Weekend in Prague

There have been a bunch of weekends that I have not written about yet due to lack of time. I will tell you about this past weekend in Prague and then after my semester break will fill you in on my other weekends, what I have been doing and visited during the week as well as my travels within Italy.

This past weekend I left on Thursday for Prague. We look an over night bus there which took us 12 hours, I mostly slept. In the morning we arrived at the Czech Inn which is a beautiful hostel (never thought I would describe a hostel that way but it really was very high tech and clean) two tram stops away from the old center of town. The group that I was traveling with was 24 girls 1 boy and our group leader. I went with two of my girlfriends Merritt and Ewilena from Syracuse. Prague is in the European Union but does not use the Euro yet so we had to exchange our money to get Koronu which are worth about 25 koronu to 1 euro. We learned very quickly that everything in Prague is very inexpensive. We were able to get settled in and then right away met a tour guide to go on a full city tour. We first took the tram (which is all on the honor system and no one checks the tickets so we got around town for free) to the National Gallery Museum. The first thing that everyone notices about the city is the incredible architecture, every building even the McDonalds are unique and impressive. We went to Wecslaw square which when you walk down the main avenue leads to the the old center of town. Everywhere you look are shops selling crystal and marionettes, these are apparently the two things that I was told you must buy as souvenirs in Prague. The old town square has the famous clock/zodiac sign/ astrological counter on the church. At the top of the hour figures come out of the clock and move around, this very much reminded me of clock in Marienplatz in Munich. After seeing this we walked to the outdoor market which sold all the best goodies from a funnelcake type of dough with cheese to sugared nuts to many many varieties of sausages. We of course bought a little bit of everything and continued our tour to the old Jewish quarter of town. Here we saw a 12 layer cemetery with thousands of graves on top of one another from the Holocost. Then we continued by crossing the Charles Bridge, which had many painters and knicknack stands on it and kept walking towards the Prague Castle. We were able to visit the Lenin Wall which truly was incredible. The colors and messages on the wall were inspiring and comprised of Beatles quotes and other cries for peace. On the way to the Prague castle we walked on a few canals and passed an Absinth store which was completely green and even sold Absinth ice cream! (which looked gross by the way). Another interesting thing that we learned was that before there were building numbers each building had to identify itself with an image and so while walking sure enough some building still had either a flying horse, or a blue pig or some other kind of symbol above its doorway which it used as its address in the past. When we got to the top of the hill we entered the Prague castle complex which had many buildings, the castle itself with guards outfront and then the Church of St. Vitus. Inside the church was some very nice stained class and somewhat reminded me of the inside of St. Patrick's Cathedral.

After our tour was over my friends and I went to an authentic Czech restaurant for lunch and I had chicken soup and goulash, which was exactly the way we make it at home ( a nice break from all the pasta in Italy). Then we shopped around the center of town and went to this place called Bohemia Bagels, where I was able to get my first bagel since leaving New York. At night we went on a Pub Crawl, which apparently is the thing to do in Prague because there are so many of them and if you are only in Prague for a short amount of time there is no way you could possibly know which pubs are worth going to. This was alot of fun since our group was about 200 people of all ages and places but many of them were from Australia and Germany. We had a great time out with everyone including our tour guide from during the day. The following day we came back to the center of town to get the breakfast donuts that are made over a fire on a long skewer, very yummy. Then we visited a few galleries in the artsy part of town and stumbled upon one with unseen photographs of Paul McCartney and the Beatles which was very cool. The streets of Prague were also packed with very roudy Polish futbol fans and we quickly found out that night was a Czech Republic vs. Poland game and they were long time rivals. That same night there were in total 5 futbol games on television and so the riot police were out on the streets just in case. We were told that we had to be very careful but we went to the Beer Factory to watch the games anyways. Here there are taps of Pilsner beer built into every single table at the bar which was very convenient. We watched a bunch of the games but once the fans got too intense we had to go back to our hostel but it was ok because we were exhausted. Overall the city was stunning and very interesting and I would love to come back and spend more time there. Tomorrow I am leaving for Brussels and Amsterdam but soon after you will hear of all my adventures.

Ciao with love,

Tania

OKTOBERFEST!!!

After some minor set backs such as being flown into a tiny airport on the boarder of Switzerland due to fog, realizing that I do not have my pin code for my cell phone that is not working in Germany, and a few trains, buses, S-Bahns and U-Bahns later I arrived at the infamous Oktoberfest in Munich. We right away headed to the Hofbrau House ( the very firts original beer house) to get our first beer which of course was delicious. The entire city is packed with drunken idiots... I don't even know how such a holiday could exist or be legal. Usually it is the tourists who get drunkest when they travel but definitely not in this case, the locals take off from work and visit the tents almost on a daily basis for the two strait weeks in their lederhosen and dindrls (traditional outfits that they were everywhere not only to the tents during Oktoberfest). I then met up with all of the German Ukrainians that I know and we went to my friends Sonja's house because she was cooking all of the Ukrainians dinner. I was pleasantly surprised to find ukies from the United States, Paris, England and Germany, there were about 25 of us.

The next morning we woke up nearly at the crack of dawn in order to make sure that we got a table in the Paulaner Tent which I guess is an annual tradition because the ribbons on the top of the tent are blue and yellow (Ukrainian colors). I stayed with the Sammer family (which has six kids and is clearly a great time) they even had an extra dindrl outfit that I was able to borrow to wear to Oktoberfest, I looked like a true Bavarian girl. As we weaved through Oktoberfest to reach the Paulaner tent my german girlfriends and I were stopped several times by tourists asking to take their picture with us. I used what little German I remembered from freshman year and was able to fool them... they thought they were getting an authentic picture with German beer girls but little did they know that I was from New York, I thought this was hysterical. The general atmosphere of Oktoberfest is happy, people do not seem to have a care in the world besides drinking steins of beer. Each tent has extravagent decorations and some have amusement park size mugs on top of them... tents that were included were Paulaner, Spaaten, Augustiner, Hofbrau, Fischer, Braursol, Hippodrome just to name a few. There were stands with any German food that you could think of from chocolate covered fruit to bratwursts that are a foot long. There were also roller coasters and other rides and outside every single tent is a little beer garden to sit in if you do not want to go inside or cannot get in. Inside the Paulaner tent were thousands of people all packed into wooden tables absolutely covered with steins of beer. The waitresses were the most impressive, they were able to carry 6 steins in each hand, I had a hard time just holding one. There is a live band in every tent and they sing alot of German songs but then randomly break out into The Twist or other classic American songs to which everyone sings along. Every half an hour they sing a song to which you are supposed to chears you neighbors called "Ein Prosit" its bizarre, you jump up on your bench and then just clank mugs with everyone around you singing the song. In the tent I had the largest most delicious pretzel, the Germans definitly do it right. After about seven hours in the tent we came out for fresh air and headed to the Englisher Garten where the true Beer garden is outside. Here we had dinner and another stein and then later in the night still in our German get up heading to a club where my friend Edgar works. Everyone there was in German traditional costumes.

The next morning we went to this beautiful lake called Starnberg Lake where apparently all the upscale Germans have houses. Here we had lunch on the water and took a break from the craziness of Oktoberfest. Later on in the day we headed back to the tents and hopped around a bunch of the tents then went to the Hofbrau house and then came home. I left very early the next morning and I know I must come back for the amazingly fun holiday and this time I will come prepared with my very own dindrl.

Tschoss ( its a form of goodbye in Deutsch),

Tania