Czech Me Out!

Lately I've been traveling quite a bit.  OK, not huge amounts, but enough to say that this Sunday spent at home was extremely relieving.  Last weekend I was in Hamburg visiting friends after finishing that terrible exam (which by the way, through some miraculous maneuvering, I managed to PASS!) and then returned Monday for our first week of classes.  I like my classes- I have a finance class and a politics class.  This may sound like a rather light load of classes, but please remember I did 150 hours of intensive German class for the last 6 weeks, and then an additional 50 hours of culture class as well, so I've already accumulated 10 credits towards this semester.  Clearly, I'm doing quite alright.  But yes, I find my classes pretty interesting and not too stressful- the perfect semester I'd say.  But anyways, back to Hamburg.  I spent the weekend at my friend Chris' house with him and his family.  I hung out with Sarah and Patrick this weekend too, and we basically relaxed the entire weekend.  I finally managed to make the journey to my first European Ikea; they're like little villages here.  It's so creepy.  But yet so enticing.  I'm not sure I could really describe it... it's one of those things you'd have to experience yourself.  Here are some pictures from last weekend in Hamburg; we went to a part of the city called "Hafen city" which translates to "Harbor City."  I haven't seen it since I was first in Hamburg 4 years ago, and it has been basically redeveloped and touched up.  I loved it!

Here are the rest of the photos :

http://picasaweb.google.com/113919949355390501172/20101018?authkey=Gv1sRgCOuG77PR-r7qswE&feat=directlink

On Wednesdays I only have class until 12, so Nichola, Christina, Kayte and myself (my girlfriends from here) took a random train to Heidelberg with our free student passes for the day.  It was about a 1.5 hour train ride in total to reach Heidelberg, and once we got there we found the weather to be absolutely freezing, windy, foggy and raining.  Absolute crap for seeing any of the city.  We still wandered around a bit and eventually got some Chinese food, then made the trek back home to Marburg.  Basically it was a waste of a trip, but in reality we probably wouldn't have done anything at home in Marburg either, and it was free, so eh.

 
The main travel of this blog section, however, was Prague, Czech Republic.  I was there only about 2 years ago in the summer with my family and a school group, however we were given Prague as the destination to our blind booking trip.  A blind booking is where you pay for a flight without knowing your eventual destination and then once you pay you are given a destination.  We got Prague and yep.  I can say that Prague is a city in which you really only need to visit once in your life, but I'm not saying it was a terrible trip.  I went with 5 of my girlfriends from my program here and we stayed in a small hostel right in the old city of Prague.  The Czech People really are not hospitable to English speaking people however.  They're extremely rude (not all, but majority) so it was kind of frustrating.  Our Taxi driver was cursing at us in Czech because we weren't getting out of his cab fast enough and wanted to use a coupon that HIS company gave us to use.  Whatever.  Strange people.  But yes.  We did everything for free; basically walking around and taking photos of the city.  I finally saw a wall which is a tribute to John Lenon.  The story goes that when John Lenon was killed, people would draw tributes to him on this wall and then the police would paint over them.  However, the next morning the tributes would be back up again.  So eventually they just stopped covering them up and now this huge wall of tributes stands there.  It kind of reminded me of the paintings on the Berlin Wall.  Also, I liked the "lock bridge" right next to the wall; couples come to this bridge and put locks on the bridge representing their love for each other and then throw the locks into the river.  It's so cute!!!  I'm running late for dinner, so here is the link to all the photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/113919949355390501172/20101023?authkey=Gv1sRgCM6EpaGvjqTgqgE&feat=directlink

The flights there and back were only an hour, but it was a 2 hour train ride to the airport.  Clearly, with being such a cheap flight, it wasn't the nicest air travel in my life, but it worked.  The landings were all kind of rough, but eh.  Can't complain I suppose.  Well I'm off folks.  6 weeks until I see you all again.