Rome - Day Three

This morning when we woke up it was pretty cloudy out and the weather forecast was predicting rain so we planned on walking around to different churches and places where we could be inside most of the day. But when we walked outside it was cloudy but not raining so we decided to take advantage of it and head over to the Colosseum. We walked around the outside a little bit and over to the entrance before it started to drizzle so we got in line to go inside. As we were waiting it started to pour but we were inside of the Colosseum at this point so we just had to wait out the rain before walking around the interior. After spending some time in the gift shop and walking around the covered area the rain started to slow down so we could go check out the interior of the arena. We walked out onto the top level of the Colosseum and from there you could see all the way around. The floor of the arena was no longer intact and the network of passages underneath was exposed. The structure looked bigger on the inside than I thought it would from the outside and although the seating was no longer intact either you could see the slope of were it once was it was cool to imagine the place filled with spectators watching gladiators fight each other and animals on the arena floor.

After spending some time inside of the Colosseum we headed out and took some time to walk around the Arch of Constantine before heading to Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. Palatine Hill is said to be the hill where the twin brothers Romulus and Remus were taken care of by a shewolf before they grew up and Romulus killed his brother before founding the city of Rome. There were lots of ruins on the hill including the House of Augustus which we walked through. From the Hill we headed over to the Roman Forum which was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. The forum is a large area filled with the remains of different temples and churches. There were several temples that still had a few of their columns intact and you could begin to make out what they may have once looked like. The floor of the forum was filled with fallen walls and pieces of columns that had once been part of those temples. We happened to come upon a tour guide who was giving a free English tour of the Forum who we followed around for a while. One of the most interesting things that he pointed out was the Column of Phocus that was still standing that he explained the Pope at the time traded to the emperor Phocus in exchange for the Pantheon, turning the Pantheon from a pagan temple into a Catholic Church and explaining why it is still in such great condition today.

When we reached the end of the Forum it started to rain harder so we started to head over to the Campigdolio, a public square designed by Michelangelo. The space was smaller than I had expected and there was a 12 pointed star designed into the floor of the trapezoid shaped piazza and a statue of Marcus Aurelius in the center. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard at this point so we couldn't spend much time here and headed down the ramped stair from the piazza. Walking down from the piazza it was hard to miss the enormous Monument of Vittorio Emanuele II to the right. The huge white monument seemed a little out of place and almost overbearing although it was cool to the see the Italian flags blowing in the stormy weather. We walked past the huge monument and over to Trajan's Forum next door where we hung out under some trees while the rain slowed down. With the weather being lousy we spent the rest of the day doing some souvenir shopping and stopping in to see some churches. We saw one church, Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, designed by Bernini, the architect and sculptor who designed the piazza at the Vatican and whose tomb we saw in the Santa Maria Maggiore. The interior had large marble columns and was heavily ornamented with sculpture. Another church that we stopped in that I really liked, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontana named for the four fountains at the corners of the intersection where the church sits, was designed by the architect Borromini. It had a small, simple white interior and an oval dome in the ceiling ornamented with a geometric pattern. One symbol that repeated throughout the church was a blue and red equal armed cross. The last church we stopped at was Santa Maria della Vittoria, which housed the famous Bernini sculpture the Ecstasy of St. Theresa.

Our hostel offered a free pasta dinner on weekdays so we decided to get some red wine and take advantage of that for dinner. We hung out at the hostel for a while before going out to the Julius Caesar Pub, a bar recommended by the receptionist at our hostel.

Vatican City - Rome Day Two

On Thursday we woke around 7am so we could head over to the Vatican by 8 since it can get pretty crowded and the lines are known for being notoriously long. We took the metro, one of only two metro lines in Rome, since it was on the other side of the river and when we got there waking up early paid off and the place was pretty empty. The piazza in front of St. Peter's was unfortunately half filled with chairs and the obelisk in the center was blocked off because they were doing some construction in front of it but the spaces in front of the two colonnades were open. The colonnades are formed by four rows of columns that are in the shape of semi circles on each side to close in the piazza. There was a point on both sides of the obelisk that you could stand on and when you looked at the colonnade all of the columns would line up and it would look like just one row. We spent some time in the piazza walking around and taking pictures before deciding to head into St. Peter's Basilica.

