Roma!

So, I'm in Naples, but I figured I'd take some time to write about the first few days in Rome. I wrote everything down on paper as I went along, so I'll just copy what I have here:

Friday, March 16
So, we're in Rome.

At first, I was a little worried we weren't going to actually make it here. We got to the airport, and we went to the wrong terminal. We were sitting there, trying to figure out why our flight wasn't coming up on the board (since it was an hour before it was to take off) when we finally went into the main area and promptly realized we needed to be in terminal 2.

After a quick sprint, there, we checked in relatively quickly, got our passports stamped (#8) to leave the Czech Republic, got through security, and eventually got on the plane, which was full of what looked like an Italian high school trip. Or, more accurately, it looked somewhat like Hills East would have looked like had it been an Italian high school trip.

We get to Rome, get our luggage, and get on the train to get to the center of the city without any major mishaps. After a minor freakout wher I thought that a) the train was going to take over an hour to get to the city center (it didn't) and b) that we were going to get fined 25 Euro because we hadn't stamped our tickets (even though I was proud of myself for reading the entire sign in Italian) we got to the Termini station without any big problems. We also successfuly navigated the metro. However, when we get to the Garbatella metro stop, we discover that a) Emily has lost the map that that the hostel had sent us, which I had given her to hold, and b) the area of Rome we are currently in isn't even ON the map that the tourist office at Termini had given us.

We wandered a bit, and asked a policemand near the station for directions. I asked in Italian, so I waws proud of myself for being able to do that, but he had to ask someone at the newsstand for directions. Clearly, not a good sign. He proceeds to direct me - in Italian - to make a left, a right, go across the parking lot, up some stairs, etc. It's days like this where I miss the gridlike order of (most of) Manhattan. Even Prague seems less complicated than this.

Three sets of Italian directions later, it is clear that we are a) going in a gigantic circle and b) lost. I'm extremely frustrated, and it's clear Emily isn't happy either. We have no idea where we are.

More directions and one false alarm later, we finally arrive at the hostel. It's alright - nothing terribly nice to speak of, but the crowd is really international, so that's cool. We decide to head back into the center of the city for dinner. We ask the owner of the hostel how to get back to the metro - because there has GOT to be an easier way than what we did - and she directs us to a window, where she proceeds to show us that if we cut across a parking lot, we could be on the metro in a matter of minutes. We quite literally could have thrown a rock and hit the metro station, instead of spending half an hour wanderiing through the streets of Rome's equivalent of Prague's Holesovice or Zlicin neighborhoods.

We went out to dinner near the Coliseum, which is pretty impressive in person. I can't wait to see it in the daylght. I was proud of myself for eating in an Italian restaurant, and my Celiac card made sense to the waiter. Even better. Even better than that, is all the gelato in this city. Worse comes to worse, I can survive on that.

Saturday, March 17

Today was exhausting, but in the best way possible. Emily and I managed to knock off about half of hour to-do list for the entire trip (and almost get our money's worth out of our 11 euro 3 day metro passes.) Needless to say, it's about 10 pm and I'm exhausted, even if it is going to take a lot of Nyquil and some hostel-provided earplugs to drown out the disco next door, which proved to be somewhat difficult to deal with last night.

We woke up this morning and got on our way pretty quickly. The morning was square-themed, and not in the uncool way. Piazzas are a huge part of Italian city culture, and a lot of these were pretty amazing to see. We saw the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, and Piazza del Popolo, among others.

After lunch (Risotto again - this city seriously makes me wish I didn't have celiac) we headed to the Coliseum. Taking the guided tour proved to be a smart idea, as we got to skip the queue, and we even got half-price tickets (although that was for being a student. It was pretty amazing to see. I can only imagine what it was like during ancient Roman times.

We hit the Roman Forum, Palantine Hill (the site of the first settled Roman community) and the Pantheon. By this point we're both exhausted, and it's getting late, so after a quick gelato break, we headed back to the hostel before dinner.

One of the most interesting parts of this trip so far is our hostel. It's certainly a different experience when you don't take over the whole thing (Budapest) or have a private room (Vienna.) Because of price restrictions - Rome isn't a cheap city in terms of hostels - we oèpeted to take two beds in a six person dorm and share with complete strangers. Two are from the Canary Islands -they're nice and don't talk much - and one is this Irish guy who is in town for the Ireland-Italy rugby game that happened earlier today. The city is full of Irish rugby fans. I never expected to see so many green jerseys and shamrock hats in the middle of Rome. This guy REALLY likes to share his opinions about everything with any of us who will listen (and, clearly, thos of us who might not want to because we've JUST WOKEN UP) about traveling, rugby, various cities, including New York, which he's apparently never been to, and this is all after stumbling home drunk at 6 am, nonetheless. He did lend us his Rome guide book though, which I'm now loathe to give back, as I've grown quite attacked to it over the past twelve hours. I guess everyone serves some kind of purpose.

