Travel Adventures Continued...

The journey to Prague was definitely a traveling experience. Well, we knew it would take six hours from Salzburg, but we just didn't know we would have to get on four different trains. Our first train in Austria was nice and spacious but as we went further into the Czech Republic, the more dirty and scary the trains were. On our last train, there were clear signs in the bathroom telling us to not drink the tap water. Despite that, we arrived in Prague around 10:30 and then needed to find our way to the hostel. We didn't have any coins in Czech krones to get metro passes and everything was closed, so we had to take a taxi.


We arrived safe and sound at our hostel and went to bed peacefully until... a man staying in our hostel room started snoring (We stayed in a co-ed room). This is not some kind of quiet snoring that you can ignore if you put the pillow over your head. It was like Hillary and I were sleeping in a room with some kind of wild animal! So I got up and when I came back, Hillary was awake. We didn't know what to do or if we should wake him up, so... We  sat there giggling at three in the morning, trying to sleep with two pillows over our heads. Eventually we fell back asleep, and there is wonderful video commentary of Hillary and I describing the whole situation in detail.


The next day, we did some sight-seeing. We went on the Charles Bridge and visited Old Town Square. It was nice to see that the prices were a bit cheaper (sandwiches were $4 instead of $9 in Copenhagen). While in the square, we went up in a building to get the "best view of Prague." The building is famous for the astronomical clock that hangs on the outside of it. 

Every hour a man comes out of a window at the top of the building to play the trumpet. Hillary and I thought it might be a rare occasion, so we stayed to watch. We later found out that he does that every hour. It's not really anything spectacular, yet crowds of tourists gather every hour.

During the day, we found a quaint, little cafe and enjoyed cheese bagels, tea and hot chocolate. It was richest hot chocolate I have ever tasted. It tasted like I was drinking Hershey's chocolate syrup. On that topic in Copenhagen, at some cafes if you order a hot chocolate, they will often fill a glass with warm milk and then drop a stick with a chocolate cube into the glass.

On Friday, we stumbled onto a market in Old Town Square. We had some interesting with different cheeses and meats and enjoyed the view. It was nice to walk around with only a light coat. We then went on a boat ride around Prague and later found the Lennon wall.

That was probably my favorite part of visiting Prague besides the beautiful architecture.

Now my goal of this blog is to give the good, bad, and the ugly so here it is: Hillary and I unfortunately got a bit of food poisoning on Friday night. We suspect the pizza!

Prague Castle.

On Saturday, I headed on my way to Rome...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Today, I'm extremely thankful for wonderful, family, friends and travels.

Here are a few updates before I continue writing about Prague and Italy:

-It's freezing and snowing in Copenhagen (in November!) As sad as I am to be leaving in a few weeks, I'm not sure if I could take this weather for four straight months. It's is only light out from nine to four, and it has been a bit depressing. Today, it snowed all day. I woke up in the dark and came home in the dark. I don't know how the Danes do this every winter!

Yes, people are still biking in the snow.

A ridiculously expensive cappuccino I drank to warm me up.

-The other day my host family surprised me with some traditional Danish Christmas food. It's fun seeing all of the streets in central Copenhagen decorated with signs and lights. My host family loves talking about their Christmas traditions. The traditional meal pictured below is pork, regular potatoes and then potatoes dipped in caramel and sugar. Typically, Danes will eat goose or duck as well. For dessert, they make a special cake (I'm not sure of the name), and there's an almond in the cake. Whoever gets the piece with the almond in it gets a small present. I loved that idea!

Christmas dinner with my host family.

Goodbye, Salzburg, Hello, Prague!

We spent our last half-day in Salzburg visiting the fortress. It’s a main attraction in Salzburg and can be viewed from anywhere in the city. We took some beautiful shots of Salzburg from the top, and we had to take a train just to get up there. I thought, “Oh we can just walk up! Save some money! But Hillary wisely told me it was too steep, scary, and we would be exhausted.”

A view from the fortress.

We also went on a horse-drawn carriage ride. I have been telling Hillary I wanted to go on one in Copenhagen for months, and we finally decided to go. We took a relaxing, scenic trip around the city.

