Geneva, Amsterdam, Home.

I’m sitting on a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean right now, so this will likely be my last entry. I just wanted to give one final update on the end of Yitka and my journey; that being our time spent in Geneva and then one last day in Amsterdam. As I think I mentioned before, in order to get to Geneva from Athens we had a long journey. We started by taking the Greek metro, suburban, and national rail from Athens to Patras (a port town in the Northwest of the country). From Patras we caught a Superfast Ferrylines boat to Ancona, Italy. The boat ride was 22 hours long but it went by quickly; probably because Yitka and I both slept for about 15 of the 22 hours. The ship itself was basically a cruise ship complete with multiple bars, restaurants, and stores, and even an internet cafe. Unfortunately or not... we spent so much time sleeping, we didn’t actually take advantage of any of these things.

We boarded the ferry about an hour before departure and both proceeded to fall asleep and nap until about 5 hours in to the trip. When we woke up it was about 6pm, so we decided to have dinner and even some dessert. After dinner we played a nice game of scrabble (of course) and then after a little reading we both fell asleep on two tiny deck chairs that we pushed together. Despite the sleeping space being probably the most uncomfortable that we encountered on this entire European adventure, we were both able to sleep pretty much straight through until about 10am, just an hour before we were to dock in Ancona. It was pretty great. After arriving in Ancona, we walked about 1.5km to find the train station where we caught a train to Milan, and from Milan we got another train to Geneva. It was about another 12 hours of travel after we had docked and finally at midnight about 41 hours after leaving our hostel in Athens we were picked up by our lovely host at the Geneva train station.

Our host in Geneva was actually a friend of mine that I went to pre-school with who moved to Switzerland with her family when we were about 3 years old. They’ve been living there ever since, but luckily Helen and I are still in touch and her family was happy to take us in to their beautiful house. They don’ actually live in the city of Geneva, but they’re about 30 minutes from the center of the city. Their house is this amazing old farm house with beautiful views of snow capped mountains and vineyards all around. Although we did manage to get in to Geneva for a little bit of touring on one of our days there, we were both happy to simply appreciate the amazing house and countryside that we found ourselves staying in. On both days that we were there we took long walks with Connie (Helen’s mom) and their dog and Matthew and Charles (father and brother of Helen) on the second day. These walks were not only wonderfully relaxing, but we also got to see a bunch of old Swiss villages and of course appreciate the wonderful scenery of their neighborhood. It was definitely an amazing visit and it is now a goal of mine to return to Switzerland for another, longer vacation with the Stevensons.

We left Geneva on Saturday night in order to catch an overnight train that got us in to Amsterdam Centraal at 9:30am on Sunday. That gave me a whole day to appreciate the city that I have come to love so much one more time. I had a whole list of things I wanted to do on my one day in the city, and I think I was pretty successful in getting stuff done. Most of the things I wanted to do involved eating certain things that you can only get in Amsterdam, so for each of my three meals yesterday, I had a different Amsterdam delight. Maoz (falafel), toasties, and frites, it was a good food day. I also picked up a few last minute souvenirs and even went to see a movie!

This morning I had to sell back my cell phone to my program and then I took a cab to Schiphol Airport. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the most relaxing of travel days. My travel plans involved a connecting flight in Frankfurt, but my flight to Frankfurt from Amsterdam was delayed about 45 minutes and so by the time we actually landed in Frankfurt my flight to New York was already in the boarding phases. Also, Frankfurt happens to be the biggest, most annoying airport to make a connection in that I’ve ever been to. Our plane wasn’t taken to a gate, instead we came out on the tarmac and then had to take a bus to the terminal, but the terminal is so huge that by the time we got there I still had to walk/run for about 20 minutes before I actually got to my other flights gate. On top of that, I had to go through Immigration. Luckily I was carrying my Amsterdam Residency Permit on me, otherwise I think I probably would have gotten in trouble because I’ve been in the EU longer than is allowed without a visa or residence permit. Good thing I got my Dutch professor to translate that note for me way back when that told me to come pick up this card. Anyway, after all the hassle, I made it to be gate about 15 minutes before the plane was due to leave and all was well. The flight so far has been alright, a little turbulent at times, but Lufthansa is a pretty great airline so I can’t complain to much. Three more hours and then I’ll be in New York... But likely by the time I post this and any of you get around to reading it, I may be off in Honduras!

Pictures! (prague-athens)

Well we finally got a good enough internet connection here in Switzerland to upload our pictures through Athens. There are two albums, so here are the links:

http://oberlin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028363&l=e6610&id=4302935

http://oberlin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2028366&l=9c614&id=4302935

We'll be in Geneva for a few more hours and then we're catching an overnight train to Amsterdam! Then one more day in A'Dam before heading back to America! (at least for a couple of hours). Enjoy the photos.

Athens (The city where we met people our own age)

Well, it’s our last night in Athens and fortunately we’ve been able to pick up some pirated wireless for the time that we’ve been here and therefore we’ve remained quite connected to the outside world. Athens has been beautiful and sunny and warm! I spent the last two and a half days walking around in a t-shirt and my flannel, and I was warm! It was a nice change from the intense winter of Eastern Europe that we had just come from. We did get a bit of rain on our first day here, but it was interspersed with bouts of wonderful sunshine, so we couldn’t complain too much. But let me get to the update, because these things always end up being extremely long anyway, I don’t want to bore you with tons of insights that you don’t care about, so here we go!

DAY ONE

We arrived in Athens on Sunday after a one-night visit to Vienna, which we made solely to get on a really cheap flight to Greece. It seems that the second half of our trip has been quite different from the first half, mostly because we’ve just been meeting so many more people. On our metro ride from the airport to our hostel we ended up talking to these two guys who had been on the same flight as us from Vienna. It turns out that they were brothers who are in their 4th month of a 10-month trip around the world. They’d already been to Central and South America and had made their way around a whole lot of Europe, and their next stop is Africa. We talked for the whole train ride and then decided to have dinner together. Apparently somewhere over the course of their 4 months abroad they developed a tradition of having pizza every Sunday night. Not surprisingly, pizza is a food that they’ve been able to find in every place they’ve been to. Given that it was Sunday, Yitka and I were all for a dinner of Greek pizza. We parted ways in order to check in to our separate hostels and then met back up a few hours later and started walking around the neighborhood that our hostel is in. Within 5 minutes we had already found a pizza place that ended up being a really awesome restaurant, with a wonderful waitress who enjoyed taunting us immensely and who made us laugh over and over again. We liked it so much we actually ended up going back there for lunch the next day.

After enjoying our pizza dinner we decided to go explore the area near the Acropolis. Our hostel was literally 3 blocks from the main archeological site of the Acropolis, which made all the sightseeing we wanted to do extremely convenient. Obviously the actual ruins are closed at night, but we were able to walk around them on the other side of the fence and get some pretty cool views. We ended up climbing some random stairs that we came across, which to our surprise, led us to the top of a rock ledge where we could look out upon the entire city of Athens, it was stunning. You could just look out in front of yourself and see the whole modern city of Athens, and then dispersed within the modern city would be these lit up ruins from Ancient Greece, it was really cool. We explored a bit more before deciding to get back to our hostel so we would be able to get up and go exploring in the daylight the next morning.

