Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Fleckerflacker Burgerbacker

Ok, I am back in Madrid. First, Spring Break was spectacular. It was quite the adventure, I learned a lot about myself and others, and it only increased my want to travel more. Definitely have aquired some good stories and sights, but for this particular entry I will just bullet point the main parts of each day and maybe throw in a story here and there.



Day 1: Milan

  • Saw the most expensive street of shops in the WORLD (including the original Prada).



  • Saw the Duomo -------------------->





  • Got the last tickets of the day to see Da Vinci's The Last Supper. It is huge, it actually takes up the entire wall of the church.

  • Enjoyed gelato

  • Went to a Club called Planet 50


DAY 2, 3,4: Venice




  • Took a train the next morning from Milan to Venice


  • Took a water taxi to the apartment the 12 of us rented. Saw 2 old women sitting on a dock painting, now that's the life.


  • Went on a walking tour with my friends Danny and Laura, took all sorts of pictures. Bought myself a little Venetian mask. They were everywhere!

  • Starting wishing I had studied abroad in Italy.

  • Went on an island tour. Saw Murano-island where they do the glass blowing. Saw a man make a horse figurine in about 2.5 minutes flat. Burano (my favorite-->) - was a colorful little fisherman's village. Then Torcello, which was an erie little island I believe at one time all the inhabitants died of some kind of disease..and only an old church and monestary remain there.
  • Made dinner ourselves at the apartment. Pasta, the freshest salad with tomatoes, cheese, peppers, and onion, bread, cheese, and wine. So delicious.

  • Saw Doge's Palace, Rialto Bridge, Basilica of San Marco, Palazzo Ducale, and more.

  • Who goes to Venice and doesn't take a gondola ride? Not me.


  • Seriously contemplated what I was thinking by not choosing to study in Italia.

  • Took a night train from Venice to Vienna. Didn't realize that our seat pulled out into a bed until we were getting off the train at 8 in the morning. Awesome. Saw the most beautiful scenery training it up through the Austrian Alps.

Day 5: Vienna, Austria










  • Everything is in German...cool. We don't know a single word, nor can we figure out any signs, but we do think its funny to pretend we can pronouce the words and for the rest of the trip we made up our own words like the title of my post.


  • Had our backpacks on all day while we explored the city. It was thankfully a beautiful day and we saw St. Stephen's Cathedral and lots of other important looking buildings that I took pictures of.

  • Went to the Sigmond Freud Museum.

  • Thought we could get on the student agency bus without a reservation...epic fail. Ended up having to stay the night and convinced a nice Austrian man who worked a fairly decent hotel to let 8 people stay in a 4 person hotel room for only 100 euro. Success.

DAY 6, 7, 8: Prague, Czech Republic




  • We finally made it to Prague after a quick little train ride. The train ride was actually really fun because about 5 of us sat in the bar part of the train and drank some refreshing beers in preparation for our time in Prague.

  • We got there around mid-day and easily found our hostel.

  • Then we bought our bus tickets and got out the bus, making the HUGE mistake not to stamp or in fancy terms "validate" our tickets. So the next thing I know is I'm being asked for my ticket and I was like here ya go mister tough guy...I'm not doing anything wrong here it is, I'm not scamming the system I bought a ticket. Well you see that's not really how it works. You are suppose to get on the buses and put your tickets in these little yellow machines that stamp the time on your ticket. Well we didn't see a single person stamp anything so we didn't know we were suppose to (this could be because they were all locals who had monthly passes who didn't need stamps, but how were we to know). So the 8 of us get pulled off the train and are told we need to pay a fee of 700 crowns. This seems a bit ridiculous to me and I think it was around about 50 euros or something like that. So we end up arguing with these basically mall cops from the Czech Republic who are in the nicest words I can think of ...little skeezballs. Anyway long LONG story short we talked for them for about an hour while he claimed he called the police twice and ended up paying for 2 of the 8 tickets just so we could get the hell out of there. I'm sure they just pocketed the money, but I guess that was karma because we didn't buy a single ticket in Austria, we just kept getting on and off the trains. It's a lot different than Madrid or Chicago, because in those places to even get to the station you have to scan your ticket or you can't get it. Anyway, lesson learned and maybe this post will save someone 700 crowns and valuable time. haha.


