The evacuation.

A brief interruption to the travel blog for an update on school life:

I drove down to State and met up with my cousin's girlfriend Lindsay, after unpacking one of my two bags we took off to go explore San Diego and get tacos. I finally got excited to be living down here, the area is so cool and I feel like I could happily work anywhere from the French restaurants downtown to ticket sales at SeaWorld. Lindsay dropped me off just in time to witness my building being evacuated for unknown reasons. After meeting some cool Freshmen we took off to explore campus while waiting for the dorm to open back up.

It didn't.

Turns out there was a flood that flooded into the basement where the electricity box is kept. (I know thats not a real thing but I don't know what it's called). No electricity. No water. No dorm.

After a silly yet fun mixer we were told that the Red Cross was setting up in the gym for all of us who didn't have a place to go. I know I could have stayed with Lindsay or some of my other friends who offered, but I opted to stay in the gym to get to know the people in my dorm. It is a really cool building with transfers, freshmen and foreign exchange students. Not to mention the baseball team (which unfortunately did not stay in the gym). This morning I was able to go to my car and get my computer, choose not to go to the commencement ceremoney and now I wait in a Starbucks trying to kill time before our meeting at 1:30. It is now 10am. Le sigh.

Some Videos.

I don't feel like posting a whole post today so here are some videos I forgot to upload earlier. This one is of one of the performers at the traveling show in Dresden.

Prague. (Praha)

So take a step or two back to Prague, capitol of the Czech Republic. We stopped in Prague right before Dresden and on a night train from Vienna. On said night train we lost a camera with the photos from earlier in the trip so we bought a disposable camera, the film of which we just had developed. So the photos aren't great, but you can still see what is going on in them. To the left is the sister dearest standing next to the astronomical clock, voted Europe's number one most pointless tourist attraction. It may not have done anything cool, but it is still pretty 'cool that such an old clock still works with all of its original functions. It also had a cool 600th anniversary event. The video of it was something I saw years ago before I even knew where Prague was. The video is pretty long and starts off really boring but gets very cool and it goes through a lot of Prague's history, which is a real achievement seeing as they have been through so much. You can watch that here.

We did another walking tour in Prague 

On the tour of the old city Prague we saw and learned so much that I don't remember most of it. There have been so many battles and revolutions that it was just impossible to keep track. For example this lovely glass roof was over a courtyard where someone died? Or maybe there was a protest? I can't remember but I remember taking this photo for more than "Oh, that's pretty."

We also saw a lot of things dedicated to Franz Kafka and I took more than one photo of these statues for a Mrs. Coghill. (Shout out!) As we were walking around I just kept thinking about all of the people moving around like bugs. Kafka, a weird man. After our tour wrapped up we explored on our own over the famous tourist bridge (Charles, I think it was called) and over to the old town area where I felt like I was stepping into the grounds of Hogwarts. (How many nerd references can I throw into one post?) Check out the photos below:

Right?

After that long day of walking around we went back to our hostel and hung out, showered, napped and went to the grocery store. Beer was cheaper than water. Literally, cheaper than water. We met two Swedish guys who were on break from teaching and we taught each other drinking games. We taught them Kings Cup and by the end of the game our "Rule Makers" had us high-fiving, over the table, with our tongues out, yelling with our eyes closed, EVERYtime ANYone drank.  

The next day we went with the guys to Kutna Hora outside of Prague where we went to the Sedlec Ossuary. Which is monastery filled with the old monks bones. I didn't get any good photos but it is definitely worth looking up better photos. Here I did it for you: Photos

We also walked up to the old (est?) cathedral in Prague and possibly Europe. The rest of the photos are just us goofing around on a playground and exploring the town. I will try to get photos from our Swedish friend and put them up, but for now these will have to do. 

Na zdraví!

Sorry Starbucks.

Amsterdam.

After we took the disorienting night train to Amsterdam and wandered around for several hours looking for our couchsurfing host, we gave it up for good and tried to find a hotel online at an internet cafe.  This is what it felt like:

The internet was slower than when my grandpa had AOL Dial Up internet and we had just spent ten euros getting us all to the outskirts to see her house and then we spent another ten to get back into town to find the hotel. Once we had settled in though we started enjoying Amsterdam. Oh did I mention it started raining as we lugged our luggage to the hotel? No? Well it did.

