Spring Break 2013- Europe!

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Vienna and Auschwitz

The second day in Vienna started off with a visit to the City Hall! It's a beautiful building on the inside and outside.... We snuck through a ribboned off area and came upon a private performance of classical music for a group of school children. After listening for a little while, we continued exploring and found a huge, ornate ballroom.

Stairway in Vienna City Hall

Ballroom in Vienna City Hall

After the City Hall, we walked to an open air marketplace where many vendors have permanent shops. I was hoping to find some authentic sausages, but unfortunately all the vendors were selling mediterranean or arabic foods. We then walked further and found a sausage vendor. We got a spicy sausage and a bratwurst... Here I am with the sausages!

After eating the sausages, we made a pit stop for a bottle of water and I found pre-mixed drinks in the can. Pretty crazy, u can buy a can of Jim Bean and Cola in Vienna (and I'm sure in other European Cities)...

After the pit stop we walked over to Stephanplatz (spelling?) and checked out the huge cathedral. We took an elevator to the top of the tower, but I didn't enjoy it much... Vienna is a beautiful city with HUGE, impressive buildings, but from the sky it doesn't look nearly as cool. For some reason I also felt scared of heights up on top of the cathedral so we came down pretty quickly.

After visiting the cathedral, we stopped for coffee... Had my first expresso... It was... STRONG... Not sure I'll ever have one of those again...

After coffee, we walked to the Freud museum. The Freud museum is his apartment in Vienna where he first began practicing psychoanalytic therapy. Having studied so much of Freud's work, it was incredible to see where he practiced. Unfortunately only the waiting room has the original furniture... His therapy room has been re-created in the London Freud museum, so in Vienna the room was empty with pictures showing you how it was decorated.

Freud's Waiting Room

One of many Freud books on display in his study

At night, we went to the Vienna State Opera House. It was HUGE and ornately decorated on the inside. It was definitely larger than the Prague Opera House, but I don't think it was as beautifully decorated on the inside. We saw The Barber of Seville... It was really cool to see an opera in such a beautiful place, but to be honest it wasn't quite as entertaining as I thought it would be.... Maybe that's a result of being a part of the digital generation....

The next morning we woke up at 5:30am to head to Auschwitz... We took a train to Brno, then a bus from Brno to Auschwitz. The total travel time was 7 hours from Vienna to Auschwitz. We arrived at Auschwitz at 1pm. Auschwitz was really powerful. As a kid, I was fascinated by the holocaust and read a lot of books detailing everything that occurred. Walking around the place that such horrific events occurred is really hard to describe. A lot of times I felt nauseas. You can still see finger nail scratches in the concrete walls of the gas chamber... Auschwitz is actually pretty small when compared with Birkenau (built just a mile or so away from Auschwitz)... After we toured Auschwitz, we went to Birkenau... Driving to the parking lot, we could see just how huge that camp is... It is 7 times the size of Auschwitz... There were 4 gas chambers (there were 2 in Auschwitz) and an organization of barracks/restrooms/workrooms that was far more streamlined than that in Auschwitz...

Empty cannisters of Zyklon-B, the gas used in the gas chamber

What Zyklon-B looked like

Famous sign at entrance to Auschwitz

Baggage left at the railway by prisoners of the camps

Some of the 80,000 pairs of shoes on display

The Birkenau Concentration Camp

Electric Fences at Auschwitz

After leaving Auschwitz, Magda got off the bus earlier than me closer to her hometown, and I rode another 5 hours to Prague. I arrived in Prague at 12:30 where Klara was waiting for me! We took a tram, then missed a connection and ended up taking a cab back to her apartment where I finally got to pass out after a LONG day of travel...

Today I am just hanging out in Prague before taking off at 11:30pm tonight for Moscow, where I'll have an 8 hour layover before my flight to Washington D.C.!

Thursday, March 21, 2013

First Day in Vienna (and the end of Frenstat and Brno)!

Part 1: Frenstat and Brno

After the huge hike in Frenstat, Magda and I walked through her hometown. It's kind of like a small town in America... The majority of the jobs are centered around the coal mining industry in the area, so many people live there throughout their entire lives with everything based on the mine...

Here's a picture of the main town square

and the city hall!

After our walk, we came home and had dinner with her family who lives in Frenstat. It was Magda, her mom, sister, brother in-law and their two kids. We had a great meal which was similar to fondue, except you cook your own meat in teh middle of the table... There was chicken and pork and we each had our own little dishes to place on the 2-level burner... Not only was the food great, but the dinner was fun because Magda is the only person in the family that speaks English... We quickly found out some hilarious false cognates- fuct= so in Czech, but it sounds like they're saying fuck, so we all had a good laugh about that... I had a couple of shots of moonshine with Milan (the brother in-law) and also tried two czech beers... Lots of laughs were had, and even though there was a language barrier, with the translations help, we all became fast friends...

In the morning we took two trains then a bus to the capital of Moravia- Brno.

Czech Countryside

In Brno, I was craving a hamburger so I had a McBacon... It was AWESOME... The bacon took up the entire bottom bun, instead of just two measly criss-crossed strips... Then we walked through the town to get our bearings set... During our walk we came across an old crypt... Check this out.... Pretty creepy....

All the walls were lined with boys and skulls....

Being underground with nothing but bones around you is a pretty powerful experience...

We went into a beautiful cathedral afterwards and then to a modern art museum, then climbed the main hill of Brno where the castle is. It was pretty big but nothing too special.... After the castle tour, we went on a labryinth tour. Back in the day before Brno was a huge city, people created basements to store things underground. Over time many of these basements were connected, creating an underground passageway beneath many areas of Brno. We got to take a tour of the main passageway beneath the former main square in the city.... It was pretty cool to think of how many more passageways there are in the city and what kinds of sneaky things occurred down in these tunnels...

