parnassos reunion in Budapest 6/30-7/6

im going to write this blogpost when i get home. sheila’s keyboard is annoying and hard to type with

rome and venice 6/25-6/30

Thursday

i was pretty sad the entire time i was en route to rome. i was crying the whole bus ride from the corner of parnassos to centraal. I wasnt ready to leave Utrecht and all my friends there. The trip to Eindhoven and then to Rome was easy. i was nervous my bag was over 10 kilos… and it probably is, but no one weighed it so it wasnt a problem. once i arrived in rome i had to take an hour bus ride to get to the city center. the bus dropped me off right at treviso the main train station. first i had to book my train ticket for my trip from rome to venice. the line was really long and i probably waited 1 hour. once i bought my ticket and gave the old man my debit card we started talking about my last name and where my family is from and where i live yada yada.. he actaully started signing new york new york at one point. really cute and nice. the yellow hostel was just 3 or 4 blocks away so that was easy. as soon as i got to the hostel i just dropped my stuff off and headed to one of the restaurants that i had passed on the way. i was pretty hungary and some of the places looked really good. of course i got pasta. i dont know if i mentioned this in my last blog… but pretty much all i ate (and most of my roommates too) the past week was pasta. i had tons left over from when steph and rachel and ethan were here and i didnt want to waste food or money buying more food. so i ate pasta all the time. the pasta at the restaurant was really good. it was pretty late after dinner..maybe 11 oclock so i just headed back to the hostel and used the computer and headed to bed. i was a really good tourist while i was in rome and venice. i would wake up every morning at 8am and head out by 9 or 930. i was very impressed.

Friday

like i said, i woke up at 8, had breakfast at the hostel restaurant for 2 euros and headed out by 915. i didnt really have a plan, just that there was a walking tour of rome offered by my hostel at 2pm. so the plan was just to wander around rome and some of the ruins untill then. so i walked towads the ancient ruins. i was really lucky with weather on my trip. it was probably 90 degrees the whole time. and sunny. no rain. so i walked through pretty much the entire city center untill i got to the collesium. along the way i passed the roman forum and ceaser and ausustus forums. the line to get into the collesium was ridiculus and i remembered reading in my guide book that you could buy a combined ticket for the collesium and the palentine hill/roman forum so i ditched the collesium and headed towards the palentine hill. the line was way shorter. i treated myself to an audio guide for 4 euros because even though i took a roman history class sophomore year i thought that i didnt remember anything (at the time i had forgotten everything but it hsa since been refreshed) and headed up the hill. it was freaking hot out..and i didnt not plan ahead and had no sunscreen and i was wearing jeans. i did buy a huge water on my walk earlier tho for only 1 euro.the palentine hill was really impressive. i saw augustus house and livias house etc etc. and from up there you got an amazing view of the circus maximus and the roman forum. i ended up getting lost. even though i had a map. it was obviously hard to guide myself throught all the ruins because nothing actually looks like anything. .you just have to imagine what it used to be. by the time i found my way out of the palentine hill it was almost time for the tour that left from the circus maximus metro stop. The tour was really good. it was about 4 hours long. and the group was maybe 10 people only. the first thing i learned on the tour was that michael jackson had died. i was completely shocked. i didnt believe it. once on a train from prague to berlin two girls had told me that patrick swayze had died and i didnt know because i had been travelling. but that ended up being a rumor and hes still alive. but the fact that everyone was talking about how he died i knew it had to be true. i wonder if this will be one of those things like you always will remember where you were when he died.. like jfk and 9/11.  so some highlights from the tour that i remember: jewish ghetto, pantheon, really good margherita pizza during the break, where mussolini gave his speeches, victor emannuel memorial, roman forum, collesium. it was a really good tour. probably one of my favorites since ive been here. except it was the first tour i actually paid for. i searched online and there are no free tours of rome. this one was 20 euros which is the cheapest i heard of. plus i got to meet people from my hostel so it was good i went because i made some friends. i was surprised about all the stuff i remembered about ancient rome. the tour also included a lot of recent roman history too which was really interesting because i really only know about ancient stuff. after the tour i headed over to the collesium because they supposedly closed the gate around 6ish. so i ran over there and got in. the ticket i bought earlier in the day was 12 euros and it included the roman forum/palentine hill/collesium. and you have 2 days to do everything in. so i walked inside the collesium for a while. i ran into 2 people from nj.. i found that out when i asked them to take a picture of me in the collesium with the arch of constintine in the background. it was still freaking hot outside even though the sun was setting. it was probably 7pm…which is weird because when i left holland it didnt set until 10 and it didnt get dark untll 11. weird. and i was getting pretty tired so i found a rock in the shade to lay on for a while. around 8pm it was still light out and i decided to head out for an early (for italian standards) because i didnt really want to be roaming around rome at night in the dark alone. the restaurant was soro margarheta and was reccomended by my guidebook. its a roman jewish restaurant that was all the way on the other side of town and there was no easy way to get there by public transport. i found the restaurant after a while of searching. it is litteraly a whole in the wall. and there is no sign for it. the only reason i realized it was the restaurant is because there were chairs outside and people were sitting.,..and they looked like they were waiting. no one in the restaurant spoke english…but it wasnt really a problem. i sat down…and saw that there were tons of critic praises for the restaurant…some in english. on the wall… so i just ordered the 2 things that were always mention. fried artichoke (which is typical roman jewish) and some peppery speghetti dish. everything was amazing. so good. and it wasnt even that expensive. and th restaurant was really packed. im glad i decided to trek across town and find this place to eat in. so by this point..around 10pm…i was exhausted.i left my hostel at 9 that morning and hadnt been back yet. so when igot to the hostel…after figuring out the metro system i just passed out right away. and i was really burnt. i had crazy red burn lines on my back and on my shoulders and from my over the shoulder purse on my chest.

saturday

my hostel offered another tour for vatican city. originally i didnt think i was going to go to the vatican…because i didnt realize it was IN rome.. but it is in rome just has some walls around it. so i had to go because i was already all the way in rome…why not? right? so before the tour..since it left at 11 i wandered around some more. i found the triton fountain and a cool intersection that has 4 different fountains in it. And the tour left from the front of a church (i cant remember what the name was and i dont have my map handy) so i walked around inside the air conditioning for a while. This tour was 4 or 5 hours and cost 20 euros. i really liked this tour. this probably sounds ridiculous but before this tour i hardly knew who st peter and st paul were…and pretty much nothing about jc’s life and death blah blah.. so everything was really new and interesting. a lot of it sounded crazy… but still interesting. so some highlights: angels bridge, st peters square, vatican museum with the greek sculputre that michaelangelo used as muses for the creator and adam, sistine chapel…which was seriously amazing. how the hell did he paint that leaning back for 3 years.. .crazy. it was so amazing. i snuck a couple photos…. more stuff: where pope john paul ii is buryed, and st peters basillica. im really happy i went to the vatican. i dont really care about most of the stuff, but its really interesting and there are tons of people that wish they could go see this stuff and never have..so ha. i did. after the tour i went to eat lunch at a panini place my tour guide reccommended and then right next door was a gelato place that my guidebook suggested. so good. yummy. also on this tour i met more people from my hostel. one girl..summer from Florida convinced me to go on my hostels pub crawl that night. after my lunch i needed to rush back to the city center to go to the roman forum because my ticket would expire in a few hours. so i hopped on a metro and checke out the roman forum. all really interesting stuff and there was also some kind of special exhibit there. walking through the roman forum took me a while because every couple of minutes i would find somewhere in the shade to sit in and i would sit there for a while. after walking around the roman forum i found the same rock i layed on next to the collesium and layed there again. it was around 730at this point and then i realized that the pub crawl left around 8 oclock so i booked it back to my hostel to get changed. the pub crawl actually left at 830 so i had more time then i thought. this crawl was also a night time tour..so for the first hour the guide (the same one from my rome tour) took us to barbarini square..or is in bernini? (i was earlier in the day…it has the triton fountain there), the trevi fountain, and the spanish steps. all those things were really awesome places to see at night and im happy i went on the pub crawl because i probably would have just went during the day and not experienced them in the dark. on the pub crawl i recognized a bunch of people from both of the tours i went on..so it was really fun. i met a bunch of people. mostly americans and canadians. so after the tour we headed to 3 or 4 bars..and i was getting pretty tired because i had had a really long day so around 230ish me and a few girls i made friends with headed home.