DAY TWO

You may have noticed from these blog entries that Yitka and I really aren’t the type to get an extremely early start in the morning. We usually are satisfied with ourselves if we get up around 10am and leave our hostel by 11am, which is exactly what we did on our second day in Athens. After waking up and enjoying the continental breakfast of toast with Nutella, we headed out to explore the ruins. One of the girls staying in the same room as us in our hostel goes to Oregon State and we’ve been spending basically all of our time together for the past two days, so when we headed out to explore, she came with us and was with us on all of the adventures that I am about to impart to you.

Our first stop of the day was the Acropolis, but the Acropolis isn’t just one ruin. It’s actually a whole area of Ancient ruins with six different main attractions. I think we managed to see about 4 of the main attractions (and that still took us 2 days). But we were definitely able to get a feel for it. The first day we went to the Parthenon, which stands atop a massive rock cliff in the center of Athens. From the top, no matter which way you turn you can see the city stretching out for miles, it’s really amazing, and as soon as we have a more steady internet connection we will surely be uploading many pictures of this awesome sight. From the Parthenon we went to explore some ancient caves, but then unfortunately, the rain began and it started coming down pretty hard. The three of us decided it was time to run for cover and so we headed back to our new favorite restaurant for some lunch. Don’t worry though, this wasn’t just a pizza place, it was actually a traditional Greek restaurant and we all ended up getting delicious Greek food for lunch (and let me tell you, Greek food is delicious).

After lunch we were going to try and go to the National Archeological Museum, but it was still raining and I think we were all pretty exhausted, so we ended up just using our pirated internet, and talking in our hostel room for about 6 hours. We also made Kayla (the girl from Oregon State) sit through viewings of our pictures from our travels thus far as well as tons of pictures and videos from Oberlin... I don’t think she was that bored by it, but it made Yitka and me both really nostalgic and excited to get back to Oberlin in a few weeks. After spending a while in the hostel we knew that we’d have to make up for it by having an awesome Greek dinner, and we definitely succeeded in that. We went to a restaurant around the corner that had been recommended by our hostel, and it was delicious! I had Moussaka, I’m not even sure exactly what it’s made of... I know it has potatoes, and meat, and vegetables, and it’s made sort of like lasagna, it was delicious though. We also had some of the most amazing baklava I’ve ever had, which was served with this weird shot of alcohol that I couldn’t quite place the taste of. Well, we enjoyed the food so much, we ended up going back there tonight, and I couldn’t help myself but order the exact same thing! It was just so good! I think my favorite thing about Athens has definitely been the food, hands down.

After dinner we had a laid-back night and came back to the hostel and watched Garden State, which we had learned earlier, was a movie that all three of us absolutely loved. Luckily I thought to bring my movie collection with me on this trip, I knew it would come in handy.

DAY THREE

Today was similar to yesterday. We saw a whole lot of ancient ruins that I don’t think I can really do justice to just by writing about them. Don’t worry though, you will see pictures. Overall though I think it’s just really amazing to be in this city where you can just be walking down the street and all of a sudden a sign will be posted pointing out some ancient ruins right under your nose. And when you walk through the sites like the Ancient Agora, where we were today, you can just think about what it was like in about 200BC and you can actually imagine it because some of the structures are so well preserved and in tact. It’s just amazing and Yitka and I have both fallen in love with this city, it’s ruins, it’s food, and it’s people.

After seeing a lot more ancient ruins we then walked over to the old Olympic Stadium, which is actually the stadium from the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. It’s a massive stadium with huge marble stands that we all just wanted to climb up to the top of. Unfortunately you couldn’t go inside, so we had to take our pictures from the other side of the fence... Oh well. After seeing the stadium we walked over to the National Archeological Museum, but once again, we failed to see it. This time (after about a 30-45 minute walk to get there) we found out that the museum closes at 3pm on Tuesdays, and it happened to be 4pm. It was still sunny out, so we lounged on the steps of the museum for a while taking in the heat from the sun before finally hopping on the metro and heading back to our hostel.

I already told you that we went back to that same restaurant for dinner again tonight and had an amazing meal. Now I think we’d both like to try and get a decent nights sleep because we have to be out of here by 7am tomorrow morning in order to catch our 8am train. For those of you who don’t know yet, our next stop on this journey is Geneva, Switzerland. How are we getting there though? Well that’s the interesting part. We will be traveling from 7am tomorrow morning until about 11pm the day AFTER. Our first leg of the journey is a train ride from Athens to Patras, a port city in Greece. From Patras we will take a boat to Ancona, Italy. From there we have to catch a train to Milan, and from Milan we will be able to catch a train to Geneva. Doesn’t that sound fun? Well, if you read this anytime before the 18th, that’s probably what Yitka and I are currently up to, so now you know!

Alright, just one more city to go before we head back to Amsterdam and then home, 5 more days in Europe! How crazy.

Hanging out with middle aged men in Budapest

I hope you have all been enjoying my updates, and I hope you haven’t been bored out of your mind by the intricate details that I tend to include. We’re currently in Vienna and although the wireless at the hostel we’re staying at seems to be broken, I was able to get to a Starbucks about 10 minutes away from here in order to post the last two entries. So, I’ll write this now (Saturday night) and hopefully I’ll be able to post it tomorrow from Athens! Our hostel there is supposed to have free internet connections, so we can only hope that theirs wont be broken also, but I guess it’s pointless for me to be saying this because if anyone is reading this post, it means that I finally found some internet and was able to update my blog. Sooooo, on to our crazy adventures in Budapest!

As you heard in my last entry, we chose to stay in a different hostel than the one that we had previously booked. Mom, don’t freak out too much about this, we were very cautious, and really we could either have gone with Ziggy or tried to find our way around Budapest at 11:30pm… our options really weren’t all that great. Our choice to stay at the Locomotive Light Hostel (as it was called) is really the reason that we had almost all of the experiences that we did in Budapest. I’ll start from the beginning though, because I like to stick to chronologies.

DAY ONE

After getting in at 11:30pm and staying up talking to Ziggy for a while on our first night in Budapest, Yitka and I were both pretty tired and so we decided to sleep in a bit instead of rushing out and trying to cram in as much sightseeing as possible. In fact, sightseeing was very low on our agenda for our time in Budapest. The first and most important thing that we did in Budapest was to take a trip to the thermal baths. We had heard before arriving that a trip to the baths was a thing not to be missed if one was going to visit this city and so at 11:30am we followed Ziggy’s directions and took a bus over to the Schezny Baths (I think I spelled that right). We got there at about noon and paid our 2500 fts. (About 15 dollars) each and then headed in. There were a bunch of different baths that one could go into, including one like a hot tub, as well as one with powerful water jets that made the whole bath into the most powerful whirlpool I’ve ever been in. If you just let yourself float in the water you would find yourself being whisked around the entire pool by no effort of your own. There were also two baths that may have had something special about them, but I really don’t know what that something would be… Now that I’ve explained that, I’ll just let you know that Yitka and I stayed there for almost 6 hours. We had left the hostel knowing that we weren’t going to try and do anything else that day, and the time just flew by as we were sitting relaxing in the water. It was extremely refreshing and also very good for us I think. The water supposedly has all these minerals in it that results in your entire system being cleared out just by sitting in it, it was pretty awesome.

So that was what we did on our first day in Budapest, but one thing that was different about our visit to Budapest than the rest of the cities we’ve been in so far is that we actually went out to some bars both nights. On our first night Ziggy introduced us to Andrew (a 34 year old guy from Idaho who ended up staying in the same room as us in the hostel for the next two nights) and Andrej (that’s Hungarian for Andrew, although I’m unsure of the spelling) a friend of his from Budapest. The five of us went to a nearby bar and had some delicious Hungarian beer and also played pool for a while. When we came back to the hostel, Yitka, Andrew, and I ended up playing poker until about 3:30am when we finally called it a night, all in all it was a fun night.

