Luck of the Irish

Dublin!

Alright, I know I keep changing what my favorite city was, but after this weekend...Dublin actually is my favorite city and I don't think any other will even remotely be able to top it (even Rome this coming weekend!).

(All photo credit in this post is to Kendra, by the way. Thank God she had her camera since...I am still cameraless.)

Kendra and I went to Dublin on our own. Our flight left at about 6:50am on Friday morning, which meant that we had to be up at about 4:30 to get to the airport on time (it's convenient having an airport 20 minutes away). We got there and onto the plane with no issue, so all was well. Because any flight to Dublin directly from the airport closest (called Weeze, by the way, it's in Germany) was at a horrible time or cost entiiiiiiirely too much money, we had to take a plane from there to London and from London to Dublin. We touched down in London about 20 minutes early, but there was some other plane having some sort of equipment problem on the runway so we were stuck there for about another 10 minutes, and after unloading everything and finally getting off, we only ended up getting there about 5 minutes early. We got into the airport and to passport control (since we were technically going into the UK we had to go through security again and show our passports and all that). However, the guy at the passport gate thing was apparently having a shitty morning, because he gave us a hard time about getting into the country. He didn't believe that we were students when we couldn't produce a Netherlands ID card, even though we showed him our Boston IDs and our International Student ID cards. It wasn't fun. We had to show him all our other plane tickets and he looked at our passports for another 5 minutes and we were practically DYING because by then we only had another 40 minutes to get to our next flight, but he finally (begrudgingly) let us through. We ran through the airport and to security again and manage to get to the gate on time, and luckily enough our next flight was actually a bit delayed, so it worked out well.



We finally got to the Dublin airport at about 11 and took a 30-minute bus ride into the city, walked the 20 minutes to our hostel (which was literally right on the River Liffey, by the way (pictured above)), dropped all our stuff off, and set out.



The Clarence Hotel was also, awesomely enough, RIGHT down the street from our hostel, like a 5-minute walk away, right on the water just like our hostel was, and right near everything.

The Clarence Hotel is owned by U2.

Anyway, we walked a bit found a small cafe down the street and grabbed some food, which was SO GOOD and pretty cheap too, which was really nice. Then headed to the Guinness Storehouse to take a tour!



The Storehouse was set up really awesomely. It was sort of set up like a museum but wasn't stuffy like a normal museum would be, and it wasn't too crowded or anything at all and it was just really nice to walk around and see how beer is made and taste test some of the day's draught and whatnot. The coolest bit of the whole storehouse is that with your ticket you essentially buy a pint of Guinness, which you can get up on the 7th floor of the Storehouse...



Which overlooks all of Dublin. It was incredible, especially since we'd only been there for a few hours at this point. We sat up there drinking and enjoying the view for a while, mostly to let our feet rest since we'd already done a lot of walking, and also to just enjoy he gorgeous view and the beautiful weather outside.



After that, we headed back towards the hostel (passing this sign on the way), but went up a side street to see if we could find this church we'd heard about. The church supposedly has Bram Stoker's grave in it and also the organ that Handel used to compose Messiah. Alas, we couldn't find it. We did find some other suuuuuuuper pretty churches though, and since our hostel was apparently in the middle of everything (and the best hostel in the city too, supposedly - we had been recommended it by another group of people who went there from the castle a month-or-so ago) they were all right near it. We wandered into a huge cathedral and hung around in there for a bit taking pictures and enjoy it, and then headed back to the hostel to nap a bit before dinner since we'd been up for 12 hours already and it was only the late afternoon.



That night we went to Grafton Street to get dinner. Grafton Street is one of the most famous streets in Dublin, with a lot of shopping and restaurants and people and just things to do. They had all the Christmas decorations there too, which was beautiful, and we had been recommended to go check it out by Kim, a girl who Kendra met at our hostel in Brussels who she's kept in contact with and who lives in Dublin. We got some dinner and then just wandered around a bit more, enjoying the weather and the people and the energy of Dublin. We even saw a street band playing Irish music with a guitarist, bassist, drummer basically using a wooden box as his drums, and a flautist.



