the end of an era_

so this is it folks, i leave prague tomorrow for good. it is kind of a sad day for adam, aaron, and i. we will all really miss this place. it has treated us well. but on the bright side tomorrow is the beginning of our journey across europe before we come back home. our schedule is as follows:

friday june 24 - morning - prague to munich
sunday june 26 - morning - munich to zurich
monday june 27 - evening - zurich to basel
wednesday june 29 - morning - basel to paris
friday july 1 - overnight - paris to barcelona
tuesday july 5 - morning - barcelona to madrid
wednesday july 6 - morning - flight home

we are pretty excited for the next couple of weeks, i just hope my wallet holds up. i should have periodic internet access, so i can check emails and i might even be able to blog (prolly no pictures, though) once or twice as well.

one final exciting thing was last night when we went to the mars volta concert at the roxy. it was an awesome show. no opening band, but they played about a two hour set. definately glad i went, and i got a few photos as well. i am just a little regretful cause a dj at one of our favorite haunts, nebe, is from el paso and supposedly knows the band. when i texted him after the show to see if he was going to meet up with them later, he said he was going to try. unfortunately, adam and i came home and passed out cause we were so tired so we never got the chance to go back out and see if he met up with the band. we should see him tonight, so he can tell us all about it.

anyways, i have finish up a few more things here. i should say now, that i hope you enjoyed following along with my adventures through this site. i did it for the fans. now seriously, i have to come up with crap to say like twice a week, so show me that i have a remotely creative audience that can come up with comments to post, ok?

stu stu studio_

on monday i turned in my studio project and today we had our final meeting as a class. following that we had a short individual meeting with the professor to get our grades. if its not too small to see, basically, what i did first is create one big block of mixed use buildings that not only have streetfronts, but also a central courtyard that would have shops fronting it as well. so essentially, the buildings are double loaded with a service corridor in the middle. in turn those buildings are serviced from the underground parking area which is accessible to garbage trucks and what not. next, on the block to the south, i have one group of more traditional buildings next to an existing building that i am preserving. on the waterfront, i expanded on the existing park space and also added, drumroll please, a modern art museum. so thats the design in a nutshell. after talking to him, he wanted to see more renderings in order to see what the project would actually look like, but i didnt want to pollute my presentation with sketch up (the only 3D program i have) any more than i had to, so i didnt feel bad when he gave me a "very good" or B, if you will. I think it turned out alright, though. the printed background color was alot less vibrant than on my color screen (it was less salmon and more bile), so my biggest regret is not being able to pull of a sweet looking pink presentation. oh, well, theres always next year. i also got signed off on urbanism and turned in my ecology paper for him to grade. so i will actually be done when i get that grade on monday. so to celebrate i went and got some sun at some small nearby park this afternoon. ya know, need to work on my base tan before i head to spain, im sure you suckas can relate.

ok, still not quite done, but close_

disclaimer: this entry is not very funny, just an update of what i have been up to. if you dont feel like reading it, my feelings wont be hurt, but you can leave a comment and pretend like you read it if you want.

i have been working overtime in order get some of these last tasks done, namely studio, which is done and i will show you later, but first i have some catching up to do. well, last week i showed my photography finals works to my professor and got my book signed, so thats done and done. i put two themes together. the first is one point perspectives (above) just cause i am obsessed with one points, all of which were taken around prague. not that mind-blowing, but hey, you can't win em all. the second is the jewish museum in berlin (below) just cause there were a couple shots that i realy liked, the other two are par at best. try to figure out which is which. also, i had my interview with dean slapeta for my history of arch. class. i took it with tiff and nicole and we pretty much just talked about where we travelled to this semester and what architecture we saw. this guys knows his stuff. not like charney, but not too far off. nicole mentioned she was in tampere, finland (to visit don) and he took about 5 seconds to draw a sketch of a building and asked her if she knew it. she had no idea. then he said it was the central train station in tampere. so after all was said and done i looked it up online, and sure enough, his 5 second sketch couldnt have been anymore accurate. i was impressed, but i dont think nicole was. she must have just been bitter cause he stumped her. also he caught tiff slip up and say the wrong architect for a building in vienna, and corrected her promptly. i dont want to make their discussions sound bad, cause they were both on point for everything else, where my portion was just uninteresting. i talked about the things i saw in berlin..... and that was that, so we got our books signed and said goodbye. so now for me i have a final studio meeting on thursday, i finished my ecology paper and i just have to turn it in, then i have to finish and turn in my urbanism paper. then its days in the sun and nights out with friends until i leave prague.

krickitty kracow_

last week, bec, who just graduated from ksu, came and visited me in prague while she was on her post school/pre work tour of europe. we decided it would be cool to go to krakow, poland, so we did. we took the night train from prague thursday night, which was as usual, intersting. got a few hours of sleep before we arrived in krakow at 5:30 in the morning. that day we went to auschwitz-birkenau which is about an hour and a half from krakow. it was really busy, but still surreal nonetheless. our first stop was auschwitz 1, which was a converted army barracks (above). it was initially used to imprison so called dangerous polish citizens, aka educated people that might not agree with the nazis. they were used for slave labor during the days and brought back to the camp at nights. it was not until a couple years later that the decision was made to bring all of the jews there. that is when the nazis decided to build birkenau or auschwitz 2 essentially from the ground up (above). there are too many other details to mention about these places, but i suggest if you are anywhere near there, go. it is quite a powerful experience.
after returning to krakow, we wandered around the old town and old town square (below). the town is really gorgeous, prices are even a little cheaper than prague for most things, and the people were very nice. much of it was reminiscent of prague, for me, but on a smaller scale. also, we read some statistic that said there were 750,000 residents of the city and almost 100,000 students, so there was a very young and hip vibe about, not to mention lots of cool clubs and bars.
saturday we visited the salt mines outside of the city, which are really famous in poland because of there extroidinary extensiveness. i couldnt tell you how many hundreds of miles of mines there are or how many huge carved out spaces there are, but i can tell you that they have a church about 80 meters underground, that is used regularly for sunday mass and often weddings, as well (below).
we returned to prague on sunday during some rainy weather, and for a couple hours with some creepy guy in our train cabin that was a white chevy astro van short of being a child molester. we made it back just in time for me to work on my studio project some more. speaking of which......

dude_

not much to blog about, lately. just been trying to finish up some photography stuff that is due on monday and remotely preparing for an oral exam on tuesday. i'll show you my photography stuff and let you know about my exam with dean slapeta early next week. this weekend i will be in krakow, poland taking my last trip before i leave prague. i'll also update you on that. for now, check out this sweet lamborghini i saw in town the other day. brings back old memories of the rad posters i had on my wall 15 years ago that i bought at the book fair. yeah mom, that three dollars didnt go to the newest boxcar children thriller, sorry.