berlin fool_

hey everyone, i am now in berlin, and i will return to prague tomorrow evening. it is quite a change from italy, but every place i have been to on this trip has been amazing in its own way. it has been an amazing trip, and i will be a little sad to see it end, but then its back to my schoolwork for a solid few weeks to give it a final push. i have met some really cool people, seen beautiful sights, and even taken a few photos. of course i´ll tell you all about it in the next few days. sidenote - congrats to my brother trevor and his wife kristen as he e-mailed me to tell me i will have a new nephew at any moment now.

pre-italia preparation_

tomorrow morning i, along with 5 others, board a train to berlin where we will fly to pisa, italy. we will stop in castiglion fiorentino for a couple days to meet up with some fellow ksu archies (they are studying there for the semester), move to florence for another couple of days, shoot down to rome, again for 2 days, then back to pisa to catch our plane back to berlin, where, you guessed it, we will stay and tour the city for 2 days. so i should return to prague on the 30th. its a long trip, but it's italy. i hope to bring back some good wine, big tacky sunglasses, and maybe if im feeling lucky, a nice italian mullet (pretty much all of the male italian tourists here in prague have it, and it just makes me jealous). the berlin part was pretty much cause we will be in the neighborhood, but should be good as well. if i get internet access along the way, i might be able to tell you a little bit what i am doing while i am there, but no promises. anyways, i havent done much the past few days except classes, homework, and preparing for this trip. nothing really new to show you, so i just included this photo from a window in the city tower at jindr. hradec from last weekend. and people, people....it wouldnt be bad if you left a comment every now and again. in fact, it might be good.

cool group, here i come_

last night i returned from my weekend trip to cesky krumlov and jindrichuv hradec in southern bohemia. the verdict is now in, and i was cool enough to make friends with the economics students, as opposed to being the nerdy outkast. a total of about 20 exchange students went along for this trip, and i had never met a single one, but on the train ride to our destination, i quickly befriended a german guy and an english guy, who i ended up rooming with at our hotel/hostel. we arrived at this small town called jindrichuv hradec friday evening, got settled in, ate dinner, then our tour leaders brought us to a local bar. the reason why we stayed in this town is because one of the departments of prague's economics university is located here, so there are like 1000 students who live and go to school in this small town. saturday we took a bus to cesky krumlov (above and below), which is a really big tourist town here becuase it is such a well preserved and picturesque little town. it is actually protected by Unesco now, and they are helping to restore more of it. anyways, first we took a graphite mine tour, which i thought was quite boring, especially on the gorgeous day that we had. finally, we got to spend some time in the town, which was nice. we then took the bus back to where we were staying, so we could eat and then we went to another local bar. the next morning, it was dreary and rainy. we toured the castle in jindrichuv hradec and also saw a museum that housed the worlds largest nativity scene (they said it was in the guiness book, so i took their word for it). it was oddly impressive, yet at the same time, kinda sad seeing that two brothers spent nearly every free moment of their lives working on it. i dont have a picture to show you, cause they werent permitted, so if you are really that curious, make the trip when you get a free weekend. we werent scheduled to leave until about 6 pm, so we killed some time in this boring town by hanging out in a cafe for a couple of hours. all in all, the sights werent amazing, but now i have a grab bag of new friends to show for it.

thirsty "for watercolor" thursday_

yesterday was such a beautiful day, aaron and i decided to go to vysehrad to sketch and maybe even watercolor. we stayed for a few hours in the afternoon, where i was able to come up with this little ditty. i know its not very good, but the photo makes it look even worse, o well. i got to get back into the watercolor thing sooner or later. also, the paper in the moleskin doesnt like water that much, but i dont have much watercolor paper, so i just decided to practice on it. anyways, this afternoon i am going on a trip to southern bohemia. the international student club organized this trip at my university, but i was too late in signing up. so i am actually going with one of the other universities that has that trip this weekend, but no one else that i know of is going. i'll update you when i get back if i met all sorts of cool people or if i was the nerdy outcast with no friends.