sunday

sunday morning was the only morning in rome and venice that i woke up at 9am. check out was by 10 am so that gave me plenty of time to pack up and shower. it was probably 1030  by the time i was all checked out and finished breakfast and left the hostel. first on my schedule for my last day in rome was a market that one of my tour guide suggested. it was another freaking hot day and of course there was no easy way to get there. i had to take a metro and a bus. the bus was packed. so you had to squeeze your way on and then continuously get pushed back everytime more people got on. i had no clue when my stop was so after a while i just got off the bus because i couldnt stand the heat. i found some benches in the shade and realized that i was only one stop away..but  i didnt know which direction. so i just waited for the bus and gotback on for one more stop. the flea market was huge! giant. i wasnt feeling that well and didnt really want to waste money so i just walked pretty much straight through it.. i had no clue when it ended and it kept on going and going and going, so after a while i just turned around and headed out the same way i got in. probably a good idea because the market was off my map so i had no idea how to navigate myself back to the center without the bus and metro. got on a metro and headed towards the spanish steps. i wanted to see what they looked like during the day. still very crowded. tons of tourists. so i hung out on the steps for a while. after the steps i walked to the trevi fountain. i wanted to throw a coin in and take some good pictures, because the night before it was to crowded to do either. it was still crowded but now i was on my own time and could do what i wanted. hung out by the fountain for a while. then i had some time to kill before i wanted to go back to the hostel to pick up my bags before my train so i just roamed around the city heading towards to collesium in the distance without my map. i rewalked by some stuff that i had seen on my walking tour. when i got to the victor emmauel the second memorial i just hung around and sat for a while. then i headed to the collesium to sit for a while and then i hopped on a metro to get to my hostel. got my bag and headed towards the train station. the train was easy. really comfortable seats (unlike my moms trip from rome to venice 40 years ago). i set my alarm for 4 hours later and i slept most of the way there. i got to venice around 11pm. it was dark out and at first i was really nervous about getting to my hostel. everyone had told me its impossible to find your way around venice, and i was doing it alone and at night. i had directions from the hostel website and i had figured out where the hostel was on my guidebooks little map of venice so i was pretty confident just a little nervous. i probably waited for a vaporetto (water bus) for around 40 minutes. there were a bunch of people there so it wasnt a problem. got off a few stops later…amazed at how pretty venice is at night, and a few minutes later i was at my hostel. the hostel i was staying at… the venice museum.. is in a 400 year old building. really old and pretty and unneccisarily fancy for a youth hostel….it was suggested by sam my camp friend from england. i went to bed as soon as i checked in and woke up early the next day around 8am

monday

the hostel had free breakfast from 9-10 so i stuck around from that. i met some of the other people staying in the hostel and some of them reccommended things for me to do. after i headed out.. around 930..i hopped on a vaporetto and headed towards the main tourist spot of st. marks square. reallypretty old gothic square with st marks church. hung out in the square for a while. it was filled with tourists and i kinded wanted to get rid of all them and all the venders. but first on my list was to buy a purse that steph gonias had bought from a street vendor that i realy liked. its a big blue and white striped beach bag style purse with venizia italia and an anchor on the front. its really cute and the one i found was only 6euros. after i bought the bag i started wandering around venice. i heard that you were supposed to get yourself lost and just try to find your way back without a map…so thats what i did. i just wandered the streets going into different stores a such..and after a while i just found a canal and followed a few gondolas back up to the grand canal. it wasnt too difficult but i can see why people always say they get lost in venice. i mean what can you expect from a city made up of over 200 islands. then i hopped on a vaporetto for a kind of make shift sightseeing cruise. i was pretty much all the way south on the grand canal and i hopped on a bus and i got a seat in the front in the open air and i went all the way up the grand canal to the main bus station. my main goal was to have a boat toar of the city and i also needed to buy my bus ticket to the venice treviso airport. the boat ride was so nice. i was probably on it.. in my awesome seat for 40 minutes to an hour. so nice. it was such a good idea. once i got to the bus station i found the bus company and bought my ticket for 4 euros. awesome. for my trip to the airport the next day. after i saw i vaporetto sign that said to murano. so i waited for a while and got on the boat for the trip to murano island. that ride was probably also 40 minutes. omg. this city is amazing. so pretty and you need to ride on boats to get everywhere. i seriiously was so happy in venice it was amazing. i had such nice hot weather and everything was so gorgeous. so once i got to murano i walked into the first glass factory show thingy… after i found out that they are all over the island. they basically just show you for 5 minutes how the blow and mold the glass on the island. it was really cool but kinda lame. and then the rest of my time on murano was walking in and out of stores looking at all the really cool glass stuff. i bought sheila a glass mezzuzah and myself a yellow watch. im pretty upset because my watch was 25 euros and really really cute and its already kind of coming apart. hopefully when im home my mom can take me somewhere to fix the watchband. nothing is wrong with the face or the glass.. just the band. i was getting pretty hungry so i found a sea food restaurant that wasnt really expensive. i got pasta and clam sauce and fried calimari… yum. really good seafood. after i roamed around for a while and then got back on a bus to head back to the city. one of the girls in my hostel mentioned some international art festival in venice thats a pretty big deal that was taking place so that was my next plan. the art festival was called beneille.. something like that,. when people pronounced it it sounded just like BNL. the art was really werid. all of it was super contemporary and really weird. like there was one room full of plastic bags blown up really big..with a video of the guy blowing them up. and there was a room with tons of broken mirrors. basically i think each country involved..there were tons.. has a few artists and then they all get as much space they want.. there were exhibits all around the city. the coolest thing i saw was this one room thats really dark. all you see are different small little colored lights throughout the room. so i took a picutre with my flash and it was all different kinds of electronic stuff..like a fridge and a computer and a tv and stuff… really cool. after that i headed back out and walked along the grand canal for a while. i found some benches looking outward so i just sat. i was sitting next to these two people.. and they just offered me some of their cheese and crackers.. they were really nice. they were from oregon i think and were just traveling. we talked for a while and then they left. while i was sitting a few cruise ships drove by. so cool. i was visiting a city that people on cruises come too! so cool. every floor of the boat was lined with people looking into venice and st marks square and stuff. so cool. one of the cruise ships was being tugged by a tug boat. also really cool. at this point it was around 7pm and my hostel offers a free dinner so i hopped on a vaporetto and headed back to eat. i must have gotten lucky that i got that front open air seat before.. because this time the boat was packed and i needed to stand inside. so i got back to the hostel and started talking to a few people before dinner was served. the hostel was pretty small. i think there were only 3 bedrooms…so maybe something like 20 people were staying there. and for the dinner there were probably 15 people. dinner was speghetti with some really good sauce. i talked to the people sitting around me. some were from california, canada, and australia and germany. after dinner we all hung around the table for a while and 2 of them mentioned they heard about an outdoor concert to i invited myself to go with them. the whole group of us that went was like 6 people. all really cool people around my age. we got on a water bus and then walked for a while but then eventaully got to the concert. it was in this big park in st pietro square all the way on the south side of venice. the people i nthe band looked like they were in their 50s and some of them were wearing leather pants.. but it was really fun. they were playing pretty much all old 80s and 90s american music so all of us new it and could sing along. after the concert ended we hung around for a while and then headed back. didnt get back too late.

tuesday

my last day in venice. woke up early again, packed, showered, ate breakfast and was out of the hostel around 10 am. all i wanted to do for my last few hours in venice was go to the beach on lido island. so thats what i did. i hopped on a vaporetto and the last stop was lido. asked someone how to get to the beach and then got there 10 mminutes later. it was so pretty. and i didnt have to pay. some people mentioned that it was really hard to find a free beach on lido…but i just went onto the first beach i found… when i was walking onto the beach i saw this really cool pavilion that had really cool beds with cushions and really cool beach chairs..and it went pretty near to the water. so i jumped the rope that surrounded the pavallion and just found a chair to lay on. im pretty sure i wasnt allowed to be there…but if someone asked me to leave i would just get up and go.. so i layed at this awesome pavillion for a few hours. it was so nice out. i was basically sleeping on a full sized bed on the ocean. so nice. the beach was really nice and it wasnt too crowded. i saw a few naked people and some naked babies but not as much as i expected. after laing down for a while i went up to the water and went up to my knees. that day i wasnt wearing a bathing suit because i was aboutto get on the plane and didnt want to deal with a wet bathing suit.. kinda sucks. but not a big deal. i knew i would be swimming in budapest. hung out with my feet in the water for a while and then headed back to the boat to get my luggage at the hostel. did that and then hopped on my last vaporetto to go to the bus stop. i seriously love this city. i really really need to go back some day. im not really sad that i only had one and a half days there.. because i was by myself and going back with friends or family or whatever and spending some time there would be really cool. but by yourself ther isnt that much to do. it was a really really good relaxing 2 days there. it was like a vacation from my sightseeing vacation….eventually got to the bus station..its the last stop, found my bus and headed to treviso airport… which was like an hour away. easy easy. checked into my wizz air flight..that cost zero euros…with taxes this flight came out to 17 euros awesome. and then off to budapest to see trent and mor….