We passed this while walking and thought it was funny. We wandered a bit more after that, went into the Temple Bar area, went to the Temple Bar Pub, didn't buy anything since things were SO expensive, and just sat for a while and enjoyed the live music (two Irish guys playing a long acoustic set mix between 90s pop-rock and traditional Irish folk songs), checked out a bar recommended by Kim, and called it a night at a decent hour.

The next day we decided to take a tour of the countryside. The tour was about 25 euro each but it was literally 8 hours long, only consisted of 8 other people besides ourselves, and went up into the mountains that you'd otherwise need a car to get to (ie. no huge-ass bus tours were up there with us). So it was worth it.

On the way up into the mountains we drove along the coast, which was so beautiful. We passed Van Morisson, Bono, and Enyas houses too, which was really interesting (Enya lives in a freaking castle, it's huge, I swear).



Our first stop was on this cliff overlooking ...something. We weren't sure what, since the weather was terrible for the first half of the day and being so high up, we were basically in a cloud. We were outside for only about 5/10 minutes and by the time we got back to the van we were DRENCHED. Two girls on the tour actually fell over too, which kind of sucked, and when we did finally make it back Ed (our adorable 65-year-old tour guide/driver/awesome dude who treated us all like his granddaughters by the end of the day since it ended up being an all-girls tour (when he first realized this in the morning his reaction was basically "It's my lucky day!" which was hilarious coming from his white-haired self)) had tea, coffee, and cookies waiting for us.



It rained the entire morning we were in the mountains, but honestly, I wouldn't have had it any other way. The world is so beautiful when it rains and the Irish countryside is no different. We saw so many waterfalls and flowing rivers and streams because of it and it was just...too beautiful for words. Ed stopped whenever we asked him to or didn't when we didn't want him to and basically it was like having our grandpa or crazy uncle drive us around all day. Since the 10 of us were also stuck in the back of the van together all day also we all ended up sort of becoming friends, and I've added a few of them on facebook now. They were all SO nice. The four who I mostly talked to were Missy from California who's studying in London this semester, Annie from West Virginia who's studying in Barcelona this semester, and Maria & Jordan from Copenhagen who didn't speak English fluently but did pretty well for themselves and were continually referred to as the vikings by Ed (and later by me and the other girls on the tour). There were three girls from New York too (two from upstate and one from Babylon, of all places), and another Aussie working in Scotland for the year or something like that.



HOW COOL IS THAT. That valley was so huge, I don't think the picture really does it justice.





For lunch Ed drove us to this adorable tiny-ass town in the mountains called Wicklow, which literally had like...a few restaurants, a hotel, two gift shops, and that was it. Kendra, Missy, Annie and I all got lunch in a little cafe (which consisted of an incredibly tasty sandwich) and spent some time wandering into the shops. I asked the guy behind the counter at one point if he had any disposable cameras since the one I had with me was near done. He said he had some that had expired a little under two years ago and that I could chance using them if I'd like. I said sure, so he gave me two of them for free! I don't know if they'll actually develop properly, but I did take a ton of pictures on them so I sure hope they do!



After Wicklow, Ed drove us to Glendalough, which is Irish for the glen of two lakes (glen da lough, get it?), and used to be this amazing monastery that was attacked by vikings hundreds of years ago (this got many jokes thrown at the two Danish girls). It still has a lot of the old gravestones there and a lot of the old buildings and just was...so beautiful. Ed apparently had at one point in his life (after leaving the navy) studied to join the church, but eventually had abandoned that prospect, so the place seemed to mean a lot to him. He knew tons about its history and about the different kinds of gravestones there from the different time periods in Irish history and it was so cool to hear him talk about it all. We spent some time wandering around and even took a little 20-minute hike through the woods along the two lakes and had Ed meet us at the other side. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my entire life, if not THE most beautiful place. I just could not believe that I was actually seeing this place. I could not believe that it existed. I could not believe that I was there experiencing it. I just couldn't fathom it.





