place 13 minutes late to find the Spanish tour still there... and a very angry American college kid arguing with the Spanish tour leader. Turns out he'd bought a ticket for the English tour which had been cancelled for the day because there weren't enough people (they needed 5 to run...). He didn't want a refund, he wanted a tour. After about 30 minutes of arguing with the Spanish tour guide and realizing that three more English speakers had shown up, they finally decided to call the tour guide back to have her run the tour anyway. She was goign to show up at 11. The angry guy went off to get coffee. The tour guide showed up. 11 came and went. We paid for our tour (offered by the same company, but there's only one free tour per city and since London is so big they had to break it up into the "Royal Tour" and the "Old City" tour). We wanted to leave without him (after that big fuss, he was late?) but the guide apparently had strict orders to give him his tour. He showed up at 11:15 and we finally got to start. This tour took us by the Tower Bridge (which is the famous one... often misreferred to as the London Bridge. The actual London Bridge is actually quite disappointing), the Tower of London, Shakespere's Globe theater, the Church of the Knight's Templar (from the DaVinci Code), the courts of law (with the hanging clock featured in all the Harry Potter movies), a bank from which Gringott's (Harry Potter again) was based on, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Millenium Bridge (wobbly pedestrian bridge across the Thames).

The most exciting tidbit of info was the story of why England drives on the left side of the road. That was actually the norm back then... if you were right-handed (like most people) and you were a knight with a sword and were walking down the street, if you were to meet the enemy, you needed to grab your sword from your left side and spar. Well, if you're walking on the right side of the road, this gets awkward (she acted it out for us). If you're on the left side, it works out quite nicely. You can quickly start sparring. However, Naploeon was left handed. So he insisted everyone walk on the right hand side. Thus the rest of Europe (which he invaded), drives on the right hand side, while England still sticks with the left hand side.

Anyway, our tour ended at 2:30 or so. We crossed the Millenium (wobbly) bridge and walked up the other side of the river, past the Shakespear's Globe Theater and then across the Tower Bridge. Then we caught the subway to the British Museum and wandered around until closing. We really only went to see the Rosetta Stone, which was pretty cool, but the museum in itself had a lot of really awesome stuff. After the museum closed we found "the Ultimate Burger" (definitely not in Germany... HAMBURGERS!) which also sold Budweiser. Not kidding on that one. We wandered around for a bit on our own since it was a new area, and then headed back to the hostel to pack. Our flight was at 6:40 am. So we went to bed around 9:30pm and woke up at 1:30 am. That makes for the start of a wonderful day... see, we didn't know what time the night bus came (Hostel didn't either... after all, why would they? it's only the only way outside of taxi to get to the airport at night... they guessed it came once an hour. I knew it came twice an hour... just not when). Well, we got to the stop at 2:10 and it turns out it came at 2:30 so that wasn't horrible. We got to the train station at 3:10 but the train to the airport comes once an hour on the hour so we caught the 4:00 and got to the airport at 4:50, checked in, bought breakfast, changed our pounds back, boarded the plane, and crashed.

We landed at 9:10 and I went straight from the airport to my 12:15 Stat lecture. Slept very well Monday night... when I finally got to sleep. That's pretty much it for the week. Classes are continuing. Research is dragging out as I expected it to... I went in Monday and Tuesday and am supposed to go in next Tuesday and Thursday... and then supposedly I'll be finished (minus that paper). Still working on credit approval for the new classes I mentioned... the Transportation class and Genocide in Eastern Europe (which Tim and Kristina, who are in the engineering college, got approved for non-western... now it's just up to me to get it approved through the LAS college...). And other then that... I leave for Prague early tomorrow morning. I'm going with Hans, who I went to Cologne with the first time, and Matt, who's the new kid from U of VA. We're taking an 8:30 train Friday morning and will be back late Sunday night.

So for now I'll leave you with some pictures from London and catch up again after Prague.

Pictures:
Big Ben (note the gorgeous sky)
Buckingham Palace
Me at Abbey Road
Big Bend with House of Parliament from across the Thames
Tower of London
Us at Platform 9 3/4
Tower Bridge (not London Bridge)
Us with a posing guard