Last week in Utrecht

my last week in Utrecht was the best it could possibly be…while being really sad. There were tons of goodbye parties, and just the idea of goodbye parties are sad. I had my one final for History of Economic Thought on tuesday. i thought it was pretty difficult, but i think i did pretty well. We also had a group paper due that day. since my group rocked it was pretty easy to get 20 pages done.

on wednesday i went into Amsterdam with Aliisa. the main goal was for me to drop off all my luggage at Sheilas apartment. and it was also aliisas lasst time in amsterdam. after carrying up all my luggage up two flights of narrow winding stairs, me and aliisa roamed around amsterdam all day. it was my last full day with her. it was a really good day. we also went to the albert cuyp market..which ended up being a lot better this time around. maybe its because i was shopping with a girl.

thursday morning we all woke up really early because david and lucia were leaving at 8am. so they woke up the whole apartment at 7 to have some coffee and breakfast. it was really hard to say goodbye to them. i love both of them so much.

i had a few hours left in utrecht. i packed my back pack, sold my bike for 20 euros!!!!!! and then trent and aliisa walked me to the bus stop. it wasnt sad to say goodbye to trent because i will see him in budapest in a week. It was really hard to say goodbye to aliisa. as the bus came we both started crying. we got really close the last few months. we didnt really start the semester as friends..but at some point early on we got really close. we were basically best friends the past 4 months. i was actually shocked she cried too because she is pretty good at hiding her emotions.
that was the hardest goodbye. during all the goodbye parties i would pretty much avoid everyone as i was leaving so i didnt need to say goodbye. i didnt really want to start crying at a party..even though many people were.
it was really sad to leave utrecht. i will definitely miss it and all the people i lived here with the past 5 months.
i love utrecht. i will def visit in the future. it just wont be the same.

now off to rome, venice, budapest, and dubrovnik

ethan’s visit 6/12-6/18 (plus Bruges and Brussels)

Since Ethan was here for such a long time (7 days), and we didnt really have any specific plans, i didnt keep track of what we did day to day. So i forgot most of the details, but here is what i can remember from it.

Friday morning i picked him up at Schipol. Super happy to see him. Obviously I hadnt seen him (or anyone else from Madison) since I left in December. He had an overnight flight, so once we got back to Utrecht he passed out for a while. Made some dinner and then just hung around in Utrecht for the rest of the day. Saturday we went to Amsterdam to take the free walking tour. We just made it right before they were about to leave, and we also got the last two spots. It was nice actually learning about stuff in Amsterdam rather then just walking around it aimlessly. We actually lost our tour by accident. There was probably 30-45 minutes left and we kept on walking straight along a street and we later figured out that our tour group turned a few blocks before us. O well. Then we walked around the red light district for a while. Then we walked to leidseplein and museumplein and through the albert cuypmarket.. the market actually kinda sucked. it wasnt that fantastic. Then we headed back up to the red light district and chilled there until late.

On Sunday we did Utrecht. Took him to Dom tower, the boat, the oudegracht, etc etc. … i also bought a travel backgammon game that we both became obsessed with. I def need to buy a normal size wooden one when i get home/back to madison. Hung around Utrecht the rest of the night.

Monday we went back to Amsterdam. This time with our mini back gammon board so we could play pretty much whereever we wanted too. Walked around the windows for a while. We actually found the indoor part of the red light district and its super creepy…because the girls can stand outside of their windows and try to grab you and stuff. pretty creepy. we didnt stay in there for long. Tuesday we also hung around Utrecht. I had class from 5-7 so we couldnt go too far. After class we went to see The Hangover. It is absolutely hilarious! Serisouly so funny. I really really need to see it again. Funny thing about movies in europe: there is an intermission in the middle of the movie. Basically they just stop the movie right in the middle for 10-15 minutes. Ethan said that happened when he saw a movie in Greece too. wierd. and pointless. everyone around us got up and got more to drink/eat. Went back to my apartment and we had a arty in my kitchen for one of my roommates, Karina, because it was her last night. We had some Ouzo, some Greek alcohol that Ethan really likes since he got back from Greece. O yea… i dont know when, i think at this party 2 of my roommates are finally back from Turkey. David and Lucia. I missed them so much. I havent seen them since my fake birthday. It was so nice to finally see both of them. I missed them and they missed me too

the next day i had class 11-1. my last class before my final exam. This time around finals isnt as stressed out because im only in one class. And the paper isnt too difficult because we have 4 students all working on it together…unlike last semester. We actually finished the paper today.  After class on Tuesday me and Ethan planned to leave for Bruges at 2:45…but because we both had to pack and he had to book one of his trains things took a little longer than expected and we were 2 hours behind schedule. Took the train from Utrecht>Rotterdam>Antwerp>Bruges. It was still daylight when we were there. The hostel was like a 10 minute walk from the center, so we just walked around the city at night. We were both not feeling so great, so we hung outside this one bar for a while. It probably took us two hours to drink our first and only beer. Got some fries on our way back to the hostel and passed out. Bruges is really pretty. Super old. Its really small too. I need to see the movie In Bruges now. The next day we woke up pretty early to get the free hostel breakfast and then we were off the Brussels. We got to Brussels around 12. We walked around the city all day. We saw the Mannekin Pis fountain, the Royal Palace, Royal Park, the Grand Place square..etc etc. pretty much all the tourist attractions. We got some pretty nice view of the whole city. Not intentionall..but we got up this big hilly part of the city where you can see a whole panorama. We even got to see the Atomium from a far. The Atomium is this big giant futuristic sculpture that is left over from a worlds fair in the 1950. We didnt go to it because its a few kms out of the city, but we did get to see it. Walked around some more, got lost…well not really. but we definitly walked in circles for a while before I asked someone how to get to the train station. I chilled with Ethan for a while before his bus to Paris left. And then at 6 we said goodbye. I was sad to see him go. the 7 days went super fast. But we both get back to Madison at the same time so I will see him again in about a month. Then i hopped on a train and got back to Utrecht around 10pm.

Now its Friday.. and im having my first lazy day pretty much since i left for Vienna in May. And the next few days are going to be mixed with studying for my final on tuesday and packing and saying goodbye. Im not excited for the goodbye part. Its so sad. We are down to 7 people in my apartment.. we started at 12. And i am the next one to go… on the 25th.. Less than one week in Utrecht left.

Steph’s Visit

Day 1 Monday June 8

I picked up Steph and Rachel from the Utrecht train station about 9pm. This was the day that i got home from London at 11am ish and was super tired. When i spotted them in the trainstation i did the classic D’Agostino wave trying to get Steph’s attention. it worked. haha. We then walked back to my apartment and they were both starving and so was I. We cooked up some pasta and salad for dinner. That night they were both tired like I was so we just hung around in my kitchen for the night and then went to bed. Since some of my roommates have moved out already i was able to get a bed for Rachel, Steph slept in my bed and I slept on this half mattress that Mor found somewhere. We all had clean sheets, blankets and pillows. So everything worked out fine. Skyped the paretns and then went to bed

Day 2 Tuesday June 9

Steph made us all eggs for breakfast which was yummy.. then we headed out to see Utrecht. First i took them to the Dom tower and Dom Church. This was actually the first time iwent into Dom Church. Its really pretty. I forgot what year it was built.. but i think something like 1300. The i took them to the Oudegracht. We walked around there pretty much for a few hours walking into differet stores to shop. We stopped at one second hand store and I got an awesome brown leather (i think it is) shoulder bag. Ive been wanting one since i got here… everyone here wheres shoulder bags. and it was only 10 euros. Im pretty much in love with it right now. I also got a pair of bright yellow birkenstocks…not at the second hand store.. somewhere else. I decided i wanted a pair of the thong style sandles and originally i was going to get them when i got home. But steph told me they were more expensive at home so i just splurged and got them here. she also got a red pair. We then grabbed a quick bite at Broodje Mario, an amazing sandwich place on the canal. At this point it was kind of pouring rain. We hung out under the awning for a while till the rain stopped till a drizzle. We then went back to my place..because i needed to do school work. They went to Broers cafe to write some postcards. I went to class at 7 and then met up with them at the cafe. We then went to the grocery store to buy some food and Stroopwafels, which they fell in love with. Everybody does. for dinner we made chicken fajitas and tons and tons of rice. i never know how much to make so i still have leftovers. I was super full and still had to work on my presentation so i decided not to go out with them. I gave them directions and they went to Kafe Belgie… a bar that has mostly Belgian beers and there are about 200 of them available.