After that, we drove back into Dublin. We stopped a few more times along the way but I don't want to overwhelm you with pictures and a lot of the other pictures I could post are just green fields and mountains and stuff (we saw a valley where parts of Braveheart were shot!). We got back to our hostel at around 6 and after resting for a bit went out to grab some dinner and went back into the Temple Bar/Grafton Street area to do a bit of last-minute souvenir shopping. We called it a night pretty early since we had to be up at 4 again to make our 7am flight, got to the airport with no issue, and got onto our flight with no problem at all. We flew AerLingus back since it was cheaper than flying RyanAir like we normally do and the flight was not even remotely completely booked, so neither Kendra nor I sat next to anyone and we got into the Dusseldorf Airport about 30 minutes early and the ride was so much smoother than the crappy scary RyanAir flights and...it was so nice. We both slept most of the way. We got to Dusseldorf at around 10am and from the Airport managed to take three trains to get back to Venlo in The Netherlands, took a bus back to the castle, and were back in our room (and napping, might I add) by 2pm.

All in all, this weekend was absolutely incredible. Ireland is easily the most perfect place I've ever been to and I can even imagine myself living there someday. I did not meet a single unpleasant person the whole trip. From our flight attendants to the people working in the hostel to just random people we met on the street who started conversations to people in bars to people in random shops we went into! Every single Irish person we met was just so...happy. And friendly. And nice. I've never met a collectively nicer group of people in my life. If I could be Irish, I would be. I am going back to Ireland someday. I have to.

Viennese Cake & Czech ...Pasta?

I'm going to try to fit my Vienna & Prague posts into one to save room/time, let's see if it works!

Our 11-hour train ride from Berlin to Vienna was...pretty terrible. The three of us were crammed into a 6-person compartment with 2 other people (who were very Austrian, but also very nice, so it wasn't so bad in that respect) and spent 11-or-so hours trying uncomfortable (and unsuccessfully) to sleep. We arrived in the city at about 6:30 in the morning, spent entirely too long looking for our hostel (which was literally right next to the train station, but we weren't used to the city layout yet and took the long way there), and went in to see if we could check in early. The guy working there said that we could, but that we'd have to be put into a 6-person instead of the 4-person room that we'd booked. We said it was fine, because all we wanted was a place to sleep, so we got our keys and went up to our room and when we got there we realized that it was empty. As it turned out, it was a slow week at the hostel or something, so we had the entire room to ourselves the whole time we were there. We each took a quick shower and by 7:30 had crashed. We slept until about noon, got up, and headed out.



First we headed to a street market. It was sorta gross out so it rained on us a bit but we enjoyed it nonetheless. They were selling everything from all sorts of clothing to food and we just wandered around it for a while. We ended up going into this intense Turkish restaurant called Kent for dinner, because we'd been recommended it, and got some aaaaaaawesome Turkish food.



Afterwards we headed back towards the hostel and took a long walk down Mariahilferstraat, which is the street our hostel was on and also one of the main shopping streets in Vienna. We stopped into a famous bakery called Aida and got coffee and cake!



The cake is called Sachertorte and it's a Viennese specialty. Vienna is apparently known for both its coffee and cake. And it was delicious!



Afterwards we continued our walk down Mariahilferstraat and found the museum/palace district, which was lit up gorgeously at night. It was at this point that my camera started to malfunction, which is why all of these pictures look of such high quality (because I've stolen them from Nicole, props Nicole!).

There was a nifty bar in our hostel and Vienna's not so known for it's hopping night scene, so we mostly hung out there at night. They had food there too, which was nice, because since technically all we'd had for dinner was cake/coffee we were starving.

The next day we got up earlyish and decided we were going to wander around the main area of the city. We walked over to where we'd been the night before, past the parliament, past the town hall (or what I think was the town hall, but I'm actually not sure) and found this gorgeous church. I'm still not sure which church it was, but it had all of this renovation going on outside, so we couldn't really get good pictures of the outside. The inside, however, was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. There's no other word for it.



After that we walked back to the palace and spent a whiiiiiile there taking pictures and just enjoying it. The streets are all so cute and it was just so nice and so fun.