We had to pass through metal detectors and there were signs warning against wearing revealing clothing inside. When I walked in I immediately noticed just how big the place was and how heavily ornamented every part of the walls and ceilings were. There was gold decoration and paintings everywhere and the statues that were everywhere were bigger than any I had seen in a church before. There were statues of angels, St. Peter, and several popes. The symbol for the Vatican, a pope's headpiece above two crossed keys, was tiled in the floor and also carved into the walls in many places. This symbolizes the keys to heaven that were given to St. Peter. Throughout the Basilica there were several tombs of previous popes and wooden confessional booths. In the center of the church there was a large baldicchino, a tall structure covering the altar, designed by Bernini with large twisting columns made of bronze. There was a small side chapel to the left of the baldicchino were there was a mass going on.

After spending about two hours just walking around the enormous Basilica, we finally decided to head out and go see the Sistine Chapel. We went over to the Vatican museums, checked our bags and went in. They have several collections of art and at first we just wanted to go see the Sistine Chapel so we followed the signs and it took us through a series of several rooms to get there. There was a room of tapestries, a room of maps, and several rooms covered from floor to ceiling with art. One painting that I liked being able to see was the School of Athens by Raphael. It was painted on a wall in one of the rooms and it depicted many of the ancient philosophers, with Plato and Aristotle in the center, on a set of stairs interacting with each other, each representing their own ways of thinking. Raphael even painted a small self portrait of himself among them.

After passing through several more rooms of art, mostly religious art of all types, we finally reached the Sistine Chapel. The chapel was rectangular in plan and had benches along both sides for people to sit on and look at the frescoes along the walls and the ceiling and back wall painted by Michelangelo. Pictures were not allowed inside and guards were walking around threatening to throw people out when they were caught with their cameras out. The paintings on the ceiling depicted the Creation with one of God creating light and dark, creating earth, creating man, creating women, and a few others. The painting on the back wall of the chapel, also by Michelangelo, called the Last Judgment depicts the apocalypse and souls rising up to be judged by God. Among the frescoes along the walls there were some that depicted the life of Moses as well as one that showed Jesus giving the keys to heaven to St. Peter. There were so many details to look at inside of the chapel that we must have spent over an hour just sitting in there and looking at all of the different scenes that were depicted.

After spending time in the chapel we walked through a few of the other galleries that were in the museum. There was a large garden and courtyard called the Pinecone Courtyard outside between the galleries where there was a sculpture of a really large gold sphere with a smaller sphere inside. The spheres were made of bronze and parts of their surfaces were missing to reveal their pieces inside. We also walked over to the Octagon Courtyard which had several sculptures as well. By this time it was later in the afternoon and realizing that we only had about an hour of daylight left, we left Vatican City and were on our way to the Piazza del Popolo.

We took the metro to the piazza and when we arrived we walked through the small courtyard entrance where the Santa Maria del Popolo church sits. We then crossed the busy street that separates the small courtyard from the giant piazza. In the center of the piazza sits a giant obelisk with a lion fountain at each corner of the base. There were also steps at the base of the obelisk where several people were sitting and hanging out. At the opposite end of the piazza from where we entered there were two twin churches, the Santa Maria dei Maricoli and the Santa Maria in Montesanto. We hung out at the piazza for a little while as it got dark and then headed back to the hostel to rest before dinner.

Although it was hard for us to remember because they don't celebrate it in Italy, today was Thanksgiving so we decided to go out to eat and have a good meal. We went to a restaurant called Al 39 that we walked to from our hostel. We had red wine again and bruschetta for appetizers. In Italy they have a first course, usually of pasta, and then a second course, usually of meat, for dinner so since it was Thanksgiving we all ordered a first and second course. I had farfalle pasta with shrimp for my first and then a pizza with shrimp for my second. The food was good and we stayed until midnight just talking and drinking wine.