Day 3 June 10 Wednesday

The next day i had class from 11-1. My presentation went well. I did fine..and then i headed back to the apartment. I took them to Bagels and Beans a really good bagel restaurant thats kinda like Modern Bagel in Radburn. It was really good..but not that cheap. Then we headed to do the canal tour of Utrecht. I didnt even know Utrecht had a canal tour, but Steph and Rachel didnt do one in Amsterdam, so they wanted to do one here. It was pretty good. It was awesome to see Utrecht from the perspective of the canals.. because they are alot lower then the side walks. Learned some stuff on the tour. it was about an hour long. And then we headed to Rotterdam. I heard a few days earlier that there was going to be a Netherlands vs Norway game in Rotterdam and I really wanted to go. I had no clue how to get tickets…and I wanted to go to Rotterdam anyway, so we decided to go for the rest of the day. On the train there was a guy dressed in a crazy orange outfit so i asked him if he thought we could get tickets for the game, and he said that he had heard on tv yesterday that there were still some tickets available..and he gave us directions on how to get to the stadium. We hopped on a train (we later learned the tram was easier) and then took the somewhat long walk to the stadium. We figured out where to go to get tickets and there were still some available. The only ones they had left were 60euro..which is kind of expensive.. but i really wanted to go and so did they, so we bought the tickets!! woo. there were still 3 hours till the game started so we went back on the tram to the centraal station. we picked up a map at the tourist office and headed out. the entire day the rain was on and off. it was never crazy downpoaring yet.. but it pretty much always rained. We walked around, saw some tall building and the river in Rotterdam and the Erasbus bridge. Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe,,maybe the world, but the port is outside the city center so we didnt go there. But we did see some old boats and a light tower. Then we headed back to get on a tram to the stadium. The tram was absolutely packed. We had to squeeze our way on. We were so short and squished in there. Everyone was in orange and singing dutch football songs. When we got off the tram is started pouring rain. like crazy pouring. We went though the gates and found our seats which were all the way up/….but the stadium isnt that high up, so the seats were actually pretty good. I could see the players faces and there names on the shirts. We got some food in the stadium and the game eventually started. The game was so amazing. Ive always wanted to go to a football game in europe and this was perfect. An actual national game! its the only Dutch national game that has happened since ive been in Holland and its the only one in Netherlands until August. Im so happy we got to see it. Totally worth the money. The fans were crazy and loud and singing like crazy the entire time. We even did the wave a few full times around the stadium. We won 2-0. We also got a free orange scarf and a free flag for the game. It was awesome! Then we waited for a while to get back on the tram, and then once we were in the train station we waited 30 minutes for a train back to Utrecht. We got back to Utrecht around 1 am. Even though it was raining (thank god our seats were covered) it was such a good day. The game was so fun. We went to bed pretty much right away.

last hours June 11

got up at like 9am..steph and rachel packed, ate breakfast and then i walked them to the bus stop at like 10:30. they were catching a train to antwerp at 11am. i got an email from rachels blackberry that they were on the train on their way. The 2 full days we did together were really fun. Even though some hours i spent doing school work it was still really fun. Im glad they came.

Now i have one full day alone and tomorrow my friend from Wisconsin, Ethan is coming. I have to pick him up at 9am tomorrow at Schipol. Im super excited!

camp reunion in Londontown (3/6-8/6)

first night, Wednesday June 3rd

For this trip i was flying ryan air and that means that i was flying out of and into airports that are a way out of the city. kind of annoying and time consuming, but my flight was super cheap, so o well. So i got into London Standsted at like 8 or 9pm and hopped a cheap bus into the city. I think it took a little over an hour. Graham gave me directions on what tube to take so i could meet him closer to his and Kristen’s apartment. So while i’m in the tube station i hear my name being called. I turn around and its one of my friends, Amanda, from school. She works at the ATO and she just got to London a few weeks ago to start a study abroad there for the summer. I had no clue she was in london. Crazy small world that we bumped in to each. Seriously crazy. Soon after i met up with Kristen and Graham at Kensington Olympia station. It was so nice to see them. I havent seen them since the end of summer 05 at camp. So its been almost 4 years. We went back to the apartment for a second to drop off my stuff and then we headed out soon after. I’m pretty sure they live in West Kensington, but they like to pretend they live in Shepperds Bush. I dont really know what any of that means, but thats what they told me. We hung out at a bar for a while, reminiscing about camp. the whole weekend was pretty much filled with camp stories and gossip about life since camp and the recent camp reunion. We headed back to the apartment after a while and i was exhausted so i passed out pretty easily.

Day 2 Thursday June 4

Since it was Thursday, Graham went off to work early, but Kristen had off so we roamed around the tourist sites during the day. First stop was buckingham palace. We didnt really plan for it, but we ended up getting to the palace soon after the changing of the guard started. There were tons of tourists everywhere. I dont really know what changing of the guard actually means, but what we saw was some guards walking back and forth and a marching band (in guard uniforms) playing some music. Eventually there was some sort of parade and the guards marched down the street. Funny story: me and kristen were both looking at my camera to see the pictures that ive taken and an American women walks up to me asking if i got a picture of the king and queen. Then i said that i dont think that the queen comes out for this event. She responded that she heard that somebody saw them and then walked away. A second after she walked away i was like to kristen.. .wait.. there is no king of england.. haha. i love stupid american tourists. really funny. So me and Kristen walked for a while towards the Thames to see more sites. We saw Big Ben which is part of the parliament building, westminster abbey, and the london eye. At first i did not think that big ben was actually big ben. We walked up to it from behind, so i didnt look like it did in all the pictures, and honestly it didnt seem that big. O well. Eventually we figured ot that it was big ben. not that exciting. then we walked over a bridge (i think it was westminster bridge) to get to the south bank. There we walked along right by the london eye. for a while we walked on the south bank… some of the sites we saw were: the millenium bridge, shakespere’s globe theatre, we went to the bathroom at the tate modern (but didnt actually go in the museum), gabriel’s wharf, london bridge (not that exciting…just a normal bridge). Somewhere between all that we stopped to eat lunch. We pretty much stuffed our face with soup and pasta but it was really delicious. We were both starving and needed a pick me up at that point. Eventually we got to the Tower Bridge. We layed in the grass by the bridge for a while and i think i may have actually fallen asleep for a little. Then the bridge opened up to let a boat through. not that exciting in real life, but later graham told me that he has never seen it open up in real life (as oppossed to just in pictures), so then i guess it was kind of a big deal. Walked over the bridge (once it was back in place) and then passed the Tower of London..where the crown jewels are kept. Then we hopped on the Tube to head to Graham and Kristens office. They both work for some company that used to be part of the BBC..i dont really get it, but anyway, the important part is that they work in the BBC complex in London. Super cool. So i went up to there offices and Kristen showed me around for a while. They pointed out some famous BBC people that i had no clue were. Still it was pretty awesome. After Graham got off at work, we went around looking into different studios for a bunch of shows. The first one we walked into was actually just about to start a taping. Its some comedy game show. I think its called eight out of ten. I recognized the host from some show on comedy central. We maybe watched for about 30 minutes then left. Then we headed to the bar in the BBC building because Graham and Kristen take a British Sign Language class there. The lesson was actually really fun. After it we hung around for the bar a while, watching the premiere of the new Big Brother…which is huge in England. Eventually we went back to the bar we went to the night before and then when it closed we headed back to the apartment… O yea.. just remembered earlier in the day me and Kristen passed by 10 downing street where the prime minister Gordon Brown lives. Since there has been tons of controversey with him and the Labor party there were tons of papa razzi there taking pictures. Someone in the labor party drove right in front of us and ran into the building because tons of people were taking her pictures..

Day 3, Friday June 5

Both Graham and Kristen had work on Friday, so i tried getting in touch with my friend from Wisconsin, but i think i may have had the wrong number or something because none of my texts or calls were going through. O well. There were tons of stuff that i still wanted to see in london and i didnt have a problem walking around by myself. First up I went to abbey road. Really cool I took some pictures, and then some other toursists offered to take my picture as i walked across. Its pretty much just an intersection and all the tourists almost get hit by tons of cars. I would probably be really annoyed if i had to drive past the cross walk all the time. They should put a stop sign or something up. Anyway.. the next thing i went to is Kings Cross Station. Thats where Harry Potter and all the wizards in the books get to Hogwarts… if you didnt know already. I found platform 9 3/4, took a picture and again asked another tourist to take a picture of me going into the wall. Next I went to Harrods. Super fancy and huge. Its about the same size i think of the big MAcys in NYC. I walked around inside for a while looking at all the fancy clothes. It looked like all tourists.. i didnt actually see any real people shopping. Then i headed out and got some lunch at Yo Sushi. This is the sushi place where you sit at a bar type thing and sushi and other stuff comes out on a conveyer belt and just goes in circles. You take what you want and the plates are color coded according to price. At the end they just add up you plates to know how much you owe. It was super yummy, but kinda expensive. Its pretty much a trap because of course you are going to grab a bunch of plates that are right in front of you all the time. But it was really good anyway. Next up I walked to Hyde Park. I walked around for a while. Then I walked to the other side of the park and saw Kensington Palace where Princess Diana used to live. Later I asked Graham and some other English people if they knew who lived there know, and no one knew. Kinda funny. Then i walked through Kensington gardens and saw the Peter Pan statue and the memorial waterfall for princess Diana. I layed on a bench in the park for a while because i was super tired from walking around all day and had some time to kill before i met up with Graham and Kristen at the BBC.  Then i decided to head back to the apartment to find out where the closest Top Shop is. There was one in the mall that is super close the Graham and Kristen’s apartment so i headed there. Turns out it is a Westfield mall. Haha. For some reason i couldnt find Top Shop (even though graham and kristen told me later that there is one there.. i was in a different part of the mall) but i headed to the mall that Graham told me about before near BBC to see if there was one there. And there was one. Top Shop is a really cool clothing store kinda like Urban outfitters or H and M. But ten times better. I loved everything in the store. It was so nice and not that expensive. I walked around for a while and had to decide between a bunch of things because I told myself that I would only buy ont thing. I ended up buying the bright pink sleevless shirt thingy. Its really cute. After that i went back to there office to meet up with them. We grabbed a quick bite to eat at the convenience store close by and then graham, kristen, there friend Dan, and I headed out to go to a concert. When i originally told graham that i was thinking of coming this weekend he said that him and kristen were going to buy some concert tickets and that he would pick one up for me too. Ive never heard of the guy..Dan Deacon, but i was sure i would have a good time anyway. The concert ended up being amazing. It was in the student union of some university so it wasnt that big, but the crowd was a perfect size. Dan Deaceon isnt my type of music but i still loved the concert. I really got into the music and the dancing. Dan Deacon is really cool. he got the whole crowd to push back into a circle so people could dance in the middle. It was really awesome. At the end i was so excited about Dan Deacon that i actually bought a CD. It was super fun. After the concert we headed back home.

