Prague, Czech Republic

I arrived (by bus) in Prague on Wednesday afternoon.  Lucy picked me up, and I did some reading (Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There (thanks Lis!)) while she was in her afternoon class, and got a bag of vitamin c gummies because I woke up sick that morning.  After her class, we went to Old Town Square, which is really close to her place.  It was beautiful:

me in Old Town Square

That evening, one of Lucy's roommates joined us for dinner at a cute little restaurant where I got this delicious pizza and ate all but one slice because I was so hungry:

When you go out to dinner here in Europe (and particularly in the Czech Republic) you could seriously sit there for 4 hours, and they wouldn't give you any trouble.  That's nice in that you can relax and not be rushed out, but you have to do all but tackle the waitress in order to get your check.

Thursday morning I was still quite sick so I slept while Lucy was in class that morning.  In the afternoon, we did some shopping on "the shopping street", which connects to Wenceslas Square (you know, 'Good King Wenceslas', the Christmas song?).

Wenceslas Square on a cloudy day

Prague is by far the most beautiful city I have seen yet.  The streets make absolutely no sense, but the city is small enough that if you wander through them, you'll find your way.  They're so narrow - you think you've seen narrow cobble streets - not until you've been to Prague).  I just could not get over how beautiful every nook and cranny of the city was, and these photos don't do it justice.  I wish Berlin hadn't gotten the living daylight bombed out of it after the war, or else I'm sure a lot of it would look much like Prague in that sense.

That night on our way back from meeting up with some other HWS students for one girl's birthday, we stopped at a food stand near Wenceslas to get fried cheese - a very czech food, that Anthony Bourdain recommended.  Let me tell you..... it was AMAZING.

I'm eating my way through Europe.

Friday we went to the Charles Bridge (the big/main bridge in Prague connecting the two parts of the city) and walked across it to the other part of the beautiful city.  From the bridge, you can see the castle, the house where the president lives, and an overall great view of that part of the city because it's on a hill.

On the Charles Bridge.  The castle above, and the waterfront.

We found a cute little restaurant once out of the touristy area.  They didn't have an English menu, but the waiter told us he would translate the whole menu for us if we waited a few minutes!!  It was so nice, and something that would never happen in this part of Germany.  He took our order, and then we waited an hour for our food, trying to surpress our immense hunger.

After lunch, we found the Lenin Wall, which was surprisingly small (especially after walking down the Berlin wall so many times), but cool.  We walked back across the bridge and got another Czech delicacy - a Trdelník.  It is the best thing to ever happen to carbs.  Ever.
It's a pastry that's made by wrapping a long string of dough around a metal rod many times, and then it's  cooked over a fire while it rotates (picture a pig roast).  Afterwards, it's rolled in cinnemon/nut/sugar mix.  You can also get nutella in it.  So with that, I continued to eat my way through the Czech Republic!!

Saturday we did a bit more exploring before my 5pm bus back to Berlin.  It was so nice getting to see Prague, getting to see Lucy again, and meeting all of here awesome flatmates.
On the bus ride back, I had a bit of an issue getting across the border because I didn't have my passport (because the government had it until Thursday [and I left on Wednesday] to give us our visas).  You are supposed to be able to travel via bus or train within the EU with just an ISIC (int'l student ID card) card  and a license, but the bus people weren't having any of that.  Luckily I convinced them to let me on because of a letter I had from my school saying that the authorities have my passport.  We were stopped at the border (because there are no actual border crossings in Europe like we have between Canada - black unmarked BMWs just pull you over at random).  Thank God, after much suspense, the police let me through with the letter and my two forms of ID.  It was a scary experience, and I'll definitely have to let those who advised us on travel that it is not okay to travel without passport back TO Germany, but only from.

But, thankfully, I made it back okay, and have been rushing to unpack, go to the gym (saying no to food is not an option here), and planning out my trip to Paris!  I'm leaving here in an hour, and will be back Saturday.  I can't believe I'm finally going, it's so crazy!

Have a great week!

Thursday

I've been in Germany for exactly one month now!

This morning started off great, as I woke up to a winter wonderland!  It was showing real snow flakes, which was nice.  Even nicer, was that the sun came out by the time I left for school an hour later.

