One, Two, Three, BEER!

That's how you take pictures in Munich.  Because when you say beer, you have to smile. (According to our really cute Australian tour guide, and who would want to correct him?)


We got to Munich on Friday and wandered around the main square. It is also very commercialized.  Lots of Starbucks and American chains. And not really a whole lot to see or do.  Except drink beer? Anyway, we got pizza for dinner (fail on our parts, but you can't get away from Italian food forever..) and then decided to be all authentically German and get Haagen Daas ice cream.  And then to finish the night, we made our way to the Hofbrauhaus.  And I have never seen so much beer in my life.  Being the lightweight that I am, I only got half a liter, but Elise managed to knock back a full liter. I was very impressed. AND she could still walk in a straight line on the way back to the hostel.  Talented. In case you've never seen a Hofbrau mug, it's pretty much the size of a small child (that might be a slight exaggeration, but seriously, it's a lot of liquid).

I woke up on Saturday feeling exceptionally awful.  I'm going to assume it wasn't a hangover, because it lasted all day and I had a fever.  Also, if the cleaning standards at the Hofbrauhaus are anything like those at the bar we went to in Prague, then I could have easily caught something there.  Anyway, we went on a free tour in Munich in the morning, with the Australian tour guide, and saw all the main sites of the city.  Which isn't much.  Apparently people only go to Munich because of the beer.  We chose it because it was halfway back to campus, not because we're alcoholics. Just to clarify.  Anyway, there were a lot of annoying American tourists there that were our age.  And the sorority type (aka STUPID). As Renee said, "If i ever have sorority girl daughters, they are NOT allowed to travel to Europe by themselves".  Luckily, everyone in my travel group is exceedingly intelligent and not orange.

So we caught the overnight train back to campus last night.  And it was quite possibly the sketchiest moment of my semester thus far.  We were sharing the compartment with a man, who reeked, and his son. What's so bad about some nice old dad? Well he was being SUPERRRRR inappropriate to the point where we had to go ask to switch cars.  Luckily the conductor let us, otherwise we would have had to stay awake all night with Renee's knife at the ready.  I wish I had pepper spray.

So now we're back in Rome, and the homework can no longer be ignored... PARIS on THURSDAY :)

 In front of the Hofbrauhaus!

Czechsperts. Evidently a word.

The Czech Republic: where the beer is quite literally cheaper than the water.  (Europe, stop charging us for tap water, it's ridiculous, Love, Claire).  We got to Prague Wednesday night after a longgggg train ride from Krakow.  While I like the advantages of being able to have more than a backpack, trains definitely eat up a lot of time.  But it's a lot less of a hassle and it gets you where you need to go. And occassionally foreign boys ask to sit in your compartment.

We got to the hostel and then went out for Czech food, walked around, and then went to bed.  Traveling is exhausting, so we can totally justify being lame.  Yesterday we started off the day with yet another pastry hunt.  And Prague is super cheap.  Not quite as good as Vienna, but when you're only spending about thirty cents on something the size of your head, it all works out.  Anyway, then we went on a free walking tour around the old town center, new town center, and some other notable destinations. Our tour guide was some 22 year old Justin Bieber wanna-be, and I had to resist the urge to cut his hair.  Anyway, the architecture in Prague is beautiful, especially the clock tower and the old church. Downside: there's like five million American tourists here.  Which makes it really hard to pretend you're not one.  But at least everyone speaks English, and they all have a somewhat British accent when they're trying to talk to you.  I don't know where they picked that one up, but there you go.

Prague is also super commercialized. There are around five starbucks, a Gloria Jean's, and TGI Fridays, and other big American chains.  The only thing super Czech about Prague is how cheap the beer is.  Apparently, Czech Republic is the number one consumer of beer worldwide, and Pilsner is the specialty. (I had one for 23 crown, which is literally a dollar).  We met three Czech boys in a bar last night, and they claimed to be able to drink 17 half liters of beer.  I think I saw one of them get up to 11, and the other one had about 8 mixed drinks.  I wish I had that kind of alcohol tolerance.  Except it seems like an expensive habit.  On another note: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, for anyone up to speed with one of the goals of this semester. 

