I left Paris last Wednesday night -- made kind of a mad dash to the train station for my train at 7:06pm after my class got out at 6:30 -- rather exciting! I took the train from Paris to Mannheim (Germany) which took about 3 hours, and then I had about an hour and a half "layover" in Mannheim which was a bit eerie. It seemed to be the place where all the homeless people hung out -- and people kept on wandering in and out. And people were only speaking German or Italian -- the whole thing was just a bit unnerving.
My overnight train to Prague left at midnight -- I shared a sleeping "cabin" with this lovely French family of 4 (parents and two young girls), and some other man. It was literally like something out of a movie. I had the bed that was on top -- and there were three "beds" on either side, and so I climbed up and got into my little sheet pouch and fell asleep pretty soon after that. I actually slept pretty well overall -- I only woke up each time that the train stopped - which seemed quite frequently. At around 9:30am, I got up and went to one of the cabins to sit for the last hour until we finally got to Prague!
After we arrived, I spent a little pit of time wandering around the train station trying to figure out how to buy a ticket for the metro, and also how to get some "Czech Krones" -- which is what I needed in order to use the metro machines. Not to mention that everything is written in Czech! I finally found my way to the metro and then followed the instructions to get to Sir Toby's which was the hostel where we stayed.
I spent most of Thursday walking around Prague and getting lost -- I know I walked in lots of circles. Pretty circles! But circles none the less. I ended up visiting the Old Jewish Cemetery and that ticket included visits to the main synagoges and a few small museums as well -- it was a lovely way to spend the afternoon.
Cemetery.
That afternoon, my friend Nick arrived -- and so we headed back downtown to wander around and had a delicious dinner -- I had meat in this sweet gravy with bread dumplings which seem to be quite q specialty there. Food was incredibly cheap -- for our two dinners plus 2 beers each, it was only 25 euros. After that, we went back to our hostel and ended up going to a bar for a bit with a group of people from our hostel which was really fun! The place was practically empty -- but we had a great time getting to know each other.
Friday, Nick and I went up to Prague Castle and walked around for a bit. I bought two really pretty little watercolors from a street artist which will be great fun to have as momentos! We continued to walk around down in the Mala Strana district which was a great area. We stopped for lunch, and I ordered what was called a potato "dumpling" which turned out to be like a fried potato pancake that was stuffed with some bacon pieces and blue cheese. It was absolutely delicious. The rest of the day wasn't overly exciting -- I mean, besides the fact that we were exploring Prague!
A lovely view of Prague!
Saturday morning, I took my time getting up, and then went to the bus station around noon for my bus to Vienna at 12:30. The bus was actually great -- very comfortable, free wifi, tvs on the back of each seat with a large selection of movies and tv shows! Quite a nice ride! We were a little late because we got caught up at the Austrian border, but my friend Peter (Grassl -- who I played saxophone with for forever) met me right at the bus station! We had a wonderful dinner of sauerkraut and pork at the wine bar in his town, Langenzendorf, and then we turned in for the night!
Sunday, we woke up early and went to the train station to go to SALZBURG! We got a deal with the Westbahn train that was only 9 euros each way -- and the trains were gorgeous and new and also had free wifi! Hard to beat that. Despite the bad weather, we had a lovely time in Salzburg -- saw all of the Sound of Music sites that we could, walked around the whole city, and it's such a beautiful place! We headed back to Vienna later in the afternoon and went to a free organ concert at 8 at one of the churches near St. Stephan's -- nice way to end the day!
Salzburg skyline!
Me in front of Mozart's house.
Monday -- we spent the day touring around Vienna! Peter's friend Matthias was nice enough to drive us into the city and accompanied us! We literally walked all the way around the city -- saw all the main things -- St. Stephan's, the Parliament building, city hall, St. Charles' church -- all so pretty. And the city is incredibly clean!! We stopped for lunch at this restaurant near where we had parked the car -- Peter and I each had homemade "green noodles" in this cheese sauce with pieces of ham -- absolutely delicious (but pretty heavy).
From there, we drove a ways out of the city to one of the mountains where we could get a view of the whole city and the surrounding towns. It was incredible!! We went home for a little bit and played some piano, and then Matthias picked us back up to drive us back to the city. We walked by Schonnbrun palace and then took the metro to city hall which was all lit up and had an ice rink right by it and like a whole food fair! It was wonderful! We got some sausages and homemade potato chips which were SO GOOD.
Me and Peter overlooking Vienna.
City Hall at night!
Tuesday, we took a little adventure to SLOVAKIA -- crazy, right? The train trip to Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia) was only an hour each way and was only 14 euros round trip! We got up early and got the 8:03 train -- and arrived in Bratislava just after 9am to very snowy and slushy weather, which soon turned into rain that lasted all day long....We started to walk to what we thought was the center of the city, and after quite some time, we asked a nice looking girl for help -- she was very nice and helped us buy student tickets for the bus and told us which bus to catch. We got almost to the end, when the bus "police" got on to check tickets. We were pretty relaxed -- because we had tickets, right? WRONG. Apparently, we had to be Slovakian students in order to use the student passes. The "police" were really unpleasant about the whole situation and didn't really speak any English at all -- and even though some of the people getting off the bus were telling us to run away, we ended up getting fined 40 euros each. Bummer.
We wandered around the old city for the rest of the day -- it's a nice place! Very Eastern European -- and it was very wet and chilly. But we saw some cool things! Mostly churches and old buildings and supposedly the skinniest house in central Europe!
Bratislava street
The skinniest house in central Europe!
Later that night, we went to the cemetery in Vienna which was very cool -- saw the graves of Beethoven, Mozart, Shubert, etc. After that, we headed to the Grinzing neighborhood which was so beautiful! It's apparently where all of the hoity-toidy people of Vienna live -- and I can definitely see why!!
I ended my trip with a proper visit to Schonnbrun - in the daylight! Beautiful place as well. It was all beautiful!
Castle Pretty Fountain (apparently that's the translation)
One of the pretty fountains!
Alrighty -- well I think that about sums it up! Quite a busy week -- I'm going to need the weekend to recover! If you're interested in my full album of pictures -- you can click this link:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2909549422476.2124704.1372800318&type=1&l=b2ac89a989 -- it should work even if you don't have a Facebook account!!
Can't believe that it's already MARCH -- WHERE IS THE TIME GOING!!
A bientot!
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