Sunday, March 18 and on.

Today was slightly less exhausting than yesterday. We went to the Vatican this morning, which was incredible. St. Peter's was amazing. Every time we head out to see another church, I always think "do I really need to see ANOTHER church?" but they always wind up being pretty incredible, especially this one.

We also saw the tombs of the popes, which was kind of spooky, in a "so this is a room full of dead Catolic leaders" kind of way. It was really interesting to see people praying at the tomb of the pope of their choice, particularly John Paul II, who had quite a few visitors. We also watched a random baptism - apparently all you have to do to get your kid baptized at the Vatican is make a reservation. You think it would be harder than that.

We were going to go to the Sistine Chapel, but it was closed, so we were going to head over yesterday morning (the 19th) before we picked up Graham at the train station, but after hiking all the way up there, we discovered it was closed again. It was a good thing we didn't try to go this morning, because according to one of the girls who was staying in the hostel after the Irish guy and the girls from the Canary Islands left (all of our new roommates were American) there was a four hour line that wrapped all the way around the building and most of the walls around Vatican city this morning. There was no way we were going to get there. Our train was leaving in a little over two hours.

Yesterday we had done some sightseeing repeats with Graham, who just got in yesterday afternoon, and this morning we took to the train down to Naples. Stephanie and Jon were supposed to meet us in Rome and we were all going to take the train together, but they missed their flight from Belgium. Supposedly they'll be arriving in Naples soon.

Naples seems alright so far - we haven't seen too much of the city, but our hostel is really nice. We're going to head to Pompeii and Vesuvius sometime in the next few days, although we might have to scratch Capri due to weather. Something always has to give, right? The weather was great at the beginning of the week, but it's rapidly going downhill.

I'm still alive, I haven't died from the food, but I am getting a bit jealous of the fact that everyone gets to eat pizza besides me. Oh well.

I'll write more once I've seen more of Naples and the surrounding area, probably when I get back to Prague on Friday, and I'm not on the Euro anymore. I'm starting to take how cheap everything is in prague, for granted, apparently.

Pictures are coming soon.

Watching C-SPAN, except live

Today, we went on a tour of the Czech Parliament for my international reporting class, to see how Czech journalists cover politics. Normally this doesn't happen when the Parliament is in session, but my reporting teacher knew someone, and here we were. It was fascinating, to say the least, because we got to talk to journalists from several different outlets - one of the big TV stations, and CTK (basically the Czech AP or Reuters), so it was cool to see the different approaches they all had.

My favorite part of the whole thing was getting to sit in the gallery and actually watch the parliament in action. I didn't understand anything, because it was all in Czech (and very fast Czech, at that) but it was interesting to observe nonetheless. I managed to see the prime minister, although we didn't get to see his mistress, since she apparently wasn't around right when we were there. I really felt like I was watching C-Span, except it was in Czech, and I was actually there. It was pretty cool.

Where am I going, where have I been?

First off, major points if you get the title reference.

Secondly, my apologies for updating so infrequently. There really isn't much going on here. We've been in Prague for the last few weeks, with the exception of a detour to Dresden, Germany last Saturday. The fact that I can just head over to another country for a day hasn't gotten old. Other than that, midterms have mostly been keeping me in Prague. I only had one test, but I had several papers and articles due over the last week or so, and a presentation in my Varieties of Contemporary European Cultures class. I wrote a paper on my search for gluten-free food in Prague for my Travel Writing class - I figured I may as well write about something that really affected me, and I may as well capitalize off of this somehow.

We're headed to Italy on Friday for spring break. I'm really excited about it. Emily and I will be spending a few days in Rome, and then meeting up with some friends and heading to Naples. We'll also be checking out Capri and Pompeii and Vesuvius. Should be a great week. I have a bit of a cold though, so I'm hoping that goes away. I'd rather not have the flight to Italy be the most miserable two hours of my life if I can help it.

Trying to buy cold medicine today was interesting. I was attempting to get by with cough drops, since Halls are the same in the U.S. as they are here, but I had to give in this morning and go to the pharmacy. The pharmacist spoke very little English, as most people directly outside of the city do. I realized as soon as I got there that I should have looked up the generic names for what I wanted, because the only thing I could ask for was ibuprofen, and I already had a perfectly good bottle of that sitting on my desk in the dorm. I managed to explain (somehow) that I had a cold and needed something for it, and she gave me what I'm guessing is the Czech equivalent of Tylenol Cold or Dayquil. The only thing I know is that it has pseudoephedrin in it and won't make me drowsy. I can't tell if it's working otherwise though.

