Berlin

Last weekend, the morning after Pink, 10 of us left for Berlin. Even though the train was early, the train station is an easy 8 minute walk from our apt so it was super convenient.
Holesovice train station

After nearly 5 hours on the train we arrived in Berlin! I stayed with my old roommate who is studying there right now, but I followed my friends to find their hostel when we arrived. We took the S Bahn (metro) way into West Berlin and then we walked for about an hour looking for the place- I guess you could say it was not conveniently located. After wandering around town and getting some food we headed over to East Berlin.


The East Side gallery is a portion of the Berlin wall that became a gallery of art in 1990. Recently the wall has been repainted.
We even saw one of the artists working on his piece.
Lots of images of peace, freedom, and love. It was truly beautiful.
A lot of the images that were painted this year were just redoing images that were painted in 1990... for example I found this picture of this car from 2005, and here is my picture from last week.

Then we went to dinner for Jess' birthday!
I had a chicken burrito- and it was delicious, unlike Prague Mexican food.

The next morning I met up with some of my other friends who had come separately and we went on the "NewEurope" free walking tour of Berlin. It was 5 hours long, but pretty great.
This was the first thing they pointed out to us on the tour- the Adlon Hotel, please notice my alteration to the image.
Holocaust memorial. 2,711 concrete slabs. No markings or signage or anything that says what it is, I would have had no clue if it weren't for the guide.

Berlin wall.

Crew in the top of the Reichstag.

Soviet memorial.
Wandering around Berlin with Shevani!


And that finalizes my travels for the semester... from here on out I'll just be exploring Prague!

P!NK

So for my Jess's birthday, Sarah, Jess, and I went to see P!NK in Prague! We had seats up in the nosebleed section, but so much of her act involves her flying through the air that it didn't matter at all. She put on such an amazing show. She has a beautiful voice, even when soaring on a trapeze.

yes... that's her flying through the air, while singing, def not lip syncing.

They love her here!

She did a cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, which was AMAZINGGG. So Jess and I stood up and sang every single word while every person around us looked as though they'd never heard the song before! I'm guessing because it was popular during communist times here and there might not have been that easy access for outside music. Anyway it's funny that she sang that song because Prague is in the old Bohemian Kingdom, so the who region where Prague lies is called Bohemia.
Singing Bohemian Rhapsody in Bohemia with P!nk was prettttty awesomeee!!!

Milan and WILCO!

Milan! So sometime back in September we booked these tickets to Milan for the weekend because it was a super cheap flight and we had a free weekend so why not? Then a few weeks late we found out Wilco was going to be playing while we were there! It just so happens to be that Jeff Tweedy (lead singer of Wilco) is Sarah's (my roommate's) Ex-Stepmom's ex- husband's sister's husband! So naturally not only did we get comped tickets, but BACKSTAGE PASSES as well!
But more on that later... Milan isn't that exciting. There's the Dumo, which I believe according to Rick Steve's is the 4th largest church in Europe.

It was pretty cool. Apparently they have a bunch of "relics" in there as well- maybe a nail from the cross and some deciple hair or something wierd like that.
Pidgeons love David Fell and his neckbeard.

Massive pasta lunch= delish. Thanks again Rick Steves hahah

Then after we did some leather jacket shopping for Eric, we headed to some Castle where apparently Leonardo Da Vinci lived for a while.
Outside the castle.
pretty legit.

NOW TIME FOR WILCO!!!!
soooo exciteddd
they were sooooooo goooooooood. We had great seats. It was so weird to be at a concert where people don't stand up until the encore. Bizarre, but it was an amazing show in a small venue.


After the show we went backstage where a few of the band members came out to talk. Unfortunately Jeff was not one of them, and Sarah was too scared to pull the "he's my uncle" card.
Anyway I ended up talking to Pat, the piano/ guitar player for nearly an hour. It was soo awesome talking to him about being a musician and touring and his whole career and everythingggg. It was extremely memorable.

Plzeň

Sorry long time no post...

November 6th NYU sponsored a day trip to a town in the Czech Republic about 2 hours away from Prague. Plzeň is the home of Pilsner Urquell, the best beer in the Czech Republic.
We started off the day with a walking tour of the city. It was freezing and our toes/ hands/ ears were cold.
Thank you America!

Then we had lunch and headed to the underground tour. We all had to put on hard hats and walked in these tunnels 10 meters under the city. It was warmer down there than on the streets... weird apparently it stays a constant temp down there all year.
Then we had a guided tour of the Pilsner brewery/ factory. That was really impressive. It was such a nice facility compared to other breweries I have been to this semester. Also I was working on a project for my Marketing class about Pilsner, so I gathered a lot of information from the tour for that.
Churning out A LOT of beer.
Marble floors- fancy. This is where the beer is actually being made- not for show.
Jess and I sampling unpasturized Pilsner in the cellar.
The whole group in the cellar.
My blonde Prague family- Kendra and Will.

Fall Break final stop- COPENHAGEN!

Finally we arrived to our last destination very late on a Friday night. We weren't really sure if the bus that we needed to catch into town ran at midnight so we took a cab to our hostel- 15 minutes and $60 USD later, we arrived. Copenhagen is by far the most expensive place I've ever been. Their currency is 5 to our dollar but everything was pretty much the same price as it is in prague except instead of dividing by 18 like we are used to, you divide by 5. Whoaaaaa.

But besides that it was a great city- we weren't there for too long, and I'd really like to go back in the summer time!

SO CUTE!!!

We were there on Halloween but apparently they only started celebrating Halloween there like 5 years ago so it hasn't caught on yet- I didn't see a single costume :(

At the Carlsberg museum trying all the different types of Carlsberg and Tuborg.
In Denmark someone told me the last Friday of October is the day the Christmas beers come out so it's a big holiday. The whole town was pretty much decorated for Christmas! I loved it! I tried the Christmas beers and the Tuborg was delicious, the Carlsberg not so much.
leavesss
SO COLD!
sort of dreary and dark most of the time...

It's so cool how in Copenhagen and Amsterdam everyone rides their bikes everyhwere. I think the states would be such a better place if we did that. We just need to get some propper bike lanes!

And as for fall break that's it! We were all excited to return to Prague and are so happy to have our Czech Kc back... oh how we missed our cheap currency. So grateful we're not on the Euro!!!

I'm off to Pilsen tomorrow- the home of Pilsner Urquell!

Fall Break Stop 3 of 4- AMSTERDAM!

and the climate started to get colder as we headed north to Holland!

I have been to Amsterdam once before, about 10 years ago, but the experience was a little different this time...


a fish eye view of Amsterdam!


eating too many french fries!


Sarah, Emily, and I rented bikes one morning and rode through a park on a beautiful chilly fal day. The leaves were amazing.


We went to the Van Gogh museum which was amazing. Afterwards I went to The Heineken Experience with my old roommate Shevani!

A Czech flag in Amsterdam! representtttt
The canals are soo beautiful!

next stop Copenhagen...