We also walked up to Prague Castle which was exceptionally gorgeous.  I felt really bad for the guards standing out front, because obnoxious American tourists were posing awkwardly in front of them.  If I was on duty, I would have taken one of those intimidating looking guns and fired a few shots at them.  But that's not very nice, and probably why I won't ever be allowed to hold a gun.

Today we leave for Munich, and hopefully tonight we'll be at the Hoffbrauhaus with more UD students. 10 day is almost over, and we're trying to make the most of it!

Poland: Cheap and Delicious

 Outside St. Mary Major in Poland

Our tourguide from Kazmierz showing us a traditional Jewish dance.

Hello from Krakow!  It took almost nine hours to get here from Vienna, but it's been worth it so far!  We spent almost all day on Sunday on the train trying to get here.  Notable highlights: finding out our Eurail does not cover Poland, and missing our train in Katowice.  Luckily, there was another train headed to Krakow from Katowice that we managed to get on.  Major incident avoided.  However, upon arriving in Krakow we had one heck of a time finding the trams to get to the city.  And once we figured that out and got off on the right stop we wandered around for about an hour trying to get to the hostel.  We didn't print off a map of the area and that made it more complex.  Lesson learned.

Also interesting to note: no one in the train station spoke English.  This was our first experience with going up to people to get directions and just having them stare at you like you're retarded.  That's when we stopped asking the grandmas for directions and began talking to people our own age.  They've at least been adequately schooled and can communicate with us.

So Sunday we went out for traditional Polish food after checking in to the hostel, which is pretty nice but is a little creepily dark.  Also, the toilet seats are clear with pictures of barbed wire all over them.  Please explain that to me.  And, on another cultural note of bathroom decor, the toilet paper here is green because it's apparently recycled.  Saving the environment? I guess so.

After dinner Elise and I decided to go out.  We almost had Ellie and Renee convinced to come along, but they decided they were too tired at the last minute.  So Elise and I headed into downtown Krakow to find a club.  On the way, two charming Irish gentlemen of about 30 offered to buy us drinks.  The following conversation ensued:
"Are you girls married?"
"No.."
"Well you will be soon!"
Cue a speedy exit and lots of nervous giggling.

We found a club that was playing American music and went in.  It was so much fun, but it was a really weird demographic.  There was a lot of high schoolers, and a couple of really old men.  Then guys our age finally started showing up, and so we got to meet Polish boys.  Check.

Today Ellie, Renee, and I went to Auschwitz and Birkenau.  I wouldn't say it was a fun trip, but it was really worth seeing.  Auschwitz was way more modern than I was expecting.  It was a lot of stone buildings all in a row. Birkenau had the stark and isolated atmosphere that you get from the movies.  So if you ever find yourself in Poland, definitely go visit.  Even if you didn't have a West Civ II teacher who harped on Hitler nonstop.

Tomorrow we're going to take a walking tour of the city and hopefully go shopping.  Because Poland is CHEAP.  Finally a favorable exchange rate.  That's whats up.  Too bad I don't have a ton of room to bring shoes back to Italy.

We leave on Wednesday for Prague :) Another cheap city with delicious pastries.  EXCITEMENT!

German is an Ugly Language

Greetings from Vienna! Or Wien, if we're being all European.  Our 10 day has officially started, and day one was a success. (just a note right now, there may be a lot of typos in this, because Austrian keyboards don't have the letters in the same location as American keyboards.  Most notably the z and y are switched. Its been super frustrating thus far.  and it took me five minutes to figure out how to get the @ symbol to appear... i hate technology.  especially the foreign kind).

We left for ten day on Thursday, which was Saint Patrick's day, but it was also the celebration of 150 years of Italian unification.  WHICH IS APPARENTLY A BIG DEAL. So of course the buses weren't running on their normal schedule, which resulted in many a UD student standing out at the bus stop in the cold rain for over an hour.  Luckily, our group was already running late so we only had to wait fifteen minutes.  Procrastination at its finest.  But we got to the train station with three hours to spare.  During those three hours, we managed to eat, and get our eyes violated on so many different levels.  Here's a fun fact about Italians: they have no sense of decency and think its appropriate to grope each other in public, even if your standing two feet away. Gross.

