Winter SUCKS!

February 7, 2012

Well, it’s been a few weeks, roughly 3, since I’ve last wrote something. I’m definitely the best blogger of the family, since Matt and Laura’s both last update was in the beginning of December.

After break, things at school have been calmer. Nothing real big to discuss there. In case I haven’t said it yet, I’m planning on coming back next year. It’s a job, and there are some great travel opportunities. My friend Blake just went to the UNI fair (in Iowa, the same one I got hired at) and he said the jobs for Social Studies teachers were very limited. He ended up getting a job in Honduras, not his first pick, but hey, it’s a job, right? And from the sounds of it, things aren’t getting much better with unemployment in the states…

I had my birthday on January 18^th.  It was a Wednesday, so I couldn’t get too wild and crazy, but my fellow teachers organized a birthday dinner at one of the only Mexican restaurants in town, so that was nice. Allison even made me a cake (well, it was more of a brownie pan, but still, it was good!). We had a few drinks, but didn’t stay out too late.

That weekend I had a little birthday bash at my apartment here, inviting a bunch of people from our school and a few people I know that don’t work with us. It turned out to be a pretty awesome party (in my mind the best one we’ve had this year so far…). ; - ) I made a make-shift beerpong table out of the cabinet door of my bedroom dresser. It worked pretty good actually.

I also have been doing this thing called “CouchSurfing.” Some of you may already know what it is, so if you do, you can skip this paragraph. You sign up on the website couchsurfing.com, and basically what you’re doing is offering people to stay on your couch for free. Obviously there is a bit of trust involved, but you can look at people’s profiles and references to see if they are legitimate or not. Even though I’ve only hosted people so far, I plan on someday actually doing the “surfing” since it’s free and a great way to meet new people.

My first couchsurfer was a South Korean girl back in the beginning of December. She was on break from school for about 2 months and decided to travel around Europe. I ended up having her stay 2 nights, because the 2^nd night her other host was busy. I showed her around on that Sunday, which only took about an hour because there really isn’t a lot to see in Prishtina. We also watched the Packer game (can’t remember which one it was, but we won). My next couch surfers were on my birthday party night. I had warned them that if they wanted to stay with me, they would probably have to stay up kind of late because I was having a birthday party. They didn’t mind. Claudia was from Italy, and Gonzalo was from Spain. Their English wasn’t the best, so I tried my best to speak Spanish to them, since they talked to each other in Spanish. “Spain” Spanish is much different than Latin American Spanish. It sounds like they have a lisp or something… I don’t like it. Anyway, I was totally hungover the next day, so I just stayed in bed. They went exploring around the city, but then had to leave that afternoon. They probably though us American teachers were crazy, since the party was pretty wild the night before.

My 3^rd (or technically my 4^th) couchsurfer was a guy named Sam. He’s a Brazilian-American, who lived most of his life in Brazil, but was born in California. The best way to describe him is he looked like Jesus. Huge beard, long hair, but he was a really great guy. He ended up crashing at my place for 2 nights as well. We had a “dude’s game night” one night, then we all went to trivia the next night. I also gave him the tour of the city. By the way, all these couch surfers are in their 20s, so it’s not like I’m getting a bunch of creepy old guys staying with me. As a host, I’m not expected to give them anything but a bed, but being the nice person I am, I usually cook something for them or take them on a tour. The Korean girl washed my dishes for me one night, as did Sam, so that’s generally what they do in return. Sam has been traveling around Europe for over a year now, and he said he usually just cooks for the people he stays with. My couchsurfing experiences have been great so far. I usually will get 2-3 requests per week, but I don’t like to host ALL the time (maybe 1-2 times per month), so I have to decline a lot of people. Plus, I prefer weekends, since weekdays I’m gone (although I have left my couchsurfers in my apartment a few times and there were no problems at all). Another good thing, they all offered me to stay with them if I’m ever in their area, so that’s always a nice way to return the favor (so Matt, if you ever make it to South Korea, I’ve got a nice Korean girl you can probably crash with—just pretend to be me…). I’ll continue to update everyone on my couchsurfing adventures…

