Wanderlust Traveler: May 2015

Guten Tag!

Another blog is up, only because this way you do not have to get bored reading a million pages again like my last post.

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First, let us start out with some venting stories.

People in Europe are strange. It is 60 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and people act like there is a blizzard! Everyone bundles up into huge puffy coats, hats, and gloves, and Kelsee and I are sitting in the train, dying of heat in jeans and short sleeve shirts. Even outside we are perfectly content with the weather. Maybe it’s a Utah thing, but I do not understand how people can be so cold in such comfortable weather.

Next… Kelsee and I have for some reason been craving desserts. I think it is time for me to buy snacks because chocolate isn’t covering it. Tonight we had to indulge in bananas and LOTS of Nutella to make our stomachs happy. Sometimes, desperate times call for desperate measures. This was one of those times.

Nutella Banana

Also, apparently pedestrians have the right of way in Europe. Literally, Europeans just start walking out in the middle of the street and expect the cars to stop. Cars do stop, unless they are in little itty bitty one way streets in Prague. I cannot tell you how many times I almost got hit in Prague. One of the girls in our class got clipped by the mirror, even, because they just did not seem to care about all the tourists....

Lastly, I thought Amerikans were gross, but I do not think I have ever been hit on more than I have been in the past couple weeks in Europe. I have been asked out to go have a beer with some old creeper guy; we have also been wolf-whistled at by many men while walking along the streets. We also constantly get stared up and down (although, this is probably just because of what we are wearing compared to many other people…) Nonetheless, it is starting to creep me out.

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Now, let the adventures begin

This past weekend we went to Prague, Czech Republic. To be honest, Prague was never on my list of places I wanted to go, but surprisingly there were a lot of tourists there, including Americans. It was a beautiful city, and it was fun to learn about the old history of the city and see some of the older buildings in the area.

Soldiers after the changing of the guards at the Prague Palace

One of the things we learned was that the city was first built with a moat built around it, so technically most of the city was built underground. They then took out the moat and all of the dirt they added made the city grow 12 feet up. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s ever an earthquake there if the whole city will fall because of the underground tunnels that are below the city.

Anyways, our time was quite pleasant. The first day we got there we went to explore because we had a few hours before we were to all meet for dinner. We walked around and originally thought we were heading to the Old Clock Tower where we were to meet for dinner, but we walked across the Charles Bridge into the “New Town” and managed to find the palace and gardens around the palace (which was where we were going to go the next day!) But hey, it was nice to find our way around so we wouldn’t get lost the next day. We made our way back to the Old Town and went up the Clock Tower to see the panoramic views of the city. It was beautiful up there and it gave us a feeling of how big the city truly was. I came to Prague with absolutely no expectations, but I for some reason was thinking Prague was a littler city, but I was definitely wrong!

I pulled out some Czech money. It made me feel rich!

Unfortunately, it's only worth about $40....

View of Charles Bridge

U of U represents!

Some cool dudes we found walking in the streets

Czech-style crepes

Discovered that the Czechs love their cannabis...

Ew. Cannabis beer....

View of Old Town

Some of the buildings

More views of Old Town

The little apartments in town

Old Clock Tower

That night we went out with a couple of classmates to check out the beir garten festival. My mom told me that my dad was jealous because apparently the Czech Republic is known as the beer capital of the world. I didn’t know that so that was interesting to learn, so of course I had to try some of the boys’ beers to at least say I tried it, but I’m not a beer fan so I steered away. Nonetheless, it was fun to go. We got a nice night view of the city, and even got to see fireworks out in the distance!

Some goulash before our night out

Night out at the Beer Festival

With the girls

After, we went out to experience the bar life. We all decided we had to get a sex on the beach...

One of the signs at the bars.

The next day we got to go and enjoy the palace. We went in to St. Vitus Cathedral, and it was beautiful! I think it was one of the most beautiful cathedrals I have ever seen, and one of the oldest as well. After, we continued on and got to visit the Prague palace and see some of the rooms, including some torture rooms and see some of the old armor that many of the men wore.

We, however, started the tour a bit late, though, so we were getting quite hungry which made a few of us get a bit “Hangry” and delirious. We tried to make jokes about it and get through the rest of the tour before finding a place to eat. One of the jokes was about Kelsee and I since we both know a little Spanish and a tiny bit of German, we always will say random little phrases like “Ich bin hungrig” (I am hungry: German) or “Yo no se” (I don’t know: Spanish) so we kept going back and forth between the different languages and phrases that we know, so one of the boys in our class was like “Wow. Hunger gives you the gift of tongues!!!”

Side view of St. Vitus

The front of the Cathedral

Video of Inside the Cathedral

Walking around town

Pano of Old Town

Walking down the streets

More buildings.

Anyways, we got some lunch and walked around the city for the rest of the day. During the night we went on a Ghost Tour of Prague, but it ended up being a boring tour about a couple interesting stories about the city; there was nothing scary about it!

Our dessert: chocokebabs!

So delicious!

Where we got the chocokebabs, we found some chocolate wine and beer! I had to buy some chocolate wine....