So we got on the overnight train to Vienna, which was also stopping in Munich. There were evidently about 10 UD students on the train, but we were the only ones that didn't cheap out.  We actually paid for the upgrade to a  sleeper car.  Which was SO SMALL. It was three bunks high on each side, and I couldn't even lay across the whole car, it was that tiny. And we shared it with two Italian women who were apparently really noisy.  But I didn't notice, because Dramamine is magical.  And I learned my lesson from the boat, I took the dramamine and went straight to bed so I couldn't say anything stupid and get made fun of for the whole rest of the trip.

We got to Vienna at 8:30 in the morning and made our way to the hostel.  It's really nice! I'm glad we didn't cheap out and go for the sketchy 5€ hostels, but we do have a 4€ hostel in Prague, so hopefully that wont be too  suspicious.  Yesterday we went and saw the Imperial Jewels.  NOTE TO FUTURE HUSBAND: my expectations have been raised, so start saving ;)  Anyway, they were beautiful.  We then headed over to the Imperial Crypt, which was really cool but I think I would have appreciated it more if I was familiar with all the different Kaisers and whatnot.  In West Civ. II we only ever discussed Hitler...apparently you can never understand Hitler until you understand a struggling artist.... I evidently didn't learn much.

We bought tickets for Mozart and Strauss concert in the evening.  Which was impossible to find.  Every main square in Vienna has a statue with a man on a horse, and thats all the map showed.  So we arrived 20 minutes late.  Luckily it wasn't a formal affair, more of an Austrian recital.   So we got to see an Austrian string quartet, two ballet dancers (and yes, they were legit ballerinas) and two opera singers.  German is an ugly language.  It's even uglier when it's being belted out in Opera, and that's all I have to say on the subject.

Because we were so cultured and classy earlier in the day, Elise and I decided to counterbalance it by going to a bar later.  Best drink EVER.  Screwdriver with fresh squeezed blood orange juice.  SOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOD.  Highly recommended to everyone.

Today we're going to the market and eating pastries until we explode.

On another note, i feel completely lied to about how many pastry shops are in Vienna.  We walked for a solid hour without seeing one yesterday.  What the heck!

On yet another note, Austrian boys are gorgeous.  Finally entering into the realm of the tall and blonde, and getting away from the short, greasy Italian men.

Hopefully I'll update from Prague or Krakow! :)

It's half over?

This is my pre-10-day post.  Because in about 72 hours, I'll be heading off into the unpredictable world of hostels.  Which I'm super excited about.  I can honestly say this is going to be the most epic spring break of my life.  So for all you miserable folks that are stuck in America, I'll be off playing in Vienna, Krakow, Prague, and Munich :)  Or, as my Art and Architecture teacher commented, I'll be taking a ten day pastry tour.  Which is exactly what Elise and I were going for.  To accommodate all this eating, we're aiming to have a "no pants" spring break.  Which means we'll be trying to wear only tights and leggings for as long as we can, without having to do laundry.  This could be difficult, because it's pretty frigid in Poland at the moment. 

On a side note, our room (Me, Elise, and Paige) have been trying to figure out a theme for our room.  We're down to either the "accidental daters" or the "no pants", given our love of wearing shorts and unfortunate experiences of going out on dates with boys, and not realizing it was a date until halfway through.  And then it just gets awkward.

So the two weeks between Greece and 10 day are supposed to be exceedingly stressful.  We've had two midterms, and I'll be turning in the longest paper I've ever written (gotta love Philosophy).  Amazingly, I haven't been stressed out at all this semester.  Not once.  It's so unlike me, and I love it.  Whoever said the Rome semester is the hardest semester was lying. The work isn't what's difficult; it's lack of time.  Between booking flights and hostels and trying to get into the city to hang out, time literally does fly by.  It's already halfway through the semester. Which is incredible, because I haven't even spent a weekend in Rome yet.
However, we're addressing this problem by going out on Wednesday night and pulling an all-nighter in the city (we haven't worked out the details, and are mildly concerned about safety, so we'll see how this works). So that's my bit of debauchery planned for the week.

