Look at Me Go!

Having Survived the infamous Prague "Blizzard" of 2010 (so dubbed by those who live in climates where it doesn't snow. To the rest of us it was just a snow storm) that occurred at our dorm last night I have decided I need to continue this Blog roll I am on!

So to Continue my adventures of the first week I was in Europe.... (Geez this is going to take a while... Stick with me guys!)

So basically our program decided it would be a fabulous idea to wake us up at 4:30am to take a morning flight from London to Munich in order to continue our cultural journey across Europe to our desired city Prague. After the fiasco that was getting 75 American students with 1,578,392 bags checked in and through security we arrived safely in Munich (minus Alex's Bag) and headed to our hotel where we all headed to our rooms immediately for naps. Enter mine and Sara's room we discovered our rooms were so small and oddly shaped that the two twin beds were in fact pushed together! Contrary to some of the boys reactions Sara and I were ecstatic! We could sleep holding hands! Finally!

Having only enough time for a quick cat-nap and bite to eat at the Pizza place across the street we then hopped on a bus for a tour of Munich. Unfortunately for the two wonderful women giving the tour warm cozy buses, melodic voices and jet-lagged 20 year olds who have been up since 4:30 am do not mix well. I am pretty sure everyone on the bus was passed out by the time we pulled off of our street. Of course I was on like the third row and right in the line of sight of the tour guide and felt awful for falling asleep!! The good news is the second part of the tour was a walking tour. The bus pulled up in front of the Munich Opera house and getting out into

the frigid air was exactly what I needed to wake me up.

So now I feel it is necessary to add that I had no idea what to expect from Munich. I didn't really know what was there, if it was a cool city or if I was going to like it at all. The only thing I knew is that the little girl from the book I was reading at the time lived in Munich (The Book Thief, an excellent book, read it if you haven't already!) But I was knocked off my feet by what a cool city Munich actually is!

Our walking tour began at the Opera house and as we started walking it began to snow lightly as it was getting dark, totally adding to the ambiance of the city. I loved walking the streets and seeing the beautiful houses and store fronts. We got to see the Marienplatz (translated as Our Lady's Square) one of the main squares in Munich. The Marienplatz is dominated by this amazingly cool gothic building. On the columns there are these little dolls that apparently sing and dance and move about during the day. Well as it turns out the building is the Munich Town Hall! Which I found amazingly cool that they would build such an elaborate place to house the mundane operations of the city. The tour ended with our guide taking us to a famous Munich institution, the Hofbrauhaus.

Munich City Hall and the Marienplatz

The Hofbrauhaus is a classic German beer hall filled with long tables, German sausages, pretzels, and Beer. But not just any beer HUGE mugs of Beer! In fact let me introduce you to the huge mugs of beer. I am pretty sure it was bigger than my face!

This was the moment in my life that I realized I needed to become a fan of beer. Having never really liked the stuff before... Yet one sip of German beer made me realize American beer is a weak comparison.

The night at the Hofbrauhaus was needless to say my favorite night of the trip thus far. My beer drinking buddies included Becca Pieser (on the left) and Alex Horn (on the right) and in the picture below, (from left to right) Celia Fox, Sara Sloyer (my roommate) and Jenny Crisp.

We sat and ate dinner (veal sausages and pretzels SO GOOD), drank our beer and played a new game brought to us from Texas (ie Alex and Becca) called Nelson. It includes each person having 6 small pieces of paper and works kind of like telephone. Each person writes a phrase on the first piece and passes it to the next person that person reads the phrase moves the first piece of paper to the bottom of the pile and then draws a picture of the phrase. The stacks then get passed to the next person who looks at the drawing and must decide what the original phrase was; they then write what they believe the phrase to be on the next piece of paper and the stacks get passed again, continuing on in this pattern of writing and drawing until you end up with your original stack. Due to our lack of artistic ability and wacky song-lyric phrases this game is hilarious and gets very out of hand!

All in all a wonderful time in Munich!

I must now go nurse my sickness...

xoxo

A little Catching Up To Do....

Hi All,

Believe it or not it has been a little over a month since I arrived in Europe, yet this blog doesn't seem to show all of the amazing things I've been doing since my arrival. So in the spirit of anniversaries here is what happened in my first week in Europe.

On the morning of February 27, 2010 I arrived in London on my flight from L.A. After checking into my hotel my friend and roommate Sara Sloyer and I took off with our friend Kacy Lebby to explore London. We went to Trafalgar Square and spent the afternoon at the National Gallery. This museum was amazing and houses a fantastic body of work. It was one of the places in Europe I had always wanted to go. That evening we had a welcome meeting at our hotel where we were able to meet the people on our program. I was extremely surprised to see how many people there were on our program! The hotel dining area where we were meeting was completely packed! That evening we took the "Tube" into the city center and went to a pub called O'Neil's. The pub was packed with local Brits watching the Manchester United vs Manchester City football (soccer) game. This was such a cool experience as we got to meet many locals and be a part of the intense local football culture! This was obviously a huge rivalry!

