(S)Prague is Cool

Last but not least: Prague. I have wanted to go to Prague since I arrived in England nearly a year ago now, and it didn’t disappoint. Although our hostel was not in the best area (and again, about a 20 minute walk from the old city center), the architecture and history of the city itself made up for it. One of the first things I noticed about Prague was how cheap everything is. I’m talking dirt cheap. Like the equivalent of $0.30 for a beer; $5.00 for a massive pizza, etc. It was a great way, money-wise, to end our trip.

On our first day in Prague we went on two tours, a free walking tour and a paid castle tour. Our tour guides for both tours were great, especially the free walking tour. The guy was incredibly animated and did a fantastic job telling us all about Prague. My favourite part of his story was when he told us how the people of Prague would handle disputes back in the day, during the 30 Year War. Any guesses? Interestingly, instead of using knives or guns or hangings or anything like that, the Czechs would throw people out of windows. Yup. And if the window wasn’t high enough to ensure death upon landing, they would place spears in the ground so that the poor guy thrown out would land on it and die that way. Lovely mess on the ground outside the buildings I’m sure.

On the tour we saw and learned a lot; I can’t even begin to remember everything, especially with all the German history floating around in my brain as well, but I have come to understand that Prague is a city rich with history, both glorious and tragic. The buildings, monuments, streets, and personalities of Prague tell a captivating story – such buildings etc include the Astronomical Clock (a clock that has both numbers and astronomy symbols to tell the time), the Jewish Quarter and the Old New Synagogue (yes, Old + New) , Jan Hus Statue, Charles’ Bridge, the Estates Theatre and much much more. We ended the tour lying on the grass with everyone from our tour in a park beside the Charles’ Bridge, thinking about everything we had just heard and hoping we could remember it all (which, as I already mentioned, I unfortunately do not).

About a half an hour later we embarked on our Prague Castle Tour – there was a charge for this one, but I guess we had to pay for some stuff in Prague. On this tour we went to The Garden of Eden at the Wallenstein Palace and I saw one of the most interesting walls I have ever seen. It is called The Grotto, or the Dripstone Wall. It is a humongous wall made of artificial rock, or dripstone, the purpose of which was to create a secretive and mysterious area in the garden that brought artificial and real living nature together to mingle and contrast. Don’t ask me why the dude who lived here wanted to do that but he did. You could actually see if you looked very closely the startling images of frogs, snakes, lions, and a variety of monsters and grotesquely formed faces that had been formed out of the dripstone on the wall. It was creepy but cool.

After the garden we took a tram up the mountain to the Strahov Monastery and Brewery, where monks continue to live and brew the “finest beer in Prague.” Too bad I don’t drink beer or I would have tried one. Smelled good though.

I have to say, the Prague Castle was pretty disappointing. It doesn’t really look like a castle, at least not compared to other ones I have seen. We were lucky enough to catch the changing of the guards though, which was cool considering every time I’ve been at Buckingham Palace when they are changing there are too many people’s heads in the way, blocking my view. The castle is the home, though, of St George’s Basilica which is a very fascinating church, so I guess travelling all the way up that mountain was worth it. Thank god we took the tram, that’s all I have to say.

After the tour Sarah and I had dinner and wine/beer at a nice restaurant in the center of the city and slowly wandered back to our hostel. We were exhausted at this point; it was another long day that involved hours of endless walking. My body didn’t know what hit it on this trip!

The next day was cloudy and cool, but we had planned to meet up with one of Sarah’s friends from a camp she worked at a few years ago in Canada. Her friend, Simona, is Czech and very kindly took us out for lunch at a traditional Prague restaurant. It was a very good meal and a good visit for the two of them. After lunch Sarah and I spent the rest of the day shopping since the weather was pretty crappy and we had already done most of the sightseeing we could. We spent all our Czech money (what would we do with it all!?) and lugged our bags back to our hostel for an early night. We had to wake up at 6am the next morning and head to the airport for home. I was happy to leave, actually; I was sick of sleeping on horrible beds and showering in public showers and I longed for a home-cooked meal. The trip was fantastic though, and it excites me to no end that I get to cross off four more countries from my list. Where to next? Who knows! (Although I’m hoping it’s Italy…).