That night we wanted to get some traditional Austrian food. We'd gone to this adorable cafe back on Mariahilferstraat for lunch and gotten some nice sausage (and in my case spinach, potatoes, and eggs - IT WAS SO GOOD), but we wanted a real meal. There was a Mozart-themed restaurant around the corner from us, so we headed there. I got these insane egg dumpling things, Nicole got fried Camenbert, and Kendra got apparently delicious pumpkin soup. It was a good meal.

The next day was the day we were leaving, but we didn't have to leave the hostel until about 4pm so we had the morning/early afternoon to ourselves. I really wanted to attempt to go to the Zentralfriedhof cemetery, where a lot of famous composers are buried, but Kendra and Nicole had homework and things to do, so I decided to go on my own. I took the tram and it took me about 45 minutes to get there and let me tell you, the ride was so worth it.









For one, the cemetery was absolutely gorgeous. Literally the most gorgeous cemetery, and possibly one of the most gorgeous places, I've ever been in. Each of the graves was created so perfectly and so elaborately. Everything was beautiful. I really don't even have enough words to describe it. I saw (pictured above) Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss's graves. I also saw a Mozart monument, but I don't think it was his actual grave since I had read somewhere that he's not buried in the same cemetery as Beethoven. When I was at Beethoven's grave I ran into this woman who started babbling at me in German. When she saw the look on my face, she stopped, I asked "English?" and she started talking in perfect English. Turns out, she and two other men (who were there with her) are making a documentary on Beethoven's 9th symphony. Her name was Isabel from Chile, and the two guys with her were from Edinburgh and somewhere in California. I think the Californian was excited to meet another American.

After I got back to the hostel, the three of us got our things and made it to the train station. We caught our train at around 5:30 and were finally in Prague around 10, got to our hostel shortly thereafter (with the help of a suuuuuuper nice English-speaking concierge at the Hilton on the way), dropped our things off, and went out to find a place to eat. Unfortunately, on a Thursday night in Prague at 11pm there is little open that serves anything but alcohol. Thankfully, we did manage to find a small pizzeria that was near close, sat down, ordered food quick, and downed it because we were starving by then.

After eating, since we hadn't done anything terribly tiring that day, we headed out to walk around a bit. Our hostel was - I kid you not - a two-minute walk from Old Town Square. So, naturally, we headed in that direction. Old Town Square is incredible at night. I know there's really not much around there besides pretty buildings and tourist shops and restaurants, but the dark and the lights combined with the perfect night was...perfect. Since it was a Thursday there weren't very many people in the main square, so it sort of felt like we had the place to ourselves. We walked down past the old Synagogue and to the water and hung over the railing staring over at the Prague Castle and Charles Bridge. It looked like a fairytale land. I truly cannot describe how beautiful that city is. Truly. Before we headed back for the night I stared up at the castle and leaned over the water saying, "Alright Prague, I have to go to sleep now, promise not to go anywhere while I'm gone, okay?"



The next morning we let ourselves sleep in, because since our hostel didn't serve breakfast we had no real incentive to wake up early (plus we'd had to wake up early every single day thus far and wanted a break). We finally got out around noon and wandered around in the labyrinthine streets behind Tyn Church, basically where our hostel was. There are a lot of hidden shops and cafes and bars and restaurants back there, and we found this restaurant with a lunch special where you got soup, an entree, and a dessert all for a fixed price (I think it came out to being about $10 when we converted it), so we went in.



Do you think this looks incredible? Because IT WAS. Best meal I've had since coming to the castle, hands down. Even better than the amazing dinner we had in Paris. So. Good.



Here is a picture of Kendra in front of our hostel! It was under this archway and through this passageway into a courtyard. It was really cute and so close to everything so we loved it. Also very clean, which was a nice plus.



Next we wandered around the main square. There was a market going on there (I think it was a Christmas market) with lots of booths set up with people selling sausage and chicken and fried dough and jewelry and marionettes and mulled wine and everything you could possibly want.



There was even a cute street band playing in the center! We stopped to look for a while and this little kid came wandering up, and the trumpet player started playing at him, but he didn't even notice. So cute.