Day 4 Saturday June 6

The next day was sort of a lazy day. Not really. Kristen had work super early, so i didnt see her untill later at night. Me and Graham headed out around 2pm to meet up with Scott Connor from camp at a sports bar. Him and graham are good friends now and always meet up to watch soccer games. This one was a qualifying game for the World Cup next year between England and Kazakhstan. Before the game started we watched the end of the UK Lions rugby match. The lions are a team made up of athletes from England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland and only get together once every 4 years. I guess its a really big deal and only the best players from each place make the team. the lions won and it was a really close game. Eventually Scott and another guy from camp Brian came. He worked at camp when i was 12, so i didnt recognize him at all. It was pretty funny because at first he thought i was Kristen. I guess we do both wear glasses and we are short with brown hair. Funny mixup. Today was also the day that i was supposed to meet up with Sam Chelton. He was a counselor in 05 also. I barely talk to him since camp, but we were pretty good friends at camp and i was really looking forward to seeing him. I was kinda nervous that he wasnt going to show up because it seemed like he had tons of stuff to do that weekend…but he did. It was so nice to see him. I was pretty much going though camp story overload..and i think he was too. He had worked at camp 05-08 and this was his first summer that he didnt go back.And he also worked there during the year. England won the game 4-0. Yay. Eventually Kristen came and it was a mini summer 05 reunion. Then we headed to another bar. We all hung out for a while reminiscing and telling funny stories about camp. It was really fun. Im super happy i got to see the people that i did see. Eventually we headed back home

Day 5/6 Sunday/Monday June 7 and 8

The next day Kristen had work as well, so Graham got the chance to take me a around london again. First we headed to the National Portrait Gallery. Woo its free! Some super old stuff, but some newer paitning and pictures of people i recognized as well. After that we headed to Convent Garden where there are tons of street performers hanging around in the streets. We then had a quick bite to eat and then we headed for Camden Market. Camden market is huge. Its so awesome. Tons of little shops pretty much selling everything. There were really really cute clothes stores everywhere. I probably could have spent tons of money there and spent the entire day therre. But i wasnt really in the wasting money mood. Also it was kinda raining so that was annoying. We also saw a really small old lock and watched a tour boat go through it. It took kind of a long time for such a small lock and small boat. But it was interesting to see how old and old fashioned the lock was. After walking around in Camden market for a while we headed back to the apartment for a little rest. I was pretty sure that i saw everything in london that i wanted to see. Both me and Graham couldnt think of anything else that a tourist needs to see on their first trip to london. We hung around the apartment for a while and then headed to a bar around the corner from their apartment to play some trivia. At first we were doing really badly but we made up for it later. We ended up getting 20/40 points and 2nd place. The team that won was a group of 8…so there was really no was we could have beat them. It was a good time. I love trivia. After that we headed back to the apartment to watch the results of the European Parliament elections. I dont really know much about European politics but it was super interesting because there is tons of scandel in the curring English government. We had some pizza for dinner and eventually Kristen got home from work. I needed to catch a city bus (yes the red double decker bus) at 2am so we all just stayed up watching the results on tv. They walked me to the bus stop and said our goodbyes. It was super nice seeing them and I hope they know how much i appreciated them letting me stay at there place. It was a nice little camp reunion and kinda made me miss camp. Around 2:30 i got to the train station where the bus would pick me up at 3am to take me to the Stansted airport. the bus only cost 12 pounds round trip. for 3 hours in total thats really cheap. Im super happy i booked in advance because there were a bunch of people that tried getting on the bus but the next available one was at 6am. sucks. So the bus was easy. i slept untill we got in the airport. I spent the rest of my 7 pounds of a sandwich and 2 drinks…i had like 60 pence left that i didnt know what to do with so i just left in on a random table… hopefully i made someones day. And then i got on my plane. The plane left at like 6:30ish i think. I landed at 9amish Dutch time.. the flight was only an hour, hopped on a bus at eindhoven to get me to the centraal station, and then hopped on the train to get back to Utrecht. I finally got back to my apartment around 11am and when i opened the door Aliisa was there. I was so happy. I havent seen her in 2 1/2 weeks. i really missed her and im pretty sure she missed me too. My original plan was to sleep all day because i had to pick Steph up at 9pm that night.. but i was super busy and needed to clean and do homework and add london pictures to facebook. So i didnt actually sleep. So i was working on the 1 hour sleep i got on the bus and 1 hour sleep i got on the plane. Most of the day i was fine, but towards the end of the night i was super exhausted.

My real 21st BDAY

a lot more chill and relaxing than my fake birthday.

i started the day off my heading to Schevenegin which is the beach town in The Hague. I went with three girls that live next door, Ally and Anna from California, Matilde from Italy, and Alyssa from California who lives in a different apartment. The beach was so nice. It was really hot put but the water was extrememly cold. We were at the beach  for a really long time and around 6ish it started getting windy and cold. So we went back into the center of The Hague and found a restaurant in Chinatown. It was really good. Of course we got tons of food and it was pretty cheap too. Then, to my surprise, the waitor brought out a cake and they all sang happy birthday. Really nice. I had no clue chinese restaurants even did that. I guess so. Then we headed back to Utrecht with plans to roast some marshmellows and make smores. After i chillled at my computer for a while i had a knock at my door…and it was a bunch of my neighbors and roommates with borwnies with candles in it and they all sang happy birrthday. It was really sweet. then we all hung out in the kitchen for a while, and i was exhausted from all the sun, so i just went to bed.

Good birthday! im sure ill have a more “21st style bday” when i get back to the states

Vienna, Prague and Berlin with Steph G 5/21-5/30

So. Get ready for a long blog post.

thursday 5/21-22 Utrecht>Schipol>Vienna

My plane to vienna left around 8pm. It was an easy 2 hour flight. Got to my hostel around midnight and passed out. I was meeting Steph the next morning. There was some confusion booking our hostels (the company has two hostels in Vienna) but the hostels are right around the corner from eachother. The next morning I met Steph at her hostel at 1030am. We werent really friends in HS. more like friends of friends, but we got a lot closer when we both had internships in DC last summer. So, neither of us really new Vienna so we just started walking towards the center of the City. First we saw Museum Quarter, walked around. Then we just kept walking around the parks in the area. All the buildings were really old and fancy looking. Then we found what i think was the palace for the Hapsburgs, which is now a museum. We didnt go inside because it was expensive, but we just checked out the view. Then we walked around the grounds some more and decided to find somewhere to eat. We picked a restaurant in Museum quarter that was pretty good and not that expensive. Walked around some more, and we noticed a really fancy looking building. I was guessing and said that maybe it looked like it could be the parliament building and she said absolutely not. it was way too decrative with all the gold and statues. Lo and behold two seconds later we saw the sign on the building that said “Parliament”. Woo i am so good! then we planned to walk to the House of Music museum that my guide book said was “mind blowing” but we got distracted along the way. We saw a sign for Beethoven park, so we walked there. Took some pictures with Beethoven and then walked to the bigger park that was near by. I believe its called Stadtpark, but im not sure. We didnt realize how huge it was. But its giant. We walked around, found a statue of Strauss in the park. Had some yummy gelato and just sat in the sun for a while. Then we decided to change our plans because the big fancy Versaille-like palace was going to close soon. So we needed to look for the train to get there. This is where we are stupid. we saw a point on a map that showed what we thought was a tram that left in the park. but that didnt make any sense to us, because we didnt see any tram tracks. So we walk to the edge of the park and are even more confised beause there are no trams to be seen. So we walk pretty much around half the park and ask someone how to get to U …so and so. And he points us in the direction. Turns out that the “U” is an underground metro system. that makes sense.. ha. so we got on the train an headed to the Schloss Schonbrun which is the Hapsburgs summer palace. It was absolutly gorgeous. The outside wasnt as pretty as versaille, but still really nice. We walked around the gardens, found a maze, walked through, and then decided to hike up to the top of the grounds to get a better view. It was a pretty intense hill. Probably Bascom hill times 3 or 4. Once we were at the top it was so beautiful. We had a really nice view of Vienna. After we hung out for a while we decided to walk back to our hostel. We didnt really realize how long our walk was, but it wasnt that bad. We headed back and went to an Asian restaurant recomended by our hostel. It was called Yellow. So delicious. Then we headed to the House of Music museum. It was pretty cool… but not mind blowing. It was interactive, but kinda lame at the same time. We did spend like two hours there tho. So after that we headed back to Steph’s hostel to claim our free drink at the bar and then i headed back to m hostel.. it was like 11 or 12ish im guessing and I passed out right away. We planned to have an early start for our 2nd and last full day in Vienna.