Finals week was about 2 weeks ago—it was the end of the first semester. However, after 1 day of finals, it snowed like ca-RAZY! So we had to cancel school on Thursday and Friday of that week. I didn’t really do a lot—just hung out and stayed inside, cuz it was so damn snowy. Speaking of snowy, we’ve got SOOOO much snow here this year so far. Two weeks ago during finals we got 16-20 inches. On top of that, we’ve been getting light dustings lately. Just today we got another 2-4 inches. The biggest problem is there is no where to put the snow. The sidewalks are just a mess of snow and ice—which, by the way, is seriously about 3-4 inches thick in most places. The problem was is they never cleaned the snow off the sidewalk after it snowed (there are no laws about that here… weird… ), so all the snow eventually just got packed down and now it can’t be removed cuz it’s been super cold here lately. Well, cold by Kosova standards… in WI it’d be cold, but by no means would we cancel school.

Which brings me to my next point—they canceled school for this whole week in the Kosova public schools because of the extreme cold. Energy use is a huge issue here (in case you haven’t learned that from my previous blogs about how the power goes out all the time in my apartment), so to help ease the use of the heating systems, they just canceled public schools. However, our school had to go yesterday. I’m not really sure why, because it’s been really cold in our school. I probably have the warmest room, but that’s because I have one of the only rooms without windows, so there’s no way for the heat to get in or out of my room. However, the downside is that my room smells like teenagers—aka body odor. I’ve gotten used to it though, so it’s no biggie.

The temps have been in the single digits and some nights it even gets in the negatives. Like I said, it’s cold, but considering our school heating system is pretty shotty, it’s pretty rough for some classrooms. Heck, in our middle school you can see your breath when you’re in the hallways. That’s not good… Yesterday there was only about ½ of the students in school, then today when we all showed up, there was even less than that. Our principal decided then to cancel school for today and tomorrow, but to return on Thursday and Friday. He was kind of hesitant to do this, because we’ll be having a 10 day break coming up from Feb 17 through the 26^th, but what ended up happening is the Kosovar Ministry of Education forced us to close school, so I’ve got the rest of this week off. Yay! The worst part about today was the wind—20 mph to 30 mph. Plus, the blowing snow made it terrible to walk to school in. Wind chills have consistently been in the negative teens, which is pretty darn cold. My apartment is still really really cold. Well, not too bad, in the mid-60s, but I’ve been running my heater everyday and it gets about 1’ warmer every day. But things could be much worse.

I’m sure a lot of you have been reading about how all of Europe is suffering from the cold and snowy conditions. I read that in Sarajevo, not too far from here, they got over 3 feet of snow. Ukraine and Romania have had hundreds of people die because of the cold. The rest of this week is supposed to have lows in the single digits as well (some days negative), so I understand why school needs to be canceled. I wonder how the homeless people are surviving outside. Every few days I see people begging out in the streets (usually the Gypsies/Roma). I have no idea where they go in conditions like this. That’s probably why so many people are dying around this region—they have no heat or place to stay.

So we’ll have school just for 4 days next week, then we’ll have a 10 day break. I still haven’t decided yet where I wanna go, but Joe and Courtney are going to Barcelona, so I think I might just tag along with them. Other people are going to Italy, Cyprus, and a few other places. But I kind of want to get away from the cold weather, so Spain should be ok. I think the temp has been in the 50s and 60s there lately, so I shouldn’t have to worry about packing all my winter clothes. Kosova’s 4^th anniversary of their independence is coming up next Friday too. I’d like to stick around and see what happens on that day, although I’ve heard it’s not a very exciting day.

Finally, for my last part of my blog I’ll tell you guys about my recent trip (last weekend) to Belgrade, Serbia. Don’t worry Mom, Serbia is safe. I’m not an Albanian, so they don’t hate me (well, some of them don’t like the US because we helped Kosova, but I didn’t encounter any animosity at all on the trip). We went on a UN bus, so it was safe. Every few weeks, UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosova) hosts these trips around the region. They’ve gone to Serbia, Thessaloniki (Greece), a few ski places in Bulgaria and Macedonia, and that’s about it so far. It’s relatively cheap for the bus (usually about 30 euro), but you have to find your own hotel, which is fine, cuz I don’t like expensive hotels that all the other people usually stay at.