Arriving in Rome

On Wednesday, November 26, John and I left Prague at on a flight to Rome and arrived around 2:30. We took the 35 minute train from Leonardo Da Vinci Airport to the center of the city where we were staying at Alessandro Downtown Hostel. We had a less than five minute walk from the train station to our hostel and we checked in and after about 20 minutes or so our other friends from studio who had come into Rome on a different flight, Ryan and Miller, showed up at the hostel too. We unpacked our things and headed out to try and see something before it got dark. One of the closer churches to our hostel was the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. There was a large column in the piazza in front of the church and a large obelisk in the piazza behind it. We went inside and the church was very different than any church I have been in Europe so far as it had a flat, gold and coffered ceiling. There were columns down both sides and the floor had a very pretty swirling mosaic. The whole place was very dark and you had to pay 50 cents to light up the ceiling, the walls, and the apse, the area behind the altar. Underneath the altar there were two sets of stairs that led to a small area where behind two small doors we learned was the crib that belonged to baby Jesus. The tomb of Bernini, the architect who designed many structures, churches and sculptures in Rome, including the colonnade at the Vatican, was also located in the church. There were also several confessional booths were you could the feet of people who were confessing their sins to a priest sticking out of the booths.

When we came out of the church it was already dark but we were pretty close to the Colosseum so we decided to walk there to see it lit up at night. To get there we walked through a large park where we saw our first Roman ruins. Around Rome there are ruins everywhere, in parks and along the streets, it is not hard to stumble upon the foundations and walls of a temple or a house that is thousands of years old. At the end of the park we could see the Colosseum and as we approached it we saw how big it really is. There are some parts of the walls that have been rebuilt but for the most part the original structure is still standing. We walked around the whole building, reaching the Arch of Constantine on the other side and seeing a small glimpse of the Roman Forum and Palantine Hill.

By this time we were all pretty hungry so we went to eat at a place in Ryan's Let's Go guide book called Luzzi. We got there to find a small Italian restaurant where we sat down and ordered some red wine and bruschetta. I don't typically like to drink wine but after drinking beer so often in the Czech Republic I figured it would be a good time to try some wine while I was in Italy. The bruschetta were really big and very good. I also had some lasagna which was also very good. After dinner we walked around, heading back to the area where the hostel was before stopping to get some gelato. We had heard stories that good gelato with natural ingredients had a more gray color then artificially flavored gelato, which is brightly colored, so we looked around for the dullest gelato we could find before stopping to get some and it was really good. So far the food in Italy did not disappoint us.

We headed back to the hostel and had one of the guys working at the desk recommend a good place to go drink a beer and he sent us to a bar called Druid's, right behind S. Maria Maggiore. There were several soccer games on that night and Rome was playing so the bar was pretty crowded. It was nice to have some selection as they had about five or so beers on draft, typically in Prague there is one beer on tap in every restaurant. So I drank a Carlsberg and we sat and watched the soccer game and Rome ended up winning.

Snow + Plzen

We had plans to go to Plzen, a city about an hour west of Prague, on Saturday to visit the Pilsner Urquell factory. There were about 14 of us going on the English tour but we split into smaller groups to make traveling there easier. On Saturday morning, after waking up to see it snowing outside, John, Danielle, Kyle, Paul and myself took our time leaving to get to the bus station since our tour did not start until 4:00pm and it only took an hour to get there. We got to the station at noon trying to catch the noon bus but it was sold out so we bought tickets for the 1:00pm bus, grabbed some lunch, and then jumped on the bus and were in Plzen by 2:00. We were dropped off at the opposite end of the city from the brewery which worked out because we had two hours to walk through town before the tour. We bought our tickets for the return journey to Prague and planned on leaving Plzen on the 6:00 bus at a station closer to the brewery.

The town was really pretty and it was nice to be outside because it was snowing on and off, even though it was really cold. We walked by the second biggest synagogue in Europe which was awesome because now I have now seen #1 and #2 after seeing the biggest one in Budapest! Of course it was Saturday so we could not check out the inside but the outside was pretty nice. From there we headed towards the brewery and came upon St. Bartholomew Cathedral which was in the middle of a really large square. We went into the church and also climbed the stairs up the church tower. From the top we could see all of Plzen with snow on the rooftops and we spotted the brewery where we were headed. After coming down, we headed to the brewery and arrived there to find the jubilee gate at the entrance, the symbol of the factory. We were a little early so we roamed around the gift shop and also got some hot chocolate at the huge restaurant that was downstairs; apparently it is the biggest restaurant in the Czech Republic.