Today marks two months since I left New York. It's going really fast. The program's half over already. While there's plenty I can't wait to get back to New York, there's a lot I'm going to miss about being here. A lot of people are traveling after the semester ends, but I feel like I'm going to be ready to get back to New York by the beginning of May.

On the other hand, I hear the weather's miserable in New York, and it's been in the 50s here, so maybe I'm not ready to go home just yet.

a camera-less weekend in Vienna

Rachel, Emily, and I headed over to Vienna this past weekend for Emily's birthday. It was the first trip that we planned ourselves, and it went off without a hitch, so I was pretty happy about that.

Overall, I liked the city a lot more than I liked Budapest. I'm not quite sure why, although (among other reasons) I'm sure the fact that we weren't traveling with half of the dorm had something to do with it. The city was beautiful though, and I really liked everything we saw.

We got there Friday afternoon and, after successfully navigating Vienna's public transportation system, checked into our hostel. Considering that we picked it somewhat-randomly off of hostelworld.com, I thought we made a good choice - apparently the one that some people from our dorm went to a few weeks back was run by a prostitute, or something like that. The only thing that I was slightly sketched out about was the fact that we had to pick up our keys at the cafe next door since the hostel staff was only on duty from 9-noon because it was the off-season. The lady who ran the hostel was really nice when we met her though, which is good, because I've heard that some hostel owners can be a little on the creepy side.

After that, we went for a very late lunch/very early dinner and then walked across town to see Parliament and City Hall. However, when we got to Parliament, I went to pull out my camera and discovered that I had managed to leave my memory card in Prague (more on this later.) The building was beautiful though, as was City Hall. In the winter, they turn the area in front of City Hall into an ice skating rink, so there were tons of people around, and it had a really cool atmosphere - it almost made me wish I could skate. After hanging out there for a little while, we got on the tram and went around the Ringstrasse - the street that runs around the Old City of Vienna. We got off about halfway around the ring and spent the next few hours hanging out in a cafe - Vienna has a big coffee/cafe culture, so we had really wanted to do that, and the place we picked wasn't touristy at all, which was really nice. By the time we were done with that, it was pretty late so we just headed back to the hostel.

Saturday was busy. We started off the day with breakfast and by checking out St. Stephen's Church in the center of town, which was pretty cool, and then we stopped and got some ice cream at a place recommended by some people in our dorm. Nutella ice cream is great, and I can definitely see how they wound up there four times over the course of the weekend, because I probably would have done the same thing. After that, we checked out another church, although you couldn't go inside this one, and then we went to the Naschtmarkt, this outdoor greenmarket and flea market that they have on Saturdays. We walked around and got lunch there, and then we headed to the Schonnbrunn, the summer palace of the Hapsburg Monarchs, which was incredible. It was probably my favorite thing on the trip, and I would definitely want to go back there if I ever go back to Vienna, which I definitely want to do at some point. After that, we went to another cafe and then got dinner for Emily's birthday. Sunday we got up early and got back to Prague around 4 in the afternoon.

I think the strangest part of this weekend for me was not having my camera. I was pretty upset that I didn't have a memory card with me at first. If I go anywhere, chances are there's a camera glued to my hand for most of the time - this is what I do, and at the very least, I had wanted some kind of documentation of my weekend - something that said that I was actually in Vienna, that I had brought some sort of physical evidence of it home, but it worked out well, in the end. Rachel said something to me at the beginning about looking at things differently when you aren't looking at them through a camera lens, and by the end, I could see what she meant. It was even a little more relaxing, in a way, although next time I think I'll remember to check that I have every part of my camera before I go anywhere.

Photos from Budapest

I've been a bit remiss in posting these, but here are some photos from this past weekend:


This is the castle we visited the first night after we walked across the Chain Bridge (the one that was in the last post.)




These are from St. Stephen's Basilica, which was easily one of the most beautiful churches I've ever seen.


The Parliament building. I would have really liked to go in.

Eating Burger King in Budapest, and other things I did this weekend (part one)

I now officially have my second and third stamps in my passport - one each for entering and leaving Hungary. We went to Budapest this weekend - my first non-NYU planned weekend excursion, and the second country I've been to in Europe. The city is absolutely gorgeous - I don't know if any picture I took can really describe the things I saw this weekend. I'll post more photos tomorrow, but here's one to start with:



This is the view from the Buda side of the Chain Bridge over the Danube river. The city is split into two parts, appropriately named Buda and Pest (pronounced "Pesht"). Our hostel was in Pest, and it was definitely the more cosmopolitan side of the city - there was far more going on there, so we spent the majority of our time there, but on the first night, we walked over the bridge and up this hill to the castle, where there was a labrynth we went through with oil lamps. It was creepy at first, but a lot of fun.