  • After that little incovience we headed to the Prague Castle and walked around checking out the delightful view of the city. Most of the house are white, with red roofs, very beautiful sight.



  • Went out to some some bars as well as a 5 story club. Had a terrific night and met people from all over the world.

  • Woke up the next morning at 9 am and went on our Prague city tour, which I'm really glad we did because our tourguide showed us all the cool buildings in Prague as well as the Jewish quartersand Charles Bridge.


  • After the tour our group split up and me and several of my friends went to the Lennon Wall..as in John Lennon. It's this really cool wall shown here ---> I overheard some tour guide telling his group that after John Lennon died, some people painted a wall with pictures of John Lennon and song lyrics, but this was during the Communist reign and during the day the communists painted over all the artwork in white. Well then that very next night the Czech people would paint pictures of ole Johnny again, with the Communists painting it white in the day. This continued for awhile until the Communists realized they had more important things to worry about and now the wall changes constantly with more and more artwork. Pretty cool huh?

  • After that we grabbed some dinner. Sausages to be exact because they do not have these in Espana. Solo jamon. Which I never want to see again in my life when I get back to the States.

  • Then we went on a pub crawl which ended up being really fun. Absinthe is legal in Prague so I had a shot of that. It's pretty terrible in all honesty. We started at Bohemian Bagels and then headed to 4 other pubs. We met some Australians and lucky for my friends and I we didn't have to buy a single drink all night ;) I think we stayed out until around 4 am then got up the next morning and headed to the airport for our flight to Copenhagen.


Day 9,10: Copenhagen










  • We exhaustively arrived in Copenhagen. Found our hostel that looked more like a prison cell than it did a hostel. haha "Sleep in Heaven" very ironic name for the hostel.


  • We spent the afternoon/night walking around doing a walking tour of our own. Saw the Hans Christian Anderson statue as well as his tombstone in the cemetery located right next to our hostel.

  • At night we sat on a park bench right on the water looking at the houses all lit up and with their lights reflecting off the water. It is something I will never forget. We just sat their for hours and talked until it was too cold and we decided to walk back.




  • The next day we rented bikes and the city was ours. Copenhagen is bike friendly just like Amsterdam. There are bike paths everywhere and it was no problem to get around. Only got honked at once so pretty successful.




  • Here was a nice surprise for us though. So Tivoli Gardens is like the thing to do in Copenhagen. Its basically like Bush Gardens I think, but better. And it opens in approximately one week. haha. Then they have a famous statue of the Little Mermaid. Well ..for the first time in the history of the world the Little Mermaid statue is out of the country...in China. cool. Oh and Copenhagen happens to be the 2nd most expensive city in Europe so that was the perfect place to end our spring break with the little money we all had left.hahaha! Other than those cold, hard facts, Copenhagen was sweet.
  • We celebrated our last night by going to a fancy restaurant for dinner. And I really treated myself by ordering King Crab from the North...that is what it was called on the menu and it was honestly the best seafood I've ever had.

So my spring break was a blast. Good group of people, good sights, good times. Today I went to Segovia for a day trip with API and it was really cool. Its this old little town about an hour outside of Madrid. We went in the castle and climbed to the top of the tower. We went in the cathedral and walked around town. Good times. Tonight, some friends and I went across the street to the bar and watched the Real Madrid vs. Barcelona game. Barca won. booo. Wasn't much of a game. Tomorrow I plan on going to El Rastro (flea market) and Parque de Retiro. It's almost 2am so I'm off.

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