DAY TWO

On our second day we were determined to get at least a little sightseeing done before we left the city. Since we hadn’t gone to sleep until about 4am the night before we allowed ourselves to sleep until 11am before getting up and heading out to see the sights. Unfortunately, we seemed to have picked the cloudiest, and grayest day of our entire trip, and so none of my pictures really capture Budapest in it’s truest glory, which we fortunately were able to see today as our train pulled away from the city.

Our first sightseeing stop was the Hungarian parliamentary buildings. We took the metro there, and as we emerged from the station we were immediately confronted with the beautiful sight of the parliament complex. Like the dutiful tourists that we are, we took a bunch of pictures of the building and of some of the statues surrounding it. That’s also one thing we noticed about Budapest, there are statues absolutely everywhere! We didn’t know who most of the statues were of, but they fill the entire city, and they’re all large and grand, it was really cool.

After leaving parliament we walked along the bank of the river until we came to a bridge where we could cross into Buda. That’s one thing I learned while in Budapest actually. Buda and Pest are two different places. Buda is on the western side of the river and is more expensive and also home to the castle grounds, while Pest is on the eastern side of the river and is less expensive and more industrial. We were staying in Pest, but we wanted to go walk around the castle grounds so we walked over to Buda. The palace is up on top of a mountain and is surrounded by a variety of other buildings with lots of museums and shops within the grounds. To be quite honest, I’m really not sure which building was actually the palace, but the entire grounds were really beautiful and from the top of the mountain we got a really great view of the rest of the city.

After leaving the palace we were going to try and go to the Statue Park, which is this park where all the statues of former communists leaders have been collected since the fall of communism. Even though I was already exhausted from our days adventures, I was really looking forward to seeing this place because we were told that it was a pretty amazing sight. We needed to take two different buses to get there from our hostel, but unfortunately after we got off the first bus and were trying to figure out where to get on the second bus, we found out that the park was closed. We were in a pretty random part of the city, so there was nothing for us to do besides turn around and take the bus back to our hostel… too bad.

That night we went out to a traditional Hungarian restaurant for dinner and I had the most delicious goulash I’ve ever tasted (sorry Rachel… it was very meaty). The only vegetarian thing on the menu was fried cheese, so Yitka got to enjoy that splendid delicacy. After satiating ourselves, we found ourselves heading to another bar with Ziggy and Andrew. This bar was much smaller and really personal. It was basically me, Yitka, and Andrew (the 3 Americans) and a bunch of 30-40 year old Hungarian guys. Oh yeah, and there was also a guy from Canada, and an older guy from Germany… what a crowd, eh? We spent the night drinking good Hungarian beer and playing a whole lot of foosball… more foosball than I’ve ever played in my life beforehand. What we learned was that, all 3 of us Americans were pretty terrible at foosball, but Andrej, and the German guy were both really awesome at it. After a few hours of foosball, random songs on the jukebox, and the largest pizza I’ve ever seen in my life, we decided to call it a night and head back to the hostel.

So that was Budapest… It was definitely an experience like none I’ve ever had before and I’m sure that I will never forget it. It was also really interesting for me, because I NEVER hang out with 30-40 year old men, and I wouldn’t really expect to have a good time with them, but I guess that would be a bad judgment on my part, because I ended up having a lot of fun, and it was definitely a night, and a city, that I will never forget.

Alright, by the time you read this I assume that I will be in Athens or maybe even on my way to Geneva! I’ve got 9 more days in Europe; I’ll try to make the best of it!

Bratislava (?)

Well, I’m currently in Vienna, but I haven’t yet had a chance to update about Budapest or our trip there for that matter. We left Prague on Wednesday morning and caught an 11:35 train that should have gotten us to Budapest by about 6:30pm. We knew that our Eurail passes were not valid in the Czech Republic and so we had paid the required fair to get to the Czech border where we believed our passes would once again be valid. Unfortunately, we were unaware that the train would be taking us through Slovakia in order to get to Budapest, and therefore when the ticket taker came around and looked at our tickets as we were approaching Bratislava, we obviously did not have the right ones. Because of this, and because we also didn’t have enough money to pay the fare right on the train, we were forced to disembark our train at the next stop, which fortunately enough happened to be Bratislava and not some little random town in the middle of Slovakia. Since we had no Slovakian currency with us, we couldn’t buy anything at the station once we had paid for our tickets to the Slovakian border. We took a short walk away from the station just to say that we had been to Bratislava. Unfortunately we had to wait about 4 hours until the next train to Budapest came through, so we spent the time reading and playing Scrabble in this sketchy waiting room at the train station.

When we finally did get in to Budapest it was about 11pm and although we had directions to our hostel, we were having a lot of trouble figuring them out. This really sketchy guy with a beard and long hair, who was wearing a big black coat kept coming over to us and offering us a hostel. At first we kept turning him down, but he was extremely persistent and he showed us a flyer and eventually convinced us to go with him to see this hostel. I think we were both pretty terrified seeing as it was 11pm and we had just gotten to Budapest… But he ended up bringing us to a really nice little hostel that was right near the train station. When we got there we were still pretty sketched out because the entranceway had a big metal gate and we were also the only people staying at the hostel that night.

Everything turned out to be fine though and we ended up staying at this place all three nights we were in Budapest, and you’ll be hearing all about those nights in the next entry. I know these have been really behind, but I haven’t been able to get any wireless for a while, hopefully that will change soon.

Prague

Hello again! I write to you now from a hostel in Budapest. There’s a whole story about our travels between Prague and Budapest, but I think it deserves an entry on its own, so you’ll get that in due time. Prague was really amazing. I think Yitka and I both agreed that it was one of the most beautiful cities we’ve ever been to, all of the architecture is just stunning. It felt like every time we turned around we would find ourselves looking at another amazing building. We’ve been doing so much every day that I feel as though the only way I can manage to recount everything that we’ve done is to give a blow by blow account of each day of our travels as I did in my Berlin update, so here goes.

DAY ONE

We arrived in Prague at about 4pm on Sunday and made our way to our hostel which was pretty centrally located within the city. The hostel was extremely nice. We were in a comfortable room and we had access to free wireless from the hostel. Our roommates on our second and third nights were all from the states and one of them went to SUNY New Paltz, so we even managed to find some common acquaintances through the wonderful world of facebook. After settling down we decided to go explore the city for a little while and grab some dinner. We went over to Wenceslas Square, which isn’t actually a square at all so much as a big avenue that spreads out in front of the National Museum at the top of the hill. We found a traditional Czech restaurant and treated ourselves to a delicious dinner. After eating since we were both exhausted we went back to the hostel in order to take advantage of the free wireless (which is how you were all delivered with my Berlin update and those wonderful pictures on facebook).

DAY TWO

We spent our second day in Prague wandering around the city seeing various sites and of course, numerous beautiful buildings. We made sure to take advantage of our hostels free breakfast every morning of our trip and so after we had enjoyed our hearty corn flakes we were ready to explore for hours. Luckily the day before we had stumbled across some information that said the National Museum was free on the first Monday of every month which happened to be our second day in Prague. Always looking for a bargain, Yitka and I decided to make the museum our first stop of the day. I think the best part of the museum was probably the building itself. It was a massive structure with tons of statues and engravings all over it, we took lots of pictures (which I’ll upload next time I have wireless access on my lap top). We went to two exhibits in the museum, although I’m sure there were many more because it was a humungous museum. The first exhibit we saw was all about aerial archeology. It was about how archeologists use aerial photography in order to discover where ancient civilizations once were. The photos show the differences in landscapes that have formed because of different human uses of the land over the years. There was one picture where you could see the remains of a shipwreck that occurred over a hundred years before the picture was taken, it was really cool.