Kissing Vienna

The scenery during the train ride from Germany to Vienna was spectacular. It was definitely a ride worth taking; looking out the window for hours at the magnificent mountains, gorgeous lakes and luscious greenery, I can easily say that this train ride was the ride of my life.

When we arrived in Vienna we took it easy again that first night, walking into the old city center and mostly getting our bearings. The next day we walked for an astonishing seven hours straight before taking a nap and then walking for another three hours. We started off walking down the street our hostel was on, and I was lucky enough to find a hat for only €9.00 (I have been wanting one forever)! The walk to the old city center was about 20 minutes, but once we got there it was well worth it. We spent hours taking in all the amazing architecture of the hundreds of buildings. Most of them have been turned into government buildings and museums which you can enter for an absurdly large sum of money. We didn’t do any indoor touring on this particular day; the weather was so beautiful we didn’t want to waste it. Instead we wandered aimlessly, taking pictures and drinking ridiculous but necessary amounts of water.

At the Parliament buildings we were approached by a guy dressed in a rather silly costume who was advertising for a Mozart concert later in the evening. We politely declined but decided to ask for directions to the Belvedere Museum (or Castle Belvedere) which Sarah really wanted to see and that we were planning to go to the next day. Oh dear. This guy and his friend fell madly in love, or so they said, with the two of us, and asked us to meet them later that night, at 9 o’clock. They told us not to eat dinner because they were going to take us out for spaghetti and wine. We agreed (why not?) and carried on our way.
We walked through Volksgarten, a very beautiful garden that sits in the middle of the old city. We walked along the water and accidently stumbled upon a fair going on – I can describe it best as a smaller version of the Western Fair; lots of fun little rides that cost an arm and a leg to go on. We carried on and eventually made it back to the city center where we had lunch (pizza and salad), and then carried on to our hostel for a little nap and a shower before our big date that evening.
When we met “Baily” and “Dashy” we were confused to hear that they were planning on taking us back to their house for champagne. Um, no, we never agreed to that. They couldn’t seem to understand why we refused to go back to their house, and after much arguing they got the picture and we started another very long walk to a bar that they promised was a good time. When we arrived at the bar (which was made into a beach, with sand and everything – pretty cool), they went to get the drinks, leaving us chillin on the sand in our beach chairs. Well, they returned with drinks…for themselves. They said that the drinks here were too expensive to buy for us too.

 Sarah and I exchanged glances and telepathically communicated with one another that this was a big waste of time. After about half an hour or sitting there while they drank their drinks, we decided to take off. They couldn’t understand why we were leaving, and kept texting me all evening wanting us to come back: “I was just going to buy you a drink but you left, please come back.” Um, again, no. At this point, though, we were starving. It was about 11 o’clock at night and we hadn’t eaten anything since mid afternoon (as we were promised dinner). We stopped at McDonalds, unfortunately the only place open at that hour, and ate our Royale with cheese while laughing about Pulp Fiction (watch the second scene if you don’t understand that reference) and the unbelievable evening we just had.

The next day was very cloudy and promised rain so we went to the Belvedere Museum, home of the famous painting The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. That particular painting was very beautiful, but that’s about the only thing worth mentioning at that museum. A lot of portraits of people’s faces which, in excess, is not very exciting. After the museum it had started to rain so we did some shopping (I got a full-wrap scarf which I have also wanted for a long time, so the shopping in Vienna was very successful) and then went to see Inception at an English theatre in the city. Loved it, by the way. The next day we were off to Prague, the last stop of our journey.

MmmmMunich

When we arrived in Munich we were pretty tired and our hostel was about a million miles away from the city center, so we did a little bit of wandering but nothing too major. That evening Sarah and I had our first of three fantastic German dinners. We both had traditional German sausage with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. I didn’t particularly care for the sauerkraut but the meat and potatoes were divine.

The next day was when the Germany adventures began!

