Glass Blowing

 We got back from the 5 day trip on Wednesday and on Friday we had our glass blowing day trip. We took a bus to northern Czech Republic. The Czech Republic is known for glass blowing. They've been doing for an incredibly long time. They have bountiful amounts of the material needed to make glass. The area where the glass is made was once the border area of the Czech Republic given to the Nazis by Britain and France in hopes that it would be enough for Hitler and there wouldn't be a WWII. The Germans gave the Czech 24 hours to move out of their homes in that area for Germans to move in. During WWII Britain and France scrapped the treaty giving the land to the Germans because they did not follow the rules of the treaty. After WWII Czechoslovakia gave the Germans 24 hours to move out of those areas. The areas have high unemployment because the areas are not as populated as they used to be before the war. The glass blowers do not get paid a lot, but they are happy to have a job.
All of us watched the glass blowers from a balcony looking below. All the glass blowers were men. They all drank beer while they blew glass. A lot of them also smoked. I noticed some of them would light their cigarettes on the glass they were about to blow. There were also calendars throughout the room with woman barely wearing any bikinis. It was definitely a boys club. But half way throughout the time I noticed two people came out, I'm assuming they're designers. One of the people was a younger woman informing the men what she wanted from them when blowing the glass. It was fun watching this woman tell these burly men what to do.

Everyone in our group got to blow their own vase. You got to pick a color and a design mold. The man would put the glob of molten glass into the furnace, you close the mold shut and he puts the glob of glass in and blows a little bit to get the mold. Then you go up and blow the glass and spin the stick until they let you know it's done. The guy told me I did it perfectly and that I must be a glass blower :-). I'm just really happy mine turned out well. I'm really hoping my glass wont break on the way home.

We also got to see the gallery of the finer pieces they made. They make pieces for American hotels, they made a huge lighting sculpture for a subway in Dubai, and they've done many other things with famous glass blowers. They made one glass sculpture and got permission from Mick Jagger to call it the Mick Jagger. They gave it to Mick Jagger and then made only 10 more for a limited edition event. They had a picture of Hilary Clinton with a piece of glass in the gallery. I don't know the story behind that though. Then we got goulash at the restaurant across from the glassblowing warehouse. We could watch glass blowers make things in the restaurant while we ate and could buy things. It was a pretty cool experience.

Me in my stylish glassblowing-glasses blowing my beautiful vase.

My beautiful vase.

Glass blowing warehouse.

View of the town.

You the best! No Budapest! & Bratislava

After the gallery in Vienna we were off to Budapest. Budapest was amazing. We also stayed in hotel rooms instead of hostels which was nice. We were in Budapest for two nights, which I was happy about. It was my favorite city out of all of the ones I was at during the 5 day trip. We first had dinner at a nice restaurant and had amazing goulash and wine. Hungry is wine country. After dinner we walked up around the palace. It was amazingly beautiful. Amazingly beautiful doesn't even do it justice. You could see all the lights of the city down below with the river going through it and the castle had an amazing glow to it. It was so romantic. My friend and I decided were going to Budapest for our honeymoons. We'll go up to the castle with a bottle of wine at night and enjoy the view. Walking around the castle there were a lot people that had the same idea. There was a lot of PDA. Some of it was soo cute you wanted to melt, some of it was too much and had an eww factor. But I think everyone fell in love with Budapest.

One of the people in charge of our group, Richard, grew up in Budapest and lived there for most of his life. He was really excited to take us to Hungry and Budapest. Our tour guide, Joseph, who is Czech, would talk about historical places and the history of Hungry and Budapest and would tease Richard through out the walks. Richard would tease right back making fun of the the Czech Republic. It was a lot of fun to see them joking back and forth.

The next day we walked through part of the town and went to a hot springs spa. Budapest is known for their hot springs. It was so nice. They had three pools outside. One was for laps, one had a little lazy river and was just like a regular pool, but it was a perfect temperature, not too hot or cold. The last pool was warm. It wasn't a hot tub temperature but it wasn't cool. It was so nice. There were also some pools and spas along with steam rooms inside the building surrounding the outside pools. I tried an acid hot tub. It was interesting. Most of the people at the hot springs spa were older, chubby people in speedos and bikinis. I liked that because that made me feel good about being in my bikini. No skinny girls and no cute guys to care. I liked the confidence the older people had.