The other exhibit that we went to in the museum was called “The Human Footprint” and it was literally about the footprint that human beings have left on the earth (and the moon for that matter). The exhibit basically consisted of a bunch of different artifacts that all had something to do with human existence on earth. The most prominent artifacts were various pairs of shoes! There were all different kinds of shoes from all over the world that were prominently displayed… It was a pretty strange exhibit, I must say.

After leaving the museum we continued to wander around the city, we made our way through the Jewish Quarter and then over the river and up to the Prague Castle. The castle was beautiful and it was up on a hill so we were given a brilliant view of the entire city of Prague.

DAY THREE

On our third and final day in Prague we made sure to get an early start on our adventures and were out of our hostel by 10am that morning. Our first stop of the day was the Old Town Square where Prague’s famed Astronomical Clock is located. This clock tells not only the time, but it can also tell you the zodiac and perhaps something about the movement of the planets (?) I’m not entirely sure to tell you the truth. Every hour when the clock strikes the hour all of these figures make an appearance from within the clock. A big crowd gathers every hour and so we made sure to be there when the clock struck 11am. It was pretty exciting I guess… I took a video of it, but it wasn’t really that amazing, but I’m glad we saw it.

After we watched the dance of the clock we walked over to the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Pinkas Synagogue where we forked over the 200 Crowns (about 10 dollars) to go into both places. The Pinkas Synagogue is a really old Jewish Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter where the names of many of the Prague Jews that died in the Holocaust have been recorded on the walls. There are a total of 80,000 names written on the walls. There are literally 4 large rooms where every wall is entirely covered in the names of victims as well as their dates of birth and death. Walking through the synagogue was an extremely moving experience. I found myself overcome with sadness as I calculated the ages of the victims. As I scanned the names I kept seeing my own name as well as the names Anna and Adolf and I felt a true connection to all the victims. When we left the synagogue, we went into the Old Jewish Cemetery that is right next door. This cemetery has been around since the mid 1400’s and there are so many headstones crammed into the tiny plot of land, it is obvious that many of the graves must be right on top of one another.

The rest of our wanderings that day led us to the Charles Bridge and up a funicular to the top of a mountain on the edge of the city. There’s not really much to say about these places, so I’ll let the pictures do all the talking when I get a chance to upload them in a few days.

Our last stop of the day was the Kafka Museum. I’ve never read any Kafka, but this museum really intrigued me and now I definitely want to read a bit of his work. I really liked the museum, especially because it was really focused on Kafkas’ relationship with the city of Prague. So it was really interesting to read about it and see all the old pictures of the city.

Before heading back to our hostel for our last night in Prague we went to this amazing vegetarian restaurant that we had read about on our tourist map. And now here’s the best part, we ran into ANOTHER Obie at this restaurant! We were sitting there waiting for our food and all of a sudden this girl walked in and we both stopped our ramblings (which of course were about Oberlin) to stare at her befuddled and amazed that we were running into another Obie on this short trip!

Anyway, so that’s the story of Prague. More to come about the ride to Budapest and our experiences in Hungary in my next post. Also, I’ll update pictures soon as well.

Berlin (and a little London)

Hello Again! Well, it has certainly been a long time since I last updated, I’m sorry to keep you all in suspense about what’s been going on in my life, but the dial-up internet connection in London just wasn’t cutting it. Since this entry is mostly about my time in Berlin, I don’t want to spend too much time discussing what I did in London, but I’ll just give a quick overview of my 11 days in London. My mom and I traveled from Amsterdam to London on Saturday December 22nd, where my friend Wendy met us and stayed with us until after Christmas. We proceeded to spend the next few days seeing various family and friends in London. We spent Christmas day with our cousins, and my cousin Rachel cooked a huge feast for us and Wendy as well. Rachel (not my cousin) and her family came to London on the 28th and we all had lunch. By the 31st my mom had left and Rachel, Yitka, Wendy, and her boyfriend Alex had joined me. We all spent New Years Eve together at my grandpas flat. On New Years Day we went on the London Eye, then Rachel left on the 2nd, and the rest of us cleared out of England on the 3rd. Wendy and Alex headed off to Amsterdam and Yitka and I hopped on a plane to Berlin. And so finally, I will tell you about the time I have spent in Berlin.

We arrived in Berlin at 9:30pm on January 3rd after a long day of traveling. We had to leave the flat at about 2pm in order to make sure we were able to get on a bus to Stansted in time for our 6:45pm flight. It seems like a lot of time, but the tube ride to the bus station was about 40 minutes followed by the actual bus ride to the airport, which was at least an hour. Before getting on the bus we had to wait in a line where it felt like we really weren’t going to get seats on the bus we wanted, but luckily we were given the LAST two seats on the bus, lucky us! After that all travel went smoothly. RyanAir treated us well (definitely worth the 20 pounds we paid for those tickets!) and we arrived in Berlin on time. For those of you that don’t know, we’ve been staying with my old au pair (spelling? I’m not so good with the French) from when I was 2-3 years old. She picked us up from the airport along with her son Joschi (short for Joshua, pronounced Yoshi). I don’t really remember Stefanie all that well from when I was a toddler, but the whole time I’ve been here she has been telling me all these wonderful stories about her memories of me and Lindsay when we were babies. She also showed me her four photo albums/scrap books from the year that she was in America and they include tons of pictures of me and Lindsay as 2/4 year olds as well as a bunch of pictures of my house before all the remodeling that we’ve done over the years. It was really fun to look through the pictures and hear stories about what Stefanie remembers from that time in 1989. It sort of felt like I was getting an outsiders perspective on my childhood and my family, and I really appreciated it. On top of all that, Stefanie and her boyfriend Thomas have also been amazing hosts. They’ve fed us breakfast every morning and taken us on walks around Berlin and they even treated us to dinner at a delicious Vietnamese restaurant on Saturday night.

Anyway, on to our activities in Berlin. We had two days of tourist activities, so I’ll just go day by day.

DAY ONE

After a wonderful breakfast with Stefanie and Joschi we made our way via the S-Bahn and the U-Bahn (Berlin public transport) to the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. Checkpoint Charlie was one of the main border checkpoints along the Berlin Wall between 1962 and 1989 when the wall was in place. On one side of the Wall at Checkpoint Charlie was Communist East Berlin and on the other side was the American Sector of West Berlin. Outside the museum they have left the Army checkpoint station standing and there is also a replica of the old sign that alerted people to the fact that they were entering or leaving the American Sector. The museum itself was entirely overwhelming. It is dedicated to those people that lost their lives trying to flee East Berlin, but there was just sooooo much stuff inside. There were hundreds of pictures and newspaper articles and models of different methods people had used to try and escape, but there was no cohesive story to tie everything together. I’m obviously glad I went because I think it was good to be able to see all these things, but I wished that there had been a more cohesive story that flowed throughout the entire museum instead of just a slew of hundreds of random artifacts thrown randomly into the museum.