After that we wandered back towards the water again, just sort of going in and out of touristy shops and stuff like that, trying to see everything that we could. The day was really nice, which was a nice change from the crappy weather we'd had in Vienna.



Next we decided to wander into some shops. We found this store called Brick a Brack which was just basically an epic thrift store, and it was awesome. We spent a while in there, and wandering through its sister store a little bit down the street.



After wandering some more we found this cute outside cafe. Kendra and I ordered coffee and Nicole got water and we sat outside for a while enjoying the weather and sipping on our drinks. Prague is such an easy city to see in only two days, so we let ourselves relax while we were there. We'd been so pressured in Berlin and were still so tired from all the stress of classes/that that we allowed ourselves time to recover. And Prague is one of those cities that you feel like you have to take slow, because it's just...like that.

That night, after doing a bit more wandering in the Jewish area and peering (since it was closed) in to the awesome cemetery there, we found a bar called The Dubliner (ironic that we found an Irish pub in the middle of Prague, no?) and spent most of our night there. They had live music, which was really awesome. A lot of bars that we passed actually had live music. Prague is supposedly one of the bar/club capitals of the world, so we tried to take advantage of it.

The next day we decided that we wanted to see Prague Castle. The castle itself wasn't terribly exciting (and we didn't want to pay to go into it), but the church within it was incredible.



It's weird that I've been to so many churches now (or...I guess I'm in Europe, so it shouldn't be all that weird). In almost every city I've gone to I've gone in one (or in London's case, attempted to go in one). This church reminded me very much of Notre Dame, actually. It wasn't quite that huge, but it was made similarly inside and was just as beautiful.



After we left the church we decided to explore the area some more. We just randomly found ourselves walking down this incline into the town area surrounding the castle and before we knew it, we were on a cliff (basically) overlooking the entire city. We literally just stumbled onto it, totally by chance.



This picture really doesn't do it justice, but unfortunately Nicole's camera died before she could take many good pictures. I had my disposable camera with me though, so when I get those pictures developed (probably when I get home) there will be much more to see! It was beautiful though. Possibly more beautiful than the view in Budapest, which I previously had loved the most out of any view that I'd seen so far.

After leaving the castle we headed back into Old Town Square, got some street food (fried potato pancakes - SO GOOD - and chicken and sausage skewers), and went to the St. Nicholas church to see a string concert! We got an awesome discount of like 7 euro since we're students too, which was nice. The concert was five violins, one violist, one cellist, and one bassist, and occasionally a trumpet player. They were the Prague Radio somethingsomething Orchestra and they were phenomenal. The church was freezing despite the heaters built into the seats but we didn't care. The concert was only an hour but I wished that it had been longer. They played part of Dvorak's New World Symphony too, which is one of my favorite symphonies ever (if not my favorite), so my night was made. It was late by the time we got out and we had an early train to catch the next morning, so after it was over we just headed back to the hostel.

The next morning we had to wake up at 5 to make it to the train station in time. Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch, and we got into Berlin (since we had to take a reserved train to Berlin before taking local trains back to The Netherlands) at about 11am. This was my favorite train ride. Though I was incredibly tired, because it was light out, I could actually see where we were. I've never seen a more beautiful place on earth, hands down. The town at the Czech, and then at the German, border were beyond words. Valleys with sprawling forests and lakes and tiny town settlements with glorious gothic churches. I'll go there someday. We also passed through Dresden on the way back, which was so exciting for me since one of my favorite books (Slaughterhouse Five) takes place there, and one of my favorite bands is called The Dresden Dolls.

At the Berlin station, we grabbed a quick lunch and went looking for a train to take back (since the trains are local we didn't have to reserve them and they also leave relatively often so we didn't have a set one that we were going to take). We found one that was leaving around 11:40 and got on it. As we were looking for seats, I realized that everyone around us had tickets with seat numbers on them, which meant that the train we were on was a train that we actually did have to reserve. I told Nicole and Kendra and headed out of the train. At first I don't think they followed, but eventually they realized that I was right, except that by this time it was too late for them to get off the train because the door had shut and would not open again. The train left, with them on it, and me standing on the platform. Oops.