The tour started at 4:15 and we were not allowed to take pictures unless we paid for a photo pass so I don't have any pictures from inside. Our tour guide took us to the bottling factory first where we saw several assembly lines that washed recycled bottles, moved bottle caps, examined bottles, filled bottles, and we also saw the workers down below making sure everything ran smoothly. From here we watched a video about the beginning of the Pilsner Urquell brewery and how the founder of the brewery invented the pilsner style of beer. We learned about the hops, barley, and malts that go into the beer and saw the old factory where the beer used to be made. At this factory they make Pilsner Urquell, Gambrinus, Kozel, and the non alcoholic beer Radegast. He then took us to the factory where they currently make the beer and we saw the huge copper vats where the beer is heated and stirred. From here we walked through part of a huge network of cellars that used to house the kegs of beer before they were ready to be sold. This is where we got to taste some of the Pilsner Urquell beer before it is filtered. The beer was pretty good and this concluded the tour. At this point we realized that it was 5:45 and our bus was picking us up at 6:05 at a bus stop that we weren't quite sure the location of and we still wanted to go to the gift shop. We quickly scanned the gift shop and picked some things out and gave ourselves about 10 minutes to run through the snow to find the bus stop. We are getting pretty good at frantically running to catch buses so John, Danielle, Kyle, Paul, and I ran through the streets for about 10 minutes in the direction we were pretty sure was right and finally arrived at the bus stop to see the bus coming our way. The ride home was just long enough to take a short nap and they also gave us hot chocolate.

We got back to Prague at 7:00 and decided to get some food at a Mexican place at St. Wenceslas Square. The food was really good and when we came out of the restaurant it was snowing pretty hard and there was a lot of snow on the ground, much more than I am used to in North Carolina. We threw snow balls all the way home to the pension.

Figure Drawing + Weekend in Prague

After missing Drawing class on Thursday afternoon to leave for Budapest I had to make it up and go to the Monday morning class. When I arrived at class I remembered that we were going to be doing figure drawing and our teacher had previously described the figure model that she was going to have come in as "old" and "quite fat." We quickly found out that these things were both true as class started and our model was a 67 year old lady who was pretty chubby. I had never done figure drawing before and it was actually a little easier than I expected. We had to draw the naked lady in several different poses for almost the whole three hours of the class. I then had to do this again for three hours in class on Thursday too. Needless to say by the end of it I was ready to get out of class.

On Monday night John and I really wanted to see a movie at the movie theater since we hadn't seen any new movies in about two and half months. Since the new James Bond movie Quantum of Solace had just come out and I had just seen the first one about a week before we found a theater that was playing it in English and after eating dinner at Café Slavia, we went to see it. The movie was good and was shown with Czech subtitles.

I don't think that I have mentioned at all where the pension that I live in and the building where I go to school are located in Prague. The pension is located in Prague 10 which is about three miles east of Old Town. Every morning I take a metro (line A, the green line) to go to school. I get on at the station Jiriho Z Podebrad and ride it only three stops to the station Mustek. This station puts me out right at the bottom of St. Wenceslas Square, in Prague 1, and then it is about a 5 minute walk to the Prague Institute. On the way to the Institute I pass a large market one street over from the Institute that sells fruit and souvenirs. The Institute is located on Michalska where I enter a nice little courtyard before going in, and studio is located on the second floor of a building that also has offices, a tea house, a gallery and apartments. The studio is a little cramped since there are about 25 of us and it is usually cold since they are always trying to save on heat but overall it is a nice space.

On Tuesday night we had our last official school outing and went to a jazz club on the other side of the river called U Maleho Glena. The jazz band had a female singer who had a nice voice and I don't know much about jazz but they sounded pretty good. The whole back room had been reserved for us so we all piled in and the only beer on draft was Bernard, which I hadn't seen before and it was pretty good.