So a group of 11 of us went up to Belgrade. We left Friday after school (4 pm) and didn’t arrive into Belgrade until midnight. The trip should only be about 6 hours, but because we went across the Kosova/Serbia border, it took quite a bit longer. For some reason, we were stuck at the border for almost an hour and a half. Plus, it took us almost an hour to get out of Prishtina, because of the traffic. Anyway, the beers sure made the ride an easier one… : - )

So we got to our hostel late and just crashed. We stayed in a 10-person room, so that was kinda fun. The next day we got up and went to the Nikola Tesla museum. Tesla was a famous scientist that worked with electricity. He was Serbian/American, so that’s why this museum was here. There were a lot of experiments here that our tour guide demonstrated for us. Like how Tesla discovered that electricity can be transferred through the air. We all held up long florescent light tubes and when he turned on this giant Tesla coil, they all lit up, even though they weren’t attached to anything except our bodies. Tesla worked with Thomas Edison, and from what it sounds like, Edison was kind of a jerk and stole some of Tesla’s ideas. Edison discovered DC current, or direct current, which was the OLD way of electricity. The biggest problem with direct current is that it can’t travel very far through powerlines, so if you wanted electricity with DC current, you had to live within a mile or 2 of the powerplant. Not very efficient. Tesla discovered AC, or alternating current, which allowed electricity to travel much further distances. I don’t know all the details of AC and DC, but I do know that DC is not used much today, and AC is. Tesla also created the first induction motor, or motor that uses magnetic forces to run, with a coil and all that stuff. Basically, that type of  motor is still being used today in almost all major appliances and machines. So thanks Tesla. You’re an ok guy! Oh, some people also think that Nikola Tesla is responsible for the Tunguska event (look it up if you don’t know what it is), which happened in Siberia about 100 years ago. Thousands of trees were flattened here and no one really knows why, although most scientists today believe it was a meteorite that exploded in the atmosphere. Anyway, on to the rest of Belgrade…

The city of Belgrade itself was beautiful. It really made me feel like Prishtina is just kind of a blip out in the middle of nowhere. People were shoveling sidewalks, streets were clean, and there weren’t cars parked in any empty space (including the sidewalks) just like in Prishtina. We went to the Belgrade Fortress, where the Danube and Sava Rivers meet. It was basically an old city wall/fort to protect the city. However, inside the fortress there was a military museum. Outside of the museum there were a bunch of large canons, tanks, and artillery, but they were all covered in snow. Inside, the museum laid out the history of wars in Serbia, starting with swords and helmets, moving all the way up into the 1990s. WWI and WWII were pretty cool, since I really am interested in those wars. But the part that interested me the most was the 1990s section of the museum.

In this part, they had new weapons that would’ve been used to fight the Americans and Kosovars during the wars in the late 90s in this region. One thing that I found particularly distasteful was the display with an American soldiers uniform. They also had a pilot’s uniform that had been shot down, and a part of the airplane. They had a UCK (KLA, or Kosova Liberation Army) uniform there as well, and outside of the museum they had a US Humvee that was confiscated during the 90s. I’m pretty sure that if a US museum did something like this, it would get a lot of negative feedback. I really don’t feel it’s necessary to show the prisoner of war’s personal belongings. It makes you wonder what happened to that person or what kind of torture they went through. I obviously understand why the museum does it—because there is a hatred for Kosova and the US among them, and it’s kind of their way to show off to the visitors of the museum that they can “run with the big boys,” or that this wasn’t just a one sided war—Americans and Kosovars were captured and killed as well. Either way, I find it kind of discourteous that they have to display these types of artifacts as propaganda just to try to show their people that they are a powerful nation.

