Once again, I fail at writing blogs. But it has actually been an extremely busy past few weeks. I’ve had a lot of school stuff (paper, presentations, etc) and my parents came 2 weeks ago also. I just needed a little taste from home. We’re about half way through the program ( I can’t believe it!! ) and I think a lot of people have been going through their ‘culture shock’ valley lately. At the beginning of our program, during orientation, we were told that we might go through phases of culture shock. Sometimes we will go through peaks where we will love every single thing about study abroad and never wanting to come back. And then there are valleys, lows in the trip where we could be homesick, depressed, or just feeling weird and blah. Well my feelings haven’t been that dramatic but I’ve def. been a little discouraged about the whole language barrier thing. I never thought it would be this difficult!! And sometimes I just can’t understand Josefina (my host mom) at all and therefore can’t communicate with her. Well it has gotten much better. I’m not sure if I just became more confident and comfortable speaking Spanish or if I really have gotten much better these past few weeks, probably a combination of the two. But anyways, it’s been a great month and I want time to stop going so fast! Ah. But the family visit was GREAT! We went to Sevilla, Barcelona, and I showed them around Granada as well! Definitely a well rounded vacation, but more on that later!
So I am FINALLY finishing up my Semana Blanca posts, because next weekend is the beginning of my Semana Santa break… I am going to Rome, Florence, and Venice, Italy with Kelly! Also, exciting news, I just booked my tickets to Greece for our final trip of Europe before going back to the U.S. It’s going to be my summer vacation trip… just before I get home!
Vienna, Austria
CouchSurfing:
So for our lodging we decided to try a new thing to save money. At first it seems kind of crazy, but when you investigate further it actually is a wonderful idea and concept, and it worked out really well for us. For the first time, we tried ‘CouchSurfing’. Visit this site: http://www.couchsurfing.org/home.html if you want to learn more. It is basically a registry of people all over the world who are open to meeting new people and even open their homes and apartments to let travelers stay for free… thus the name: CouchSurfing. Now of course, you need to be very careful with this because people may have wrong intentions, but, if you do your homework you can find wonderful, wonderful, hospitable people. Well Kelsey looked for a potential host in Vienna who would let 4 people sleep over at their house and was successful. His name is Andrea and he works for the antinuclear terror department at the U.N…. can you believe it?! What a job! Anyways we got to Vienna, and met him at the U.N. building and got a nice little tour and even had lunch there! It was so surreal but so cool! He was awesome, helpful, and incredibly worldly and intelligent. That first night he made us pasta with pesto, let us shower, and then put on a black and white (English!) movie on his sweet projector screen in the living room, though most of us fell asleep, it was a good relaxing night. We sadly didn’t get to spend that much time with him because we were busy but he was a great host and I def. had a positive CouchSurfing experience!
Opera House
Our first day in Vienna, we were absolutely desparate to get indoors because of how freezing cold it was outside. We found the center of the city, walked around for a bit and came upon the famous state Opera house. We paid for the English tour and had a really great tour guide. The tour wasn’t extremely in depth but gave a great overview about the functionings of the operahouse. We got to go into the auditorium and watched the crew set up the stage for the opera that was showing that night. I felt terrible but was practically falling asleep in the seats, this has happened to me once before, at Carnegie Hall when I was with my choir in New York. Our tour guide was telling us about the price of seats and continued to explain how there are standing room seats. She said that there are a few sections (one being on the floor right in the middle) where there are bars lined up and places were people stand the entire night in order to watch the opera and it is only about 4 euro!! The seats are great but the cons were that a. you have to wait in line 2+ hours to get the tickets and you have to stand for 3+ hours. She also told us that tomorrow night was the premiere of Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro. We debated about which show to go to, but then we decided we would just go for the premiere. So long process but end results, we got our 4euro tickets and got PERFECT center standing room tickets for the premiere of the opera. It was so awesome to see!!!! Sometime my feet wanted to kill me, but it was worth it. Annnd now I get to cross something off of my bucket list… to go to a real opera house and see a real opera. Except that next time, I will want to be dressed up in a dress or gown instead of dirty winter clothes that are dirty and smelly!