Over the weekend my roommate Danielle was out of town visiting a friend in Florence and a few other students left to go to various places like Krakow and Brno. I stayed in Prague to visit some things around here and I was tired from going to Budapest the week before. On Friday I walked around Old Town Square and took some pictures and then John and I went around to see some things. Unfortunately things by the castle are starting to close because it is November and the tourist season is ending so I was not able to see a tunnel that I wanted to see but we did stop at the bottom of Petrin Hill to see the Memorial to the Victims of Communism. It is a series of long stairs with statues of men that wither away as you walk higher on the stair. The monument was dedicated to anyone whose life was ruined and changed by Communism. We then decided to visit the Communist Museum which had been something I had wanted to do since I came to Prague. The museum explained in writing and pictures how the Soviets helped free Czechoslovakia from Nazi rule after World War II and then slowly turned them into a Communist state before bluntly enforcing Communist rule by bringing in troops and tanks in 1968, taking control until 1989.

That night John and I met his friend Jennifer and about six of her friends who are studying abroad in Florence this semester and had come to Prague for the weekend. We went out to a bar with them and then the following night had dinner with them and went out again. It was nice to hang out with some new people for a little while and it was good they could come and see Prague.

It was nice to have a weekend in Prague again and I am looking forward to heading to Rome for Thanksgiving break on the 26th through the 30th.

Budapest, Hungary

On Thursday, November 6, I left with a group of 13 other students to get on a 7 hour train to Budapest. We left at 3:30pm and after the long ride of playing cards, sleeping, and listening to music we finally arrived around 11 at night. We arrived into a train station on the east end of the Pest side of the river. When we walked out of the train station to find an ATM and head to our hostel, we found that the street was literally a construction site, blocked off and filled with construction equipment, and the city looked a little less than friendly than we had become accustomed to. We quickly found some money (about 200 Hungarian Forints equals $1) and walked to the hostel, walked up to the second floor of this large building and found a guy sitting at a kitchen table or "the reception area". The hostel was three large rooms with beds, a kitchen, 2 bathrooms and 2 showers. The man who was the receptionist had his own living area where over the course of the weekend we heard him snoring many times and learned that he lived in the hostel, sleeping and eating there and checking people in and out as they came. We settled in our rooms and after walking around the city to see the river and then finding something to eat and drink, we were all tired so we headed back and went to sleep.

The next morning, Friday, everyone split up to go see different things and John and I set out from the hostel and walked across the white Elizabeth Bridge over the water to the Buda side of the city. There was a large monument over a waterfall just across the bridge with a statue of St. Gerard holding a cross out to the river in front of a semi circle colonnade. The monument was built into the side of the Gellert Hill because St. Gerard was thrown off this hill by rebels in 1046. We walked up the large set of stairs to get a better look at it up close and on the way up we started to get really good views across the river back to the Pest side and also to the Buda Castle to the left. After hanging out and taking some pictures we made our way higher until we reached the Citadel on the top of the hill. The Citadel was built by the Hapsburgs, the same family that built the Hofburg Palace where we had seen the treasury collection in Vienna. At the front of the Citadel looking out over the river there was a large Liberation Monument that can be seen from anywhere along the river. This monument was built in 1947 to commemorate the country being freed from Nazi rule by the Soviets after World War II. We walked along in front of the Citadel and looked at some of the things that the vendors where selling along the path and then headed down the hill to go to the Buda Castle.

We walked up to the Buda Castle and there was a small entrance with a tower to the left of it. We went through the gate and up a flight of stairs and it opened into a big open space surrounded by old castle walls on all sides. One wall was covered in really pretty red and green leaves and we spent some time there looking around. We made our way through an arch way and followed a path towards the river that brought us to the front of the Castle which now houses the Hungarian National Gallery and the Budapest History Museum. It was starting to get dark (around 4:30pm) and lights were starting to come on to light up the facades of the castle. After coming down from the castle we walked through the city underneath it for a little while (the streets on this side of the river were much nicer than on the Pest side) before coming to Matthias Church. The gothic church was covered in scaffolding but there was a series of small towers connected by a walkway that we walked through before heading down to the river to take the Chain Bridge back over to the other side. By this time we were hungry and looking for somewhere to eat dinner so we went back to the street where we had found food the night before and found a small restaurant that had a good menu. We had pitas with feta cheese and tomatoes for an appetizer and I had a chicken breast with cheese and bacon inside for my entree. The food was really good and after dinner we headed back to the hostel to meet up with everyone else before going out to a bar.

