Amsterdam

So a few weeks ago I went to Amsterdam for my second trip out of the Czech Republic! The city is really tiny, and kind of like a mini Venice with lots of canals and tiny streets. It was absolutely gorgeous, but we sadly got extremely terrible weather. I went with my roommate Allison, my friend Erin from Wisconsin, and two friends Sarah and Nay who go to Hamilton.

Erin, Sarah, Nay, Allison and me!

Our first night there we got in pretty late, so we just went out to find some food. We went to this awesome Falafel place. I hadn't hummus since coming to Europe (I'm obsessed with hummus), so it was an extremely awesome Falafel. The next day we went on a canal tour in the morning. We were able to see a lot of the city this way and it was nice cause the boat was closed off and it was raining outside. We did a lot of walking around and just exploring the city.

Erin and me on the canal tour

That night we went for dinner to this mexican place called The Taco Shop. Funny story about this place - it's three locations are Madison, WI, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. I remember seeing this place in Madison before and those locations were on a sign in front of the place and I was like thats most definitely not true. But Erin and I were freaking out there because the guy opened the location in Madison and it was just so random to have a restaurant in Madison and Amsterdam.

The Taco Shop!

The next day we found the illustrious "I amsterdam" thingy. It was really crowded but it was fun to climb all over it and take pictures.

We found A (pretty little liars reference)

We went to a wine and cheese tasting, which was really yummy and fun and made us feel very class. They let us cut our own cheese, and we were probably supposed to do a little tasting of each cheese, but we devoured our 5 blocks of cheese.

Allison and Erin tasting some wine and cheese

On our last day we did a tour of the Heineken factory. It wasn't just a typical tour, but a very interactive tour with lots of things to do so it was really fun.

Heineken Factory

Sorry I went to Amsterdam a month ago, so this post is kinda lacking details :/
But the week after Amsterdam I went to Krakow, Poland so that post will hopefully be coming soon!
P.S. it's finally warm here and the sky is no longer a perpetual hazy gray! It's fantastic  

Visitors in Praha!

So this post is coming about a month after what I'm actually writing about, my bad. But anyways two weeks in a row I had some visitors in Prague so I got to be the tour guide! My parents visited the first weekend in March and my friend Melina from high school came the week after. 

A few days before my parents came I had my first dabble in some traditional Czech food. I went over to a friends apartment and her Czech roommate showed us how to make strawberry dumplings. It's basically strawberries with this cream cheese/sugary thing around it. It was really good, but extremely filling. 

Niki, Allison, Morgan and Dani making strawberry dumplings

Before my parents came I went to the Vietnamese Sapa Market. It was a really interesting different side of Prague to see. We had to take the metro really far out and then got on this bus. We didn't have the name of a bus stop to get off at, our directions from some website just said "follow the Vietnamese people." The definition of racist profiling, but surprisingly it worked! It reminded me a lot of shopping in downtown LA at santee alley in LA. It had a lot of clothes, sunglasses, handbags, and creepy weird toys.

Vietnamese Sapa Market

Niki with an immense amount of toys

When my parents got here we did some basic sight seeing that day and that night we went out to this fancy restaurant with my friends Laura and Niki. On Sunday we went to Český Krumlov, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was a really gorgeous cute town, and has this giant castle.

View of Cesky Krumlov

My parents and I in front of the Castle at Cesky Krumlov

I spent the next weekend in town, but my roommates and a lot of my friends were out of town. I spent most of the weekend with my friend Laura from Wisconsin doing some sight seeing and just hanging out. We went to the Communism Museum which was smaller than I expected, but still really interesting to see. They had a lot of old communism propaganda posters. 

Laura and her best friend

Laura and I also went to the Dali exhibit and did some touristy shopping. That night we went out with her brother and some of his friends. We started out at this one bar where one of her brothers students was performing with his band. They did a lot of covers of American songs, but they didn't really know what they were singing apparently so that was funny. 

Creepy witch marionettes

The next day we went to the Kolbenova Flea Market, which made for a very janky interesting experience. The market was in a really sketch area, with really sketch people, but it was really fun to see. Most of the things there were shampoo, electronics (none of which were in cases, and most likely stolen), jewelry and other knick knacks. The reason we went there is it's famous for having communist time trinkets and things. That was really cool to see. They had tons of communist like toys, coins, and random things. They also sold guns here...

Kolbenova Flea Market

Communist knick knacks

Gas mask, type writer and old coins

Janky electronics...

Laura agrees that this places is sketch...

The week after my parents came my friend Melina from high school came! She was a year above me so she had studied abroad in Madrid for a semester last year so it was nice that she was familiar with Europe. She got here early in the morning and we spent the whole day doing a ton of sight seeing. We got lost for at least an hour trying to find the Lennon Wall, but besides that it was a successful day. Melina was here for a few days and we saw a ton of the city, and she also did a lot of sight seeing on her own when I was in class. It was great having her here cause I haven't seen her since high school so we got to reminisce a lot and update each other on our lives.

Melina and I with a view of the Castle

The TV Tower...and creepy black babies climbing it

Melina in the very retro TV Tower lookout

I spent the next two weekends in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Krakow, Poland so my next post will be about those!

Munich

So the other weekend I ventured outside of the Czech Republic for the first time to Munich with my roommates Allison and Niki. Munich was absolutley amazing! None of us had stayed in a hostel before so we had no idea what to expect. We got into Munich pretty late Thursday night and our hostel had a bar so we had a beer there and went to bed. If you've never stayed at a hostel before, walking into a room of 12 sleeping strangers is kind of comical/creepy/ridiculous so we all started laughing and just didn't know what to do with ourselves that first night.