This afternoon I got a care package from my mom with a couple essentials I needed from the states - as well as my L.L. Bean slippers!!! I was/am so excited!  My feet are now nice and toasty against these linoleum floors :)  Unfortunately, Detusche Post took the liberty of opening my package to see what's inside.  It discovered my eye glasses, so they charged me an additional tariff to receive the package.  Luckily it arrived at school, so Ella (our wonderful staffer who helps us with literally everything) mediated this interaction with the post worker.  When I expressed a look of surprise that I had to pay this much extra (wouldn't you), he rolled his eyes and got really annoyed with me.  While I scrounged up some cash he stared at me with his "hurry the hell up, you dumb foreigner" look I've gotten so accustomed to seeing.  Anyway, I reluctantly paid and then devoured some York peppermint patties to recover from another rude interaction with a Berliner.

I spent a few hours this afternoon getting a head start on a paper due that's due in a couple months, because starting next weekend I'm going to be traveling a lot and don't want to have to be stressed about work then.  Hopefully it'll pay off!  All my classmates have been talking about how writing papers is going to be really difficult because our english has deteriorated... and let me tell you, that paper was so hard to write!  It's much different from the colloquial language with which I write here.

For dinner I made a mushroom/union/garlic/olive oil concoction with rice, and it was pretty flavorless because I don't know how to make things, but still yummy.  (But your recipes would still be greatly appreciated!)

On Saturday I'll be going to Hamburg, Germany with two other students.  We'll be doing a day trip, so we'll be taking the 5:18am train (it's a 4 hour ride) and getting back at 11pm.  It'll be a long day and my company will be less than enjoyable, but I'm still looking forward to getting out of Berlin, even if it's just for a day.

Wednesday

Monday in my pop culture class we watched a film called Changing Skins, which was made in the late 1990s and depicted the situation of two school children in the GDR.  They kidnapped their principal in order to ensure that they could apply to the university programs that they wanted to pursue.  This is because in the GDR, you didn't get to chose where you studied or what subject you studied; instead it was assigned to you by those in charge of your school.  If there were a shortage of police officers or Stasi workers, well, then you were going to be a Stasi worker - even if you were interested in studying and had the skills to pursue medicine!  Can you imagine?  I sure can't.  If someone had forced me to be a police officer or work in medicine, I don't know how I would be able to endure my university years.
Anyway, it was a good movie, and one which I will add to the list of recommended movies I'll be making while I'm here.

Today I wanted to get a head start on some midterms papers, and thus began watching The Lives of Others.  I've watched this before for a German studies class at HWS, and it's one of my favorite movies.  It's about the Stasi (the GDR's secret police) and their work in spying on one of the GDR's biggest playwrights.  It's a really fantastic movie, and sheds a lot of light onto the internal conflict that a lot of Stasi informers felt about spying on/turning people in.  If you don't believe me, the film won an Academy Award for best foreign film and was nominated for 11 German film awards.  This, along with Goodbye The Pianist is american-made).

Anyway, now I am in my kitchen again, this time finishing up making some gluten-free banana bread muffins!!  To my great surprise, they turned out to be really tasty!

Well, I should go eat a bunch of those and then get some rest so I can be extremely productive tomorrow - I'm planning to go to the Humboldt library after class.  It's so beautiful (check it out with this link), and as a result all the HU students go there and it's apparently quite hard to get a seat, so we'll see how I make out!

about these muffins:
Even if you leave butter out on the counter, it's so cold inside that it's still too hard to spread, and since microwaves don't exist, I lit a candle and melted a few spoon fulls of butter.  My first world problems.

In the kitchen

Greetings from my kitchen!   A fairly unusual place for me to be spending more than 20 minutes.

Background: Germany's eating theory basically revolves around "the clean plate club".  Everyone typically finishes everything on their plates at each meal (remember, they pay per bag for their trash), and in addition to that, no old food in the refrigerator should go to waste!  So, in that spirit, I decided to use all my rotten apples to make some homemade apple sauce the other night - inconveniently the same night my host mom was making a lamb feast for her boyfriend.  But, the situation forced me to carry on conversations in German/English for two hours, and I left - surprisingly - feeling really great about the amount of German I was able to understand!