The next day John and I left the hostel with the intent to explore the Pest side of the river. John had a list of some thrift stores that he wanted to go to so we checked them out before getting some lunch and walking by the Great Synagogue. Since it was Saturday we were not allowed to go inside so the closest we could get was the small courtyard in the front. This synagogue is the largest in Europe and the second largest in the world. Not being able to do much there we headed to St. Stephen's Basilica where we were able to get in. There was a really large courtyard in front of the entrance and the interior was very ornately decorated with gold and stone. Stephen was the first King of Hungary and one of the most interesting parts of the Basilica was that they had his mummified hand on display. It was in a small glass shrine that was very dark but when a tourist paid 200 forints (about $1) the box lit up and you could see the small mummified hand clenched in a fist inside.

From there we took the metro out to the very large City Park. We came out of the metro in front of Heroes Square, a large square where the Millennium Monument sits that has statues of important people in Hungary's history. The square is framed by two art museums and the main street through the park starts just behind it. We walked up the street and found the Vajdahunyad Castle on our right. We walked over the moat on the bridge and through the main gate. The castle complex housed a little church inside and there were several vendors along the path. The path lead us out into a large open area of the park where there were people throwing a frisbee and also playing ping pong on the permanent ping pong tables. We spent a little while outside enjoying the daylight while we could before heading across the main street to the Szechenyi Baths.

We had heard from several people that the baths were something that you should definitely do while in Budapest. We didn't really know what to expect and the list of different tickets you could buy was pretty long so we decided to just buy the basic all day ticket for the steam bath. We got the tickets, went through the entrance and were led to locker rooms to change into our bathing suits. John and I met up again ready to go and followed the path to the baths. We walked into a long hallway that had what looked like a series of small swimming pools. The pools are all at different temperatures, some at 30, 34, 36, and 38 degrees Celsius, and some even colder or warmer than that. The water from the baths comes from two thermal springs underneath the park. We walked through the hall, spending about 10 minutes or so in each bath before coming to the door that led us to the outside baths. There was a long pool in the center where some people were swimming laps and two semi circle pools on the ends. We went in one on the end and the water felt really good since it was cold outside and there were fountains spraying water into the bath with a lot of pressure that felt really good when sprayed on my back. The bath was very crowded and there were older men playing chess on a section that jutted out into the water. We spent a lot of time in there before checking out the bath on the other side which had a large whirlpool in the center where tons of kids were jumping on top of each other and getting carried around in circles. We spent about 2 hours going in and out of different baths before using a sauna, which I had never done before, and seeing how long we could stand the heat before jumping into a cold shower to wash off the sweat. We changed back into our clothes and they had free hair dryers for us to use. The baths were definitely my favorite part of Budapest and one of the coolest things I have been able to do so far while in Europe.

That night we ate at a Hungarian restaurant called Fatal where they gave us huge portions of food, I had chicken with potatoes and John had schnitzel. When we came out of the restaurant it was raining so we quickly headed back to the hostel to meet up with everyone else and hang out for the night. The next morning we woke up, packed up our things, and left the hostel to grab something to eat before getting on the train to go back to Prague. Budapest was very different from any of the other cities I had been to so far, and even with its not so nice parts it was definitely a city worth experiencing.

Halloween week + Project Review

After going out of town for three weekends in a row it was nice to finally spend a weekend in Prague. The due date for our first project was coming up in a week so it was also good to finally have some time to focus on school work. We have finally been in Prague long enough to find some really good restaurants around the pension and around school that we go to a lot. Around the pension we found a great place called Café Sudicka that has a really good vegetable tortilla that I have had many times and thick garlic soup with cheese that comes with baguettes. There is also a Chinese place called Fenix that has pretty good chinese food with large portions for pretty cheap prices. Around school I have been going to a lunch place called Paneria a lot where I can get a sandwich and iced coffee for about $4. The typical Czech food is heavy on meat and potatoes so it was nice to find good places with a different menu.