With that said about my opinions of the museum, here’s a small world story for all of you. Just as we were leaving the exhibition a girl grabbed my arm and asked me frantically if I went to Oberlin (I was wearing my sweatshirt of course). We started talking and it turns out that she also went to Oberlin, AND, she was in the museum with 2 of her friends that ALSO went to Oberlin. We ended up knowing the other two girls as acquaintances and so we stood around in the Checkpoint Charlie gift shop and talked about our European travel plans for a while before parting ways. It was just really cool to run in to Oberlin people in Germany! Small world eh?

That evening we met up with Stefanie and after utterly freezing ourselves walking around the city for an hour or so (it was about -8°C), we finally stopped in an Indian restaurant and had a yummy dinner.

DAY TWO

For our second day in Berlin we tried to start the day early, but even though we had set our alarm for 9am we didn’t actually get out of bed until after 10am. Again we were greeted with a lovely German breakfast of bread, cheese, and various meats. After eating we headed into the city on the train prepared for a long day of touring. The first place we went was the Brandenburg Tor (Gate) which, to the best of my knowledge was an old entrance to the city. After wandering around in the area we came across the Jewish Memorial for those that lost their lives during the Holocaust. The memorial consists of a series of big stone boxes which at first don’t really look like much but when you start to walk through them you soon find yourself completely immersed and surrounded by these stone structures. When you look around you can only see the narrow paths that are created by all of the stones. I’m sure there is some profound meaning to why the memorial is set up in this way, but I haven’t yet taken the time to look it up.

After exploring the Jewish Memorial we made our way two blocks over to the Reichstag where you can enter and go up to the Dome at the top of the building for free, just so long as you’re willing to wait in a long line out in the cold. Since it was free we chose to wait not knowing that we would be standing outside in the below freezing air for over an hour. Despite the long, cold wait, it was pretty cool to get inside and have a view of the city and also to see the photo essay history of the building that was presented in the Dome.

Our next stop of the day was the German Historical Museum. This museum was also extremely overwhelming because it attempted to tell the story of German history from around 500BC to the present day. With that being said, it was definitely a lot more organized and easy to follow than the Checkpoint Charlie museum as the story was actually told in a cohesive manner that was easy to follow and interesting to read.

As an end to our time in Berlin, Stefanie and her boyfriend Thomas took us out for a lovely Vietnamese dinner, but not before taking us on an hour long walk across the newly ice slicked streets of Berlin. The walk was very treacherous and all four of us had some pretty close calls to falling right on our butts, but luckily we made it to the restaurant all in one piece.

This morning we caught a train to Prague and that is where I am right now. The train ride was 5 hours, but it passed by rather quickly. After a nap, some reading, and a good deal of time spent staring out the window at the snowy white countryside we found ourselves in Praha (where the snow had finally stopped falling). We’ll be here for three nights and then we head to Budapest. So that’s all for now, and in a few days time I’ll update again with some stories of our time in the Czech Republic.

I won't be uploading photos to my blog this month, but I'll keep facebook as up to date as possible. Here is a combined album of mine and Yitkas' photos from our last few days in London and our time in Berlin:

http://oberlin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027970&l=7a9f4&id=4302935

finals... but here's a short update anyway

Okay, sorry it's been so long since I posted. I'm in the midst of finals, and though they're nowhere near as daunting as Oberlin finals, there is still a bunch of work to do this week so this won't be a long post. I just wanted to give you a quick update, and I'll just let the pictures I have be my explanation of what I've been doing the past 2 weeks.

1. My friends and I went to Hortus Botanicus, the botanical garden a few blocks away from my dorm. They had a butterfly room.



2. We had a party for Sinterklaas on December 5th. Our program directors Hannah and Rudy dressed up as Zwarte Peit. I didn't realize who they actually were until they spoke to me. It was disturbing.



3. Oh yeah, and Hannah's husband dressed up as Sinterklaas.



4. My dad visited for a long weekend (he left this morning). We went to Delft and to the church where Johannes Vermeer is said to be buried.



5. Delft was really pretty, and it DOES have canals (Rachel...).



6. We also stopped in the Hague for an hour... It was not as cool or as pretty as Delft. But there was this cool clock outside central station.



7. Yesterday we went on a canal cruise. It was fun to see the city from the water.



Okay, that's all for the pictures. This morning I took my final exam for my Russia and Europe class, I think it went well... Friday I have a 4,000-5,000 page paper due, and then I'll be basically done with school work. Then my mom gets here on Sunday... I may or may not update again before leaving the city.

So long!

Deltawerken

Yesterday I went on one final excursion with CIEE. This time I actually managed to wake up on my own and made it easily to the bus by 8:15am, so that puts my success rate at waking up for excursions at 1/3. I guess that ratio could possibly give you some idea of my schedule here. Basically, yesterday was the earliest I've been awake (besides catching flights) all semester. Only two days a week do I have to wake up for an early class, and so on most other days I tend to sleep until about 11am, sometimes later on weekends, it's very enjoyable, and I'm not looking forward to next semester when I will definitely need to be a lot more productive than I am required to be here. Anyway, back to the excursion though.

In Dutch class a few days ago, Bonny (my professor) was telling us about a survey that asked Dutch people what they are most proud of regarding their Dutch identity and the society they come from. The thing that came up as what the most Dutch people are proud of (about 70% of the population) was the so called "battle against the water." As I'm sure many of you are somewhat aware, the Netherlands is full of dykes and dams that work to keep the North Sea from flooding the country. Without these dykes and dams, about half of the country would be under water, including Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam, three of the most important cities in the country. The country has been protected by dykes since the middle ages and maybe even before (I don't know the exact history) but in 1953 there was a major storm that broke past many of the dykes and flooded the coastal area. About 1,800 people were killed during the storm and flood that resulted, the sea level during that disaster was higher than it has ever been recorded in the country prior to or since 1953. After that disaster it became clear that something more was needed to keep the water out, and that is what the Delta Project was.

Shortly after the storm dams began to be constructed throughout teh Zeeland (the area where the damage of 1953 had been the harshest and also the area most vulnerable to the North Sea. The most intense dam that was constructed, and also the one that we visited yesterday, was the Eastern Scheldt dam, which was completed in 1986 and cost about 2.5 billion euros. The entire project, which included 13 different dams cost a total of 6.5 billion euros. I won't try to explain the science behind the dams or how they were able to construct such massive gateways to the North Sea, because although we watched a movie about it and had it explained to us by a guide, I really just dont understand it. Nonetheless, I was extremely impressed by the scientific genius that obviously went into the design and construction of the dams.

We got to walk out onto the main dam and look over at the rushing water, and it was quite a sight. The water was moving so incredibly fast, but we were told that it was a very calm day really. Seeing the strength of the water on a calm day, I can barely imagine what it must be like during a massive storm. The one thing I do know about how the dam works is that the gates are left open until the water level gets to 3m above sea level. At this point a series of 62 huge gates are shut so that no more water can get into the country (that seems like a weird way to put it, but that's essentially what happens). Our guide told us that in the 21 years the dam has been in operation, the gates have only been closed 9 times, and one of those times was just a few weeks ago on November 9th, 2007!

Unfortunately, my camera was out of batteries, so I can't put up a picture of the dam right now. But as soon as I get my hands on someone elses pictures from the day, I'll make sure to post one on here.

On a completely separate note, Shari visited this weekend and we had a splendid time! Also, last night I went to see Taryn's photo exhibition, which was part of her final project for SIT, and it was really great. She's an extremely talented photographer, I expect big things!

Sinterklaas Is Here!

