So, I didn't realize how long it had been since my last post. Sorry about that! Most of last week is kind of a blur... Had class all day Wednesday and country presentations Wednesday night. We saw a presentation of Slovenia and of France and ate homemade crepes and baguettes. The French presentation consisted of naked women, naked men, a few pictures of the french landscape, a few more naked pictures, and a slide show of the french students showing some skin. Needless to say, it wasn't very riveting for me. The Slovenian one, however, was enthralling. Especially since prior to watching it, I knew NOTHING about Slovenia. By the end of it, Rachael and I had decided we wanted to go to Slovenia the next day. So that night, we did some research to find out the price of train tickets to Slovenia, a cheap hostel we could stay in, and a few must-see places to visit while we're there. We were really excited and bright and early the next day went to the train station to buy our tickets. Unfortunately, our Czech still is not very useful, and by the time we explained to the lady where we wanted to go and when, we had already lost all hope of being treated fairly. Some people in Brno love foreigners. Mainly because we are ignorant enough to be taken advantage of. It was pretty discouraging to literally watch the lady change the price on our tickets from 500 crowns to 2000 crowns (about $25 to $100) Rather than let ourselves be cheated, we decided to save Slovenia for another time when the Slovenians could share some of their traveling secrets with us and instead, go somewhere a little closer. So we headed to the student agency stand and left with round trip tickets to... you guessed it- VIENNA! We were to leave Saturday morning at 6am and leave Vienna Saturday night at 9. We figured since it was still winter and pretty cold, we would just spend the day and save a longer trip for later in the Spring when it's warmer and prettier outside. It was gonna be me, Rachael, Ruthie, and Jeongmin. We were stoked.
Saturday morning we woke up bright and early and spent the two hour trip to Vienna listening to music, drinking tea (compliments of the bus stewardess!) and watching Rumor Has It in Czech. Once we got to Vienna, we found our way to the information stand, picked up a few maps, located our location, and set out to stumble into whatever adventures we could. We decided not to take advantage of the trams or buses and instead walk around the city to see whatever we could see. It was such a fun day. We ate really good food, saw beautiful things, ate some more really good food, saw some more beautiful things, and ended the day with some more really good food. It was such a successful trip. We never got lost and we saw a lot of the things our friends back in Brno recommended us to see. While I love it here in Brno, it was such a refreshing break from reality to spend the day wrapped up in the beauty and romance of Vienna. Vienna is incredible and I can't wait to go back.
This was my absolute favorite place in Vienna. In front of that huge, magnificent castle was an ice skating rink and also an ice skating trail. Basically, you could either skate in the big open area, or skate a loop around the castle. It was absolutely enchanting. I felt like such a little girl, in complete wonder of the whole place and captivated by the beauty of it all. Unfortunately, we were running out of time, so we didn't get to ice skate. But I will go back someday and ice skate there. :)
On the bus home. We were all sound asleep within minutes. It was such a fun day, though and worth every second and every cent. :)
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