The weather here is not always the best, usually rainy in the morning and then overcast for most of the day, so last week everyone was happy when we had three days where it was sunny all day. I finally was able to go on some runs, which I have been missing a lot lately since it is usually rainy in the morning and by the time I get out of class and back to the pension it is already getting dark.

Last weekend was also Halloween, which we later found out that people in Prague do not celebrate. We all got dressed up, I was a leprechaun and John borrowed some clothes from me and my roommate Danielle and dressed up as a girl. My friend Julie was a hot dog, some of the other girls were party animals, and one of the guys was a ninja. We had the receptionist at the pension take a picture of the group before we left and then we all headed to the go-go dancer club where we again had some mojitos. We saw some other groups of Americans also dressed up for the holiday in the metro but for the most part people just looked confused when they saw us. That night we also headed to a really packed bar called Chapeau Rogue right near Old Town Square.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on projects and catching up on sleep. We had the review for our second project all day on Tuesday and Wednesday. My review went pretty well; my project was a wellness center on Narodni Street, one of the busiest streets in Prague. I had plans, diagrams and a model of the façade that fit in with the neighboring buildings while marking its place on the site. It was nice to be done with the project and look forward to the trip to Budapest on Thursday.

School trip to Berlin

On Friday, October 24th, our group left for our school excursion to Berlin. The trip was included in our program and we were excited that we did not have to buy train tickets or book a hostel because our program did it for us. The train was leaving at 8:30am and it took about five hours to get there. When we arrived around 1:30 we all waited around (all 40 or so of us) for our professor to get our metro passes and then we moved on to the hostel and checked into our rooms. I was staying a room with nine other girls for the three nights we were to be there. After checking in, we had the whole afternoon to do what we wanted so I walked around the city some with some of the other girls and we came upon the Brandenburg Gate, one of the most famous symbols of Berlin. It used to be the gate to the city and is right next to where the Berlin wall used to separate East and West Berlin. We ate dinner at a German restaurant and had Bit Burger beer. After dinner we headed back to the hostel where we were meeting other people in our group and we hung out the rest of the night and went out to a bar.

The next morning we were meeting as a group with our professor at the Pergamon Museum. The museum was really interesting and had actual pieces of ancient Roman and Greek temples. There was one really large section of the entrance to a Greek temple called the Pergamon Altar in the main room when you walked in the museum. This was the first museum I had been to that had pieces of temples that were so big. After the Pergamon Museum we went to find some lunch and there was a large market set up right next to the museum. They had some food stands and stands selling books, jewelry, and other flea market type things. There was also a hat stand where about five us bought new hats and the German man working at the stand was really excited about helping us pick them out and fitting them. We had to meet in front of the museum again at 1:30 and then we went a walk with our professor to a few spots to stop and sketch. The first stop was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier which was a large open room with a statue in the middle and circle skylight in the ceiling right over it. I really liked this spot because from the outside I would never have guessed what the monument looked like on the inside. Our professor Paul gave us about 30 minutes to sketch whatever we wanted around the tomb and then we met outside again and everyone laid out their sketchbooks and we all looked through them and Paul made some comments about what he saw. On the way to our next stop we passed through the Brandenburg Gate again and then walked to the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This monument took up an entire city block and was a series of thousands of concrete blocks in varying heights on an undulating floor that you can walk through. Underneath the monument there was a museum that explained how the Jews were persecuted throughout the Second World War.

After waking though the museum and spending some time going through the monument, I walked around with some other students to see some of the other interesting buildings in Berlin. On our way we passed some actual sections of the Berlin Wall that were still in place. From here we walked down a long street where we passed several interesting buildings as well as several of the embassies for other countries. We were looking for the Nordic Embassy, designed by the architecture firm Snohetta that we easily spotted because it is covered in hundreds of movable teal louvers. It was cool to walk around the embassy to see the different materials, steel, wood, and glass, and it started getting dark and different colored lights were shining on the louvers. From here we took the double decker public transportation bus, we sat on the top level of course, back towards the hostel and then we had dinner at a Mexican place that John had spotted. The food was good and that night we hung out at the hostel again and then went out.