Then, it was getting late, so we needed to head to the train station, buy our tickets to Prague and get on the train. In a momentary lapse of judgment, we decided to walk to the train station with our backpacks and suitcases. We followed the map for about thirty minutes when we realized we did not know where we were going. Then we dragged them another twenty minutes in the right direction. It was so frustrating! Words of advice: Just get a bus pass to get to the train station in Salzburg. So we arrive at the train station to find that our train has just left. We missed it by 10 minutes. We bought our tickets and found that we couldn’t leave until 4:00. So what do we do with two hours of free time?? … Have ice cream sundaes!!!

At least it was beautiful while we were lost!

My Four Hours in Germany

When Hillary and I were planning our trip, we wanted to go to Switzerland to do some kind of adventure sports like skydiving or paragliding, but sadly, we could not fit that trip into our journey. We walked into our hostel in Salzburg and saw a brochure for adventure sports in Salzburg, and we got so excited. We went up to the main desk, and the lady called to see if the weather was nice enough to go paragliding, but it wasn’t. We tried the next day, and we still couldn’t go. Now, Hillary and I have decided that we have unfinished business in Salzburg and must return one day.

We found a tour to the Bavarian mountains in Germany and decided to go for it. Salzburg is extremely close to the Austrian-German border, so our tour guide picked us up and we drove right across it. The day was very foggy, and we did not get the best views but stopped at some quaint, pretty German towns. Our tour guide was another interesting character. His wife treated him terribly, took his money and kicked him out of their home, and he decided to visit Austria. He met an Austrian woman and has been living there ever since with her. He was nice and recommended a restaurant where we could get traditional Austrian food for dinner. We had a wonderful feast of schnitzel, soup, potatoes, and salad. The lady was very patient with us since the whole menu was in German, and we did not know what half of the food was. In case you don’t know what schnitzel is, here’s the wikipedia quick link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnitzel.

That night, Hillary and I decided to check out the nightlife in Salzburg. Well, there was not too much since it was a Tuesday, but we happened to stumble onto a salsa club. We had to go in and check it out. We walked in, and there were all these couples doing complicated salsa moves. Hillary and I headed to the dance floor, and she taught me a little.

One of the places we stopped in Germany.

Delicious soup at dinner.

Schnitzel.

"You Skip Like Maria. I'll Make Pictures."

So after a long day of rearranging our plans and visiting the Leopold Museum, Hillary and I arrived in Salzburg around 7. We encountered out first dilemma as soon as we got off the train. We could not figure out how to buy a ticket for the bus. After debating for a bit, we asked a young girl who spoke English, and she told us to buy it on the bus. We tried to speak with the bus driver, but he just said he could not speak English and refused to talk with us. We stayed on the bus until our stop without paying for a ticket! It’s not something I am proud of, but the bus driver refused to communicate with us. While we were on the bus, we had our first chance to see beautiful and magical Salzburg. The mountains are incredibly close. It was like we were in a fairytale land. We arrived at our hostel and got settled in our room.  

Day 1: The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music

Salzburg is where The Sound of Music was filmed and the real story took place about the Von Trapp family. As Hillary and I were waiting in the lobby for the tour to pick us up, all of a sudden a man in a green hat with a red feather and green vest walks into the hostel. Yes, that was our tour guide. He looked like one of the Von Trapp children from the movie. We went on the tour with five other girls in a van, driving through the hills of Salzburg and stopping at all of the sites where the movie was filmed. Hillary and I of course sat in front right next to the tour guide to get the best view and sing along with him. He was incredibly animated and led us through the entire soundtrack. He also seemed to really love his job. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in Salzburg, take in the scenery every day leading tours while singing with Julie Andrews? One of my favorite parts was when we skipped through the hills, and our tour guide said, “You skip like Maria. I’ll make pictures.” He took pictures of each of us posing in front of the famous gazebo from “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” as well. That evening we watched The Sound of Music at our hostel. They play it every night at 8. Hillary and I had a great time laughing, crying, and singing (Yes, there were young children in the room watching it with us and laughing at how much we loved the film.)

We met a girl from Colombia at our hostel who laughed at us for being so “American” when going on The Sound of Music tour. She said, “Americans always want to visit, and they are so excited about going on The Sound of Music tour.”