The next morning we got up and ventured to Nymphenburg Palace and it was gorgeous. There was this little pond area in front that had a lot of swans and ducks. I'd never seen a swan before so that was cool, except one of the swans kind of almost attacked us. The inside of the Palace was really nice and had a lot of giant decorated fancy rooms. One room had paintings of young girls all over it that this Prince had done. He picked out what he considered the most beautiful girls in Munich and got paintings of all of them so he could look at them whenever he wanted, kinda creepy.

Niki and Allison outside the Palace 

Inside the Palace

After that we went to the Deutsches Museum, which has science/technology stuff. It was a huge musuem and had a ton of cool stuff. We met up with our friend Laura and her German friend Franziska. The museum had lots of engineering like stuff, old computers, and way to much to list. One cool thing was a U-boat from WWI.

I met R2-D2!!

The U-Boat

Then we walked around a bit and we went to Viktualienmarkt, which is just this outdoor food market and saw some other things.

Town Hall

Der Rathskeller (WI people will get why this is picture worthy)

Afterwards, we went to this pub/restaurant called Hofbrauhaus, which is apparently one of the oldest places in Munich. It was really cool traditional (and touristy) place. We got our first exposure to 1L beers there. At the table were these crazy German guys we met who spoke hardly any English, but we ended up spending 5 hours there and they were entertaining. Most of the night all I heard was "Hi, I'm Kevin," and the other guy said "I'm a pilot" and "photo!" And they kept on hugging us and taking pictures, so Niki and I became very fond of the word nein after a while.

Niki and I with our 1 Liter beers

New best friends

Allison with her giant pretzel

The next day we went to the Modern Art Museum and pretty much just wandered around all day. A ton of walking. We think we stumbled upon all the sites, we just weren't sure sometimes what stuff was. It was more like "Oh, pretty building, lets go check it out." But the city is so beautiful! The fluffy white snow everywhere made it really pretty, but I'm sure in the spring time it is just fantastic.

Pretty church!

Niki lovin' some modern art

There was a lot of snow....

The previous night we met these British guys who were staying at the hostel. They were going to this beer festival thingy and purchased some interesting shirts for the occasion. We hung out with them again the next night and made some new British friends at our hostel bar.

British guys

Our last day in Munich we went to the BMW museum. Lots of shiny very expensive cars. I was very tempted drive off in one. One of the last things we saw in Munich were some surfers in the middle of February. There is this man made wave on the river and people come there to surf.

My new ride at the BMW museum

Surfin' by the snow

Overall, Munich was a blast! I definitely wanna go there sometime again in my life when it's warm outside. We wondered around a lot, got lost, ate some good German food, met new people, and were able to actually talk loudly in the subways and smile at people :) 

Hold me fast, cause I'm a hopeless wanderer

Dobry Den! (hello)

So I am the biggest procrastinator, and I've been meaning to write a new blog post for forever. So here it is! Also, my title of the blog is a Mumford and Sons lyric, I am bad at coming up with titles for things. I am also going to see them at Bonnaroo this summer with my friend Caroline from Wisconsin! And possibly in April here in Prague....if I can find tickets that aren't $300.

So I've done a tonnn of stuff in the past weeks. Two weekends ago my roommate Allison and I wondered around Prague all day. We went to the Kafka Museum and the Modern Art Museum. Then we wondered around this little island in Prague and stubled upon the Czech version of Mardi Gras. When you don't know something like that is going on and then tons of people dressed up acting crazy it can be quite perplexing at first. We also went to a farmers market in the morning. One farmers market had a giant pig sliced down the middle with all of its guts showing.... I know you appreciate the picture.

Mmmm...dinner!

Allison and the view from the Modern Art Museum

The next day we went on trip with our program to this place called Kunta Hora. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site and its this quaint little town and we visited a church, a bone church and some other things there. The bones are from people that died in the black plague. It's kinda cool, but mostly just creeped me out. Especially thinking of the guy who came up with the idea to turn thousands of people bones into art.

At Kunta Hora

Bone Church

We went to see the opera Madame Butterfly and it was very opera-like with the elongated intense singing, but it was cool to go to. That night we went to two really cool places. The first place was a bar/restaurant that served your beer to you on a train. The second was a club called James Dean that played some good oldies. They also played Jump Around and I was with four other Wisconsin people at the time so that was pretty awesome. At one point at the club the bartenders took out electric saws, poured kerosene on them and lit them on fire. It was cool but considering there was alcohol everywhere it was probably the biggest fire hazard I've ever witnessed.

My rommate Niki and Allison and I at the Opera

Electric saw & Giant flames....

Allison getting our beers at the Train Bar

On Monday night my roommates and my friend Erin from Wisconsin went to this local Czech pop/rock concert. They were kind of like Paramore and it was quite the experience, especially because we had no idea what she was saying. But Niki and I got a picture with the lead singer!! I think we may have freaked her out a bit :/

Biggest Czech Pop Star with Niki and I!!

I took a tour of Prague Castle with people in my program and the view was absolutely gorgeous. But considering its perpetually foggy here I wanna go back on a nice warm day.

My frined Julia and I at Prague Castle

Chruch inside Prague Castle grounds

So for two weeks I had intensive Czech class. Czech for five hours a day. Czech is extremely hard and there's just so many constants next to eachother. The word for four is ctvrtek. Like whatttt is that?! But I started my actual classes last week and so far they've been pretty interesting.

I went to Munich this past weekend and it was quite the adventure, but I'll try and blog about that sometime later this week!

Na Shledanou (bye)