Adventiures
Most of the 24th was devoted to travel but when we arrived in Lido (a town on the beach in Northern Italy) I immediately changed into my swimsuit and ran into the ocean. Friday morning, we woke up and took a bus and a boat to get to Venice, the most beautiful city I have ever seen. Seriously, anyone trying to decide their next itinerary in Europe, hit Venice up. Let’s first talk gelato. I mean, eat it, and eat it as often as you can. Okay, now I have set our priorities straight we can talk about the city. I watched a four-hour documentary on Venice on the drive, so I am happy to say I know a little bit about the city. There are 118 islands making up the city of Venice. Before any Venetians settled there, the landscape was a marshland. There is a church on every island of Venice; a total of 120 churches. There are no cars in the city, there are no streets other than walking streets. Everything is done by boat. There are boat taxies and “street signs” in the canals and everything. We took a gondola tour of the city, which is something extremely necessary. It’s a little spendy, but you can get the price down with more people in the boat. About eighty euros total but if you have six people in the boat, that’s not too bad per person. We saw the square named after Marco Polo and the building Casanova lived in. The buildings are breathtaking. I felt as if I were in a movie. No picture of Venice needs elaboration because everywhere you look in the city is just beautiful and classic. Our tour was about thirty-five minutes and we got so lucky with the weather. It was a gorgeous day and we soaked up the sun. We had a classic Italian meal for lunch: pizza and white wine with more gelato for dessert!
The next day, Saturday, we spent the whole day on the beach getting wonderfully tan and, in some cases, burned.
We drove the long drive to Vienna, a really classy city very proud of their way of life. Vienna was declared to have the highest standard of living in Europe this year. We arrived in the city, and everywhere you look is beautiful buildings, architecture, and plant life. Everyone on the streets was put together and fashionable. One thing I didn’t know about Vienna was about their coffee. Long long ago, the Turks tried to invade Austria and accidentally left some coffee beans there and the Austrians took it and cultivated it for hundreds of years and were actually the first to have coffee in Europe. Not Italy, as I thought. So, at least when you ask the Austrians, they have the best coffee in Europe. They even use their own coffee names; I ordered a Vienice Theresia, (coffee with milk). It was the most spiritual experience I have ever had.
We stopped at the imperial summer palace for a few hours which has beautiful gardens, but not comparable to Versailles. The next day we started with some sightseeing at Marie Platz, which is surrounded by a natural history museum and an Art history museum. I was pretty happy to say the least. Then we walked through the square to the other imperial palace, because, of course, they needed two. We walked through Kohlmark and Graben Street, the two hotty-totty streets. Everything was ridiculously expensive. I went into a Forever21 and I couldn’t find anything under 20Euro. Then we walked to Stephensplatz, where there is a magnificent church. I spent the day in the Natural history museum and walking around, seeing the city.
After dinner, it was my friend Alex’s birthday so we went back into the city and had quite a bit of fun at a karaoke bar! I can now cross professional singer of my list of career possibilities.
We took the bus and metro to the center of the city and walked to Prazsky hrad, this huge beautiful Church. It is on this big hill in the center of Prague and the view from it was breathtaking. You could see all the roofs and towers and the whole city. After that we had the whole day to ourselves to go wherever we wanted. Some of us took the metro back into the city center and went shopping because it was the cheapest country we would visit on our trip. And as my Rotary club at home said, it would be a shame to go to Czech Republic, the bear capital of Europe and not try some of the best beer in the world. So we had some refreshments, that I will say, I don’t really taste the differences in beers. We also had a pick-nick in a lovely park with bread and meat and cheese and strawberries. This was a great cheap travel idea because it usually costs about 7 to 10 Euros for lunch. But our pick-nick was about 12 Euros for 6 people! That night we got to go the legendary five-story club in Prague which probably would have been better if it hadn’t been a Monday night!
Most of Sunday was driving but on the way to Prague, which had the most beautiful landscape I have every seen. We stopped at a concentration camp called Terezin in northern Czech Republic. This was really interesting. I felt like a should have felt more shivers or something walking through the cell rooms and hearing about what the life was like for the prisoners from the tour guide. The camp that we visited was famous because it held the boy who assassinated Franz Ferdinand and essentially began WWI. That was really interesting to hear about. He was kept in solitary confinement in this little room with no light, no windows, nothing.
The whole “prison” was built by Czechoslovakia for mostly political prisoners. Around the prison and in the prison is a town. When the Nazis came and took over the prison to make it into a camp, they made everyone move out and occupied the town. The rooms they kept the Jews in we made for 40 people. Living in those rooms with forty people would have been really awful and crowded, however, by the end of the war, the rooms occupancy was from 100 to 150. There was one bathroom, more like a whole in the wall, for all of them. There was also a big museum that had all this information about how the prisoners communicated with each other. The men and woman were forbidden to talk so they created this whole system of passing letters and writing on stolen handkerchiefs in codes. Makes you think what kind of person you would be in that situation.
We woke up and ate breakfast at the hostel… I am writing this four days after the fact so the details are a little fuzzy. Then we went around on the bus and toured to “most famous sights”. We saw the remainder of the Berlin wall, which was turned into an art piece. Hundreds of artists contributed to this one bit of wall. It was really great to see something so oppressive turned into something so beautiful and expressive. After that, we went to the Olympic arena that Hitler had built for the 1936 Olympics.
Side story: Jessie Owens, an African American won four gold metals and Hitler refused to shake his hand, as was customary. His winnings completely undermined Hitler’s white supremacy thing he had going on. The other electives told Hitler he had to treat every winner the same so Hitler decided not to shake any winners hand. Everntually he caved and shook the hand of Jessie Owen.
We drove to Brandonburg Gate, walked around and had an amazing indian lunch. We also visited the Holocaust memorial in the center of the city.
My friends and I missed the bus on the way back and had to take to metro home which was a valid adventure. After dinner, went out again. The whole city was watching a football match, making the pubs really ruckus and great. We met some danish chaps which and only realized we were each danish after a long conversation in english. And I have to go to dinner now, so that’s the end!