This weekend the Dutch version of Santa Clause came to town. Sinterklaas arrived in the Amsterdam harbor on a boat from Spain this Sunday morning. I don't feel completely qualified to give the history of Sinterklaas, but I'll try to give an idea of the tradition to the best of my knowledge. Basically Sinterklaas comes from Saint Nicholas, and he is the patron saint of children. Similar to Santa Clause, he is said to keep a list of all children and whether or not they have been good or bad over the year. On December 5th Dutch children get gifts from Sinterklaas, in their shoes (?) I think. If a child has been bad over the year, it is said that he will be sent back to Spain! This threat has a lot of historical significance because the Dutch were under Spanish control for many years in the middle ages. So, that is what my knowledge of Sinterklaas is. One main difference that needs to be talked about between Sinterklaas and Santa Clause, is that of their helpers. As all Americans know, Santa Clause is assisted by hundreds and thousands of elves that work for him in the North Pole. Well, Sinterklaas also has helpers, but his helpers are called Zwarte Piets (black petes). Basically Zwarte Piet is usually portrayed by white Dutch people dressed up in complete black face. This would never fly in America, and I think these pictures will illustrate just why that is.

On Sunday some of my friends and I decided to get a taste of Dutch tradition and so we made our way to Dam Square in order to get a look at Sinterklaas and all the Zwarte Piets running around as he made his way through the city (on a white horse of course). I had hear about Zwarte Piet before going to the parade, but I was in no way prepared to encounter the site that awaited me. There were literally hundreds of people dressed up in what looked like clown outfits, with all of their skin entirely blacked out and with wigs as well! They were all running around interacting with the crowds and acting like fools. Some of them were even scaling a building near the square. A spectacle like this would never fly in America and my friends and I were all made slightly uncomfortable by the sight of it. The arguments that I have heard to justify the continued acceptance of this practice really do not satisfy me. I have been told that "it's just a tradition" and it has also been argued that blackface does not have the same negative connotations in this country that it does in America, but I really don't think that makes it okay. It has also been argued that the Dutch do not have the same history of racism that we have in the States, but this is simply a falsehood. The Dutch played a major role in the slave trade, they held colonies around the globe, and they can also proudly claim to be the ancestors of Afrikaans people in South Africa. When the Dutch arrived on the southern point of Africa, they handled themselves in an entirely racist manner and so I think it is simply ignorant to try and argue that the Dutch do not have a racist history. Apparently there have been attempts to try and get this tradition changed, for instance one group has argued for a new tradition in which the Zwarte Piets are painted in all different colors of the rainbow in order to show diversity, but none of these efforts have been succesful at gaining support within the country, so 600 Zwarte Piets were still found running around the streets of Amsterdam this past Sunday. I'll try not to dwell on that though. It was really cool to get to see Sinterklaas, along with some colonists! (and someone is trying to argue the Dutch aren't historically racist). He rode past us on his big white horse and all the little kids got really excited. It is also a Dutch tradition for the Zwarte Piets to hand out peipernoeten (I think I'm spelling that wrong) and so all the little kids (some of whom were dressed up as Zwarte Piet themselves) were standing along the parade route with bags out waiting to recieve their peipernoeten (which is just little ginger snap cookies, they're pretty tasty).

On another note, I went to the Anne Frank House on Tuesday. I was trying to wait out and go with my mom, but they were supposed to cut down the chestnut tree from the garden that Anne wrote about so much in her diary. My friends and I decided on a whim to go check it out before the cut the tree down the next day. It was a good place to visit, it was just sort of amazing to be in all the same places that she describes so well within the diary. So... to those who are coming to visit me, I recommend that you go, but since I don't want to pay another 7,50 euro to go again, I think I will find a cafe nearby and read a book while you explore it. Well, that's all for now, Shari is coming in two days and I'm super excited!

Vienna! (through rain, hail, and snow)

Sorry it's taken me so long to get around to writing this entry. Everytime I sit down at my computer with the intention of writing it, it just seems daunting and like too much to do in the time that I have to be writing it. The case is no different right now, but I figure if I at least get started then the next time I am at my computer, I will be able to finish. I've already written a nine page entry on Vienna in my journal, because that's how much there is to say about it! I'm just going to try and give a general overview of everything that we did while we were there.

I traveled with my friend Scott who is one of my closest friends in Amsterdam. At the same time that we were in Vienna though, some other girls from our program were also there, and I was staying at the same hostel as them (Scott stayed with a friend of his who is studying abroad in Vienna this semester). We had an 8:50am flight out of Amsterdam on Thursday morning, and so our weekend adventure started at around 7:00am when we met up at Scott's place to walk over to Central Station together and catch a train to the airport. Travel went very smoothly and our flight was incredibly fast so we landed in Vienna at our scheduled time despite leaving about 30 minutes late. After we landed we made our way to my hostel so I could check in and put my stuff down. After putting everything down we (now joined by Erika, Lena, Riley, and Amanda, who all go to USC and are on my program as well) made our way to Old Town just so that we could walk around and see the city a little bit. The first thing I noticed about Vienna is that all of the buildings are absolutely beautiful. I felt as though everywhere I turned I saw another architecturally stunning building. Apparently Vienna is quite famous for their coffee, so while in Old Town we went to get some delicious coffee, and we also stopped by Cafe Demel to pick up some royally famous cake. Scott and I shared a chocolate truffle cake, and it was delicious.

As all of us were pretty tired from traveling we decided to spend the night at the bar in our hostel instead of out painting the town red. We spent a few hours drinking and eating in the bar joined by Scott's friend Megan, and then eventually at around 1:00am we all decided to go to bed, making plans to meet up at 10am the next morning to start our first day of touring the city. All of us except for Scott were staying at the same hostel, but since the other 4 girls had booked their room together, they had their own room and I was in a different room with three guys from Australia. I had only briefly introduced myself to these guys earlier in the day, and they weren't in the room when I went to bed, but unfortunately they came back about an hour after I put my head down and they were completely trashed. They proceeded to wake me up by yelling my name very loudly and with a very long "u" sound.... "Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuth!" When it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to pretend to be asleep, I sat up in bed and acknowledged that I was not asleep. They then proceeded to strip down to their underwear and make me take pictures of them posing in their underwear. One of them also began banging his head into the METAL lockers in the room. Basically they made complete fools of theirselves, but after about 15 minutes they realized how obnoxious they were being and went to bed... I didn't fall asleep for another hour, so it was not a good first night sleeping wise, but I guess that's what happens sometimes when you stay in youth hostels. On Friday morning I woke up and cleared out of the room before my lovely roomates regained consciousness.

My main reason for really wanting to visit Vienna over other European cities was because I wanted to get a chance to see the building that my grandfather lived in when he was growing up in Vienna. The entire weekend I found myself imagining what the city might have been like in the 1930's when my grandpa was here. On Friday morning the first place we visited was Weimarer Strasse 22, my grandpa's old address. I google mapped the location the night before and figured out what train to take. It ended up being only 2 metro stops from where Megan lived, so it was really easy to get to. I took a bunch of pictures of the outside of the building, but I didn't know the apartment number and even if I had, I don't think I would have been bold enough to actually ring the door bell and ask to go inside. At one point however, someone did leave the building and my friends and I caught the door and walked into the entrance hallway for a few minutes. It was really great to get to see the whole neighborhood, and I was strangely reminded of the upper west side. There are more pictures on facebook (link in the previous post) if you want to see more of what I'm talking about here.