That evening we went out to dinner then found a nice little bar with a live band, playing American music. We stayed there most of the rest of the night, then crashed at the hostel. Since the next day was Sunday, we didn’t really have a lot of time, since the bus was leaving at 4 pm. We walked to the St. Sava church, the largest Orthodox Church, by volume. It was pretty darn big, and really beautiful with the snow around it, but the inside was being renovated, so it wasn’t very exciting inside of it. We also went to this bombed out building from when the US was bombing Belgrade. It was 2 buildings, right next to each other. This used to be the Yugoslavian Defense Headquarters, so it was a pretty obvious target for the US during their bombing raids. I believe they kept it there to remind people what happened, and to never forget it. I thought it was pretty amazing, not only because this was my country that did this and I feel it was for a good cause, but also because it is amazing to see what a bomb can do to a building. We hear about bombings all the time on tv, but we never see up close what the buildings look like afterwards. This was quite an experience, to see this up close. Definitely one of the more memorable parts of this trip.

Anyway, we headed back to Kosova and this time it only took us 6 hours, since we didn’t have to deal with Prishtina traffic and because the border crossing only took us about 15 minutes this time. Obviously Serbia is more hesitant to let people across, especially when they’re coming from Kosova. We all decided that Belgrade was a really nice city. Belgrade is a much more developed city than Prishtina, so of course it’s always a treat to get out and stop at a McDonalds or mall, just to get a taste of America again… Pretty sure we all will be going back to Belgrade, but I think the spring time would be better, since it’ll be green and not so damn cold!

Well, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Tonight I’m going to dinner with some friends then going to watch a movie, since we don’t have school for the next 3 days. Like I said, my next major trip will most likely be to Barcelona, so I’ll update you all on that when I get back. Oh, I watched the Super Bowl on Monday morning, from 12:30-2, then I took a nap during half time and the 3^rd quarter, then got up to watch the 4^th quarter. So I went back to bed at like 4 am, so I only got about 3 hours of sleep. That’s probably why I’m kinda sick right now. Ah well… I love football, and it was a good game, so it was worth it to me.

Finally, for those of you that want to know, the last day for students at ASK is June 22^nd (Friday). Our calendar says that we have to stay until the 29^th, the next Friday, but all the teachers told me that you can leave whenever you get all your grades in and classrooms cleaned up. So what I’ll probably do is go on a little trip somewhere (maybe Athens? Or Rome?) for a week, then come back to the US around July 1^st, just in time for Gary and Cindy’s 20^th annual (or something like that) 4^th of July bash! I can’t wait to get back and see the family, especially Jack and Annie. I will probably be home for all of July, and since we don’t start school until the beginning of September, I will probably be home for most of August as well.

Ok, now I’m really done now. Talk to you all soon!

Love,
Mike

EuroTrip, 2k11 (and 2k12)!!!

January 9, 2012

Well, Christmas break is over. It was 2 ½ weeks, but it felt like a lot less than that. As I mentioned already, I went to Germany, Czech Republic, France, and we even found some time to swing down to Austria. Here are the details of my trip:

I left on Friday, December 16^th, from Prishtina, in the afternoon. I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany around 6 or 7 pm, where I met my friends Blake and Andrea. They both taught at my former school in Guatemala. I told them that if they came to Europe for their Christmas break, that I would meet them wherever they wanted to. Andrea really didn’t mind where we went, and Blake said Germany would be cool, so that’s where most of our trip revolved around. They had arrived earlier that day, so I just met them at the hostel.

I didn’t know much about Frankfurt, but my fellow social studies teacher at ASK here, Scott, told me that it’s a pretty boring town. He was right. Saturday morning we got up and walked around town. We soon realized that Frankfurt is neat, but it’s not a city that we’d want to spend more than a day or 2 in. The three of us decided that we would leave tomorrow (Sunday) and that way we’d get an extra day in Berlin, a place where there surely were more things to do. One of the nice things we saw in Frankfurt was a really neat Christmas market. There were Christmas markets in EVERY city we went to. They usually are little shops set up that sell food, drinks (LOTS of beer and gluewein (pronounced “glue vine”) gifts, and other various things that you’d find at shops). Some of these markets even had rides like at a fair. Oh, and gluewein is a popular hot wine that we saw in almost every city we went to. We had a few cups of it, and it was pretty good—especially at warming us up in the cold German winter.

