Last Day of London and Beginning of Dublin

I already forget exactly what I did on my last day in London but I'll give a quick outline of our last day in London. I was awoken by my phone at about 9:30 in the morning to a random number. Fortunately, it was my friend John that I worked with at ICCF. He is getting his masters at London School of Economic but still works for ICCF and will be back there this summer so Maude will work with him. I met up with him and his wife in Covent Garden at a Starbucks. Then I went back to the hotel and Maude was up and we went out to see a few things. We walked back to Covent Garden to wander around and to walk through the market there. Then we went over to Harrods, which is a ridiculously big department store. From there we walked to the natural history museum which was actually really cool. By this time we were getting pretty hungry and we really wanted to get some indian food before we left London. My guidebook had a place called Masala Zone in it so we decided to try that out and it turned out to be really good. Of course, the last thing we did in London was head to a pub and have a few ciders and beers before we went to bed.
Yesterday we arrived in Dublin and our hostel is in a great location right in Temple Bar. We didn't do that much yesterday but hang out with a bunch of people at our hostel. I actually met a fellow Hoya who is a year older and we have several friends in common back at Georgetown. Today we did another free walking tour of Dublin that took us to some good places around the city like city hall, a very famous church, and Trinity College. The other major thing we did today was go to the Guinness storehouse to see how Guinness was made and to have a taste. Like everyone says, it really was the best Guinness you have ever tasted. Tomorrow we are going to this prison that is supposed to be very cool and we might go to the Jameson Distillery as well. Thursday I will be back in Prague so hopefully I can get another post in before returning to the US of A. When I get back I will try to give some more details about this trip and tell a bit more about what I did.
Also, keep an eye out I may be starting up another blog when I get back to the US. I'll be posting again soon and be back to the US in just a few days.

London Day 2

Well its only 3 so day 2 isn't really finished but i'm at the computer right now so I thought I would just write a quick post. This morning we got up and went over to Hyde Park corner to do a free walking tour around part of London. The walking tour took us to Buckingham Palace, where we saw the changing of the guards. Then over to St. James palace where Prince Charles and his family live. From there we went to Trafalgar Square and eventually on to Westminister. At Westminister we saw Big Ben, Westminster Palace (Parliament), and Westminister Abbey. The tour ended and we walked over to look at the Thames River and the London Eye. Then Maude and I got some lunch are are using the internet. We still have some things to see and do so I will update again when I can.

Brussels, Amsterdam and a day in London

This post is going to be very short because I am sitting in an internet cafe in London and want to go eat. On the 16th, Maude and I left Prague to do a bit of traveling before coming home. First we flew to Brussels because the flight was insanely cheap. We spent two and a half days in Brussels and I was shocked at how much I like the city since I had heard some mixed reviews. We stayed in a really nice hostel that was more like a small hotel and was right on the Grand Place, the best place for someone visiting to stay. The square was beautiful and we visited the European Union buildings and some other sites in the city. We also ate almost nothing but frites (french fries), belgian waffles, and mussels, all of the specialties and drank a lot of beer since Belgium is known for its great beer. We met up with a friend of Maude's from NYU and her boyfriend also and went to a bar called Delirium with over 2000 beers, it holds the Guiness world record for most beers at a bar.
After Brussels we got on the train to Amsterdam. Our hostel in Amsterdam was also nice and it was in a cool area right on the edge of the Red Light District. Sadly, the dutch government is slowly getting rid of the red light district and in a few years it will be gone, so its a good thing we got to see it when we did. We went on a great free tour as well and checked out everything else Amsterdam had to offer, on the tour they showed us a coffee shop called Grey Area where Snoop Dogg likes to spend most of his time when he goes to Amsterdam. More details later...
But now we are in London and today we walked (really far) to go to portobello market and see hyde park and kensington palace. Tomorrow we are going to do another free tour, keep you posted hopefully....