Sunday morning we met again as a group at the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind. I thought the museum would focus more on the Holocaust but the exhibits focused on the history of the Jewish people leading up to their persecution in World War II. The building that housed the museum was really interesting to walk through and had a very irregular gallery arrangement and a jagged plan. The lines that created the pattern on the outside and the window openings on the inside were created by drawing lines across the city to connect the houses of Jewish people who died in the Holocaust. After walking through the museum we again met with our professor to go on a sketching walk. We walked through several Architecture Blocks, entire blocks that were destroyed and then the whole block was commissioned to a specific architect. We saw the blocks designed by Aldo Rossi, Philip Johnson, and Peter Eisenman.

After the sketching walk we had the rest of the afternoon free to see what we wanted. The block designed by Eisenman was right next to the famous checkpoint along the wall separating the American (West) and Soviet (East) sectors of Berlin called Checkpoint Charlie. This is where people were allowed to pass through the sectors and the wall if they had the appropriate documentation. There was also a display here about the wall and markers on the street where the wall used to be. I looked around here for a while before heading over to the Bauhaus Archiv. On the way we stopped at the National Gallery designed by Mies van der Rohe (the same architect who designed the Barcelona Pavilion we had seen earlier on the trip in Barcelona). This building is a gallery that is essentially a glass rectangle supported by steel and just like the Barcelona Pavilion, very simple and clean. The exhibit inside was being changed so we could not get in but it was still nice to see it. We jumped on a bus again and arrived at the Bauhaus Archiv. The Bauhaus is a design school that opened up in Germany in 1919 and it is the school that the NC State College of Design is based on. The school changed locations two times before finally being closed down by the Nazis in 1933. The galleries were really interesting and it was cool to see some examples of work that was similar to things we have done in studios at NC State. They also had a really great gift shop where I bought an Aalto Vase, an organic shaped vase designed by the architect Alvar Aalto, which I have wanted for a long time.

After the Bauhaus museum we walked around the city a little bit more and then headed to the Reichstag, the German Parliament building where we planned to head to the top and see the glass dome that was added by the architect Norman Foster. When we arrived the line was really long and we found out that the dome was closed for repairs and you couldn't go inside of it. Since it was already dark and the view from the top of the building wouldn't be so great either, we decided to put going to the top off until tomorrow and we went to find a place to eat. After taking the metro and walking by several restaurants we came to one with outdoor seating, heaters, and big hamburgers with fries so we took a seat. Dinner was good and after wards we headed back to the hostel. We all hung around in the room and I fell asleep. At midnight John came and woke me up and gave me my birthday presents since it technically was my birthday at midnight. He gave me a really nice coat that I had seen in a vintage store a few weeks before and pointed out. He also gave me knitting needles and some blue yarn since I had expressed wanting to learn how to knit when a lot of the other girls in architecture started knitting themselves scarves.

The next day, Monday, October 27th, we had the whole day to ourselves before we had to be on train back to Prague at 4:45. I walked around with John all day and it was rainy but there were still a few things we wanted to see. We went back to the Reichstag and waited in line for almost an hour to go up and see the dome. We could not get inside the dome, which had a walkway circling up the whole inside to the top and a really large screen inside to give some protection from the sun, but we were able to walk around the outside and we had good views of Berlin from the roof. After spending some time at the top, John and I came down and headed over to the DZ Bank by the Brandenburg Gate. The bank was designed by Frank Gehry and we could get inside and into the lobby where we could see the giant metal, glass, and wood sculpture that filled the atrium.

From the bank we walked around to find a place to eat. We had lunch at a German place where John had bratwurst with curry and I had a schnitzel sandwich. After lunch we headed over to the Sony Center, a large building complex that has stores, offices, restaurants, and a movie theater that all face a really large atrium in the center. By then it was starting to get late and we had to head back to the train station. We picked up our bags that we had dropped off in lockers and played cards for a little while before meeting the rest of our group at the train platform to go back to Prague. Berlin was a really great city and there were really a lot of things to do and see there. It was also nice to spend my birthday there walking around the city with John.