After a minor freak-out, I went down to the ticket center and asked the woman there (who thankfully spoke English) if she could help me figure out how to get to The Netherlands. She printed out an itinerary for me that didn't require me to have to reserve anything and by 12:08 I was on my way back. I managed to make it back to the castle mostly with no problem (one of my connections was only 3 minutes long due to a late train, but I made it!), and was finally back in my room by 7:30.

Nicole and Kendra walked in about 3 hours later though. Apparently the train they were on had stopped at another Berlin station before leaving for real, and they got off there, took the metro back to the Hauptbanhof, and spent an hour-or-so there looking for me before taking another train back. Then there were all sorts of train delays on trains going to Venlo (apparently I managed to make it back just before the delays began), which pushed them back even farther.

All in all, travel break was awesome. It was very nice, very fun, very relaxing, and very exciting all at the same time. Kendra and I are also leaving tomorrow at 6:50am for Dublin and we could not be more excited!

Berlin(erplatzplatzplatz)

I have decided to title this entry above due to the fact that every main square in Berlin as an erplatz added onto the end of it. Alexanderplatz, Potsdamerplatz, you name it. They all do.

We started our journey to Berlin early two Friday mornings ago. We had to meet downstairs at 5am to drop off our room keys and board the busses to the airport. Since it was a mandatory excursion, everyone at the castle went, and we were accompanied by most of the main staff as well as many of the teaching staff. We got to the Cologne airport at about 8, if I remember correctly, left around 10, and were finally in Berlin around noon. We boarded two more busses, which took us into the center of the city and to the hotel that we were put up in, and by 2pm most of us were situated. We stayed in actual hotel rooms, which was a nice change, and Kendra and I were put in a two-person room together with our own shower and everything. We felt so fancy.

After splitting up into groups, we were all taken on a short walking tour of the city. Berlin is massive so it was impossible to see even remotely everything that we wanted to, but we did make good time.



We started at hour hotel, walked down Unter de Linden (one of the main streets with a lot of sights on it) past Alexanderplatz, up to Domplatz, which is there the Berlin Dome cathedral is. I was really surprised at how spread out everything is in Berlin. We stayed in what previously was East Berlin, so a lot of the buildings are obviously very communisty (just block-like and rather drab), and the streets are wide enough to fit...well, tanks. It was really strange, but I still liked it. Even the crosswalk lights are leftover from communism, little men with boxy hats.



Here's a picture of the cathedral with the Alexanderplatz TV (radio?) tower in the background. The day was really nice and pretty, and we enjoyed it muchly.





Next we walked down to the Brandenburg Gate, one of the most known sights of Berlin. Of course, there were a million people everywhere. It was cool though. Because that weekend was the 20th anniversary of the wall coming down, there was all sorts of activity going on everywhere.



This is the memorial for murdered Jews (not to be confused with the Holocaust memorial, though it does relate to the Holocaust, it is specifically for the murdered Jews). The group had a very fun time running through, around, and even over the huge slabs of stone. As blasphemous as that sounds, apparently the designer wanted people to be able to enjoy the memorial, to play on it and have fun with it. I could've spent hours there, but unfortunately we had to keep going.



By then it was starting to get dark. We walked to Potsdamerplatz and the Sony center, following the line where the wall used to be, and on the way past some of the dominoes getting ready for Monday's festivities. The idea behind the dominoes were to create huge massive dominoes painted like the bits of leftover wall are now and, on Monday night, signaling exactly 20 years from when the wall was finally fallen, to knock them down. Because we had a train to catch that night we didn't have time to stay and actually see it, but it supposedly was a very interesting experience.



Here's a bit of the wall still left standing, now graffitied and painted with little explanations on either side of it.



The next day my entire day was planned out for me due to my Art History class. Both of my teachers accompanied us to Berlin and we spent all day in two museums. We started our day at the Hauptbanhof, the main train station, which is pretty much in the middle of everything (and also is the station where Kendra and Nicole lost me later in the week - I'll explain later). There were these massive red steps set up outside of it that let you see higher up all over the city, so we climbed them and spent a bit there.