We basically just walked around town all day, and soon realized that there really isn’t much to do here. We saw the big “Euro” sign, because the European Central Bank is there, which is the headquarters of the Euro. For those of you that have been living in a cave the last year, the Euro isn’t doing so well right now. There was a “Occupy Frankfurt” thing going on there, with about 50 tents or so set up right next to the big Euro sign out in front of the ECB building. That was kind of interesting to see. There was a neat church there too.

So we hopped on a train early on Sunday morning and headed to Berlin. I think that ride was only like 4 or 5 hours—can’t remember exactly, since we went on so many train rides. But the train ride was really cool! We had to buy our EURail pass for first class, since we’re all over 25 years old, but that was ok, since 1^st class was almost completely empty every time we were on a train.

The EURail pass can be used for any train in the select countries we picked (Germany, Czech, and France). It was about $400 for each of us, which may sound like a lot, but when you consider that some of the single train rides are over 100 euro (roughly $130), and we rode on 5 trains, we got a pretty good deal. Plus, we didn’t have to reserve any trains (well, one…), and we could ride on ANY train in the country. There are trains coming and going all the time from each city. That was one thing that was really cool in Germany—the train stations. I have never seen anything like them. They reminded me of a huge football stadium, because they all had huge dome-like ceilings. They all had restaurants and stores, and one we went to even had a mall attached to it. Anyway, we might have been able to save money if we reserved all of our trains in advance, but this way we could come and go whenever we wanted to. Plus, we could ride as many trains in one day as we wanted. Our ticket was good for any 5 days within 2 months, and since we were planning on taking 5 trips, it was perfect.

So back to the story… we arrived in Berlin and went walking around that first afternoon. We usually picked hostels or hotels that were close to the city center and that were less than 25-30 bucks per person. Most of the places we stayed during our trip were 3-4 person rooms, so it was nice to have some privacy. We went and visited the DDR Museum once we got there. No, not the “Dance Dance Revolution” museum. DDR stands for Deutschland Democratic Republic, or German Democratic Republic. This was the name of Germany between 1945 and 1989, when the Soviets had control of it and made it Communist.

Quick history lesson: after WWII, the allies decided to divide Germany up into 4 parts among the 4 major countries that won the war, and each country would control a part, putting their own type of government into power there. The US, France, and Britain all control parts in Western Germany and made them capitalist/democratic, while the USSR took control of the Eastern part, and of course, made it communist. They did the same thing to Berlin, since Berlin was the main industrial and economic city in Germany. So Berlin was divided into 4 parts, with only the Soviet part becoming communist. Well, after a few years, the US, Britain, and France let their parts govern themselves and essentially they became “Germany” again (at the time it was called Western Germany). The Soviets soon realized that people in their communist part didn’t want to stay there, so they built this little wall around the Western (democratic/capitalist) part of Berlin, as well as put up a wall along the border in the middle part of the country. Anyway, that’s how the Berlin Wall came to be—cuz no one wanted to live in the communist part, so the Soviets tried to keep them in with a wall. More about the wall later.

Anyway, this museum was built to show what it was like living in East Germany during the communist era. Being a communist country, it was a self-sufficient country, meaning that they don’t rely on products or help from other countries (except from other communist countries). Therefore, their culture was much different than the rest of the world—heck, it was even much different than that of West Germany. Music, movies, media, food—you name it, it was limited and controlled by the government. They had only 3 cars to pick from and from what I know, they were all pretty crappy. They had one of these cars there. It was a pretty cool museum since it was interactive, so you could touch everything, and there were a lot of videos and audio samples as well.

