My weekend in Disneyland-or Prague-or Prag or Praha. Whatever you prefer to call it?

This last weekend we went to Prague, which is only about 2 hours east of Dresden (where I am living in Germany). We got up suuuper early in the morning on Friday, gathered up, and boarded the bus. It is amazing to me these EU boarder crossings, I was awake (unlike much of my companions) doing some light studying and watched as we went off a ramp on the freeway and suddenly the signs were in a different language. And like that, I had entered yet another sovereign nation.

We arrived at about 9 oclock, changed money (as we had left the Euro zone), and hustled down to the subway to try and make it to our hostel quicky. The Czech way of doing escalators is awesome, I swear they travel at 3 times the speed of the 'normal' escalors, and are much steeper. It legitimetly felt like an amusment ride, and eventhough I used them say 8 or 9 times, it was still just as fun everytime
We eventually made it to the hostel, made our way to our tour guide, took a short tour, and then ended up on a boat tour. Honestly, the weakest point of the trip, but it was a relaxing cruise through the city and it had an all you can eat buffet (paid for by BU). My monster plate on the right-->
(1 of 4). <----View of charles bridge on left After the tour we trooped back to the hostel, which was BEAUTIFULLY located about 3 minutes from the main square and at 13 Euro's a night, a pretty good bargain as well. A few of us went on a quick walk through the city, basically through the main Old town square and then to the Charles Bridge. Old Town and the Charles Bridge are from a Disney kingdom, you really can't convince me otherwise. They are so beautiful, old, and authentic (which is how I would describe Prague btw). I basically just walked around the whole weekend amazed that my eye's kept on being absolutely delighted by what was around the next bend (except when I could see two different McDonald's and One KFC from where I stood on the steet), but thats the Europe that I am living in.
On Charles Bridge-------- (and below)--->
<---Old Town Square
Anyway. The delight of this city was walking around, just looking. On saturday we hiked up to the Prague castle and toured the largest castle in europe. The views of the city from the thing were ridiculus. We saw the changing of the guards at noon, a procession involving a band playing from the windows of the palace and marching guards ceremonially changing duty.







from the palace









<---Chaning of the guards <--Amazing view of castle and city Anyway, we just explored that area essentially all mornign, then met up with others at around noon and kept on exploring, eventually happeing upon a great lookout over the city and the castle, which i just had to take a solo-picture for Mom and Dad (thats what we would call it whenever we would request someone take a picture of just us, ie. "can i get one for mom and dad?" Sunday I got up early and trekked across the city by myself before anyone had seemed to wake up, I was trying to find somewhere for coffee, but other than Starbucks (and their 4 Euro mochas) nothing was open. I eventually hit a very far portion of the city and elected to take the metro back instead of rewalking everything, I meant to go a couple stops past the hostel just to check it out but zoned out and missed my intended stop by like 2 stops. Whoops. So I got a LOT of walking, but it was very fun to see a different part of the city. I submit to you that this is better than disneyland. Clocktower at 8 am



Later in the day I met up with the guys again and we set off to see the jewish sites. We saw several cool meseums, a very interesting old graveyard (from when it was a Ghetto and Jew's were not allowed to bury their dead anywhere else for 300 years and the it became a plateu as they had to bury on top of other graves)
Then we decided to go find the Lennon Wall. Apparently during the communist era when John Lennon was killed in 1980 overnight graffiti appeared on a wall in a tribute, with song lyrics other artistic expressition. Of course the communists painted this over, but then, the next night, again it was spray painted. This continued until 1989 when communism fell and became a focal point for the youth of Prague. Today this tribute is exactly how it was then, un-controlled and very very powerful. When we found it, we were really the only people there. Reading the quotes and stories written, layer upon layer, on the wall literally had shivers running up and down my spine. It seemed the more you looked, the more wisdom and meaning you could derive from the wall. It was beautiful, with poem's song lyrics, signatures of friends, lovers, solo-travelers, multiple languages, all with a common thread, hope an optamism for humanity. Inspired by John Lennon. We spent a good 45 minutes until we basically had to RUN across the city to get dinner and make it back to the bus on time, but it was an experiance that I will definetly not readily forget.




Anyway, I could really go on in more detail about how amazing it was and how cool, but really i have homework; but just know, Praha is a very, very cool city to visit and I wouldnt be surprised if i ended up there again this year. Its only two hours to fantasy land!

some pictures from my time in dresden!

so put up some 120 pictures from my time here in Germany, here is the link!

http://picasaweb.google.com/joelwackerbarth/DresdenGorlitzBerlinMeissen#

Rollerblading after dark

Last night a couple of us decided to try out the Dresden skating at night. A couple of weeks ago I had been walking through the city at night and had seen a police escort of like 8 cars closing streets for hundreds and hundreds of rollerbladers. It looked like a blast and I had to try it.

