Berlin

So It's been a while since I have written...
Whenever I get a chance to sleep that is what I have been doing. I hate my stupid colds that last for weeks if not months!
But now its Sunday and I just woke up and I'm lying in bed and I can't talk because my throat hurts so I figured...why not write? So here it goes..

Not this weekend we are in now but last weekend, I took a trip to Berlin with a bunch of friends (9 of us total) and there were some other people from our program there as well staying in a different hostel. We took the train from a really sketchy Prague railway station after deciding not to go to the main one, but apparently the train stopped at both stations. We sat in normal seats, some of which had little tables in the middle with seats facing each other. We slept, ate, and played cards. It was about a 5 hour ride and we got into Berlin close to midnight Thursday night.

The station we got into was also not the main station of Berlin, it was the east station. Everything was closed and there was no information desk. We found our way to the main area of the train station after everyone took out some euros, and waited for the bus. We got on the bus and couldn't pay because we didnt have bills small enough and he wouldn't take them. He let us on anyway and about 15 or 20 minutes later we realized we got on a bus going in the wrong direction. So we got off, waited for another bus going the opposite direction for about 10 minutes and got on the same bus number going in the opposite direction. It was the last bus of the night so it did not go all the way to where we needed to go and stopped its route back at the train station. All throughout this trip of bus mishaps, Lisa had to go to the bathroom. It was really painful to watch her suffer. She finally went to the bathroom in a port-o-potty behind a sketchy kebob restaurant next to the train station. We found our way to the front of the train station again (the bus dropped us off by this kebob place in the back) and hopped in cabs for an 8 euro cab ride to our hostel. It would have been worth it to do this in the first place because that comes out to 2 euros each, and each bus ride was a little over 2 euros a person...although we didn't pay the first one...it still was not worth it to take the bus and we wasted about an hour.

We finally got to our hostel and everyone was really pleased. It was very nice and a fun place to be in a great location. The room was pretty big and the beds were a decent size and were pretty comfortable. We were all starving at this point because our train left at 6ish so we didnt have a chance to eat dinner..just snacks...so we went out to a kebob place down the street and I had some falafel which was delicious.

We got up the next morning and did the New Berlin Free walking tour. New Europe is a company that runs free tours in every city. Josh, Jon and I did one in Edinburgh Scotland. They are legitimate tours (especially the Berlin one which was 5 hours long) and they just expect tips at the end. So you end up tipping like 5 euros a person which is nothing for a full 5 hour tour. It was FREEZING outside for 5 hours. But we hit all the major sights.

We started out in Pariser Platz by the Brandenburg Gate and continued to the Reichstag which is German house of Parliament. It was burned down "mysteriously" in 1933 and never rebuilt during Hitlers rule...hmmm...
Then we journeyed to the Holocaust memorial which is very interesting the way it was done. It is a bunch of concrete blocks and as you walk through them, they become taller and you feel as if you are sinking deeper. The ground is also very uneven. There are a lot of people that have different interpretations and the architect did not really write much about it. It is 2,711 stones on a 5 and a half acre plot of land.

Then we continued to the former site of hitlers bunker where his killed himself, the Luftwaffe headquarters(now the German tax offices), a part of the Berlin Wall still standing, the former SS headquarters, Checkpoint Charlie (the crossing point between American and Soviet sectors), Gendarmenmarkt (where the symphony orchestra plays well as the French and German cathedrals which look exactly the same), Bebelplatz (where the opera house is), The book burning memorial, The Unter den Linden (old royal blvd), The Neue Wache (memorial to the victims of war and tyranny, and Museum Island (where all the museums are...).

Then we went on the Third Reich tour and learned more about the Third Reich and saw some things that we didn't see on the free tour, like The soviet memorial which was the first thing the soviets built when they came into Berlin. We also saw all of the Jewish area and synagogue and museums and memorials and old cemeteries and a demolished old persons home and commemoration plaques and the site of the former Jewish community center.

I forgot to mention...I went to this Vietnamese place called Monsieur Vongs which was amazing! I had wonton soup with tofu and fresh vegetables and then a glass noodle salad which was delicious! The second night we all went to this amazing Italian place on valentines day and they gave the girls roses and made the pizzas into heart shapes.

Then we left on Sunday...we took the train from the main station and we sat in one of those six person compartments. We took two of them obviously...but it was amazing cuz we could sleep well and watch some TV on a laptop and really have nice intimate conversations without disturbing other people on the train. And, those cars are the main thing anyone has to experience on a European train like in the movie Eurotrip when a random guy comes and sits with them...that's exactly what it was like although its a good thing no one came in and there were not many tunnels...

Got back safely and we were ready to begin our full week of classes!