Catching Up

Ok so I haven't blogged in quite awhile so I'm just going to do a real fast run through of things I have done and places I have seen over the past few weeks. If you want a lot of detail on what I did you will have to ask me because this post is just going to touch on each place so people know what exactly I have been up to on the weekends.
First, several weeks ago my parents were in town and i met them in Berlin. Berlin, simply put, was a really new and modern city and I really like it. Since pretty much everything there was rebuilt after World War II its totally different than Prague, but I am a fan of the new, clean look of a city like Berlin. It was nice to travel with my family since we hadn't seen them in a few months and because it was nice to stay in a beautiful hotel. All in all Berlin was a really good trip and easy to make on the train. While we were there we saw things like the Brandenburg Tor, Humbolt University, the Parliament, Checkpoint Charlie, and the East Side Gallery.
The east side gallery is the longest remaining part of the wall and still stands in its original location. The gallery has a number of paintings done on the wall by famous artists and this above was one of them.
At the end of the weekend, Maude and I and my family all boarded the train back to Prague. My parents would spend the next or so days in Prague, seeing all the sites of Prague and making a day trip to Terezin. We took a 1 hour bus ride outside of Prague to the small town of Terezin, this town was once a fortress but during World War II served as a ghetto and prison. It was not actually a concentration camp, though many people did die here. It was more of a halfway house through which Jews were shipped to Auschwitz. The town as a whole, specifically the small fortress where Jews and political dissidents were housed, was still a pretty depressing site.
At the end of the week, right before my family left, Maude's mom and brother arrived to Prague. We all had dinner on old town one night but then shortly after my parents had to return to the states. The rest of that week we spent some time with Maude's family and seeing any sights we had missed until then. Right after they left I was scheduled to go on two day trips through my school CIEE. On saturday I travelled to Most and Osek, Czech towns on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany. Honestly, there wasn't much in these towns except in Most we saw a church that the Communists actually spent years moving before they destroyed the entire town to turn it into a coal mine. On the whole this trip really wasn't very exciting except for the lunch, which was free and quite tasty.
On Sunday I then travelled to Jachymov and Karlovy Vary. In Jachymov there was a camp for political prisoners of the Communist regime. We met and spoke with a man who was a political prisoner in this camp and we took a tour of the Uranium Mine that he was forced to work in while he was a prisoner.

This is the front of the Uranium mine we went in, the day before we came they actually had to ventilate the mine to make sure that the levels of radiation within the mine would be low and the mine would be safe for us to enter.
After we finished in Jachymov we got back on the bus and travelled to Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary is a hot spring town. There are natural hot springs running through the city which are funneled into like faucets where you can fill up a cup and drink it for its healing properties. However, it has a lot of iron in it and it tastes sort of like you are drinking blood. The town is most famous for a major film festival that is held there every summer and for its Grand Hotel Pupp where the James Bond film Casion Royale was filmed.

This is the Grand Hotel Pupp where Casino Royale was filmed.
Another weekend is approaching, though I am not going anywhere, I just plan to do some work and go pedal boating on the Vltava river in Prague. However, over the last weekend that passed I went to a small town in South Bohemia called Cesky Krumlov. Maude, Jena, and I made the 3 hour trip on Friday to stay 1 night there. We stayed at Hostel Skippy, which was a little far from the town square however it had a terrace that was sitting right about the Vltava river that flowed through the city. We saw all the sights, including the castle that is in the town, within a few hours of being there. So we got a few bottles of wine and relaxed on the terrace of our hostel where we met a cool Australian couple who were spending about 5 months just travelling through Europe. We hung out with them for awhile and got dinner with them. Then the next day we got lunch and had a little time to kill so we just went down along the river and read and slept because the weather was beautiful. Overall, the town is was really nice and the trip was relaxing.

So these are the last few trips I have taken in a nutshell. I have a lot of work to do in the next week and a half so I won't be doing too much that is interesting. However, after my school here is over Maude and I will take a trip for about 12 days. We are going to Brussels, Amsterdam, London, and Dublin before we return back to the US. I will try to put some brief updates on here about the trip as its happening but if not I will at least make sure I get a lot of pictures for after.

The Language

I know I posted before and mentioned words such as zmrzlina, five vowels in a row before a consonant. However I just thought I'd share this sentence in Czech. It basically means "stick your finger through your throat". Strč prst skrz krk. This is an entire sentence without vowels, further pointing out how ridiculous and hard to understand this language is. My czech teacher also told me that she thinks there is an entire fairy tale told without vowels but I haven't been able to find this yet.

Video Update

Well the next normal blog post will come shortly hopefully and will be about Berlin and my parents visit, I keep forgetting to get pictures off Maude's camera. Though I'm not sure who is going to care since I think my parents are the only ones who read this usually. But for this post I'm just going to throw a few short videos of some things on here. I have been doing a terrible job of taking video of things while here, I blame it partly on myself and partly on other people who always get mad when I try to film them. But here are a few of the videos that I have gotten.