The next day in London we woke up early for a bus tour provided by our program. Our tour guide was a Scot named Simon who I thought was quite funny but was a little too much to handle that early in the morning. Our jet-lagged crew questioned if he was still drunk from the night before. We first went to Buckingham Palace where as we arrived the royal carriage drivers were taking the horses for a spin.

Next we went to see Westminster Abby, Big Ben and Parliament. Sara and I being political geeks enjoyed going to see parliament. I have always wanted to attend a session of parliament, watching those old men yell at each other is a much more 1) aggressive (read affective) and 2) entertaining political system than the one we have in the U.S.

We also got excited to take a picture in front of Parliament to send back home to the Politics & Government Department at Puget Sound (here's a little shout out to them! As I am now featured on their blog! No pressure right...) Needless to say seeing the Parliament building was a highlight of my London trip, the architecture and the history of the building only added to the experience.
Next, we drove through the ritzy neighborhood of Westminster and admired the incredible cars out the window of our bus and learned where to get a 350 pound haircut (roughly $600). We saw the U.S. Embassy with and adjacent square with statues of a few presidents including Eisenhower and Roosevelt. The square was also home to the British Memorial to the 9/11 attacks and includes the names of the British victims who died in the tours. We got a peak at St. Paul's Cathedral (we didn't want to pay the admission fee so we just glanced in.) We got to see the real London Bridge as well as the actual Tower Bridge which many people mistakenly believe to be the London Bridge. Our tour ended at the famed Covent Garden where we grabbed lunch.

After lunch a few girls, including myself, wanted to go to the Tate Modern museum to see some of the famous modern art housed there. We got a bit lost on our way there but finally found the building with he direction from a few British men at the tube stop. The museum was very interesting. As is par for the course with Sarah and modern art I didn't understand a large majority of the pieces. One in particular was a mattress hanging from the ceiling with a long florescent light stuck through the middle with a chair sitting next to it. Not sure what that's all about. After we had walked through the majority of the galleries we stopped to look at the map to find out where the Piacaso's were. Unable to find it on the map we asked a security guard who seemed entertain to tell us that we were at the Tate British Museum rather than the Tate Modern which was a 35 min ferry ride up the river from where we were! Exasperated and tired we decided we didn't have it in us to trek to the Tate Modern and called it a day. We headed back to the hotel for a nap.

That evening we had the great experience of getting 25 Pound tickets to the production of Wicked! This was one of my favorite show I saw in New York and was excited to be able to see the British Production! The show did not disappoint, it is an amazing musical and the actors had wonderful voices and put on a beautiful show. (Plus one of my favorite songs in the show was remade on GLEE, so obviously I wanted to hear that again!)

We ended the evening by heading back to our hotel as we had a bright and early wake up call for Munich in the morning... 4:00am... not my time of day, to say the least!

Until Munich!

Catching Up in Prague

Hello Everyone and Happy Valentines Day!

Needless to say I have been having tons of fun in Europe and have been neglecting my blog. But here I go... with lots of catching up to do!

I am going to start with my recent history and then I will recap the whirlwind adventures of my first few weeks.

Currently, I have gotten settled in my dorm room in Prague and am starting the second week of my intensive Czech class. My teacher Ilona, has taught us the main phrases in Czech that we need to get around Prague. I have to say I think I have one of the best teachers. She realizes we are never going to be fluent in Czech and is focused on teaching us the basic phrases and basic grammar we will need to ask questions and understand responses. Thus far I can count to 100, say greetings, order food at a restaurant, ask for a telephone number, and talk about my family. All in all I have enjoyed learning Czech but it has to be one of the hardest languages around.


Today, being Valentines Day, my roommate Sara and I made a lovely dinner for our two best guy friends/ Valentines Walt and Alex, Alex being my Valentine. The boys showed up at our door with roses, bottles of wine and Walt's accordion. Over the past few weeks the two "couples" have been having a feud over who makes the better Valentines (obviously Alex is the best.) He wrote me a love poem last weekend that is now hanging in my room, so Walt of course had to through in his two cents by writing a poem for Sara that he sang accompanied by his accordion. But cat fights aside we had a lovely Valentines dinner in the common room of our dorm.

So after another long yet fun weekend it is time for me to finish my Czech homework and go to bed. So for now I will leave you with my mailing address here in Prague and a picture of me, my roommate Sara and my friend Celia at the underground wine bar, U Sudu, that we went to last night. Cau!

Sarah Paulos c/o
Masarykova Kolej
Thakurova 1
160 41 Prague 6

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my Blog! I will be periodically updating this with my adventures in Prague.

I will be in Prague from January 30th until May 21st so stay tuned for some fun.

I would also like to thank Paulos Strike for his contribution to the title of this Blog : )