Český Krumlov

Český Krumlov is a small town in the Southern Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It is about 3 hours south of Prague. We left Sunday morning very early - about 9AM. The normally busy street of Vodichkova was completely empty (see photo to right). I had a nice little nap on the bus...I am used to that from the past two summers...I just wish we had a 6 hour ride instead of a 3 hour one. The best sleep has been achieved on 6 hour bus rides. Cleveland to Chicago is the best example of an amazing ride to sleep on because there is nothing exciting to see on the way. Anyway...I digress...Český Krumlov... It was a very nice quaint town. Beautiful. Nice for a vacation...if it were warm outside. Český Krumlov in the winter is insanely cold and snowy...no wonder why there were no tourists to be found except for us! Normally Český Krumlov has a tourist population of 1.2 million every year. With a population of about 15,000 in the city... crazy ratio!


The main attraction of Český Krumlov is the castle. It was inhabited by the Schwarzenberg's who you would think are Jewish...but they are not. Anyway, the castle was very very beautiful and huuuuuuge! It had corridors leading to different parts of the castle on three different levels and it also has the longest lasting and well preserved Baroque theater from the 1700s.
















Also in Český, they had a fairytale museum which turned out to be a puppet, or marionette museum. There were some pretty weird ones...like this owl.
They also had a museum of torture in a dungeon...it was pretty creepy.












There was also some delicious food goin on in the Český. The first day for lunch I had steamed buckwheat with spinach and vegetables for only 100 Kc which is about 5 dollars. It was delicious! I really should have taken pictures! Then that night, dinner was provided and I had Salmon. It was okay. But then the next day for lunch we went to a Vegetarian restaurant and I had the Veggi Chili which was delicious! I also tasted some Hummus and Guacamole which were both very good...but the Chili was the highlight of the meal. I also had some delicious mint Chai (which is Czech for tea).

It's late...I'm talking to Shira now! It's her Birthday! Happy Birthday!

Fun Stuff

So, the first week of classes was very good. Some are very boring, others are interesting.
I joined the gym this week so I've been spending some time there which is good.
Thursday I went with a bunch of people to the Hockey game...Czech Republic vs. Finland. The Czechs played really well...unitl the middle of the third period when they scored three goals and won 5-3 in the end. At the game, instead of booing, they do this high pitched whistle through their teeth, which i couldn't do before the game, but I learned well enough to whistle in that way that I was able to boo. My goal by the end of the semester is to be able to whistle like that really loudly.

Friday night we went to Beit Praha, the reform congregation in the Spanish synagouge. There was a guy there who is apparently a famous anthropologist and lectures all aroud the world named Sam. There were also a lot of other Americans there. We went after services to thier Tu-Bshvat seder/ dinner and had lots of fruits and some brisket.
Today in the evening, we went to something called Red Bull Crushed Ice. It was a downhill ice skating course with obstacles and four go down at a time so they fall and knock into each other a lot. It was pretty exciting! They also had all sorts of Red Bull drinks there obvoiusly including a Hot Red Bull which was pretty good, but smelled like some sort of medicine I hated when I was younger.
Then we went to a lateish dinner at Therapy cafe down the street from our apartment and I had a nice pasta bowl with this Blue Cheese sauce and it was absolutely delicious!
Now I am catching up on email and phone calls, cleaning my room/apt and watching a movie with the roomates.

Tomorrow we get up early and go for an overnight trip (back Monday night) to Chesky Krumlov, a town about three hourse away from Prague

Second round of classes...only one!

Today I slept late and went to my one class at 2:30. It is entitled Prague, Vienna, Budapest. It is a cultural and intellectual history of those three cities. We are reading stuff from Freud and other philosophers. The class seems interesting but it is a TON of reading. We technically have 208 pages due on Thursday. There is no way everyone is going to read that!! It seems like if we get the basic idea of the readings we should be fine.

Then I went to Tesco and picked up some salmon filet to freeze (about 1 kg) and a small pillow (which is hard to find). All the pillows here are huuuge. The one they gave us is huge and it has been hurting my neck, so I'm excited for the small one! I also got a bowl to make salad in.

Then I came back, cut up the salmon, put it in the freezer, and went to dinner. A bunch of us (my roomates and a couple others) went to this Chinese place a couple minutes away. I had Spicy Tofu which was very good! Now I'm back home and going to sleep to get up for class tomorrow at 8AM!!!

My First Day of School...

So today was the first day!

After staying up until about 3am to watch the first half of the superbowl and the halftime show, I got up at 8am, had breakfast and a cup of coffee to wake up and headed to start my long day of classes. Monday's are INSANE! But it's good that I get over half of my classes over with on the first day of the week. I had Jewish History (mostly of the Czech lands), a perspective which had never been covered in any American classes, A Czech film course (today we watched a silent film with random German phrases randomly placed throughout the film), Czech language which was basically a review of what we did in intensive Czech last week (i got the second highest grade in my class on the practice quiz!), and Antisemetism and the Holocaust in Czech lands, which again, will focus on the Czech lands as opposed to Poland and what we think of as the "normal" Holocaust studies.

A little tidbit of information that I didn't know and something to sum up my day of learning: We will see in the history of Jewish in Czech lands, that no matter how bad the Jews were persecuted, it was not as horrible as some other countries.

So 8 hours of class down for today -- 7 left for the rest of the week!

1 class tomorrow from 2:30-4...what am I going to do with myself!?!?