buda vs. pest - round 4

so on sunday, our last day in budapest, i got up at 8:00 from gabor's and went back to our hostel to pack up and get ready to do a little more sightseeing. we went to heroes square (above) but it was pretty dead on account of the crummy weather, im sure. we also saw a small castle very near to the square, but it wasn't very impressive. after that, we had to head back to our hostel to grab our things and get something to eat as well. all the others really wanted to go pizza hut, so it was either that or on my own. i decided the hut wouldn't be so bad, even though i never eat it at home. hey i never eat mcdonalds back home either, but here its like a treat from another world. so back to the pizza hut..terrible. at least as bad as back home. waste of time and money, but you live and you learn. so a word to the wise, whenever you are in budapest, steer clear of the pizza hut. so after that we headed to the train station for our 7 hr ride home, which was fun, but packed like crazy so we were forced to have guests in our cabin. this time we werent quite as rowdy, but there were definately traces of mischeif. so there you have it folks, that was my first big trip. look for more recaps of trips in the future as we are planning our italy/berlin trip for the 21st - 30th and i am also going to cesky krumlov this weekend with a trip organized by the economics university in prague. should be interesting.

buda vs. pest - round 3

saturday we got up in the morning ready to do some sighsteeing. we went to st. stephen's basilica first (above). it is the largest church in budapest, seating over 8,000. it was begun in the mid 19th century, but because of numerous problems wasn't finished until 1905. in front of it is a huge square which was an awesome place to sit and sketch the church. later we crossed the chain bridge, which is somewhat famous, and the climbed to the top of castle hill. this is when we went to the labyrinth as well (see "weary return_"). after walking around for awhile there, someone in our group thought it would be a good idea to go see this statue park of old hungarian communist sculptures. the ads for it make it sound amazing, so they must be right. wrong. we had to take a tram to the end of the line, then buy a bus ticket and go another 6 or 7 miles. the only thing that could have made it worse was bad weather, and you guessed right, it started raining. also, catching the bus home proved to be a little more difficult than it sounded originally. so after that 3 hr. waste of 10 bucks we went back to the river and had dinner on a boat restaurant, which was actually good, and again, spicy, even though i only had pasta. the rain had let up so a few of us decided to go to the top of the citadel to take some night pics (below). the view was incredible, but on the way down, it started raining again, but harder than before. once back to the hostel and after alot of legwork, i was able to get ahold of gabor, a foreign exchange student at my high school who was from hungary and studying in budapest. i met up with him and we went to this student bar near his university. there he bought me many shots of hungarian liquor. it was rough. after the bar closed, i just went back to his place to crash cause it was much closer to where we were than my hostel was.




this just turned out pretty funny, so i had to include it.

buda vs. pest - round 2

indoor market. the first floor was fruit and vegetable venders, butchers, and bakers, mostly. the second floor had shops and hungarian fast food places. i think the building used to be a train station or something.

ok, so day 2 now. the first thing we did was go to a thermal bath. it was super relaxing, despite the fact that most of the patrons were large old naked hungarian men (the courtesy loincloth wasn't very effective for many of them). of course the mens and womens baths are separate. and as you might expect, i heard the womens side was an equally graphic sight. who would have thought the one place i felt a little overdressed was when i was wearing nothing but a typical swimming suit. we quickly adjusted, though, and i actually sprung for a massage (about $12). i had to be nude laying face down while some large pot bellied hungarian man performed the massage. and what can i say, he was wonderful. after the baths, we went to an indoor market to look at a few shops and get some "hungarian fast food." well most of our group decided on burger king across the street, but another guy and i actually ate there, and it was better than it looked. the lady from the train was right, good, but spicy. later that afternoon, we headed to the buda side to see mathias church, followed by a visit to the hungarian house of wines. a friend who had been to budapest a few weeks ago told us about this place. for about $17 you get a tasting glass and "two hours" in their cellar, which has displays of every wine producing region in hungary, and you can sample as much as you want. needless to say, it was well worth the money. especially because all but one of us stayed for about 3 hrs. aaron, unfortunately made the mistake of asking one of the men working to open another bottle of wine he wanted to taste. then the man countered with a polite request for aaron to leave because he had been there for longer than 2 hrs. no matter, we were all making great conversation with all sorts of random people. once we left there, i lost the rest of my group so i spent the remainder of the evening with 2 guys who graduated from harvard last year and a mother and daughter from england. strange. but i made it back to my hostel eventually, even though it took twice as long as it should have.