After leaving Weimarer Strasse, we all made our way a short bus ride outside of Vienna into the mountains and vinyards surrounding the city. A bus took us to the top of some mountain, from which we could see the entire city of Vienna laid out in front of us. We snapped many pictures before retreating from the cold into a restaurant/hotel that was located on top of the mountain. Just about 5 minutes after we had taken our seats at the restaurant, it started to hail outside! Luckily we had looked at the weather forecast before leaving Amsterdam and so I had my winter coat and a hat and gloves to keep me warm, nevertheless, we were expecting snow, not hail. After some snacks we braved the cold again in order to take a short hike through the nearby vinyards and to experience some more spectacular views of Vienna, albeit at the expense of our warmth.

The rest of our day was spent at the Albertina Art Museum, which had a huge collection of famous artists from the last two-three centuries. And later that night we went to a restaurant called Centimenter VII which gets it's name because it usually serves food "by the centimeter."
We were joined by a bunch of Megan's roomates and friends that were visiting at the same time, so all together there were 12 of us out to dinner. We had the entire basement of the restaurant to ourselves. Our hosts ordered a "wagon" and a "sword" as the main course... There was no way to predict what was about to be served to us. Basically we were given a whole lot of meats, potatoes, pastas, etc. and the whole table served theirselves. It was quite the interesting dining experience, but after one plate I couldn't eat anymore because it was so filling.

The next day we were back to touring, but first we allowed ourselves to sleep in until 11am. We met up at about one and made our way over to the Naschmarkt, which is an outdoor market that sells tons of different foods that all looked absolutely delicious. These dragon fruits were just one of the many food items on display. They also sold warm spiced wine that we all made sure to try, especially since it was just about freezing during the time that we were there. It only got colder as the day went on, and it also started to rain. The cold and the rain was not a good combination, so we tried to avoid being outside as much as possible. But unfortunately the trams were not agreeing with us this day because they kept getting re-routed and making us walk further than we should have had to in order to get to the places we wanted to go. Our next stop after the Naschmarkt was Belvedere Palace which is also an art museum. The building was beautiful as are most all buildings in Vienna and the collection included a bunch of Gustav Klimt pieces that were really awesome.

That night we decided to take advantage of cheap standing room tickets at the Opera and so we paid 2 Euros to go see the opera Arabella at the National Opera House. None of us are really big opera buffs, and it was a 3 hour long show, so we showed up a little bit late and only watched the second half. Unfortunately in the area we were standing none of the monitors were displaying the words in English... It was all in German, and since none of us had ever been to the opera before, we didn't know that all we had to do was press a button to see the English, so we didn't really understand most of the plot, but it was still fun to watch and to listen to. It made me think of all the vocal majors at Oberlin... I wonder if they'll ever end up somewhere like Vienna. I'm sure some of them will. After the opera we went to the most expensive night club I've ever gone to in my life. It cost 13 Euro just to get in and then the cheapest drink on the menu was over 3 Euro... It was NOT my kind of place, nor Scott or Megan's, but our friends were enjoying it, so we made the most of it and even snuck in some of our own sodas from the street vendor outside. The music was good, but it definitely wasn't worht the amount of money that it cost to get in.

The next day was our last day of touring, and it also happened to be the first snow fall of the year for Vienna. I woke up at around 9:30 and left my hostel to find myself covered in fluffy white snow flakes as I walked the one block to the metro station. It was extremely beautiful, despite how wet and cold it made me, and it was definitely really different from the weather I've been expereincing in Amsterdam. In comparison to Oberlin, Amsterdam weather is actually quite nice. It's been in the 40's lately, and it's not supposed to get all that much colder in the time that I'm here. It sucks when it rains and I still have to bike everywhere, but otherwise it's been quite pleasant. But back to Vienna. It was our last day touring the city so we decided to go to the Schonbrunn Palace, which is where the seat of the Habsburg Empire was located. We got a guided audio tour of the palace which took us through the main offices, dining rooms, bed rooms, and other important rooms of the royal family. Schonbrunn Palace is a beautiful building, made even more beautiful by the fact that it was covered with fresh white snow at the time we were there.

After the palace, we went back to Megan's apartment to cook ourselves dinner, and then Megan, Scott, and I went to see the National Orchestra (again, only 6 Euro for standing room). The orchestra was playing Tchaikovsky and it was really cool to get to go see it. Again, it made me think about all the Con students at Oberlin and how this must be what they aspire to. After the orchestra we went back to Megan's apartment to hang out for a while until Scott and I had to make our way to the airport. Our flight wasn't until 6:30am, but because of the public transport schedules we had to take the last train that night and sleep in the airport. Unfortunately we ended up missing the last train because of a mishap with reading the German train schedules, and we ended up taking a cab and getting to the airport at around 2am. We spent the night on a cold marble floor, until 4:30am when we were allowed to check in and go through security. Everytime I sat down in the time between when we checked in and when we boarded the plane, I fell fast asleep and Scott would have to wake me up everytime we had to move somewhere else. When I finally sat down on the plane, I again fell asleep immediately and preceeded to stay asleep until we touched down two hours later in Amsterdam... It was a great flight.

Well, that's all for my Vienna post, finally! This past week I've been pretty lazy, just going to classes and relaxing. Last night my friends and I went out to a club that was playing "steaming soul" and 60's and 70's hits, so that was pretty fun. Then today we went to Foam, the photography museum in Amsterdam, which is probably my favorite museum that I've been to in the city. After going to Foam, Natalie, Mike, and I left our bikes by the museum and just walked around the city for a few hours. I think since we are always on our bikes and are always riding toward set destinations we don't really look around at the wonderful city that we live in as much as we really should. So it was nice this afternoon to be off our bikes and just exploring and appreciating the place that we live.

My time here feels like it is closely approaching it's end. I leave this city in exactly 5 weeks from today, but before that happens I will be getting visits from Shari, Michelle, my dad, and my mom, so there is much to look forward to. Unfortunately, also in those 5 weeks I will have to write two 15 page papers, and take two final exams, but that will all come and go easily... I hope.

Until next time, feel free to email me or just comment and say hi.

-Ruth

long update coming, but for now, pictures!

I was going to update about my weekend trip to Vienna tonight, but I'm a bit too tired. I spent the night in the airport last night in order to be able to make it to my 6:30am flight back to Amsterdam because public transport in Vienna doesnt run past 12:30am and the first train would have been too late to get us to the airport on time. Scott and I slept on a cold marble floor, and as a result, I'm still pretty exhausted and there's far too much to say to do so in a short entry, so the Vienna entry will follow in the next few days, but I was industrious enough to make a facebook album, so here is the link to pictures of Vienna:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026256&l=08fc5&id=4302935

Also, I realize I still haven't added a link for more picture of Maastricht and Aachen, so here's that:

http://oberlin.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2025988&l=e7557&id=4302935

Enjoy the pictures!

Maastricht and Aachen!

This weekend my program organized a trip that took me outside of Amsterdam for the first time since I've been in The Netherlands. As some of you may know if you've been keeping up with my blog, I missed the bus for the last excursion that our group had planned and ended up missing an opportunity to visit Gouda (where the cheese comes from) and Rotterdam, one of the most metropolitan cities in the country. This time I made sure to set my alarm and I checked it many times to make sure it was set correctly (not pm instead of am, etc.). I also made plans to meet my friends outside of our dorm and bike over to the bus together and told them if I wasn't there to ring my buzzer and make sure I woke up and didn't miss the bus again. Well, needless to say... I overslept again! I really don't know why this keeps happening. I'm sure that my alarm was set, I've never overslept or been late to any of my classes this semester, so I really don't know why this keeps happening on days when I need to catch a bus. Anyway, good thing I made those plans with my friends because at 8:40am I woke up to my obnoxious buzzer, realized what time it was, promptly dressed, grabbed my bag and headed outside. We made the bus on time, and so by 9:30am I found myself staring out the window at the Dutch countryside.