Right here we have a video from the trip Maude and I took to Istanbul. We have no idea what they are saying but its a large procession of men chanting something, possibly in some sort of protest. Not really sure what it was about but I thought it would be good to catch on video



This one is a random street perform in Saint Michel in Paris. Look on top of his head, yes that is a very large glass bottle with live fish inside.



Not sure if I put this up before and don't feel like checking but here is a clip of the Superbowl, which you saw if you watched, and a little look around to all the other American students watching it there with me.



So Henry and I went to the SK Slavia Praha vs. Sparta Praha game on Monday. These are the two best teams in the Czech professional football league (soccer) and they are both based in Prague also so its a huge rivalry. The game we were at was probably the biggest non-playoff game of the year in the Czech Republic. We were rooting for Slavia and we were sitting next to the main Slavia fan section. This is a video of the crazy Slavia fans and the beginning of the game.



This is again the Slavia fans, I thought I'd include 2 because they are so intense and because the number of different cheers and things they do is incredible. You really need to be a fan (fanatic) to sit in this section.



This last video is a quick panorama of the view from the Eiffel Tower. Its a bit tough to see because its night time, but it looked great while we were up there.

was Constantinople, now its Istanbul

So one week ago, on tuesday, Maude and I set off on a plane to Istanbul, Turkey. The title of this post comes from a popular song that I'm sure most of you know. The reason for the two names, if you weren't sure, is that while under Roman rule the city was known as Constantinople and was primarily a Christian city. However, when the Ottoman's captured Constantinople they changed the name to Istanbul and promptly began changing it. For example, they changed the Aya Sofia from a Christian Church into a Mosque. But anyway thats just about the name now I will talk about the trip.
We landed in Ataturk airport and hopped in a taxi to Sultanhamet, the downtown area where most of the sites are. Sultanhamet is in the European part of the city (part is in Europe and part is in Asia) and the European part is where all of the sites to see are.
By the time we got in Tuesday it was too late to do anything really so we just wandered around the city a bit and got dinner at a little place two doors down from our hotel that had some incredible lamb sausage kebaps and this really good seasoned and toasted bread. We then went to bed pretty early to be ready to do some walking the next day and see some of the sites.
Wednesday we slept in then got up rested and ready to go walk around a bit. Our first stop was the Aya Sofia. We followed the tram path from our hotel right next to the park between the Aya Sofia and Blue Mosque and decided to hit the Aya Sofia first. The Aya Sofia was built somehwere around 530AD, so a really long time ago. It was originally a christian church, this is evidenced by two remaining pictures of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus on the inside. The building was then converted to a Mosque when Istanbul was captured by the Ottoman empire. The outside and most of the inside look like a Mosque, however in the 1930s Ataturk converted it to a museum as a symbol of religious tolerance. He did not want the two religions fighting over who held the rights to the building.

Here is Maude standing in front of the Aya Sofia and me stading on the inside. This is only a portion of the inside. It is fairly empty inside but impressive and very large. It is obviously being restored, etc. but it is amazing the condition it is in since it is over 1500 years old. The building was definitely one to see.
Right after this we walked through a very nice, small park that had beautiful green grass. This is impressive to me because it has been so long since I have seen real bright colors, Prauge is rainy and grey...though I think we are finally reaching spring here and i'm finally seeing sun in this city. But anyway, after we walked through the park we went to the Blue Mosque. I was more impressed by the Blue Mosque than by the Aya Sofia personally and this was also the first mosque that I have ever actually entered. The Blue Mosque doesn't look too blue from the outside, but when you go in, there are decorative tiles everywhere that are blue. To enter we had to go around the side entrance and remove our shoes then we could enter. We also were not allowed to walk around the entire mosque since we are not muslim.

So the first picture is clearly Maude and I in front of the blue mosque, the second is the inside of the mosque, and the thir is an example of the blue tile that is covereing the walls and ceiling of the mosque.
After we left the mosque and got our shoes back on we headed down toward the water to see the "Little Aya Sofia", this is not really at all like the aya sofia, it is actually a small working mosque but with a lot of history. We went into the little aya sofia also, my second mosque ever, and this one was totally empty except for Maude and I. However, this mosque seemed like it was actually used by people and wasn't just a tourist attraction. We were also able to walk all around the mosque so we could see all of the different parts.