The next day was a day on our own; however it was a Sunday so many things were closed. We just walked around and went to lunch on a rooftop restaurant to get the last views of the city before we went home.

My delicious lunch: spaghetti + shrimp!

Paparazzi-style pictures after lunch

The best gelato in Prague

My chocolate rum ball

I'm not quite sure what was in it....

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The next day was where everything got interesting. I woke up from a low at 4am, and after I couldn’t sleep so I looked out my window for a couple of hours and got to watch the sunrise until I could fall back asleep. Kelsee and I woke up before our alarms and just got ready for the day. We indulged ourselves in breakfast because we didn’t get a dinner night before so we were starving! It was so nice to have a divine breakfast laid out for us again! I am sure we will miss it as soon as we go back home.

Morning sunrise view

From our bedroom window...

Ready for the day!

Once we were ready for the day, we decided to go to Karlsplatz near the Opera House to pick up our opera tickets for that night. However, we somehow managed to get off at the wrong train stop, even though we both swore we saw “Karlsplatz” on the signs, but we decided to walk around and find our way to the opera house. I plugged the address into my gps in my phone, but apparently it changed the address and was taking us to a café that was in the opposite direction! We finally realized this and Kelsee tried her gps and she helped us find our way to where we needed to go.

Once we received our tickets, we made our way back to the train station to go to Prater Amusement Park. I knew which train line we had to get onto, but of course I managed to get us onto the ubahn going the wrong direction…. So once again we had to turn around and take the other line.

Getting lost, however, did lead us to this beauty!

We made it to Prater and met up with our friend Eric and walked around and tried some rides. The rides are definitely different here because there are “less regulations” because it is harder to sue in Europe. We went in one ride where it makes you lay down, but you are hardly strapped in! There is a gate that comes down your back, but there is a good foot between your back and that gate so technically you could easily fall out (but thankfully we didn’t!) We also went on a few other rides, including the Prater Turm which is the tallest swings tower in the world! So that was pretty cool.

Finally made it to the park!

Enjoying the park

Rollercoast selfies?

Video on the coaster...

Video of the coaster, itself!

Boomerang. This ride was way fun!

Prater Turm

117 meters high!

View from the swings

Round and round and round we go...

This was when we were coming back down, but the swings started to speed up!!!

Mackenzie and Ben about to enjoy the swings

Austrians take carousels seriously....

The best ride I have ever been on!!! It looks super spinney, but it's not. It's like the Cliffhanger plus the Samurai at Lagoon, but on steroids!!!!!

The group at Prater

U of U represent! Plus one Frenchman... (:

After we went to grab a “Linner” (because it was so late) and got some schnitzel and drinks. Our host mom told us to go to a specific restaurant to try a traditional Austrian meal and drink, but we all craved schnitzel. Kelsee, however did try the drink she suggested. It is called Almdudlee. It is like a “herb soda” and it’s what all the teens drink here. It’s only made and found in Austria, apparently. I, however, wanted to try it, but I found a Karli Wine, so I decided I kind of had to try that, instead. Both drinks were very delicious!

Karli wine

Karli + Karli wine

After Prater, we left to get ready for our opera. We left early to get a pastry as our dinner/dessert, and walked around the opera house. We finally decided to go in 30 minutes early and just relax, but as soon as we walked into the opera house, we found ourselves a bit confused when there was almost no one in there! A guy came down to look at our tickets and gave us a look of dismay “You are at the wrong place. If you take a taxi that way you will get there in 5 minutes. You still have a little bit of time, but you must hurry.” We started to freak out! Neither of us have taken a taxi in Europe, nor did we know where to get one, so we decided to take the train and of course, once again, got lost.

We took the ubahn to a station two stops away. The stop said “Volkstheatre” so we thought we were at the right place! But we found some people who spoke English and they told us we were not correct and we needed “Volksoper” instead… Once again we got back on the ubahn and made our way to the correct place.

Opera ready

And we are off..... for more lost adventures.

We managed to find the Volksoper, but by then we were 13 minutes late. We were worried they would not let us into the opera because that’s what they did at the Opera House, but they were kind and showed us to some seats that were nearby our seats, and we just sat in some empty chairs.

The opera was actually pretty good! We had ground floor seats so we could actually see!!! The only disappointment was that they translated what was going on, but they did not say everything, they just gave a synopsis of what was going on like “The bat and Eisenstein reminisce about some past experiences” so we obviously missed all the jokes, but we got the point. We enjoyed it more than any of our other operas thus far.

After the opera, we made our way back to the ubahn station, just for Kelsee to discover she lost her phone in the opera. Thankfully we were not far away before her realizing this, but she panicked and started to run back, in heels nonetheless, to find her phone. Thankfully it was unharmed and we got it back with ease.

We got back to the house and got ready for bed and made finishing touches to our presentation for class. We stayed up till about 2am and finally decided to sleep and would finish up in the morning. However, this morning while I was going through references, I looked back at the syllabus and realized our presentation now isn’t until Thursday… so all the late nights were not needed and we now have a couple more days to perfect it…. We were both happy and sad about it. We were ready to just be done with it.