After the tour, we were able to catch an earlier bus to Vienna!

Part 2: Vienna

Last night we took a long walk across the city center to orient ourselves with Vienna. Here are a couple pictures of some of the prominent Vienna buildings at night :)

City Hall

We went to a popular place called 1516 Brewery... It was packed both inside and outside and we were lucky to find a table by the street. I had a pilsner brewed at the restaurant and a spicy sausage! Both were fantastic, and even though I'm not a beer guy, it matched well with the sausage.

Parliament Building

City Hall from another angle

This is the Hofburg Museum lit up at night :)

This morning we walked to Hundervassen (spelling?) house. But on the way we ran into this clock... For each hour a new figurine comes out and changes the time, then at noon, all 12 characters get together for awhile....

After that quick photo opp, we got to the crazy ass house.... It was crazy... Just take a look...

All the windows and floors are uneven... It was created by a famous architect and is one of the most popular tourist places here. You're not allowed to go into the building, but we found a coffee shop on the second story that has a crazy not-level floor, like the rest of the apartment complex.

We then went to the famous Albertina Art Museum and saw some Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt, Chagall, among many other famous artists.... Afterwards we walked over to the Austrian National Library, where Hitler delivered his infamous 1938 address acknowledging that Austria had decided to become a part of the Nazi Empire.

http://gatesofvienna.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/anschluss3.jpg

Take away the cars and imagine 250,000 people cheering wildly... Pretty surreal to vist this place I've seen many times in history books

After checking out the National Library, we went into a different wing of the library that is probably the most beautiful I've ever seen...

(No idea why King Louis was chillin' in the library too)

They had a couple of hidden doorways

There were a couple really cool old globes as well

After the library we went to the Natural History Museum... They had a HUGE collection of animals, reptiles, insects, etc. They also had a mechanical velociraptor that moved around... One of the most awesome things about the museum was how beautiful it was on the inside... Even if it had been empty without any exhibits, it would have been a great place to visit... Check out the pictures below...

Total mileage walking over the last 3 days:

Frenstat, March 19th: 5.90 miles, 9.90km

Brno & Vienna, March 20th: 7.74 miles, 12.39km

Vienna, March 21st: 8.14 miles, 13.02 km

Total: 21.78 miles / 34.86km

Because my legs are about to fall off, I'm going to bed.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Leaving Prague, currently in Frenstat!

Monday was my last day in Prague! We walked through the Jewish Quarter of the city... They charged more admission for the Jewish Synagogue than for anything else in the whole city (even the Castle!!) so we decided not to go into the Synagogue to see the cool grave site that the area is known for.

After the Jewish Quarter, we walked back up to the castle and had a traditional Czech lunch for just $7 that included Soup, an entree, and dessert! A full 3 course meal... for $7! Awesome!

We later walked back across the Charles Bridge over to the dancing houses (pictured below... The house on the left is supposed to be the girl leaning into the guy on the right). After the dancing houses, we went to an English Bookstore and I bought one of the most popular Ernest Hemmingway books that I have yet to read, "For Whom the Bell Tolls", we then returned to the apartment in Prague and packed our things for the trip to Frenstat!

I was going to add pictures in the order that I'm talking about everything, but unfortunately the pictures went in a crazy order when I uploaded them, so I will just write here then add captions beneath the pictures :)

It started to rain as we were leaving Prague, so we walked in the mist to the train station, then boarded a train for Frenstat. I'm so glad we took the train because it gave me a chance to see the countryside of the Czech Republic. It reminded me a lot of going through rural areas of Virginia where there's farmland but not much else! Snow started falling heavily as we rode the train, so suddenly the countryside was covered in white and was absolutely beautiful.

We got stuck in the train cabin with gypsies! They talked VERY loud and seemed completely oblivious to the fact that there were other people in the cabin. To combat their noise, we watched a movie without headphones in and the volume turned up :D

Magda's brother in-law picked us up from the train station in Frenstat and took us back to her Mom's apartment. At the apartment she had prepared a HUGE feast for us! It was chicken and pork schnitzel (that's what they call it here, it's more of breaded chicken/pork, but the breading has egg and flour in it, IT WAS AMAZING!!!!!), potatoes and salad.

We were exhausted from the long travel day, so we went to bed and woke up early this morning to go on a hike! We took the bus to the bottom of the mountain (which is also a Ski-Resort) and then rode the chairlift all the way to the top. It was snowing like crazy at the top! I was completely unprepared and just had my running shoes to hike in pretty deep snow (at some places it was about 18 inches deep)... After a mile, we reached the summit where there is a huge statue for the Slavic god Radegast, who happens to have a beer named after him!

We walked a mile back to the Ski Village and had tea in the only restaurant open to warm up (because the resort is currently closed for skiing). Then we walked 4 miles down the mountain all the way to the bottom. We ran into a baby mole on the trail. It was crazy, we were hte only people on the entire mountain... We had to make our own tracks through the snow... I thought I was going to lose a toe or two by the time we got down, but my feet warmed up quite nicely after we got back to the apartment.

Upon our return, Magda's mom had cooked another feast! This time it was pork inside of latkas with ham and green onion... It was SO GOOD (even though I think I've probably gained 10 pounds from these last two meals alone).... And now we're back at the apartment, hanging out until we go to dinner with the rest of the family tonight :) Enjoy the pictures!