After leaving the mosque our guidebook led us a bit astray and we wandered through "real istanbul" for awhile. We were without question the only white people and we weren't really sure where we were. Finally, we backtracked though and eventually made our way over to the Obelisk of Theodosius, the remains of the Serpant column and the park where chariot races once took place. It wasn't that much to see but it was a cool park to just sit in and people watch. After this we walked back to our hotel and we were done with our sightseeing for the day. I can't even remember where exactly we had dinner but on the whole we didn't do anything special at night and we got a good nights sleep and were ready for the Baazar on Thursday.
The Grand Baazar is ridiculous, I can't really think of a more apt way to describe it. The majority of it is actually inside and it is an enormous complex of hallways going every direction possible. All sorts of stuff was for sale including pashminas, turkish teas and turkish delight, chess boards, leather goods, handwoven carpets, and an assortment of other things. The stuff was relatively cheap but you had to haggle to get anything at a reasonable price because the initial costs were way too expensive. I ended up getting a few things for other people and got myself a scarf and some apple tea and turkish delight. Turkish delight is a sort of candy that is hard to explain its like a jellyish feeling square that comes in all sorts of different flavors. We wandered around the baazar for quite some time because it was so large, but eventually, after getting everything we wanted, we left the grand bazaar and headed over to the spice bazaar just to see what it was like. The spice bazaar was much smaller and had a lot of the same things, except there were lots of shops selling all sorts of different fresh herbs and spices. I didn't buy any because I figured I wouldn't really be able to put them to good use in Prague and it would be awhile before I got home. It was interesting to see nonetheless.

Here you can see just one of the many hallways in the bazaar and a picture showing piles of different herbs and spices that were for sale in the spice bazaar. The two bazaars took up most of our day, but the spice bazaar was right near the Bosphorus (our hotel was near here as well) so we walked over to take a look across the river and watch a lot of Turkish people fishing off the sides of a bridge. We also saw a restaurant at the edge of the water where the kitchen was an open air boat sitting on the river, so the whole time it was rocking up and down and I imagine it would be a pain to cook like that especially because it was pretty windy when we were watching.
Friday we slept in, as we usually do, and after lunch headed out to see a few more things around the city. Our first main stop was Gülhane Park, which was just a very large park with a nice pond and fountain and flowers in bloom everywhere. We walked the length of the park and just looked around at all the green, the flowers, and the pleasant scenery. The park was adjacent to our next stop, which was Topkapi Palace. The palace had more of this lush greenery and included a few mosques and a number of other stops such as horse barns and a few museums as well. Our last main stop for the day was the Basilica Cistern, essentially an enormous underground cavern with lots of pillars that used to hold all of the water for the palace. It was an impressive cavern, though it was dark so good pictures were difficult (I got a postcard with a good one on it). Also, there was still some water left at the bottom of the cavern and there were some large carp living in the water, they may be the descendents of some carp that were there in 530AD when it was built who knows.

First is Maude is Gülhane Park, note all the blooming flowers, and second is me in the Cistern, in the background you can see a few of the columns. Also on friday we took the tram and the funicular up to Taksim square and walked down the main avenue where all the best shopping restaurants and bars are, this is actually pretty far from where all of the sights are in Sultanhamet.
Saturday was our last real day in Istanbul and really we had already seen all of the major sights. So we decided to take it easy, wander around the nice parts of the city and just walk and people watch. We sat in the park between the blue mosque and aya sofia for awhile and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. The one other thing we did was hop on a ferry and take a short 15 minute ride across the Bosphorus to Üskudar, a part of Istanbul that is in Asia. There wasn't really much to see there so we hung out for a bit, took some pictures and hopped the ferry back across the river. The real reason we did it was to say that we had been to Asia since neither of us had ever been before.

Not all that impressive looking but here is a view from the ferry of Asia out across the Bosphorus.
Finally, Sunday had arrived and it was time to return to Prague. We just relaxed in the hotel until we got a shuttle to the airport and on the shuttle we met some other students studying in Prague as well. We navigated our way through Ataturk airport and made our way to the plane and were on our way back. Sunday night we arrived back in Prague in time to get some dinner and try to unwind a bit before classes the next day. It's Wednesday now and tomorrow afternoon we are off again. This time to Berlin to meet my family who are flying in for a little over a week. Sunday we will all take the train back to Prague and hopefully during that time I'll be able to put up a little info about what we did in Berlin.