The drive to Maastricht was a bit more than two hours and upon arrival we were greeted with a large buffet lunch that we all were more than ready to enjoy, especially since I had overslept and therefore not had time to eat breakfast. After our meal we were met by two tour guides who split up our group and took us on a walking tour of the city of Maastricht. First let me say a little about our tour guide. I didn't catch her name, but she was one crazy lady. She was probably in her mid-late sixties, with hair that was sitting completely still above her head. She was also wearing bright blue eye shadow that was magnified through her powerful glasses. She spoke a mile a minute and gave us some of the most absurd details and information that I've ever heard on a historical tour. Anyway, it was still a fun tour and she was definitely entertaining to listen to.

The city is full of old architecture, a lot of which is made of stone from a local quarry that is now a series of underground tunnels that we were able to explore the next day. One of the highlights of the tour was these sculptures that were located in the main square of the city. The subjects of the sculpture are taking part in the Dutch version of Carnival. Another highlight on the tour is shown in the third picture. This is a picture of what our tour guide called "shit houses." Apparently, many years ago, before the invention of indoor plumbing, people who lived along the canals and the rivers in Maastricht would have their bathrooms built over the canal so that when they did their business, it would just got right into the canal and then float away. Throughout the course of the tour there must have been at least 5 different shit houses pointed out to us by our guide.

After our tour of Maastricht, we had a bit of free time to go shopping in the city and have a cup of coffee. I ended up buying myself some tea and a flannel shirt, which I am currently wearing and which I have decided is my new favorite article of clothing, it's extremely comfortable and comforting to wear and I've worn it every day since I purchased it. When we finished shopping we met up with the
rest of the group and got back on our bus in order to make our way to Drielandenpoint, which is the spot in Europe where The Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium meet. Here's a picture of three of us all standing in different countries!

This place is basically a big tourist trap, but since we didn't get there until it was dark, there was no one else around. We had dinner at a restaurant right next to the point where the countries meet (on the Dutch side I think). The restaurant was this place where they basically put out a bunch of vegetables and meats and pancake batter and eggs out and then you can cook yourself dinner... It was weird to be cooking for ourselves at a restaurant, but we all had fun making fun creations. In one of my trips to the cooking station I made myself a pannekoeken with mushrooms and onions that was absolutely delicious... I'm pretty proud of myself for that one.

After dinner we piled back on the bus in order to make our way to Aachen, Germany where we spent the night. I think the only reason we went there was to say we had spent the night in Germany because we had no planned events in the city and the next morning we all got back into the bus and drove back to the outskirts of Maastricht for our next event. After we checked into the hotel and put all our stuff down we decided to check out the German night life. After walking for probably a mile or so we found a pretty lit up street with a few bars on it and so we picked a place and sat at an outdoor table (even though it was pretty cold). Apparently in Germany they like to put random things in their beers, like banana syrup, or coca cola... Needless to say I ordered a Colaweizen (that's probably spelled wrong). It was basically just a beer with a bit of coca cola in it, it sounds gross, but it actually tasted pretty good. The weirdest part was the foam on top, which was like a mix between soda and beer foam, it was odd.

The next morning we went to visit the caves in St. Pietersberg, which is located on the main mountain outside of Maastricht and has a really nice view of the city. The caves used to be a stone quarry, but have for a long time just been a tourist attraction in Maastricht. We had a guided tour through them, but at one point in order to give us an idea of what it would be like to get lost down there, our guide took away our lanterns and had us walk about 100 or so feet in complete darkness in order to get back to our only light source. It got pitch black in there, and it was pretty scary. We had to hold hands and trace the wall in order to find our way. It's crazy to think about, because our guide also told us stories about how people had gotten lost down there and ended up dying because they weren't able to get out. Jews also used these caves as hiding places during World War Two.

Continuing on the WWII theme, after leaving the caves we made our way to our next stop which was the Margratan Cemetery, a United States WWII cemetery located in The Netherlands. The cemetery is home to around 8,000 American men (and 4 women) who lost their lives in Europe during WWII. It was a really well organized cemetery. The first thing you see is a display that outlines the military strategies and actions taken by the Allied forces in the last years of the war and details many of the main battles that a number of the men burried in the cemetery were involved in when they lost their lives. One thing that was really interesting is that a number of the graves have fresh flowers on them, despite the fact that the families of these men still live in the United States. Our guide told us that it has become customary for local Dutch families to adopt one of the graves and care for it as if the soldier were a part of their own family because they are so thankful to the US forces for liberating the area almost a full year before the end of the war. I took a picture of this one headstone because I noticed that the person had died on June 10th, my birthday. When I looked more closely, I noticed the name and realized that I was looking at the grave of one of the 4 women in the entire cemetery, even more reason to have a picture of this particular headstone.

I have many more pictures from this weekend, I'm planning on making a facebook album, so when that's done, I'll make sure to put a link up here for non-facebook users to be able to take a look. That's all for now. I'm going to Vienna on Thursday, so my next post will be a fun filled Austrian adventure (though I hear it's already below freezing there, so it may be a quite cold adventure as well). Thanks for reading!

unofficial fall break and picture updates

This past week was my unofficial fall break (conveniently the same week as Oberlin's fall break). I say unofficial because classes are not officially cancelled, but most professors choose to cancel class in order to give students a break, or time to prepare for a midterm, or they actually schedule the midterm for that week. Luckily, all but one of my classes all week were cancelled and I only had one paper due. I made sure to finish my paper by Tuesday and I skipped my one class on Thursday in order to ensure that I could spend as much time as possible with Rachel for the 5 days that she was here. It was a very nice week and I took advantage of Rachel being here to actually force myself to visit some of the museums that I've been meaning to get to for a few weeks now.

Over the course of the week we played lots of scrabble and set and also managed to visit The Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art which is currently home to an extensive Andy Warhol exhibit. We also went to Foam, which is a photography museum in Amsterdam that currently has an exhibit dedicated to Amsterdam photographers and portraits. Both exhibits were really awesome and both were also extremely well done and laid out extremely well, etc.

The rest of the week was spent relaxing, visiting markets, watching movies, eating pancakes, and riding bikes, some of my favorite activities in Amsterdam and the world. But in now for some pictures that I've been meaning to put up for a while.

This is a picture of the carnival that was set up in The Dam for some time. Unfortunately I wasn't organized to get myself over there and actually go on any of the rides, but I heard they were ridiculously overpriced anyway... The next picture is from the Albert Cuyp market as are the few following it. Next is a picture of some awesome graffiti that I bike past pretty frequently. Then there are some pictures are of an amazing sunset from last weekend. Natalie took this picture from my window and I really love it. I took the second one on the way home from the market. There's also one from Scott and my romantic candlelit dinner last Monday night. Then some pictures from my week with Rachel, scrabble and many failed attempts to take a good picture of ourselves together. And finally, here are Alanna and Kellan all dressed up for the Halloween party that my dorm threw last night. (Much to Rachel and my dismay given that we had to wake up at 6:30am this morning and the party didn't end until 3am). It's too complicated to try and get the captions to go next to all the pictures, but I'm sure you can all figure out what's what.

































I just realized looking out my window that it's raining. Luckily this is the first time it's rained in at least a week.