This may not look stellar, but it was de-licious!! 

Last night (when I started writing this post and was actually in my kitchen...) I made my first attempt at gluten free pizza.  It took from 8 to 11pm from start to finish, and although it looked like thick pancake batter when I slathered it on the pan, it actually turned out looking and tasting like delicious pizza!! I was quite pleased/surprised it worked out (new recipe, new products, new units of measurement, and a lot of help from google translate).

Yum yum yum.  Pizza with no tummy or headaches.  Livin' the life. 

So, evidently I've acquired a nack for cooking (probably just because of my frugality and specific dietary preferences).  If any of you have any dinner or dessert recipes (that don't have wheat in them, until I figure out what's wrong with me), I would really appreciate if you could send them my way!  Although I do have one request - that they can be prepared in an hour or less.

If you have any you'd like to send (the more the merrier), just send them to my yahoo or school email accounts (and if you don't know what those are..... I'm not sure how to help you, but I don't want to post my email on this site because it's public and I don't want the world to see it).

Thanks!

The weekend

Lucy arrived on Saturday morning, and we started our adventures on Saturday afternoon!  The weather was freezing, about 10 degrees with the wind chill, and when you're walking around outside all day that is truly frigid!!! But we learned our lesson on Saturday, and on Sunday we wore under armour leggings under our jeans!

Our first stop Saturday was the East Side Gallery.  That's a 1.3km section of the east side of the Wall, and in the 1990s the German government had artists from around the world paint murals on it (because the east side of the wall was completely empty, as they weren't allowed to go up to the wall, unlike the West - that's how you can tell what side is which; the west always has graffiti/writing on it and the East is [was] empty).  It was really cool to see all of the famous murals, but I look forward to going back in the spring, because we walked really fast since we were so cold!

I am in Berlin

this is on the bottom of the quebec license plate - it says "I remember" - very fitting

Lucy and I found an Invisible Children sticker - it's one of our favorite organizations, and it's in front of my favorite mural! 

After that frigid walk, we took a short ride around the city to see all of the main sights.

me and the Reichstag

the brandenburger tor in the sunlight, and an obnoxious tourist who, despite my staring at him, insisted on ruining my photo.

After all this cold exploring, we met up with Devon and Elizabeth and all had the most delicious and hygge (if you'll allow me to use some Danish) traditional German dinner! Yes, I have been in Germany for 3 weeks and had not had German food yet.  That's what happens when you're a college student on a budget! Obviously I got my favorite dish - Käsespätzle!!

spätzle is pasta dumplings, and käsespätzle is those with cheese and caramelized onions in it.  the most delicious and unhealthy dish ever.

On Sunday, since there isn't much to do in Berlin, we explored in the cold some more and then went to the Prenzlauer Berg flee market.  Flee markets are huge here, and sell all kinds of things from food to crafts to old crap that you don't need.  Unfortunately this one was mostly old crap that we didn't need.  But it was in Mauerpark, which is a park in the middle of the city that has the Wall running through it.  That park will be really cool to see in the spring (I feel like I'm saying that about everything...)

Frozen, we decided to look for a place to get lunch.  Obviously since we're in Germany, we decided to go to an Indian restaurant!  It was inexpensive and delicious.  Unfortunately since you have to pay for glasses of water, we had to ration our beverages while we ate this spicy food, and it was a true test to my taste buds - holy smokes!!!

After this delicious meal, I met up with Elizabeth and Devon and we went to church, and the service was really great.  We are joining a young adults community group, and this Wednesday night is our first meeting (dinner party)!  I'm so excited!  It'll be awesome to connect with people our age from around the world.  I didn't come to Germany to hang out with Americans all the time!

Today Devon and I got our flights for spring break, but unlike I said before, we are actually just going to spend a week in Barcelona (and hopefully take an overnight trip up to the South of France).  It would have been a lot more expensive to add Portugal, as the prices went up a lot in the past few days, so we figured it'd be best to save our money for another adventure.  Plus, it's not like Barcelona is lacking in things to do!