Later in the day, we explored more of Salzburg and found a beautiful park. We decided to test our gymnastics skills and go on the playground. Well, we are definitely not as flexible as we used to be. We had a strange encounter with some local teenagers. They came up to us and asked if we were American. They proceeded to imitate how Americans speak with some kind of harsh southern accent, and I kindly told them, “That is not the way that all Americans speak.”

The view of the fortress from our hostel.

Our tour guide pointed out that Maria skips through this garden and taps the had of these gnomes when she is running through.

I don't know who that person running is, but I'm pretending that it is Maria.

Sixteen Going on Seventeen Gazebo.

The Von Trapp home in the background.

We stopped at a cafe in the mountains to enjoy some apple strudel.

When will you realize... Vienna waits for you

So I’m back in Copenhagen, and while my host family greeted me with a small birthday celebration to brighten my long trip back, I wish I were still traveling, roaming winding European streets and exploring new cities every two days. My sixteen days of traveling were filled with ups and downs, but it was an overall incredible and positive experience. I’m going to do my best to include everything, so be aware that this is going to be long.

Hillary and I left for Vienna on Friday night with a few minor glitches. First of all, we could not find each other in the metro station. You may be thinking how is that possible, but really it took us ten minutes to find each other before we could even get to the airport. Hillary and I like to say that we can never do anything “normally.” It is always more complicated and our adventures somehow turn into a comedy (If you need more elaboration, refer back to my Bornholm biking post). Well, we finally found each other and headed to the airport. To our surprise, there were two other girls heading to Vienna from our program. We just can’t seem to get away from DIS students. They’re everywhere.

So we arrive in Vienna at about 10:00 at night, and the lady at the information desk tells us to take bus number two. We walk outside in the dark and see bus number two and head on our way. I am not going to lie, we were not positive that was the right bus to take, but we got there just fine! Our hostel in Vienna was great. Hillary and I had a double room. It was really clean and comfortable.

When we woke up the next morning to pay for our rooms, I recognized one of the kids staying in another room from Denison. I saw my friend Ryan, who I hadn’t seen since the summer at a random hostel in Vienna. What a small world! We went with him and his friends to the Imperial Palace. The garden outside was beautiful. Hillary and I took so many pictures of parks and trees while on the trip. We kept joking that people would see our photos and think we didn't leave the U.S.

We then went to a market and had an interesting experience buying dried fruit. When we told the vender we were from America, he started screaming, “America! Obama Barack! Barack Obama!” over and over again, proclaiming that he loved America. It was a new experience being in a country where most people did not speak English. In Denmark, I am spoiled by the fact that everyone knows English, and while Hillary and I were traveling we had some strange, interesting, and funny encounters with non-English speakers (More on that later.)

The next morning, we had a small situation with our itinerary for the trip. Hillary’s mother emailed us, saying that we shouldn’t go to Paris because there was a strike planned for the following Thursday, and we might not be able to make our flights. Hillary and I were a little worried since we were supposed to meet Eleanor in Paris and had no way of contacting her. Finally, after much debate, we decided not to go to Paris and instead, spend more time in Prague and Salzburg. We canceled our flights but could not get refunds. We spent the rest of our visit marveling at beautiful works of art at the Leopold Museum and then having delicious marble cake and expressos at the Leopold Cafe (side note: I did not know that when you order an expresso, you literally get a small half cup of coffee. Just a heads up before you order one). Later in the day, we moved on to the next leg of our journey… SALZBURG!!!! We took a train. I enjoyed Vienna, but I think I liked Salzburg a little more.

Our hostel in Vienna. Also, I forgot to add this. On the second night, they had to move us to a different room, but it didn't have heating. They offered to let us stay in the room for 5 euro each, and then they bought two heaters for the room. It was nice and toasty and only five euros for each of us. We were very lucky! Hillary and I bought them some chocolate and left it for them as a thank you gift.

One of the beautiful parks we walked past.

A photo of the Imperial Palace.

The beautiful park outside of the Imperial Palace.

Hillary holding our delicious gelato. (This was the start of my love affair with gelato during the travel break. More on that later.)

In front of the library.

One of the statues in front of the Museum Quarter.

Views of Vienna from the museum.

Marble cake from the Leopold Cafe.