After, we wandered around the Pest side of the city for a little while, and, strangely enough, wound up at a Burger King. Granted, there were sixteen of us and no one's phones worked, so we needed a meeting place, but it was a little strange to spend part of my first night in Hungary, a city with a great culinary tradition - including far better goulash than the Czech Republic - eating french fries in an American fast food outpost.

Saturday morning, I was dragged out of my bed at our very cute hostel to go see the Parliament building and a church. I was initially against this, as I was exhausted and really didn't feel like I needed to see another church, but it turned out to be the most beautiful one I've ever seen (and by this point, I've seen quite a few chruches.) The Parliament building was great too, although we couldn't actually go see the inside. We thought we would be able to, but then we got there and found it barricaded and guarded by a bunch of cops in riot gear, owing to some riots that had taken place a few months back.

After, we went for lunch and then to a Van Gogh exhibit at a museum and then the House of Terror - a museum documenting the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Hungary. It was fascinating, in a creepy sort of way. They did a good job of being objective about the whole thing, which I'm starting to learn is importing when it comes to tackling history.

The weather was much warmer in Budapest, which was kind of surprising to me, because I didn't think it was that much farther south. Customer service was also better, which I wasn't expecting, because, like the Czech Republic, Hungary is a post-communist country. Prices were pretty comparable to Prague, if a little cheaper, and I found it kind of funny that I was converting prices to Czech crowns as opposed to U.S. dollars, like I do most of the time when I'm here in Prague, although I've started to stop doing that now.

I'm also somewhat glad that I'm not trying to learn Hungarian. It's not an Indo-European language, which made it look far more complicated than Czech already is.

Overall, this weekend was great. Next time, I would much rather travel with less peoplek which is why I'm glad that next weekend's trip to Vienna is going to be much smaller, but it was fun none the less. More pictures will be posted tomorrow.

castles and hiking and monasteries, oh my

This weekend we went on a NYU-sponsored (read: "paid for") trip to Western Bohemia, another area of the Czech Republic. We went to Karlovy Vary, a spa town, and Loket, a town with a historic castle, among other places, and in theory, this should have been a great trip, but our tour guide was a bit of a dictator. He didn't believe in sticking to the planned itinerary (a.k.a the reason I woke up at 7 a.m. on a Friday morning to sign up for this trip) so there was a lot of hiking, because this trip was clearly about what he wanted to do. One of the first things he saw was my favorite though. We hiked up this mountain to see the ruins of this old castle, and that was pretty exciting (minus the couple falls I took at the end, of course).


We hiked up the mountain to see the ruins at the top (mostly obscured by fog here)


Ruins


The view.

I'll post more photos later, but if I don't get around to it, there will definitely be an update about our upcoming trip to Budapest.

"Do you see the end yet?" "Maybe it's just a mirage..."

Next time I go on an 8 km hike, it's going to be my idea, and it's going to be much warmer out.

We went to Western Bohemia this weekend. There will be a real update with pictures when I'm less frustrated with the world.

Frostbite & Bones: the Kutna Hora trip

Today we went to Kutna Hora, a town about an hour and a half outside of Prague. The town dates back to medieval times, so there was an interesting mix of baroque, neo-gothic architecture, with some communist-built buildings thrown in for good measure. It was bitterly cold, so my fingers and toes went numb pretty fast, and the first part of the tour - a visit to a gothic cathedral called St. Barbara's, and a silver mining museum (The town has a really rich history of mining - it initially prospered as the first site of currency production in the Czech Republic) - dragged on a little bit, although everything was still really interesting to see.

St. Barbara's Cathedral. This was built sometime in the 14th century.

After that, we went to lunch at a Czech-Mex restaurant. The fajitas tasted good, but the chips and guacamole consisted of...Doritos. I kid you not. It was an interesting, interpretation, to say the least. We then continued onto the Bone Church, which was the reason I signed up for this trip in the first place. Basically, the church is decorated with the bones of about 40,000 people. I think it's best to let the pictures speak for themselves. (Note: I'm not exactly sure why photobucket/blogger refuses to display the whole photo, or why that photo of the chandelier is sideways. If I can fix it, I will.)

Welcome to the Czech Republic, how may I not help you?

So after my two classes today (International Reporting seems like it's going to be great, and I'm sort of excited for History of Nationalism, but not as much) I set out for a trek out of my little Old Town bubble to the post office where the package I received was being held. I managed to find the post office without a problem, although it was about a 25 minute walk. However, when I got there, I get sent to four different lines before they refuse to actually give me my package because I don't have my passport on me. Apparently the 4 other forms of photo ID I had on me didn't count. The lady behind the counter knew exactly one English word - "passport" - and I can successfuly use about four phrases in Czech (one of them being "ice cream") so I'm now extremely thankful to the person behind me in line who was nice enough to translate. I still left extremely frustrated with Czech bureaucracy, although not as much as I was after I applied for my visa. Oh well. It was an adventure.