it's been so long....
updating has become rather daunting. nevertheless I'll try.
I was in Prague for a full week. I settled into a pretty nice routine. In the morning I would buy bread and jelly and cheese from the little grocery store a block or two away for about 75 cents and eat that. Then in the first few days when Jesse and Anni were there I would have a sightseeing expedition, like the castle or a big park that Anni and I found. We would walk around for a long time, in order to justify our lovely afternoons, spending hours in a cafe playing rummy and cribbage and drinking tea or coffee or alcohol. When Jesse and Anni had left I mostly spent the first part of the day taking long walks by myself, along the river or through this big bowl-shaped park on a hill above the city. Then I would meet up with Jenna and Miriam and do the same thing until dinner time. Prague is a beautiful old-feeling city, though the castle is not a castle as much as it is a courtyard. The Vlatva river is very impressive, and next time I arrive in Prague I hope it's by water.
Then I moved on to Dresden, alone. I had a good visit with Daniel and Tabea and the kids. It was completely different to be around them in the winter, and when they had all their grad student/nurse/elementary school kid tasks and schedules to think about. I tried to be unobtrusive and just float around in their schedule fr a few days and really enjoyed it. I like having an idea of what their 'real' lives are like outside of hanging around Ometepe riding horses and going swimming and teaching English. It was also very relaxing, though Daniel and I did go to a disco called "Flower Power" one night.
That, however, was only a precurser to the Russian disco in Berlin the next night. I met up with Tim and we went out with a lot of kids from his FSP. The dance floor was packed and it was an utterly crazy fun time. Tim and I met up with Jenna the next day and he took us to the Egyptian Museum, which was really cool and calm, we all loved it. After that I stayed with Jenna's aunt, a very nice woman who loved playing cards as much as I do I think! That evening after dinner she had set out on the table little bowls of peanuts, glasses for champagne, and several different decks of cards. The three of us played canasta and pounds and then Jenna and I finished with some rummy.
The next day Jenna and I went to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, actually the second of two very intense Holocaust experiences we'd shared on the trip. The first was a concentration camp (not a death camp but a work/prison camp... very slightly less gruesome) outside Prague called Terezin. Neither of us had expected how horrified we'd been there, on this grey rainy afternoon with a strange tour guide for just four of us. The horror, at least for me, consisted mostly of transposing all the camp photographs I've seen onto the actual bunks in front of us. The Jewish Museum was no less scary in places, different places for each of us, but afterward you go through a sort of normal museum with information and exhibits about the history of Jews in Germany, so it was slightly more cushioned. Still, the place is designed to be terrifyingly unsettling and it is.
We wandered around Berlin a bit more, hitting up the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag kind of on accident, as well as finding a wonderful sort of Goodwill store where they give you free sandwiches! We bought rings, mine of course has already been retired.
So now I'm back, and already restless again. I've made plans to go to Brighton, a seaside town, for a day this weekend, and then to Glasgow the weekend after that... I'd gotten used to having that shape for my time, I guess, and without it I've felt quite aimless. Just work on one paper or work on another... I did go to an excellent production of the Bacchae this weekend. Appropriately terrifying. After travelling for awhile I have a great appreciation for everything being in English too.
and my roommate lindsay trimmed my hair! I'm a whole new woman.
I was in Prague for a full week. I settled into a pretty nice routine. In the morning I would buy bread and jelly and cheese from the little grocery store a block or two away for about 75 cents and eat that. Then in the first few days when Jesse and Anni were there I would have a sightseeing expedition, like the castle or a big park that Anni and I found. We would walk around for a long time, in order to justify our lovely afternoons, spending hours in a cafe playing rummy and cribbage and drinking tea or coffee or alcohol. When Jesse and Anni had left I mostly spent the first part of the day taking long walks by myself, along the river or through this big bowl-shaped park on a hill above the city. Then I would meet up with Jenna and Miriam and do the same thing until dinner time. Prague is a beautiful old-feeling city, though the castle is not a castle as much as it is a courtyard. The Vlatva river is very impressive, and next time I arrive in Prague I hope it's by water.
Then I moved on to Dresden, alone. I had a good visit with Daniel and Tabea and the kids. It was completely different to be around them in the winter, and when they had all their grad student/nurse/elementary school kid tasks and schedules to think about. I tried to be unobtrusive and just float around in their schedule fr a few days and really enjoyed it. I like having an idea of what their 'real' lives are like outside of hanging around Ometepe riding horses and going swimming and teaching English. It was also very relaxing, though Daniel and I did go to a disco called "Flower Power" one night.
That, however, was only a precurser to the Russian disco in Berlin the next night. I met up with Tim and we went out with a lot of kids from his FSP. The dance floor was packed and it was an utterly crazy fun time. Tim and I met up with Jenna the next day and he took us to the Egyptian Museum, which was really cool and calm, we all loved it. After that I stayed with Jenna's aunt, a very nice woman who loved playing cards as much as I do I think! That evening after dinner she had set out on the table little bowls of peanuts, glasses for champagne, and several different decks of cards. The three of us played canasta and pounds and then Jenna and I finished with some rummy.
The next day Jenna and I went to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, actually the second of two very intense Holocaust experiences we'd shared on the trip. The first was a concentration camp (not a death camp but a work/prison camp... very slightly less gruesome) outside Prague called Terezin. Neither of us had expected how horrified we'd been there, on this grey rainy afternoon with a strange tour guide for just four of us. The horror, at least for me, consisted mostly of transposing all the camp photographs I've seen onto the actual bunks in front of us. The Jewish Museum was no less scary in places, different places for each of us, but afterward you go through a sort of normal museum with information and exhibits about the history of Jews in Germany, so it was slightly more cushioned. Still, the place is designed to be terrifyingly unsettling and it is.
We wandered around Berlin a bit more, hitting up the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag kind of on accident, as well as finding a wonderful sort of Goodwill store where they give you free sandwiches! We bought rings, mine of course has already been retired.
So now I'm back, and already restless again. I've made plans to go to Brighton, a seaside town, for a day this weekend, and then to Glasgow the weekend after that... I'd gotten used to having that shape for my time, I guess, and without it I've felt quite aimless. Just work on one paper or work on another... I did go to an excellent production of the Bacchae this weekend. Appropriately terrifying. After travelling for awhile I have a great appreciation for everything being in English too.
and my roommate lindsay trimmed my hair! I'm a whole new woman.