We then went to McDonalds because we were feeling adventurous and have been wanting to compare US McDonalds (not that either of us eat there often at all) with German ones.  The only fries we saw on the menu were called "American French Fries", so we ordered those (for over $3 USD!!!).  They looked like this:

I mean, don't get me wrong, they were good!  But they were not anything like fries at McDonalds in the US, nor like any fries I've ever seen in Germany!! As we were eating them, we noticed others had what looked to be typical US McDonalds fries on their trays!  I guess if you're not a dumb American you know that you'll just get normal fries when you ask for fries (pommes).  Ugh!  Sometimes I feel so dumb here.  Also, instead of ketchup, the fries came with a sour creme and chives dip (sort of like heluvagood chip dip?).

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, as I'm sure you've heard.  Sadly, I'm really embarrassed to say, I'd forgotten it was today.  On my own campus I would've been more aware of it.  I only figured it out by watching France24 tonight.  From what I could understand, there were a lot of remembrance events in Poland, which is nice.  I couldn't tell you anything about what Germany did though because thanks to my lack of German skills I can't understand the news here. It would've been nice to know how Germans are reflecting on the day and the history.

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore"

-Andre Gide

Today was a great day: I found 2 stores that have a gluten free section (more than just pasta!), and I found raisins!!
It's the simple things in life that make my day bright.  Like eating without pain!
I wish I could've come to Germany a few months ago so I could eat all of the delicious bread for every meal like the Germans do... it's a cruel world!

Weekend

Saturday, after realizing it was noon and there were only 4 more hours of daylight to make use of, I did something I've always wanted to do: walk out the door and keep walking into the unknown, sans-map, until you end up somewhere!  It turned out to be a great adventure.

I walked straight out the front door, eventually crossed the Spree, passed the Egyptian and other embassies, the Philharmonic's building, and the road ended at the Tiergarten (Berlin's Central Park).  I walked along the park for a bit, and ended up near Potsdamer Platz!  It's amazing how close the apartment is to everything! I then did some quality shopping in the mall in Potsdamer.

Yep, I spent my hard earned money on the German versions of Mamma Mia and Madagascar 2 :) to my defense, they were only €5!

I then met up with Devon, Elizabeth and Michelle at Freidrichstraße where I witnessed my first German protest. That's because they don't protest as much as the French! They were, from what I deduced, protesting the closing of Tegel airport because now the planes will fly closer to the city.  Anyway, I ate my first Currywurst.... it was DELICIOUS.  I'm trying to get my vegetarian friend here to eat one with me, but he's not as adventurous as I am.  This looks gross because they put about 9000 grams of German ketchup on it, but don't judge it! Also, it's one of the few gluten-free options you can get on the go in Berlin.

At night, we went to an IES gathering at our classmate Ben's house (his host parents told him that he should have us all over, which was so nice of them, as that means they invited 26 20-somethings to their flat!).  It wasn't that fun.  One of the hardest things to get used to here is the abundance of cigarette smokers/smoke, anywhere and everywhere.  His host parents smoke inside, so many people were last night too, and it's just hard to get used to inhaling so much second hand smoke.   After, I had my first "oh CRAP, the U-Bahn is closed!!!! How am I going to get home?!" experience.  Some nice German girls explained to us how to get home, but we understood none of what they said because we didn't know that part of town, so we took cabs home.  I need to learn to navigate the night map better (the train map totally changes at night, makes things more confusing).

Today did typical Sunday-in-Germany things like sleep in, stay inside most of the day, clean, and cook.  I finally left the house to go to church with Devon which was great.  Everyone there is just so friendly!! Today they live-streamed Brian Houston (he started Hillsong in Australia) who was speaking at the London service.  Devon and I quite enjoyed it, and then went to Starbucks for some tea and to chat.  I'm so glad we found eachother here, we're so similar and have many of the same goals for our time abroad, and just generally enjoy each other's company! Plus, it really confuses people when we introduce ourselves to them as Devan/Devon :)  We both decided that we'd like to spend less time with IES people and start getting involved with the community at church, which we're really excited about.  We did some planning for our exciting next weekend and spring break trip.

I then made for dinner a delicious gluten-free meal of g-f pasta and tofu with fresh sautéed veggies, topped off by a piece of cake my host mom gave me :) Another great weekend!