5/23 Vienna

Woke up around 8, met Steph at her hostel around 9am. First on our agenda was to go to the Nasch Market, a huge market in Vienna. It was gigantic. It had pretty much everything. It was a giant flee market along with a food market. Had some okay falafel for breakfast and some cheese samples along the way. After walking around the market for a while we headed towards the main touristy part of town, by STephen’s Cathedral. Really old church, surrounded by tourists. Walked around awhile, checking out all the old buildings. Then we went to get Gelato at supposedly the best gelato place in Vienna. It was really good. I love lemon Gelato fyi. then we found a nice quiet square for us to sit in the sun and eat while we just chilled. Across the square i recognized a name of a restaurant that was really familiar. It was the restaurant that Mor (my roommate reccommended and wrote the name in my guidebook). He said it was really hard to find and that we would need to ask someone to find the street. So we checked it out and planned on coming back for our dinner later. At this point it was pretty early but we had planned so many things to do that day that we decided on a 4pm ish dinner. So then we walked around some more and tried to find the Jewish quarter. It was pretty hard to find but once we saw some black hats we knew we were in the right place. In the center there was a big holocaust memorial which is a hug giant book shelf looking thing with all the books facing outward (the opposite way than a normal bookshelf). Sat around for a while and then headed out. Then we headed for a train to take is the the edge of the city on the Danube river because there was a ferris wheel on our map. Turns out there is a big carnival type amusement park with a giant ferris wheel. the paper we got said it was one of the oldest of its kinds in Europe. So we rode the big ferris wheel which gave us another great view of Vienna. After we hung out at the fair for a while we decided to head out to the Danube river. It was a beautful day and when we got there there were tons of people sun bathing and swimming in the river. The river was really blue and clear and we both wished we had our swim suits on. O well. Layed in the sun some more and then headed back to the city for dinner. So this restaurant must be famous, but it was pretty cheap. I got what Mor suggested which was Weinerschnitzel and potato salad. It was really tastey. After dinner we needed to head to the Opera to get our standing room only tickets. First we noticed that there were tons of people in this one candy store. Does anyone know if wafers started in Vienna? because this was a giant touristy wafer store. Bought some cheap wafers and headed to the opera. Side note: All over the city there were these people dressed in Mozart costumes heckling tourists to buy  tickets to some mozart orchestra show.. they were really annoying and all over the place. So when we got to what we thought was where to get standing room tickets, these annoying mozart people were telling us and all of the other tourists looking into the ticket office that it was sold out tonight and that we should buy these mozart things. We knew that it was sold out already, but we didnt want to buy these tickets. super annoying and i feel bad for all the tourists that get trapped by them. So then someone tells us that standing room tickets are on the other side of the Opera building. So we waited in line for a while and got our tickets for 3 euros. Incredible. So we saw Eugen Onegin by Peter Tchaikovsky. It was really really amazing. Super impressive. the hardest part was standing for 3 hours. but whatever. Then we were both pretty tired but we wanted to see the main bar area of Vienna, so thats what we did. It took us a while to find the “Bermuda Triangle” cuz thats what its called. But we did, found a bar our hostel recommeded and had one drink and then headed back to the hostel not that much later. Our bus for prague left pretty early anyway.

5/24 Vienna>Prague

Bus was easy. About 4 hours maybe a little longer. Got there around 12ish. This time we were staying at the same hostel which makes life a lot easier. We didnt really know much about Prague, what else is knew. So we headed out around 1ish i think that her friend recommended. Oh, but first we headed to lunch at a restaurant that was recommeded to us by our hostel. there was a 15% discount for people staying at our hostel. It was a czech restaurant, so obviosuly it was very meat and beer heavy. I got some chicked dish that was topped with ham and a beer. YAY for finally having Bohemian beer that i have been hearing all about. super cheap! Its a park on the outskirts of town that has a cemetery and a church and my guidebook its a place that mosts tourists dont know about. So we walked for a while to find the park. It was quite a hike up to the top. It is pretty annoying that all these maps that i have gotten since ive been traveling dont mention which part is up hill. But anyway, the view of the city was amazing. We could see Prague Castle and the center of town. We walked around the cemetery that was super old and we saw some younger girls doing what looked like a traditional/folk Czech dance, i guess we’ll never know. Hung around the park for a while, laying in the sun. Walked around the higher parts somemore to soak in some of the view and then we headed back down. Since there was no real plan, and our big sight seeing day was going to be tomorrow, we walked around the city to the next big park that has a mini Eifel Tower in it. To get there we walked along the Charles river. REally pretty, with amazing views. We both needed to go to the bathroom by the time we got to the edge of the park and we saw a sign for a subway that said like 700 meters. not bad right? turns out we need to learn the metric system. It isnt that far but i really really needed to pee and it wasnt that close. But YAY for a free bathroom. Ugh i am sick of paying to pee. SO then we decided we were too tired from all the walking to hike up to the eifel tower so we decided to walk through the city some more. Found some cheap place to eat dinner and kept on walking. So basically we walked around the entire city that day. We started all the way west.. walked all the way south…then walked east and then up north through the center and then all the way back west to our hostel. Pretty intense but we say the entire outer part of the city which was nice. We were planning on going on a walking tour the next day which would show us everything important in the center. So we had a full day of walking and then passed out.

5/25 Prague

We went to the main square in Prague for the free walking tour around 10:30am. It was a huge group, but it didnt matter because we had a really amazing tour guide that spoke loudly. The tour was four hours and at the end of it it i tipped 50 crown (i dont know how to spell the currency) …which is like $2.50. kinda sucky..but thats all i had and the tour group was huge so he made bank. Anyway, so on the tour he told us some pretty good stories and he told us a lot of czech and prague history which was really interesting. So some of the sights: Astronomical clock…which gets a HUGE crowd infront of it every hour just to hear it tick for one minute. pretty lame, but it had a cool story behind it, Jewish square.. that was still pretty much intact even through WWII because hitler really liked Prague and wanted to use the Jewish Square as the memorial to the extinct Jewish race. sucks for him. The concert hall where Mozart debuted Don Giovanni (which was the opera we missed by one night in Vienna), stopped at an AMAZING bagel place called Bohemia Bagel, Some Franz Kakfa sites, a cool Jewish clock that ticked counted clockwise, Jan Palack Square. (hey mom, do you remember him? he was a pretty young kid that killed himself in the 60s in protest to the communists taking over Prague. im pretty sure). Got sweet views of the Prague Castle, and Charles Bridge, some controversal DAvid Cerny artwork, The John Lennon wall (for the parents: lennon never came to prague, but after his death people started grafitting a wall with imagine and paintings of him to support peace and such) and its been decorated constantly since 1980 with new stuff. So the tour was over. It was really really good. After, we decided to make the trek up to the Prague Castle. It was really pretty and had, once again, great views of the city. Most of the stuff cost money to get into, so we just walked around the grounds. It was pretty complicated and we never found the gardens, but o well. Sweet views and pretty buildings. then we walked back into the city center via the Charles Bridge which is basically a really really old bridge with tons of sculptures along the side of it. Along the way i bumped into a girl that lives in Parnassos. crazy. well.. and she is really werid. so i just said hey and then just bounced. When we got back to the city we saw a group of younger kids singing…really impressive they mustve been on some school chorus trip. Saw the astronomical clock once again, and actually got a good view of all of it because it was not close to ticking again. Then we headed back to the bagel place for dinner. so good. We were tired and we planned on going on the pub crawl so we headed back to the hostel to relax for a bit. Pub crawl left at like 9ish. It was a huge group, which is good because my friend that did a pub crawl in prague said it was lame because there were hardly any people. Our tour guide was on it along with a bunch of other tour guides. That night me and steph hung out with 2 guys that just graduated from Lehigh, a guy from Atlantic City, and a girl from Dublin. It was really fun. Had a good time. Didnt stay out too late but then headed back to the hostel.