I can’t remember what we did each day (and I’m sure none of you really care what each day consisted of), so I’ll just tell you what we did for the 4 days we were in Berlin. One of the days we went on a “Third Reich Tour,” which was Hitler’s Nazi Empire from 1933-1945. It was a walking tour, and it was pretty cold, but we were bundled up pretty good, plus this was probably the best and most interesting thing I did on the entire trip, so I was ok putting up with the cold. We went to so many important places during WWII. We saw the Riechstag, the building that was burnt down and essentially helped put Hitler into power (he said he needed more power to stop the communists from destroying their country—although many  historians believe Hitler was responsible for the fire). We saw the place where Hitler and Goebbels had killed themselves (although the bunker is gone, we stood on the ground where it was located). We saw the place where the men were killed that unsuccessfully plotted to kill Hitler (if you’ve seen the movie “Valkyrie” with Tom Cruise, you know what I’m talking about). We went to a small portion of the Berlin Wall that was still left. Next to it there was a really big (free) museum about WWII. Almost all of the museums about WWII in Germany are free, because they want as many people as possible to see what happened during this terrible time. Some people still get mad at German people today for what Hitler did, but that was like 75 years ago. They DO feel bad about it. And there is nothing they can do about it but inform people about it and hope that it never happens again—which is why they don’t charge to get into the museums. In some places (like Munich), it’s illegal to write a swastika or even to do the Hitler salute, unless they’re for educational purposes.

Another night we went and saw the Brandenburg Gate, a famous gate that used to mark the city walls, and was famous during the cold war when the Berlin Wall was built right next to it. We saw a few churches, a Christmas market, and we went up in the TV Tower one night too, and got a nice view of the city. Another day we went to the Holocaust Memorial—a full city block full of concrete blocks that look like graves or coffins. Quite an interesting and unique memorial. Another day we went to the Jewish Museum. Now, I love history, but this museum was the biggest waste of time and money on this entire trip. Unless you’re Jewish, this museum isn’t really that exciting. I thought most of it would be about the Holocaust, but there was a very small part of it that was. Most of it was just Jewish history stuff. There were things to read about famous Jews, there were object s, clothes, and artifacts that were owned by famous Jews, and there were a few artistic memorials that were dedicated to Jews during the Holocaust. Either way, it was a nice museum, but not interesting for me at all. I think Blake and Andrea felt the same way as I did about this place… but hey, not every place can be interesting, right?

We also went to Checkpoint Charlie, a famous Berlin Wall gate, that once had a very famous standoff between the US and the USSR involving tanks. Other than that, Berlin was really awesome. It’s always fun just to walk around and see stuff, and we did plenty of that in Berlin. We even started eating what has since become Blake’s new favorite food—a doner kabab. You put meat (chicken, beef, etc) in a piece of Turkish flat bread, which is kind of like a big pita, and you add cabbage, lettuce, onions, and any other veggies or spices that you want. They are soooo good! I think on this trip Blake and I must’ve had about 5 or 6 of these things. I see them in Kosova sometimes here and there, but Blake had never seen them.

Anyway, our next city was Prague, but we figured since it was only a 4 hour train ride, we’d stop ½ way in Dresden for a few hours. Dresden was a very beautiful city, and I wish we could’ve spent more time there, but we didn’t even plan on stopping there in the first place, so to see it was just extra anyway. Dresden was a city almost completely destroyed by the Allied bombers during WWII, but now it looks beautiful! There were some really huge churches and a lot of really old looking buildings. While we were there, we went to an old city fort, which I guess was called a “medieval castle.” It was pretty neat. Andrea and I went up to the top of a really huge church and saw the whole city from up there. So then we hopped on the next train and headed to Prague.

We arrived in Prague later that evening (Thursday night I think). We found a hotel there for only like $35 a night. And that was for all 3 of us! So that was really nice, especially since Germany is so darn expensive. Prague was such a wonderful and lively city. First of all, I loved it because it was CHEAP! Beers there were only like 2-3 euro, whereas in Germany it was hard to find a beer under 4 or 5 euro. Even food was cheap in Prague. The city is very confusing, with the downtown having roads that run in all directions, and the buildings are so high that you can’t tell where any big churches or monuments are, so it’s easy to get lost there.