Seeing friends and crappy weather
In Vienna we actually got to meet up with a few friends from home! We saw Madeline’s group (Cory, Andrea, Meg, Ryan(s)) and then we got to meet up with some of Esteban’s friends at a fun karaoke bar, but sadly couldn’t spend that much time with them because the metro doesn’t run past 11:30/12 so we had to sprint back in order to be able to get home! But it’s always wonderful to see familiar faces especially when you are so far away from home. I wish I could have seen more of Vienna but the weather was almost unbearable. It was so cold and so we didn’t want to spend that much time outside, so we tried to find things to do inside. So that was kind of a bummer, but it was still a beautiful city (very posh!).
Prague, Czech Republic
Terrible welcome
So this was a very interesting start to our stay in our final city. We took a bus from Vienna to Prague… side note: if you ever want to hear a hilarious but awkward story, ask me about my bus trip, it is too inappropriate to post here!! Anyways, we arrived at the Prague bus station (kind of shady) and exchanged some money from Euros to Czech Krowns ~23.7kc/1euro. We then headed down to the metro to find our apartment rental office. Well, we get down there and right before we got on the metro, this guy approaches me, shows me this secretive ring thing on the inside of his hand and said something. Well I thought he was a homeless man and was wondering why he was bothering me so much. So I called out to Kelsey and Esteban because I was so cofused and I tried to round the corner but then I realized that he was the metro patrol!! They started asking for our passports, we tried to act like stupid tourists (because we partially were) but we had also been told from friends that the patrol never checks so don’t worry about buying tickets. Well we tried to fight the two scary (cartoon police looking) men but they were threatening to call the police and fine us even more so we just gave up and forked over 700 kc, which is only like 30euro but still sucked. I was pretty distraught at first but now it just makes for a memory and a good story to tell! McKenna luckily didn’t get caught so didn’t have to pay… I need to stay closer to her I guess! Sooo then after this, after almost being arrested we were almost homeless! For housing, Esteban had found an apartment rental, which was a 4 bed with kitchen apartment for only 13 euro per person per night. So a great deal! McKenna booked it on her card and we all paid her. Well we get to the place and call the guy and he tells us “so we have a big problem” he said that somehow the apartment just lost all electricity and has no heat… and that he promises ist wasn’t a double-booking. Which it HAD to be because we should have been notified if it really was an electrical issue. They then said they would put us up in another apt, so we went to their office and that is where the tension grew. So then the men were terrible rude and were like, “we can only do two things, put you up in a 3 star hotel with no kitchen or you pay more money for another apt” We of course, said no that they cover the cost, give us somewhere to stay, or give us ALL of the money back. Then they said because we booked through a certain service that they don’t have all of our money. Something to note: we have noticed that Europe has TERRIBLE customer service. So we had the options of saying no thanks and go to another hostel and make them give us our money back or make them put us up in another apartment without us paying extra. So as we followed the man to our new apartment we prayed that this wouldn’t be a ‘taken’ moment, I just didn’t trust these men after they were so rude to us! Kelsey even tried to take a picture of the man just IN CASE anything were to happen with us, crazy, we know, but we kind of had a traumatic start to the trip! All in all our housing situation ended up wonderfully. Our apartment was clean, spacious, super close to everything, and just so convenient! If I have time later, I’ll post more about Prague but it was a great city, we learned a lot and got to see a lot of the city!
I am tired of typing and want to get some homework done before I go out tonight…it is Audrey’s 21st birthday tomorrow so we are all going out to celebrate!! But, I will try to post at least one more general blog entry before I go to Italy! I miss everyone and am soooo happy in Spain! Let me know if you want a postcard J
Xoxo
Bre
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