Trips, continued (as promised)

Sooooo, back to the trips. Bratislava, Slovakia! Seems like a shady place, at least according to Eurotrip: (actually that Bratislava scene was shot in Prague...heh.). SUPER FALSE! Bratislava was really great, what with .50 euro ice cream and a really beautiful, if small historic downtown. Another bonus of Bratislava is that we stayed on a "botel" or basically an anchored riverboat with hotel rooms on it (and also a strip club?). We took a four and a half hour tour here, which was super great except for the unfortunate sub-zero weather...




























After we left Bratislava we departed to Vienna, which is the best city ever maybe (after Prague). Over the whole week most of the places we visted were pretty small and quiet...Vienna, definitely not. Tons of museums, tons of shopping (not that I had any money to shop...), tons of resturants, really great. The first place we visited was the Belveder, which is the Museum of Austrian Art. Both Klimt and Egon Schiele were well represented, and although I was much more impressed with Schiele, the main attraction seemed to be Klimt's "The Kiss." The next day we had a great tour with a young student and tour guide, Wolfgang (appropriate, I thought for Mozart's favorite city (after Prague)). After our tour, a few of us visited the Museumsquartier, a large plaza with three large modern art museums. We got a double day pass and visited the more experimental contemporary art museum first, MUMOK (Maria Lassnig and some permenant collections). Overall unimpressed by Lassnig but the other permenant collection was great. The next day we went on another more intense tour and then went to the Leopold Museum which has a huge Schiele collection and had a Kathy Kollwitz show on, both of which were amazing. That night, my friend Katie and I went out with a Austrian friend we had met in Prague.

I'm back...

So, after a long hiatus, I'm back in the blogosphere ready to give you an update. Life here is good, spring has definitely sprung and I'm pretty glad about that because it means walks in parks and beer gardens! But before spring sprung in Praha, I went on a few trips.

1). Amsterdam!: An interesting city, not sure how much I liked it in comparison to Prague. Went with my roommate Zach and did some fun site-seeing (saw the Richard Avedon show!!!), but it was pretty freezing so we spent most of our time running inside and eating fries and mayo (Pulp Fiction, anyone???). Interesting fact: EVERYONE in Amsterdam rides a bike!

2). Brno, Bratislava, Vienna: This was a group trip with most of the program, which was an interesting experience (30 American tourists is a lot for most places to handle). Brno was our first big stop and is a ho-hum (borrring) but second biggest city in the Czech Republic. Bruno was more of a jumping off point to make smaller trips out to tiny Czech villages. Before we even arrived in Brno, we visited Třebíč, where we saw a basilica and visited the Jewish quarter (where there really aren't any Jews since they were murdered during the war).


















Also, we went to Moravsky Krumlov and saw Alfons Mucha's Slavic Epic. From Brno we visted Kroměříž, where we saw the archbishop's palace, which was beautiful but very cold. The next day we travelled to the Punkva caves, which were great (sort of reminded me of the caves in MO, Dad), and hiked around a bit there. Picture below is of my good friends Katie and Kendra and I slipping on ice and getting hit by "cave juice" (dripping water) at a waterfall in the caves...














The next day we finally left Brno (where we were staying in the evenings), and went to Lednice, Valtice and Mikulov. At our first stop we got to traipse around a beautiful English garden, which was very Pride and Prejudice. Along with a huge palace type house there was a minaret, which at the time of its construction was sort of a jab at local Christians who didn't (and probably still don't) trust Muslims and their culture. The minaret was VERY high and it was VERY windy, so the experience was a little scary, but great.
































It was the first really gorgeous day of the spring at the park, so it was one of the groups favorite places. Mikolov was really interesting because during the cold war it was the last city between the Czech Republic and Austria, as it sits almost right on top of the literal fortifications of the Iron Curtain. From the castle in Mikolov, Czech citizens could look across the lights and fences of the Curtain right into democratic Austria. This was totally interesting to me, since I didn't know that the seperation between East and West was quite so real. Also in Mikolov we visted a wine cellar and did a tasting, which was pretty fun except that the wine maker was a male chauvanist and wouldn't let some of the girls taste certain wine selections...very middle ages if you ask me...

The next day we traveled to Devin Castle, which is an old military fortress and castle in Slovakia which looks like something right out of the Braveheart or Lord of the Rings sets. No pictures here since I took them on Mom's manual, but suffice it to say...the place was epic. We arrived in Bratislava shortly after we left the fortress. Bratislava was amazing, but I'll save this post for tomorrow since it will include both Slovakia and VIENNA! my favorite visit.