5/26 Prague>Berlin

The next day we took it pretty easy. We went back to the Jewish Quarter to see on of the synogagues that seemed pretty interesting, but found out that you needed to buy entrance to all the sunyagagues and we didnt want to spend that much money. So we just ended up walking around the JEwish quarter for a while. Then we found a park along the river where there was a really cute dog that hung around and played with us. After that we found the Deli that my mom sent me an email the day before about. It was just recommened in the NY times (along with the bohemia bagel place that weve already been too). It was soo good. I forgot what the word is, but my mom told me to order them… basically there were tons of open faced sandwiches and salads. they were super cheap, so i ordered a few. So delicious. Im glad we found the place. thanks NYtimes. My train to Berlin left at 4-5ish i think (steph was taking the bus the next day).. so i headed back to the hostel to gather my things and head to the train station. The train station was super creepy. Right out of a thriller. seriously. I talked to 2 americans while we waited for the train and i met two other american while i was siting on the train. Its was like a 4:30 hour train. not bad. i slept most of the way. Found the Circus hostel pretty easy (also recommended by the NYtimes and 2 of my aussie friends here). the hostel was so nice. It had its own bar/lounge and a restaurant. And the rooms were huge, and the bunks were really nice. AMAZING. best hostel ever. only thing that sucked is that internet was a rip off. 1 euro for 30 mins. whatever. i only spent like 1 hour over the course of 4 days. So it was pretty late when i got back. i just chilled in the lounge with some American girl i met in the elevator and then went to bed. Weird thing i noticed about nicer hostels: old people stay there. Sorry parents. Super weird when there are some old people staying in the same room as you. on to the next day:

5/27 Berlin

I wasnt meeting Steph untill 2pm ish, so i spent the morning walking around Berlin, which isnt so hard, since there was so much to see! First i walked to Alexanderplatz which is a big square that has the TV tower in the center. The TV tower is the tallest thing in BErlin, so i thought about going up it, but it was 10 euros, so i didnt feel like spending that much for nothing. So next the plan was to walk to the next destination and see what I saw on my way. My next stop was Museum Island. On my way I saw the Red town hall (which im not actually sure what it is/was used for), a park with a statue of Marx and Engels (yay econ) in the center of it, a bunch of fancy university buildings that eventually got explained to me on a tour, and some famous museums on Museum island. My next destination was the Bradenburg gate (of course). on my way there i past check point charlie which isnt that important just the 3rd of many checkpoints that were around during the berlin wall era. For some reason its a tourist destination tho. I saw the US embassy woo!, and a museum dedicated to the kennedys. Then i got to the brandenburg gate. REally huge! from there i got a view of the victory column and the tier garten. Then I walked around to the Reichstag and saw a huge line of people outside and i was wondering what was so interesting (more on that later). then i walked along the river spree to see if i could find the starting point of the tour me and steph were going to take. After i found it i found a restaurant right on the corner so i decided to grab a cheap lunch at a pretty fancy looking restaurant. Oh, by the way. The weather was fantastic on the entire trip so far. I forgot to mention. Some days there were no clouds in the sky and i got some real burns some days. It was super hot. maybe around 80 degrees. Berlin was a little colder than prague/vienna but not much. So after lunch i found steph and we went to the tour starting point. So the tour we were taking is with the same company that did the free prague tour. The tour we were doing first was the “Alternative Tour”. Our tour guide took us around east to even more east Berlin to see a bunch of really cool things. First we stopped at an old Jewish Department store turned illegal squat that is now space for artists to work. There is also a club and a bar in it. We went all the way up stairs to see some of the really cool spray paint all over the building and the artwork some of the artists were working while we walked around. super cool. then we hopped on a train to go even more east. we saw some really cool squats that are super illegal and fighting for property rights and some really cool graffiti. Then we went to the East Side Gallery which is the longest stretch of whats left of the Berlin Wall. Basically eahc big square was given to a famous artists to paint. One of them (that i didnt actually get to see) is Keith Haring. Pretty cool. REally cool paintings/spray paint stuff. At the end of the tour the tour guide brought us to some park that had two LIVE brown bears just chilling. it wasnt completely closed. i was so shocked they were just living there. super cool. i guess bears are the symbol of berlin and they just belong to a museum/park in the area. I cant believe that they dont cause problems/drunk people dont get killed by them when they jump in. i guess that only happens in America. After the tour me and Steph headed to a park that was all the way on the bottom right corner of our map. not really a tourist spot, but our tour guide told us there was a really cool soviet memorial there. So we found the park, and it took us a while to find the statue, but woah was it huge. First of all, the section of the park dedicated for this Soviel memorial was huge. Tons of 1945s and hammers and sickels carved everywhere. And at the tip of the area was this GIANT statue. like huge! even from far away was it giant. It was a soviet soldior that was carrying a baby that was stepping on partly crushed swastika. really epic and intense statue. So we walked all the way to it and stood nexxt to it and maybe his feet were my height. maybe bigger. HUGE. after hanging out at that park for a while we hopped on the train and headed to a Bar that our tour guide recommended to us to watch the big Championship league football final game between Barcelona and Manchester United. We found the bar, and even though it was almost an hour early it was packed! we walked around for a while and there were no seats upstairs or downstairs. Sitting wasnt that big of a deal but we were really hungary and wanted to eat. So i noticed these to girls that looked nice in a booth and i mentioned to steph that i should ask them if we could sit with them. she thought it would be awkward to ask. so we walked around once more looking and then as we passed the booth the two girls called out to us and offered to let us share the booth with them. Super nice! they were from Austin, Texas (liberal!). seriosuly the nicest people from texas ive ever met. really liberal and cool. got dinner and “watched” the game. kinda watched. Barcelona won (thats who i was rooting for). after the game i headed back to the hostel and passed out pretty early.i was super exahuasted.

5/28 Berlin Steph’s 21st Bday!

This was Steph’s only full day in Berlin so we packed as much into it as possible. First, early in the morning we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. Its a museum dedicated to all the escape attempts from East to West Berlin. Super cool. One family made a makeshift hot air balloon, a bunch of people made tunnels. Awesome. I really liked it. After that we went back up to the Brandenburg gate for the Free walking tour. there were tons of people. they broke us up into a bunch of group and our tour was about 25 people which was is a good amount i think. Our tour and our tour guide were AMAZING. he had me on the edge of my feet the entire time wanting to learn and see more. seriously it was amazing. So what we saw and learned about: Hotel Adlon, the most expensive hotel in Berlin (more on that later) and where Michael Jackson dangled his baby a while ago; the reichstag, but this time with a view of the whole thing not close up so you could see a huge glass dome on top of it (what all the tourists were waiting for); the holocaust memorial or the official name is the memorial to the murdered jews of europe. Its massive and was just made in 2005. Its tons and tons and tons of different size gray blocks made of stones of different heights. As you walk into it you get lower into the ground and cant see over the blocks anymore. Intense. REally cool. Awesome that it is right smack in the center of Berlin. Oh yea, this was the one day with crappy weather. It was kinda rainy kinda sunny during most of our tour. We saw the grounds of Hitler’s bunker. Where he lived his last year, got married the day before he died, and died in. no sort of mention of where it was. right now its just a parking lot. we saw some old nazi bunkers that now serve as apartments (creepy) or a german tax office (ha). Another stretch of the Berlin wall. then we stopped at lunch at a place called Aroma (the Israeli starbucks). cheap sandwiches that were pretty good. Then it started pouring. not as bad as it would get later tho. We stopped at Humboldt University, where i stopped before, and where there was a massive book burning by the nazis where 25000 books were burned. There is a memorial underground. You can see through a window tons of empty book shelves. and you cant even get to the actual room. its locked and sealed. the last stop was Museum island where we saw the tackiest old building ever.. i think it was the berlin cathedral. It kinda stopped raininga t this point, but sensing it was about to rain, our tour guide took us under this big chunck of trees to tell us the last part of the story. The story was really epic about the one word that caused the fall of the berlin wall. he was teasing us with the story the entire 4 hour tour. So as the story was getting more intense it started downpouring like crazy. we werent really getting that wet, but still. some huge chunks of hail were flying everywhere. it just made the whole story that much more epic. And that one word was “immediatly”. he told us this funny story about the GDR press secretary not reading the minute notes and just telling international reporters that the wall was coming down.. haha. really funny and true. So the rain ended after the tour and me and steph headed to the Jewish Museum. It was really good. The building the museum was in was even more impressive. The museum was dedicated to Jewish history in Germany since way back when. Sad ending, obviously. Some really cool exhibits tho. then i headed back to the hostel to grab some quick dinner and to get ready for another pub crawl for Steph’s 21st. It was really fun. the first stop was the bar that was in the old jewish department store. We met some really nice girls from canada. I really wish that i would have gotten there names so i could find them on facebook.. o well. it was really fun, but after 4 bars neither me nor steph were in the mood to go to the club so we said our goodbyes (probably untill xmas break) and we both headed to our hostels. I passed out as soon as i got back to the hostel