We then went out to lunch, then I took a shower and went up a hike to the tallest point in Budapest. It was exhausting and hot but it was soooo worth it. The view was amazing. After that we went to a famous cafe above a book store. A friend and I shared a bottle of wine from Hungry and had dinner. It was sooo beautiful! My mom would have loved it. It reminded me of the place we went in England to have tea. They had a pianist playing too.

The next day we were off to Brataslavia in Slovakia. Slovakia and the Czech Republic used to be make up Czechoslovakia. I believe Hungry used to rule over Slovakia and now there is kind of a feud between Hungarians and Slovaks, because a lot of Hungarians live there still and speak only Hungry while the Slovaks have their own language that's very, very similar to Czech. We were only in Slovakia for a little bit of time.

We visited two castles. One of the castles was in Bratislava and the other one was 20 minutes away. The one 20 minutes away was more of ruins of a castle. It was in a little town that was just beautiful. There was a large river on one side of the castle. If you cross the river you'd be in Austria. Many of my friends swam across it. I decided to get gilato and chill in the shade instead. The castle had a very interesting history to it. I guess there was a woman ruler that died and the women wanted there to be another women ruler while the men thought there should be a male ruler. The women locked themselves in the castle and battled against the men. The men would try to poison their well water by catapulting dead bodies by the water supply. I was happy to hear they had feminists back centuries and centuries ago.

After the walk up to the castle I went and had gilato outside with some friends and it was just so beautiful. It's just one of those moments where you just feel purely happy and content. I had a lot of those moments on this trip. My mom would have loved this castle. This would be a good family vacation. Everyone needs to go to Prague and Budapest.

Oh I want to point out something. We took a bus to all these places. The bus's conditioner broke. It was horrible, especially the last day it was so hot. Everyone was sleeping with beads of sweat going down their faces. All the chocolate Ini and Pezi gave me was completely melted. But that did not stop me from waiting until it cooled down and hardened so I could eat it.

Dinner in Budapest

Amazing goulash

View of Budapest from the castle

Me in front of a fountain at the castle

The market

Another view from the castle

Hot springs spa

View of Budapest from the tallest point

The cafe

My dinner, wine, and ice tea

Bratislava. The Bridge was built by communists because they wanted to show Bratislava as being more modern. Bratislava is pretty modern now and is part of the European Union and on the euro

Cute town with the castle right outside Bratislava

Castle ruins. People are surrounding the well the men tried to poison.

Jewish magnets!! Very cute

Vienna Part 2

Now I'm going to talk about my favorite part of my time in Vienna! Seeing my family's past exchange students :-). I've kept in touch with them over the years, maybe not as much as the first few years, but we still keep each other updated on life. One thing I've learned talking to them is that guys are the same world wide haha. But after 5 or 6 years I was SOOOO excited to see them again!! They invited me over for dinner the one night I was in Vienna. They gave me directions and I met them at the metro by their apartment. Ini and Pezi had made me an amazing dinner! They were so sweet! I wish I had brought them a gift. They also bought 8 different types of ice cream for dessert. They're Grandma bought me chocolates and made me yummy pastries. She told Ini and Pezi not to take any. Pezi told me their Grandma wanted to come down and say hi but she didn't do her hair or anything. She also told me she doesn't like Americans, but my family is the exception because we took such good care of them. The grandma was worried we wouldn't. I said I wasn't surprised, everyone hates Americans. Ini and Pezi said that was more her Grandma's generation that hates Americans, their generation likes Americans. I would hope so, everyone likes our music. We're a package deal, you like American music you like us. Or that's how I think it should be, but if that was the case I think there would be world peace.