The first night we got there, we walked around town to get a feel for it (like every city). We found a huge statue of Saint Wenceslas, the person that “Good King Wenceslas” is written about. Around his statue there were 1,000’s of candles. The reason why is because one of the Czech Republic’s former leaders had just died a day before we arrived. He was very important in helping Czechoslovakia become democratic, so a lot of people were mourning his death. The funeral was 2 days later, which we tried to see, but we couldn’t really get in or close. We found the road that was closed off for his hearse was supposed to drive down, but we waited awhile by it and it never came, so we gave up. We were in Prague for 3 days, until Christmas day, when we left and went to Munich. Here are some of the highlights of the city:

-Charles Bridge—really cool, old bridge that connect the Old Town and New Town. Has a bunch of statues of famous religious people on it.

-Huge castle—not sure what it was called, but I believe that it’s the largest castle in the world (area-wise). We walked around here, saw some cool medieval weapons and suits of armor, that was about it.

-Torture Museum—coolest thing ever! Tons of crazy stuff here! I felt kind of sick at times after seeing some of these exhibits, but nonetheless, it was pretty interesting to see all these forms of torture

-Astronomical Clock—biggest waste of time to see the “show” here everyday at noon. All we saw was a little owl turn its head and apparently there was a skelton next to the clock that moved too, but I didn’t see it. It was pretty funny seeing 100s of people filming this event that a lot of books will tell you to go see. We didn’t see it on purpose—we were walking by and I asked a lady why there were so many people looking at the clock—she said that it puts on a show everyday at noon. Like I said, huge waste of time.

We also went to the top of a clock tower and saw the entire city. I think I went up on top of a tall structure in every city we went to, except Frankfurt. But that would’ve been a waste of time, since there was nothing there to see anyway.

On New Year’s Eve, I found a church for Andrea to go to (it was even in Spanish), and she found it, but apparently they were having the mass in a different part of the church than where she was, so she missed most of it. Blake and I just sat at a bar and drank a few beers. We even took some shots of absinthe… when I had absinthe about 10 years ago for the first time it seemed to taste a lot better than this shot… yucky! It tasted like tequila and black licorice. Mikey no likely.

When we entered the Czech Republic, you could tell that it was much poorer than Germany. It wasn’t like “Kosova-poor,” but it was significantly worse looking than Germany. When we were in Prague, prices were much cheaper, like I said, but the town was a little bit dirtier than most that we saw in Germany. Either way, it was still a really awesome city, and after Berlin, it was probably my 2^nd favorite city that we visited on our trip.

So on Christmas day we took a train to Munich. Probably the boringest Christmas I’ve ever had. But hey, that’s ok. We arrived in Munich and just hung out at our hostel the rest of the night. I tried to call my family, but they were too busy in the middle of a gift exchange, so they didn’t talk to me. Hey, at least I tried—they can’t be mad at me because I didn’t call them, because I did…

Since the idiot train conductor guy insisted that we were traveling on the 26^th (and not the 25^th), he marked our tickets with a 26, even after we told him it’s the 25^th. What that meant was that we could travel on the 26^th without getting our train ticket stamped again, since he already stamped it. So we decided to take a day trip to this big castle in the Alps near the Austrian border. It took about 2 hours to get there. When we got there, we had to wait in a huge line to buy tickets, then finally when we walked up the hill and go to the castle, we saw that half of the castle had scaffolding around it, which made it quite an eyesore. I was really excited to see this castle since it’s HUGE and the pictures of it are beautiful! It was the same castle that was featured in the Disney movie “Sleeping Beauty.” Also, when we were kids, Laura, Matt and I had a Puzz-3D of this castle, so I knew every nook and cranny of this place. So as we toured it, I knew EVERYTHING about this castle… well not really. And to be honest, the 35-minute tour was a huge waste of time. The best part of being at this castle was just seeing it, in front of the beautiful, snow-covered mountains. The tour was quick (only 35 minutes? C’mon…) and the tour guide was very rude. Also, we couldn’t take pictures on the inside, but that wasn’t a problem since the inside wasn’t really that exciting anyway. We could only see part of the castle anyway. Ah well. So all-in-all, I was a little disappointed by the castle, but it was still neat to be there and see it.