This past weekend I went on the Women's Retreat at a nearby retreat facility. It was a silent retreat, so we weren't allowed to talk for two days.  Which was really nice. I like the silence.  One of the highlights of the weekend: the Pontifical Swiss Guard was also there.

We're so immature that we asked them to take a picture with us.  And they did.

Hopefully I'll score some free Internet while I'm travelling and can update this before I get back.

"Can you haggle in department stores?"

GREECE, ladies and gentlemen, GREECE.  Land of old piles of rocks, and men that aren't all that cute and kind of smell bad. And by kind of smell bad, I mean no one in that country has any concept of deodorant.  Thank goodness we were visiting in March and not in the warmer months.  Anyway, so two fridays ago we boarded a boat and headed across the Ionian sea.  I don't remember all that much, because I was hopped up on dramamine.  And yes, I was quite literally hopped up because I apparently was saying stupid stuff. 

For example, after stealing two bananas and five oranges from dinner and putting them in my enormous purse, I apparently said something along the lines of "i can shake my bag and make a smoothie", which is evidently not something socially acceptable to say because I'm still getting laughed at about it.  I'm just saying, with that much fruit, I probably COULD have a made a smoothie by shaking my bag.  SO thanks for making fun of me Elise and Renee, my genius ideas are no longer going to get shared with you.

So the first stop in Greece was Olympia.  It was pretty sweet.  We got to visit the archeological site where the first Olympics were held in 776 BC.  And we had a friendly little competition racing the 200 or so meters that the old olympians did.  This was definitely the highlight of Olympia. I was in the top 10 of the girls, and our relay team (consisting of me, Elise, Baby Sean, and Michael Tann) was 4th.  Not bad at all!  After that, we climbed to the top of a hill and made daisy chains.  Bringing back the elementary school days in style.

After Olympia we headed to Delphi.  Delphi is absolutely GORGEOUS.  Its mountainous and overlooks the sea.  There were ruins there from the Oracle and temples to Athena and Apollo or something.  I'm not really interested in piles of old rocks, but I did my best to enjoy the atmosphere.  We had a lot of free time in Delphi, so I got caught up on some homework and we all went out to a bar one night where they were playing American music.  Always fun!

After Delphi was Athens.  We saw: the pnyx, the agora, the areopagus, the acropolis (including the parthenon, erechtieon, and temple of dionysus), and lots of really old pieces of art.  And about a million stray dogs.  Which come in very handy.  STORY TIME.  Okay, so if you're a girl traveling alone in Athens, find  an aggressive looking stray dog and start petting it.  Said stray dog will then follow you around the city and try and bite any sketchy person that tries to approach you.  If the dog you picked is a little psychotic, it will also attempt and bite the tires of passing cars. Also in Athens: lots of shopping!  I spent a lot of money, but I got some cute new clothes and a new backpack for ten-day.  And a pretty legit new purse!  It was a lot of fun; you could haggle with the people selling things at the flea market and save more money.  Which leads me to explain the quote in the title, compliments of Amanda Bilko (my former roommate), who thought it was okay to haggle at department stores.

After Athens was Nafplion, a little seaside town by Epidauros and Mycenae.  A lot of fools went swimming in the Mediterranean, but Claire did not, because she is not stupid enough to get into freezing cold water when its 50 degrees and rainy outside.  I've also picked up an annoying habit of referring to myself in third person. I'm hoping to break this before I return to America.  And now I'm back in Rome, and I really need to start my homework. These next two weeks are going to be the toughest of the semester apparently, but then it will calm back down.

This weekend I'm going on a Women's Retreat, and then the next weekend is 10 day!  Time flies when you're having fun and sketchy adventures in Europe!

Renee, Me, Paige, and Ellie in Olympia.  I'm wearing my daisy chain crown.  HELLO inner flower child.