hungarian house of wines. from left: adam, aaron, will, clint, veronica, and savannah.



bridge over the danube. on the left you can see the building that housed the thermal baths we went to, gellert spa. on the right you can see the citadel which is a huge statue on a huge hill that is super high above the city. quite breathtaking from up there.

buda vs. pest - round 1

ok, now that i have my bearings, i will tell you about my trip this past weekend, but i will break it down day by day. that way each blog doesnt get too big and so i have something to blog about for the next couple of days (i gots ta please my audience, especially after recieving some rather vile hatemail). first comes the educational part. budapest is the capital of hungary. it has about 1.9 million residents which is roughly 19% of the hungarian population. it is actually 2 cities, buda and pest, separated by the danube river. hungarian is the language, which if you can believe it, is more difficult than czech, in my opinion, but many people know some english, so its aight. much of the city was destroyed in WWII, so there is alot of diversity among buildings. this was a treat for me after living in monotonous prague for 2 months. ok, moving on, 8 of us arrived by train thursday afternoon. 6 ksu folk, 2 scottish chums. funny story about the 7 hr ride there, aaron, adam, veronica and i had a 6 seat cabin to ourselves when a czech lady of about 50 came and sat with us. she said something in czech, but we didnt understand. im thinkin it was something like, "hey kiddies, im gonna sit here, aight?" somewhere along the line we began to entertain ourselves by saying filthy things. she didn't respond too much, unless we started laughing first. nearing the hungarian border, we all exclaimed how we wanted to try hungarian food. after a short pause, the lady says, "it is good, but spicy." surprise! she knew some english and we all tried so hard not to laugh out of embarrassment. nonetheless, we spoke to her for some time and she was very nice. we even saw her on our return train to prague and she was excited to hear how our weekend went. but back to our arrival, we went and toured the hungarian parliament, which was quite impressive and right on the river. after that we just had dinner and then went to a jazz club for a couple hours that night. the day pic is parliament (pest), the night pic is castle hill (buda).

weary return_

well, i am back from 4 days in budapest, hungary. it was a great trip, aside from the bad weather the last day and a half. it wore me out, though, and even after a day back in prague, i am still a little weary. i am busy with classes today and tomorrow, but soon, i will catch up and show you all sorts of pictures, so keep checking. for now, i will just show you a an image of a creepy wine fountain, which is located in the labyrinth of budapest. its actually like an underground series of stone halls and rooms. the have decorated it with some strange things and keep it very dimly lit, not too mention pipe some eerie music through hidden speakers. we had fun, though, trying to scare each other. in the end it was prolly worth the five bucks we paid to get in.

no, please, call me st. nicky_

sorry for not posting the past couple of days. monday and tuesday are my busy class days, so i haven't had much time to post plus i haven't done anything new or exciting. on top of that, alot of my time has been spent on planning for future trips, namely the italy trip set for april 20th, but also the budapest trip this weekend. the semester is just about half over, which means time is running out, so i have to plan well in order to see the things that i want to see, not to mention complete all of my school projects in the meantime. anyways, here are a couple of photos that i took this weekend of the church of st. nicholas which is in the mala strana area of prague. oh, and feel free to leave a comment.

nothing heals better than satire_

i couldn't resist showing this poster for the museum of communism in prague. i've seen a few different posters for it around, but i think i like this one the best so far. if it is any indication of the museum, i really need to go see it, cause i bet it is hilarious.

happy tower day_

the sun is starting to show itself more often in prague now, and today is a prime example of that. i went on an afternoon sightseeing trip with a flatmate of mine. we first went to the municipal house, which is a large historical concert building, as well as the powder tower, right next to it. this shot was taken from the powder tower looking towards old town square. you can see the tower of the astonomical clock straight ahead. after this, we went to the wallenstein palace garden near prague castle. it was lovely, although it is still out of season. after that we went to st. nicolas church, which was very ornately baroque, and quite impressive. we also went up to the top of the tower next to it. blah blah blah, it prolly sounds all the same. no matter, two towers in one day is starting to push it, therefore i dub thee tower day. of course there are plenty more towers in prague, so it is possible that this title could be overtaken by another day. all in all, i felt like i did something productive today, and maybe i will post some more pictures from tower day later on.