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 :)