It happens every Friday night (weather permitting) and so last night we went for it. We showed up and rented skates and pads for 5 euro. Hundreds and hundreds of German's on rollerblades eventually showed up and bam, 9 oclock on the dot (German's don't do the whole late thing), we were rolling behind a truck with speakers blaring music.

I guess I should mention that we had no idea 1) where we were going 2) how far we were going or 3) how long it would take.

I found myself basically skating as hard as possible, completely seperated from the group that I came with. We whoosed through residential streets, past the zoo (which I could tell because I could smell it), and through many parks. Hundred's of children with glowsticks in one hand and moms hand in the other watched from the side as a seemingly endless stream of roller bladers sped by.

I thought this would be a nice relaxing, fun cruise through the city. What we didn't know was that instead it was more of an athletic event. At about 10 the entire group paused, at which point we realized that no, it was not almost over, and yes this was about half way.

My feet and ankels were burning, but honestly there is no way to stop because I had no idea where I was and could not navigate home. So I stood back up, rolled to the front and bam we were moving again. This time I decided to stay in the front, because the music took away some of the intense pain I felt in my feet and in my ankles. We cruised through quiet german streets, on rollerblades and bumping to a strange mix of music that included German techno, american techno, and american pop music. I decided to take the lead for a little, the sight of completely open pavement was a welcome relief from constantly avoiding hundreds of legs and arms all methodically pushing forward. This lasted for 2 minutes until one of the organizors started yelling in German and I realized, probably not good to lead if you can't understand directions.

The event must almost be over. I assured myself over and over. And yet the pavement kept coming.

Finally, a sign I recognized, one that ment we had to be close!

Finally at around 11 oclock we made it back to the park where the whole event started, exausted I had made it back in the top 5 or 6 skaters (not that it was a race, but I still took pride in this). I basically collapsed, throwing my skates off of my throbbing feet, and the blood slowly began to return to my painful extremities.

At this point I found out how long the skate had been and decided maybe no rollerblading for awhile.

25 kilometers.

15.5 miles.

2 ridiculusly sore feet, but an interesting experiance that I will never forget.

2 very cool weekends, with some crappy class in between

2 weeks ago we started our intensive language course, and suddenly we were no longer on vacation anymore. We had to study? What? To be honest, it sucked. German is a really hard language to get the feel for, especially when the teacher uses very very little english, and the textbook is all in German. Stressful pop quizzes basically defined the last 2 weeks of class for me, but THANKFULLY it is finally over and done with. So enough about that. Lets talk about the weekends!

Last weekend (Fri, Sat., Sun) I did 3 separate day trips. On Friday we were given a tour of the Radeberger Pilsner brewery in nearby Radeberger. The tour was pretty good (or about as good a tour of a brewery actually is) and then we got to taste the beer. They have 2 kinds, filtered and unfiltered, and because it all falls under the German purity laws it has nothing but Water, Barley, Hops, and Yeast in it. So the shelf life isnt really long.

German beer is actually much different than I imagined. When we think of Germans and beer, we imagine something like what we have in the US but times like 5 (in terms of selection), but that is really not true. Every region or town basically has its own brewery, and only that beer (with a few others) is sold at every resteraunt and bar in the region. So to get some unique brew, you actually have to GO there to buy it.

Anyway, brewery was good. The next day a group of us got up early a hopped on a train to Gorlitz, a small town towards Poland. We wandered the city and happened upon a medivial street festival. It was very festive and very fun. The city was very pretty and had a bunch of different architectural styles. It felt very non-touristy, and had a very very interesting experiance waiting for us.

As we walked down the city lanes towards the river we began to get excited. Because one of the whole reasons for going to Gorlitz was because it is very unique in that when the worlds powers redrew Europe after WWII they drew the border between Poland and Germany using the river the runs through Gorlitz. The problem was that the city was divided between the two banks and suddenly became two separate countries. The Poles kicked out all the Germans and suddenly we have two cities, but only a river seperating them. We were able to walk down to the river, cross a bridge and the people, language, and general feel changed.

Poland was interesting. It felt very different, though we didnt spend a lot of time there it was a thrill to be able to cross a bridge and enter a differenent country with a different alphabet and different currency.







Sunday we went hiking in the Saxon-Switzerland National park. The hike was nothing difficult, but the town that we started out in was so cute and the sandstone pillars and bridge at the top where breathtaking. All about 20 minutes from the Czech Republic.



I have to go to the store and buy some food and then go to class, but i will try to update on this weekend in Berlin very soon!