We did the New Munich Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Tour which was such an incredible experience I can’t really describe it properly. Dachau, if you don’t know, was opened in 1933 and was the only concentration camp to remain active during the entire Third Reich period, until 1945. More than 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 nations had been imprisoned there. We had a fantastic tour guide who took us on the underground and a bus, about an hours worth of travelling altogether, to the site. The tour included access to and information about Dachau, including the barracks, crematoriums, gas chamber, former SS training camp, Roll Call Square, Administration building, prisoner’s arrival at the camp and their living quarters, religious memorials, and the experiences that the prisoner’s lived through while kept there. I can’t say this was a fun or enjoyable tour, but I learned so much and I am very lucky to have had the chance to visit such an emotion-infused historical site. It was extremely overwhelming walking around the square where prisoners were forced to work without a reasonable amount of food or water and where they were endlessly tortured, and as my tour group entered the crematorium wherein stands the gas chamber, silence overtook us all and I know that at least one person there was quietly paying her respects to all those who died there. I believe that Dachau is one of the most important centers of remembrance, contemplation and learning in Germany today, as I was promised when I signed up for the tour.

That night for dinner we decided to have a repeat of the night before, only this time a little more exquisite. I ordered a sausage platter which had four different kinds of German sausage on it. There were a couple I have never heard of before, and I can’t remember the names of any of them, but one in particular stands out in my mind. It was kind of rectangular shaped and it was a white-grey colour. It was very yum! Not to mention the mountain of mashed potatoes on the plate. Needless to say, with the prices of food in Switzerland which resulted in Sarah and I embarking on a kind of famine, we were in heaven!

When we got back to our hostel we discovered that our pajamas were missing from our beds…and that is a whole other story that I’m sure you will enjoy and that I will write about later entitled Hostel Hell.

The next day we went on the Neuschwanstein Castle Tour; this is the castle that inspired Walt Disney’s famous castle that you see at the beginning of all his films. Naturally I was stoked to see it. It took two hours on train to arrive at the location, but it was definitely worth it. The scenery was breathtaking; as we walked off the train we were surrounded by the stunning Bavarian countryside and Alps (I may be dumb, but I didn’t have a clue that there were Alps in Germany…). Anyways, the castle towers over rocky cliffs at the foot of the German Alps and the tour really was a fairy-tale adventure. We had a very good tour guide again who supplied us with endless information about the epic story of “Mad” King Ludwig and his castle – in all its magic, romance, and absurdity. It was a great day, and we had wonderful weather for such an occasion too.

We met a few girls from LA on the tour and went out for dinner that night at a beer garden near our hostel. I had beef this time (wanted to try something other than sausage, hahaha), which came with roasted potatoes and spinach. It was very good, but I have to say I prefer their sausage.

The next day we went on the free walking tour but, for the first time on our trip, our tour guide was horrible. He talked a lot about himself actually, and was not very good at explaining the things I actually cared about learning. So Sarah and I ditched that tour and took it upon ourselves to visit everything in the city centre of Munich that we wanted to. We saw the Glockenspiel (apparently voted the second most disappointing tourist attraction in Europe – I don’t agree really, but whatever), the Church of Our Lady, the Old and New Town Halls, the New Synagogue, and much more. We both really liked Munich and didn’t really want to leave; we could have easily spent another day there, especially if it meant the opportunity to eat more cheap and delicious sausage. But we had to head back to our hostel in the early afternoon in order to catch our 3:30 train to Vienna. Onward we go!

Swiss Skydiving

The day after school ended for summer holidays my friend Sarah and I didn’t waste any time getting out of the UK – on Saturday June 24th we were off to Geneva, Switzerland to start our European adventure! Our first full day there we spent our time wandering around Geneva since, unfortunately, there was not much touristy stuff to do there. Actually, scratch that – there was absolutely NO touristy stuff to do there. And even if there had been we wouldn’t have been able to afford any of it. Man, Switzerland is expensive! I’m talking the equivalent of TEN Canadian dollars for a hotdog! Yup, ground up animal leftovers cost as much as one third of my weekly groceries. Ridiculous. Oh, but just the wiener is only $5.00, so I guess that’s okay. After being kept awake all night long by the restaurant right outside our hotel room window, though, we needed a pick-me-up; we bit the bullet and spent an outstanding $7.00 for a tea at Starbucks. Gulp, indeed.
Even though there wasn’t much to do, it was a beautiful day, so we walked around for most of it, and even rented paddle boats for an hour and paddled around the water. Unfortunately nearing the end of the day we stumbled upon a beach, right in the middle of the city! That would have been good to know earlier in the day. Oh well.