It's weird, I've noticed a lot of feuds between countries. Ini and Pezi's Grandma doesn't like Americans. Ini and Pezi doesn't really like Germans. British people REALLY don't like the Germans. The Germans don't like the French. My Jewish Studies teacher doesn't like Austrians because he thinks they're all antisemitic. I know Ini and Pezi are not antisemitic because they told me they went to this Jewish, underground bar in Paris. They played Jewish music, danced, and loved it! Which sounds so cool! I guess most people have reasons to dislike other nations, but to group everyone as a whole is stereotyping. People over here aren't politically correct, I think it's more of an American thing.

Oh but anyways, Ini had also bought raspberries and blueberries, but she ate all the raspberries lol. They gave me some tea from France. They were so sweet! They're aunt came over to give them cherries she picked from the garden. They were telling me how amazing they were, but Ini said some had worms. Pezi got really mad at Ini and told her she was horrible at marketing and the cherries were fine, just eat them whole. The aunt came over and gave them the bucket of cherries and she was very sweet. I noticed a small little white worm on the side of the bucket and told Ini and she freaked out a bit and killed it. They offered me some cherries but after seeing the little white worm I couldn't.

Overall I had an amazing time with them and they want me to visit more often so I could go to the ball with them and go to a football game and other things. I'd love to go to one of their balls! They all dress up. All the guys wear tuxes and the girls wear beautiful dresses and they all waltz in these old, beautiful buildings. It sounds amazing!! It's too bad Austria is so far from home.

The next day I went to another castle that had gardens, but this castle was made into a gallery. It's supposed to be one of the best galleries in the world. Probably the most famous painting they had there was The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. I think it's one of those paintings you have to see in person. The gold parts had a certain sheen to it. I really liked it. They had a couple other paintings of his too. My tour guide said that a lot of his paintings were destroyed in WWII because Jewish people really liked his art works and owned most of them. So that obviously meant to the Nazis that it wasn't "good" art and it should destroyed.

This is the dinner they made me! It was really good! I asked for the recipe for the rice. It was good with the chunks of cheese in it. I also tried to turn the picture around but I couldn't make it work.

Ice cream!!! Yum

Ini, Pezi, and I!!

Gardens that were made so the person in the castle could enjoy looking down at it. Also the colors in the garden corresponded to the colors in the rooms of the castle.

Cool benches that were all across Vienna.

Vienna

The next stop on the trip was Vienna. I only stayed one night which was definitely not enough. Our first stop was the gardens of a castle. It was so beautiful! We were lucky because it just stopped raining before we arrived and it was perfect weather. While we were leaving the gardens it started to rain again. I love all the stories about the castle and gardens. It's interesting to learn about the people that lived in the castles, why it was built, what kind of impacts they had on the region of that time. The castle was built for an emperor and it was supposed to be a kind of utopia for him. It had large gardens, a place to hunt, some fake roman ruins, and his idea of villagers. They lived in nice places, had a nice market, they weren't dirty or poor, and they greeted him whenever he passed by. It was later inherited by a woman and for her birthday present someone built a castle like building at the end of the gardens for her to look out at. That is what I call a birthday present! A man later inherited the castle but he was "a gay" and had no children so it was given to a woman who was very unattractive, and even though she was extremely wealthy she never married and had no children so it was then given or sold to someone else. The tour guide went on to say that "the gay rulers or emperors" of that time had more beautiful castles then the straight ones. They were more lavish and well decorated. This is what I mean by the tour guides being politically incorrect even though it might be historically true. Everyone started giggling when he said "a gay."

Later we went to a restaurant and had some wiener schnitzel and then we went on a tour around Vienna. We went to the Jewish quarter and saw a Holocaust memorial. The aristocrat during WWII that lived in the castle with the garden was upset with the Nazi invasion and all the laws against the Jews. Around the time the Nazis started to enforce public places to put up signs saying "Jews are not allowed" the aristocrat put up a sign saying "Jews are cordially invited to my garden." He and his family members were later arrested. The man who did that may have lived in the castle with the garden I visited in Vienna the next day...either way it made me happy to hear a person of that status standing up and speaking against the Nazis even though it had severe consequences.

I have some more stories to tell about Vienna. I still need to talk about my dinner with Ini and Pezi and the art gallery I went to but I'll talk about it in my next post. Here are some pictures of the gardens and parts of Vienna.