After we settled in it occurred to us that we hadn't eaten anything for the past 18 hours. We went here:

Yummy.

By this time it was already pretty late but we explored Amsterdam a little and quite enjoyed it. I assumed it would be this small little town that is only famous for it's lax laws and cool policemen, but it was really quite beautiful. All of the old town homes were leaning because, as we learned later from our tourguide, that it was built on a swamp and that the ground kept sinking. The houses were also built to lean a little forward so that when the people wanted to store something in the attic they would just attach the cargo to a hook from the top of the house and haul it up, and because of the lean of the house, the heavy cargo would not slam into the building front. For example:

The pictures in Amsterdam didn't turn out great but we had a really great time and took some on a disposable as well, which we are waiting to be developed. But it was a lot of fun goofing around coming up with stupid things like the traveler walk:

We also abused Amsterdam's cheese shops which were giving out free cheese samples. I think we could've gotten by on those free cheese samples. And if anyone ever wants to give me a gift of cheese, know that I really like two year old goat cheese. ;)

We went on a tour which went through the red light district, the old town district and ended near the Anne Frank house which we went through as well. Amsterdam was fun.

Our tour guide warned us that if we took pictures of the prostitutes they would throw stuff at us  so I took this one from a safe distance.

Lucky Boob.

On to Brussels. 

Berlin (It's a big and sexy post. Good Luck).

On our last day in Dresden we climbed a hill that had been formed when the women left in Dresden after the bombings collected all of the rubble and piled it on the outskirts of town. It has since been covered in wild grass and plants and black berries. That day we went to Berlin on a train that took about three hours with one switch, and we continued to play "Celebrity Hands" Harry Potter style: our go-to game for long periods of waiting and training. When we got to Berlin we dropped off our stuff at our Hostel and went to see the East Side Gallery, a portion of the remaining Berlin Wall that has been covered with inspirational paintings and remembrances. 

"Berlin is poor, but sexy."

 That night at the hostel Gaby and I both slept with our purses in our beds with us because we both felt that it was unsafe to have sixty to eighty people in one building with one key and no receptionist. You would think that these extra precautions would have helped. No. 

Our bags were both searched, mine ending up next to me open and on top of the covers (whereas I had hid it underneath) with nothing stolen, and Gaby's... missing in action. Her purse was stolen from right next to her head, and her case of cigarettes chilling by the door. Nothing in her purse was of any value to anyone other than her. Prescription ear plugs, photos from the trip and her journal and notepad, and yet it cost her a fortune.

We did a lot of wandering around that day and eating ice cream we bought at grocery stores.  We went at a slower pace than we had the rest of the trip and it was very nice just wandering around exploring the scenery. We had breakfast by the river and then walked along it along a flee market when we bumped into the giant men fighitng in the water. We enjoyed Berlin despite the huge set back  and we went out with a traveling Kiwi for pizza.

We were shrunk in size by a magical troll.

 Berlin had so much life in just the one area we stayed, the only time we got out of our area was for the walking tour of all of the historical parts of Berlin which we did on our last day in Berlin. It comparison to every other city I have been to, Berlin seems to have had the most troubling and lasting problems and is therefore covered in memorials of all shapes and sizes. The following photos are strictly memorials.

A memorial

 in commemoration

of the Jews 

of the holocaust.

An empty library symbolizing the books burned there during the Berlin book burning. 

A memorial for anyone, anywhere and anytime who has lost some one because of hate. Above the mother and child there is a hole in the ceiling, allowing light, rain and snow in during different parts of the year. 

After two and a half days of active exploring, I still feel like I only just scratched the surface of that huge diverse city. We spent our last night drinking three euro cocktails at a Mexican restaurant (we had had enough of Bratwurst) and hopped on our nighttrain to Amsterdam buzzed... or we would have if our train hadn't been two hours late leaving us sitting on the platform until 1:30 in the morning.