The next day we were off to Interlaken via train; it didn’t take very long to get there, and after we found our hostel, and wandered around for a bit, we decided we had better have a drink. An hour later we were surrounded by two groups of guys, one local, one from Manchester, who seemed to be battling for our attention. Both groups were buying us drinks (what a shame), and I was even given a white rose by my German admirer, Eric, who, bless him, struggled to speak English so that we could have a conversation. It was a really fun night – an old drunk man named Peter (totally harmless by the way) taught me a song that we sang for hours: “There are nine million bicycles in Beijing. It’s a fact that you cannot deny; it’s a fact I will love you till I die.” Ever heard of it? Didn’t think so. I am not entirely convinced that it’s a real song – I must remember to look it up.

As we became bored with the pub our Manchester friends invited us back to their campground for more booze, and who are we to pass that up?! Off we went in a taxi to god-knows-where, just in time for a massive rainstorm. We drank in their porches and drunkenly accepted the fact that we would have to stay in their tents – it was pouring rain and we had no idea where we were. Kindly the guys offered us one of their tents and we spent the night in it, shivering in the cold and laughing hysterically every time one of us fell off the twin-size blow-up mattress, which was about every 45 seconds. It was an interesting night, and we took off early to try and catch a few winks before our skydiving adventure. Um, yes, you read that correctly: we went skydiving after a night of no sleep and with an ever-so mild hangover.

Let me concentrate on the skydiving though. We went with a company called Skydive Switzerland; they picked us up at our hostel at noon and drove us to their building where we got dressed in our jumpsuits and were given the 10 minute training on what to do when we jump. I decided to jump first as I didn’t think I would be able to watch Sarah fall through the sky without passing out.

As we rose into the air in the helicopter, attached to our jumping partner, and I watched all the houses and things get smaller and smaller, I started to wonder what the hell I was thinking. But there wasn’t much time to second-guess my decision as before I knew it Hank, my jumping partner, told me to open the helicopter door and stand on the ledge. I thought I would throw up but off I went and did as I was told. I held on to my harness, arched my back, rested my head on Hank’s shoulder as instructed, and closed my eyes. Thankfully Hank didn’t count to three or anything stressful like that; I simply felt myself no longer on the ledge and flipping through the air. Almost immediately Hank was tapping my shoulders which meant that I could let go of the harness and enjoy the free-fall. I opened my eyes and couldn’t believe it – the sights were unbelievable and I really cannot describe how I felt as I was falling through the sky overtop the Swiss Alps. It was actually kind of hard to breathe – you’re just falling so fast and the air is going into your mouth as you try to scream, which is also impossible. After the 45 second free-fall Hank tapped my shoulders again which told me it was time for the parachute to be opened. I grabbed hold of my harness again and felt a pretty intense jerk as the chute opened (thank GOD).

For the next 8 minutes I gracefully floated to the ground and came to a rather abrupt stop on the grass, landing onto top of Hank (don’t worry, he’s used to it). Sarah landed less than a minute after me and almost the first thing we did was call our parents. I woke my mom up (kind of forgot what time it was in Canada) with my news, and both she and my dad called me crazy a number of times. For the rest of the day though, I just had the most amazing feeling. The jump gave me such a tremendous adrenaline rush and I forgot that I hadn’t slept at all the night before. Sarah and I celebrated by travelling 10 minutes on a bus to this beautiful lake and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening swimming and relaxing on the grass.

The next morning we took a journey to Trummelbach Falls, the only accessible, mountain-interior glacier falls in Europe - meaning they are the only water falls that are located inside a set of caves.  The tour consisted of seeing ten different glacier waterfalls tumbling within a mountain and which you could only access via a tunnel-lift.  It was very cold inside those caves, and the pictures didn't turn out very good because it was so dark, but it was a pretty amazing sight to see.  We then took the cable cars to Schilthorn, home of the second highest mountain in Switzerland.  We should have been able to see the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountains from there, but unfortunately it was so cloudy that when we reached the top nearly the only thing we could see was an endless skyline of white.  It was really disappointing as I'm sure the views would have been absolutely breathtaking.  But alas, we froze our buts off for no reason (it was less than 6 degrees at the top and we were in our summer clothes!).  Oh well.  We laughed about our bad luck and took a picture of our sandled feet in a pile of frozen snow and made our way back down to the warmth of the land.  The next morning we woke up and made our way to the train station, ready and anxiously awaiting our arrival in Munich, Germany, for the next stop on our journey.