Best birthday present ever. (Summer House or something.)

Some friends and I standing at the top of the gardens with the castle in the background.

Summer house in the background with the gardens.

Fake Roman ruins.

Some more of the gardens.

The Holocaust memorial. People were originally upset with the memorial when it was made because it is a concrete eyesore. The artist intended for it to be that way. Your not supposed to think it's pretty, it should disturb you. The outside is full of concrete books that can't be opened and the binding can not be read. It's supposed to symbolize all the lives that were lost and what their impact could have been in the world. It also symbolizes all the important Jewish books that were destroyed.

The inside of a famous Cathedral in Vienna.

Český Krumlov

A couple days ago I got back from my 5 day trip to Český Krumlov, Vienna, Budapest, and Bratislava. We first went to Český Krumlov which is in the southern Bohemia of the Czech Republic. When we visited there was a huge Renaissance fair going on. It's not like the ones in the United States. They had a huge parade, cute stands, rides, fire breathing people, and fireworks. Their outfits were amazing. They were not some Renaissance looking costumes from Party City, they looked historically accurate and intricate. They even had historically accurate shoes and hats. I was only there for one night and left for Vienna the next morning. While I was there we went to a famous castle and theater. The castle had all the furniture still in it and all the portraits. It is the most accurate, well kept castle in Europe. There were even detailed records of where the furniture was so they could represent how it would have looked when it was still being used. Our tour guide was American. I wonder if he vacationed here, fell in love with the town, never left and became a tour guide. I like the tour guides in Europe, they can be pretty blunt and not politically accurate all the time. There were portraits of the Royals that lived in the castle. One the tour guide pointed out one and talked about the person. He said something like, "There was a lot of inbreeding of the powerful aristocrats because they wanted to keep up in the royal society. In this portrait of the girl, you can see the effects of inbreeding, she doesn't look too good." He also pointed out a picture of a woman who lived in the castle for awhile and she was considered the typical beauty of her time. The tour guide pointed out how the times had changed, she's definitely not considered beautiful by today's standards.

Around the castle there was a moat filled with bears. When our social directors told us to meet by the bear moat, I was expecting a moat with statues of bears or something, I really had no clue what they were talking about. That's one bad thing about the trip, our directors gave horrible, vague descriptions of how to get to places and what we were going to do. They'd tell us to go to the bear moat and we'd be like what? How do we get there? And they'd say you see that tall tower? Just head that way. And then it'd be rainy, you get lost because you can't see the tower from all places, the parade is clogging up all the streets, you can't find the bridge to cross the river and your tired and hungry and crabby and your late for the tour. Your friends are all following you cause they'd rather not have the responsibility even though you have no clue what your doing. You finally make it to the tower and your like where the hell is this so called bear moat. Other than that it was a lot of fun and very beautiful.

Oh I wanted to point out something random. I had an amazing dinner at a restaurant and our waiter was funny. We ordered deserts, apple pies, and he asked jokingly if we wanted ketchup on it. I guess Americans are known for liking to put ketchup on everything. Of course we do, ketchup is awesome and makes everything taste better. It goes great with the wienershnitzel, europeans shouldn't see it as a taboo to put it on things. I even talked to Ini and Pezi in Vienna about this. They were my family's past exchange students. They told be about this time when some friends came in from England or something and they went out to eat with them and one asked for ketchup to put on her eggs. They were sooo embarressed and horrified! I guess they have never heard of ketchup and eggs. I don't see why it's such a taboo when it's soo good.

Here are some pictures I took of Český Krumlov:

One of the bears in the moat

A picture of some Renaissance people.

The town

The ballroom of the castle.

The best maintained theater of its kind in Europe.

Ahoj!

Finished my last class today. My Czech language teacher and photography teacher told us that we're all getting A's, so that's awesome. I'm going to miss my teachers, they were pretty interesting people. My Czech Culture teacher was the biggest hippie I've ever met. She was awesome. My Photography teacher was the sweetest man ever. The only thing was he had a monotone voice and showed us countless pictures in a dark room and I'd occasionally fall asleep. One time I fell asleep and woke up and my friend kind of laughed at me and he's like it's ok, I was young one time and fell asleep in classes, it happens. What teacher says it's ok with students falling asleep in class?! It made me even feel worse about it because he was so sweet about it!

