Happy New Years from Europe!

Where we left off in our story, I was in Amsterdam with Melanie and Chris enjoying some Christmas cheer. Since then a lot has changed and a lot has happened. We said goodbye to Chris in Amsterdam when he flew home on the 29th. Now he's back in California snowboarding with friends. Mel and I hopped a 15 hour overnight bus to Prague. In all, it wasn't too bad, especially since Mel convinced me to join her in taking a sleeping pill and I managed to sleep through about 12 hours of the trip. We arrived in Prague exhausted and got lost in the distant suburbs of the city trying to find our hotel in the freezing cold. Fortunately for us, as it turns out, people from Prague are the nicest people on earth. Some woman came up to us and asked us if we needed help and basically walked us to our hotel. Due to some strange twist of fate, the cheapest lodging that Mel could find for us in the city was actually this amazing hotel with a big fluffy white bed, minifridge, tv, and the best shower ever. That first night we were so exhausted that we stayed in and watched bad old American movies dubbed in Czech.

On day two it was time to go explore the city. Now I've heard before from people how amazing Prague is but I never really got it until we went. The city was completely undamaged by the Germans in the second world war, so buildings from as far back as the middle ages are completely intact. The whole city centers around the river, which is wide and shallow, and hills in the west, one of which is crested by the palace district and the beautiful St. Vitus' Church. Of everywhere that I've been in Europe so far, Prague has the most amazing architecture. If you just walk around the city, you find something beautiful around every corner: opera houses, gothic churches, ancient synagogues, modern architecture. This city has it all.

On the first day, Mel and I wandered around the city and ran into a cross country ski competition in the middle of a huge square in the palace district. Of all the absurd things to come across in the middle of a city, a ski race? There had to have been thousands of people there. Well... at least we figured out why hotels were so expensive that week. We also went to a concert in the Mirror Chapel (a really nifty chapel) of a saxophone quartet playing classical music. It was pretty amazing.

That evening Mel's friend from her program in France, Mike, met up with us. So he flew in from Amsterdam and told us that he should be at the hotel between 11 pm and 1 am. So we stayed up waiting for him, watching movies dubbed in Czech, and as it got closer and closer to 1 am we were getting worried that he'd gotten lost in Prague or something. About 10 to 1, he showed up and it turned out that he'd been sitting in the room next door for the last hour or so. Apparently the hotel clerk gave him the keys to the wrong room and the people staying in that room were out, so he sat around and watched tv for an hour until he realized that the luggage in the room didn't look like ours and the couple who were staying there actually came back. They weren't too happy about it.

So the three of us wandered around the city more the next day and prepared for New Years Eve. That night we found ourselves a spot on Charles' Bridge, the famous medieval pedestrian bridge that runs through the heart of the city, to watch the fireworks from. While we were waiting, we ran into a group of crazy French guys and some Russian and German girls and we all hung out on the bridge for a long time. We were expecting to be able to see the fireworks over the big main square in town, which we had a great view of, set against the background of a gothic tower on the East end of the bridge. What we didn't expect was a fireworks display set off from a barge on the river right in front of us. It was pretty amazing. There was much alcohol, merriment and a few sparklers that the Russian woman gave us. Then when all of the fireworks across the city had finally died down, we walked back to our hotel exhausted from the chaos of the night.

The next day we checked out the palace and saw more of the city, which I think all three of us fell in love with.

The day after that, Mike left early on a bus back to Strasbourg and at noon, Mel and I caught one to Vienna. The bus ride was beautiful, mostly through snowy wilderness, and they played My Big Fat Greek Wedding which is funnier now that I've lived in Greece. After some initial confusion about where exactly our hostel was, we made it here yesterday evening. We're staying in a dorm with eight people, which is always a bit awkward but not bad. The hostel is amazing, with cheap internet access and laundry facilities. We found an inexpensive Turkish restaurant down the street for dinner and reminisced about our adventures in Istanbul over cups of apple tea.

Today we went out and saw what we could of the city. It is certainly beautiful, but also bitterly cold which makes one more inclined to take refuge in cafes than look at pretty buildings. We did manage to see our share of large important looking buildings and churches (and they have some seriously impressive baroque style churches here), had some delicious and filling Austrian food for lunch and tea later at the Opera House cafe. Tomorrow Mel is flying back to Strasbourg and then home, and then it's Clariece alone in Europe.

The good news is that I have everything worked out at last. I can't arrive in Madrid until the 8th because my host family is on vacation or something, so I'm spending one more night in Vienna (I intend to go to a rare car museum tomorrow after Mel leaves) and then catching a bus to Munich at some ungodly hour of the morning on the 5th. Then I'll be meeting up with my friends Mary, Dakota and Alice who are all spending a year studying abroad in Munich. Mary is kind enough to let me sleep on her floor for a few nights and then I have airplane tickets from Munich to Madrid on the 8th and a whole new kind of adventure begins. So right now I'm super excited to 1. see my friends in Munich, 2. have somewhere to sleep for free, and 3. go to Spain!

At first when people started leaving Greece to go home and then when Chris left the other day, I was getting really homesick, but the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that I made the right decision to stay in Europe for another semester. Everyone I've met in the past few days who's been to Spain has told me that it's amazing, which can only be a good omen. I think I'm finally ready to start a new overseas adventure.

For next semester, I think I'm going to start another blog, so as to keep things simple (at least for me). As soon as I have it up, I'll post the link here.

Wishing everyone back home a Happy New Year from Europe!