From there we walked to the Hamburger Hauptbanhof, which is a former train station converted into a modern art museum. I have to say, it was probably one of the best museums I've ever been in. Most pieces in there (and it was HUGE, so this was really staggering) actually were relevant to what we've been learning in class and we saw a lot of famous works by a lot of famous artists that we've been studying. It was SO cool. I unfortunately didn't get any pictures in it because I was too busy admiring everything.



After grabbing a quick lunch back at the train station, we headed to the New National Gallery (or Neu Nationalgallerie, I think). There was a massive surrealist and abstract expressionist exhibition there, which was really neat. We again saw a lot of artists that we have been studying, and also many others that we just know anyway (like Dali, etc..). It was pretty cool, I must say.

That night Kendra, Cara, and I all went out in search of something to do. We ended up at this music club/bar with a live band playing. We realized, halfway through, that they were speaking English with American accents. After they were done playing, we caught up to the singer at the merch table. Turns out they're from Washington state (Olympia, to be exact) and are touring around Europe with another musician called Angelo Spencer (who we also saw play, and is slightly better known that they are, as he has a kid with Kimya Dawson). Nic (the singer) was really excited to talk to us, since apparently in all the traveling he'd done so far he'd only met one other American.

The next day, which I unfortunately do not have any pictures of, was again filled with museums. We went to the Deutsches Historiche Museum in the morning (which is the German History Museum). It was actually really interesting, despite my lack of interest in...history. We had a guided tour about the history of Germany from WWII on, which was very informative. Our guide unabashedly talked about Hitler's regime and the Holocaust, which I have to admit I was rather surprised about, considering that from what I've heard most German people are somewhat ashamed of this piece of German history and don't like to bring it up much. The guide answered all of our questions though and gave a very in-depth explanation of everything and I really enjoyed the museum, despite the fact that we didn't get to see much more of it than that.

After lunch, we headed with Dojna (one of the awesome OSA staff) to the Jewish Historical Museum. The museum itself was really cool, the architect who designed it did so in a really interesting way that I'd have a tough time describing without a picture. We also were given a guided tour, but it was only about 45 minutes long so we didn't get to see much. We were free to walk around afterwards though, so we did, but left soon after.

That night, student government sponsored (with the aid of 7 euro from each of us?) a dinner. We all went to Bavaria, a supposedly authentic German restaurant (but in reality was just a campy, showy fake one - but it was fun, nonetheless!). We had amazing soup, really good sausage (or pasta if you are, like me, a vegetarian of sorts), and incredible apple pastries for dessert. You were also allowed to order drinks on your own dime, and Lewis, who I have recently met and who actually is also from Long Island (Coram, to be exact, he went to high school with Mara) was sitting next to me, and ordered literally the biggest beer I have ever seen.



Yeah.

The next day we met up early and headed to the dome cathedral in groups.



We walked up the almost 500 steps allllllllll the way to the very top (it was tiring, let me tell you). But the climb was DEFINITELY worth it. Despite the fact that it was sorta foggy and rainy out, the view was incredible, and we were happy (albeit, sopping) by the time we were done.





After that, we headed to the Reichstag, or the German parliament building, where we were given guided tours of the Bundestag, or the parliament. It was really cool to be inside it, to be in this awesome historical place where all sorts of crazy shit has undoubtedly happened. The president of parliament (akin to our speaker of the house) even just casually walked by us at one point, which was surreal, and so cool.



The Reichstag has a massive glass dome on top where people can go up and see the entire city. Obviously, we did.



Here's the Brandenburg Gate from above. Notice all the dominoes to the right! They were EVERYWHERE. More pictures to follow...





After that, our Berlin adventure was concluded and we were free to leave not only the building, but the city. Kendra, Nicole, and I all headed back to the hotel to pick up our things, rested for a bit, and then made it back to the Hauptbanhof station for our 11-hour 7pm train ride to Vienna and the beginning of our week-long travel break!