I went on a boat cruise yesterday as kind of a last hurrah for session 1 students. It was so pretty! The boat trip on the river was really relaxing and fun. They served us Budweiser, which I guess is from Prague, but it's not the same as the Budweiser in the US. I guess there's a whole story behind it but I don't really know it. They served us food on the boat too. They had latkes! I refuse to call them potato pancakes because they are not, they are latkes. They seem to have latkes everywhere in Prague. Also Lox is a big thing over here. They served a ton of lox sandwiches in Amsterdam too, more than Prague. But they put it on bread, not on bagels, they're doing it wrong.

The other night I went out to the 5 story club. It's supposedly the biggest discotheque in Europe. It's a huge tourist attraction, you wont find any Czech people there, just a ton of other people from around the world. It's weird how everyone dances differently depending on where they're from. German guys don't really dance with you, they dance by you. Some of my friends went to Berlin and went to some clubs and they said everyone was dancing at arms lengths apart. One of the guys I knew that went there started dancing with a girl from our trip and someone was like you can't do that. I guess that's just their thing. A lot of people from other places twirl you around. A lot of European guys are very aggressive, bold, and relentless. They come up to you telling you your beautiful and cute, which I love to hear, but they can be a little too aggressive. I went to the 5 story club one night with 2 other girls and the guys there were just non stop. We couldn't get a minute to ourselves without a guy coming up and asking where we were from. We'd tell them we weren't interested and 5 mins later they'd try again. It was bad! But the next night we went there it wasn't like that at all. Maybe it was just a weird night. It makes you appreciate American guys, because you know how they dance and they're not so aggressive.

One night my friend started dancing with a German guy so I started talking to his friend. He was sooo funny! I ended up talking to him the rest of the night. Usually humor doesn't always translate too easily between cultures and languages but he was so sarcastic. He asked me if I spoke any German and I said no and he asked me what languages I did speak. I told him I knew a little bit of French from high school and that I'm learning Czech right now. He was like why did you learn French?! Americans hate the French, the French hate the Americans, the Germans hate the French and the French hates the Germans. I went to Paris and asked a local a question and he's like Fuck you!! After the German guy, Dennis, said that, anytime I caught him in a lie he'd be like, I swear on the French language I am not lieing. We also talked about TV shows. He likes How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory! Which is so cool! He loves Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. He also likes the late night show with Craig Ferguson. He thinks he's hilarious and loves his Scottish accent. I didn't realize how much people here watch American TV shows and listen to our music. Everywhere I go they play American songs. I don't really hear any Czech songs anywhere. They also love American music from the 80s and 90s. They have a lot of 80s and 90s nights at clubs. They know most of the words to the songs too!

I'm leaving for my 5 day trip to Vienna, Budapest, and Bratislava tomorrow. I'm really excited!! It sounds amazing!! I'm really looking forward to the hot spring spas in Budapest. They look and sound amazing. I'm also looking forward to seeing Ini and Pezi in Vienna!!!! They're our family's past exchange students. I haven't seen them for about five years! It's too bad I'll only be able to see them for a little bit.

I know this Sunday is Father's Day and I'm sad I wont be home with my family to celebrate it. But I just wanted to say Happy Father's Day to my Dad, Grandpa Bob, Grandpa Morris, Uncle Jay, and Uncle Mark and to any other father's that read this!

I attached a video about Prague one of the students made for class. He did an amazing job and he made the music that goes along with it!

Amsterdam

I'll talk about Amsterdam, but I just found out that I can watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report over here!!! There's no TVs in our apt and I can't watch Hulu, Netflix instant queue, CBS, NBC or any of those networks online. It's also nice because then I know what's going on in the world. Important things such as Anthony Weiner's wiener hahaha. What would I do without the Daily Show?? Ooo also another side note, I found zip lock containers!!! I just now have to find zip lock bags...who thought other countries wouldn't have something like that?