5/29 Berlin

So i was on my own from now on.. not a big deal at all really since there was tons of stuff i still wanted to do in Berlin. First i went on another tour with the same tour company to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp about an hour outside of Berlin. Really creepy and sad. It was one of the first of the concentration camps built in the 30s mainly for political enemies and communists at first and then jews. We walked around for about 3 hours. there were some really good exhibits throughout the camp. Turns out the soviets ended up continuring the camp for political prisoners right after they liberated it in 1945. And they didnt even acknowledge any of the other prisoners there other than the communist ones till pretty recently. some of the Jewish Barracks were still intact and you got to see the terrible conditions. there were nice exhibits also on the torture and the work assignments given to the prisoners. really creepy. this wasnt an actual death camp, but alot of the prisoners were sent to auschwitz. we saw the places that firing squads took place and how they disposed of the bodies in the ovens. then we saw the place where prisoners of high importance were kept. in even worse conditions. The guy with that really famous holocaust quote was kept there… i just looked him up and im talking about the guywith the “First they came…” poem. His name was MArtin Niemoller.. and he actually survived this camp and Dachau. Then we saw the place where they did medical experiments. All really creepy and sad. It was an intense day. By the time the tour ended and i got back to my hostel it was 6pm. and i was starving. I heard that Asian food in Berlin was amazing from a few people so i went to a vietnamese place that was close by that was recommended by my guidebook. It was called Monsieur Vuong. I was lucky because i guess its pretty common to go there by yourself becaus there were tons of communal tables. It was so good. Since i was by myself I decided to treat myself and get an appitizer, and a meal, and a really fancy homemade lemonade drink. Everything was so good. The lemonade  was seriosuly the best lemonaide ive ever had. soo good. After dinner I decided to take a train back to the brandenburg gate. My plan was to walk to the victory column that didnt look that far away on the map throught the tiergarten. The Tiergarten is the massive park in the center of berlin. Turns out the Gate and the tower are like 1500 meters apart. I didnt realize at the time it was that far, but it was a nice long walk through the park. I saw a bunch of statues and memorials along the way. When i got to the column i took a picture of the brandenburg gate, but it was so small you cant even see it without zooming in. SO crazy. then i walked ALL the way back to the reichstag. I decided to see what the big fuss was and wait on the line to get to the top. It was free anyway. It was around 9 oclockish now..and the sun was about to set when i finally got up there. Some really nice views. I got a free headset and as you walk up the spiral ramp up the dome the headset tells you all about the history of the buildings you could see. Which was pretty much everything in Berlin. It was really interesting. Then on the way down the spiral ramp you learned the history of the Reichstag building, parliament, and all the really cool things about the dome. the dome is really really high tech, like it catches water, and vents air, and gets enough sunlight to heat/ naturally light the chamber. It also has these natural blinds so a huge glare doesnt build up. Oh yea, quick anecdote from the free tour. So the dome on top is glass and see through and from it you can see the debating chamber for the people in parliament and they can see the people in the dome. Our tou guide made a funny joke about it: “So when all the members of parliament are debating aout issues and laws they can just look right up into the dome to see the people that really matter and the people that make the decisions in this democracy……American tourists”. Haha. really funny. Spent a good amount of time in the dome and the roof of the reichstag and then headed back to the hostel. I had another early day planned for my last few hours in Berlin. O yea. Also this day i kinda started getting sick. Like the worst i felt since ive been here. Super bad headache and terrible sore throat.

5/30 Berlin<Duisberg>Utrecht

Woke up pretty early to head to the Berlin Zoo! I was super excited for this. I really wanted to see Knut that famous baby polar bear that was just born a few years ago. the zoo was pretty big. I walked around for a while looking at all the aniimals. you know, a zoo is a zoo. I still had a really good time though. Finlly found Knut. he was actually seperated from the other Polar Bears because he was rejected by his mother right after he was born (i remember that news story from the Colbert Report). Anyway, he wasnt that small anymore. he just turned three. But still you could tell he was a baby they way he was trying to move a log from on part of the water to the next. So cute. I watched him for a quite some time. The zoo has a super impressive amount of monkeys. And next to each window where the monkeys they have all their names and birthdays so you can tell how old they are. Some of them were kids but some were in the 60s. really impressive. Tons of monkeys. I hung out there for a while too. I read somewhere that this zoo has the most speices that any other zoo in the world…or was it Europe. im not sure. but seriously impressive. I spent a few hours there that day.  Then i headed back to my hostel and then headed back to the train station. Oh and by the way the Berlin HBF train station is super impressive. obviosuly gigantic, but so pretty and modern looking. I found out from the Reichstag dome tour that it was just built for the 2006 world cup. So the whole train journey home kinda sucked. I had a really bad stuffed nose and i had a one hour stop in Duisberg, Germany. It wasnt terrible. It was only 6:30 hours. And i did have a first class ticket (i waited too long to book it and all the 2nd class tickets were sold already…it was only 20 euros difference i guess.. not that bad). but there is a HUGE difference than 2nd class. tons of lefg room…i thought too much leg room.. like so much it was kinda uncomfortable. and the people who worked on this part of the train were kinda like flight attendents. they served peanuts and if you wanted to pay you could buy food and drinks from them. Got home around 10 last night and here I am.

I still feel kinda sick. but kinda better than yesterday. My apartment is SUPER empty. out of the 12 people that started.. and the 14 total that kinda live here there are 3 here right now. CRAZY. Eric is visiting germany for the extended weekend. gabor and mor left for good . turns out lou suddenly had to leave for good because something about her home university and i didnt get to say goodbye AGAIN. lucia and david are in turkey till the 15th, alex is still around, aliisa is in Finland till the 8th, anita has been  in hungary for over a week and no one has a clue when she is getting back, karina is around, trent and adele are in Paris, and Ivan moved out a while ago. So right now its just me, and Karina, and Alex. seriously the two people i care about the least. But its not a big deal. today was a lazy day becuause i didnt feel like doing anything. My neighbors are around. And i think im going to the beach with some friends tomorrow.

And then i have class tuesday and wednesday and then i leave for London on Wednesday night! SO EXCITED!

woah. that was intense. 6253 words.

5/20/2009 my FAKE Birthday!

So heres how it all got started. I started realizing that a lot of my best friends in Utrecht would be gone for my real birthday. And also, while i was gone on my long trip (more info on that in my next post) that two of my roommates Mor and Gabor would be going back to Hungary for good. Along with them, Aliisa will be in Finland, David and Lucia will be in Turkey….so basically my best friends gone for my Birthday. thats why i planned my fake Birthday for May 20th. It was really fun. I bought balloons and a birthday sign and noise makers. My whole apartment plus some had a big bar b que and big party that night. It was really fun. It was a great last night with all the roommates. The next day Mor made me a really nice Banana Split for my bday! And me, mor, gabor, aliisa, and Lucia all had a really nice last moment just before I left for my train to Schipol Airport. It was actually really cute. For some reason, i decided to give Mor and Gabor a going away present..and all i had were a few American Dollars in my wallet. So i gave each them a dollar with a few words that i just wrote. And then i made one for Lucia. And then we had a big group hug. It was really nice. But really sad. I really really miss our big family. But it was definitly an amazing “21st” birthday. I honestly dont care what i do on my real birthday, because that day was so nice… O yea.. during the day of my fake bday i spent the day sun bathing in Whilemina park with Aliisa, Lou, and Irina.

Antwerp

A few days ago a few of my roommates decided it would be fun to go to Antwerp, Belgium for the day on Monday. I was checking out tickets on Sunday, while i was supposed to be studying and just decided to book the train because it was the cheapest/fastest/most convenient times..etc. And then came the interesting part. Aliisa was avoiding getting her ticket, and more was in The Hague for the day… so i was pretty nervous that i was going to end up going to the Hague by myself, which isnt a really big deal, but it would be a lot more fun with people. Aliisa was messing with me all day until Mor got home. they didnt book their tickets they would just do it in the morning. the original plan was the get the 9:33 train. That changed, by the time we got to the station we were going to make the 10:03 train to rotterdam. As mor was waiting on line he realized he didnt have any of his money with him. He had no clue where it was because he swore it was in his pocket. I told him that i had my atm card and i could layout money for him for the day so he didnt need to go back to get his money. then, i realized that i didnt even have my atm card. I had taken it out of my wallet to buy my train ticket the day before online and i forgot to put it back in. So then me and Mor bike back to Parnassos, grab our money, and head back to the train station. They got their tickets finally and we got on the 10:33 train. So, only really 1 hour behind schedule.

Got to Antwerp before 1pm. Walked passed some diamond stores. Nothing too impressive, but i dont think we were in the very very fancy diamond area. supposedly you need to get appointments to go into those stores anyway. Then we headed off to the center of town. Me and Aliisa decided to go to the bathroom at a mcdonalds, and when we were there we bumped into an Australian girl who is studying in Utrecht that both of us know. Even weirder is that Aliisa also bumped into her in Paris. CRAZY. She was nice and gave us a map because she had extra. So we walked around Antwerp, saw all the really important sites in the middle of town: The Groet Markt, Brabo’s statue (which is a water fountain with a guy throwing someone elses hand), the Groen Plaats, the old cathedral…and a bunch of other stuff that i dont remember the names of, Then we headed to the river schelde. Really pretty port. We sat for a while laying in the sun. We lucked out with weather. It was supposed to rain a little, but it never did until we got on the train back home. Then we walked down a few streets that are known for their shopping. Walked around some more. Then we headed to a bar next to the cathedral to drink some Belgian beer, of course. the name of the bar was ‘T Elfde Gebod. Its a big tourist attraction because it is filled with tons of holy statue things. It was kinda weird for a bar, but really pretty.  Then we walked around the city some more, bought some chocolate, which was delicious. Oh yea, earlier in the day i had some French Fries (btw,… french fries originated in Belgium). Walked around some more, bought waffles, and we were getting pretty tired.. we had been in antwerp for 7ish hours, so we headed for the central station and caught the 8pm train to rotterdam. We got home a little after 10, and i passed out because i was so tired.

Midterm exam today.. that i should be studying for right now….