Being in Amsterdam made me really appreciate family vacations. 12 of us made a last minute decision to book a flight and go to Amsterdam the next day. We booked a hotel for the first night but then we had to find hotels for the next two nights while we were there. It was so hard finding hotels! It was also so stressful! And it was hard to keep in contact with all 12 of us especially since only a few of us had cellphones and it was expensive to call. Everything was in euros too so it was costly. Small bottles of water cost 2 euros! While a liter of water in Prague costs $1! It made me miss family vacations because my mom makes all the plans, keeps track of everything, and pays for everthing. I'm just in it for the ride! I don't have to stress out about every single little thing. It also made me homesick. Thinking that it's only been 2 weeks and I have 7 more to go didn't help. But now that I'm back in Prague, which is my home away from home, I'm ok. I do have to say, I like Prague more than Amsterdam. Everyone was pretty happy to go home. You can do Amsterdam in two days easily, we were there one day too long.

We did do some fun things in Amsterdam. I went to the Van Gogh museum. That was amazing. They had so many of his most famous works and they set it up so you saw the paintings chronologically. I guess Van Gogh wrote a lot of letters to his brother talking about the paintings he made and about his life. Next to each painting it would have an exert from a letter he sent to his brother about the picture and talked about that time period in his life. It was really interesting. My friend went there another day than I did and ran into Kristen Wiig at the museum! She is on SNL and is the main person in the movie Bridesmaids. She went up to her and told her she loved her and that she was her idol and asked if she could take a picture with her. She said she didn't think so because you can't take pictures in the museum but she could sign something. My friend had nothing for her to sign so Kristen Wigg offered her a hug and she's like yes! She seems like a really nice person. My friend was beyond happy.

I also saw the I Amsterdam sign, Anne Frank's house, and went on the Heineken Experience tour. The line for Anne Frank's house was incredibly long, but we knew it'd be long. We thought it was going to be a two hour wait but it turned out to just be 50 minutes so that wasn't too bad. It was really interesting. They gave us a pamphlet while waiting in line and it gave a summary of her life, the events that happened, and some exerts from her diary. We got to go behind the bookcase and saw where they lived. I can't even imagine living there for as long as they did before they were caught. They also had a section where it talked about injustices everywhere. The museum is there to remember and make sure nothing ever happens like this again. I would definitely recommend going there.

The Heineken Experience was fun. The tour consisted of mostly Americans. It was a fun tour. It talked about hops and barley, their purpose, how they make beer, and how you know what makes beer good. It also explained the history behind the Heineken. They had some fun interactive things there too.

Everyone in Amsterdam was really nice, except for the cab that ripped us off. I'm still a little bitter about that. Otherwise it was a lot of fun and basically everyone speaks English. It's very English friendly. Oh some other interesting things I've noticed in Amsterdam, everyone rides a bike in Amsterdam. They are extremely bike friendly. Not too pedestrian friendly. They'll run you over if you don't move fast enough. Also, I went to some clubs there. They had an amazing atmosphere and the music was good, but no one was really dancing. They were just mostly swaying, not dancing too much, which was not too fun. They danced like that mostly everywhere. My friends went to this one place and the cotton-eye-joe song came on and we started doing the cotton-eye-joe dance and then I noticed we were the only ones doing it...and everyone was staring at us lol. People also smoke at the bars in Amsterdam in Prague, which I don't like. I actually accidentally burned myself one someone's cigarette last night! It was weird just being burned all of a sudden and being like what just happened, then I saw the person I walked past had a cigarette. Some restaurants in Amsterdam let us know that people could smoke weed but your not allowed to smoke cigarettes, which I found interesting. Also, tourists are not going to be able to smoke in Amsterdam's coffeehouses when December comes around. Amsterdam is passing a law that comes into effect around then. I wonder if a lot of businesses will go out of business, I'm sure a lot of income comes from tourists.

I'm staying here in Prague for the weekend. A lot of my friends are going to Barcelona, but after last weekend it will be good to stay in Prague. I might go to the zoo, or to the botanical gardens, or maybe go paddle boating on the river, or maybe do all three! All while eating gelato lol.