We went back that night and just chilled out in Munich. The next day we went to Dachau, the first concentration camp that Hitler built, in 1933, the year he took power. This wasn’t a death camp, like Auschwitz (probably the most famous camp from the Holocaust), but a work or labor camp. Granted, a lot of the people there were killed eventually, but its goal wasn’t to kill people—it was to get as much work out of them as possible, then kill them. Early on, this camp mainly had people that were against Hitler and communists, but eventually it filled up with Jews. The camp today doesn’t have many of the same buildings left. The barracks that the prisoners lived in were rebuilt to show what the living conditions would look like. The main entrance was still there, along with the shower building, the building where new prisoners would come in, and the crematorium. The crematorium wasn’t used to burn people alive, but to burn all the dead bodies. They didn’t want to take the time to bury them. Ashes are much easier to get rid of. Plus, a lot of the dead people had diseases that could spread very easily, so by burning them they got rid of some of that. There was a gas chamber there, but it wasn’t used for massive killings like you’d think. Eventually it was probably going to be used for massive killings, but it was built closer to 1945, and that’s when the war ended and the camp was liberated. The whole thing was really interesting to be at—to think that 1,000’s of people that might’ve said one bad thing about Hitler were there, or 1,000’s of people that did absolutely nothing wrong, but they had the “wrong” ethnicity according to Hitler. Pretty sad to think about…

Anyway, let’s move on. The next day in Munich we walked around town, got a feel for the city. We even went on a walking tour which kind of turned out to be another “3^rd Reich Tour”—well, most of it was, but that’s ok because Blake and I really liked it. The Nazi party started in Munich, so there were a lot of important events that happened there that we got to see where they took place. We learned all about Hitler’s rise to power and how he became a powerful leader of the Nazi party. We also went to a famous brewhouse, called the Hofbrauhaus. The only served beer there (along with some food) and it was only served in .5 liters or 1 liter mugs. Blake and I had 4 liters each, which is roughly 12 or 13 beers. I was pretty proud of myself. We really didn’t drink much on this trip, so I felt ok going all out one night here, especially in Munich, Germany—this is the beer capital of the world.

We realized that we didn’t have a lot of other stuff that we wanted to do in Munich, and since our stupid Czech train conductor stamped our EU Rail passes with the wrong day, we technically had an extra day. Therefore, we decided to head to Salzburg, Austria. Even though our passes only covered France, Czech Republic, and Germany, since Salzburg is a city right on the border of Germany and Austria, it was ok to travel there. So we did. Unfortunately it was a really rainy and cloudy day though. The pictures make it look like a really beautiful town, but we didn’t really get that impression, because of the clouds. There was a huge castle on this big hill in the middle of town, so we checked that out. We walked around for awhile. Mozart was born in Salzburg and lived most of his life here, so there was Mozart stuff everywhere. Also, the movie “The Sound of Music” takes place in Salzburg, so there was tons of stuff about that there, like “Sound of Music” tours. None of us had seen the movie so we didn’t waste our time on that. We spent about 4-5 hours here, then decided that Salzburg didn’t have much else to offer us. There are some cave hikes in the area, but they were closed for the winter. Also, there’s a gondola that you can ride to the top of a nearby mountain and see the entire countryside, but once again, it was cloudy, so we didn’t waste our time doing that. Just as we left it started to clear up so we could see the snowy white peaks, but unfortunately this was kind of a waste of a trip. I guess in the end I can now say I’ve been to Austria though.

The last night before we left we went to the big soccer stadium in Munich. This was built for the 2006 World Cup, which was hosted by Germany. Today, there are 2 local Munich teams that call this stadium home. You’ll have to see the facebook pictures of it, but it’s pretty neat, because it changes colors from red, to white, to blue, depending on which team is playing there.

We had to kill some more time on Friday night (Dec 30^th), because the only train we could find that went to Paris before New Year’s Eve was a night train, and we had to pay about $30 extra for this. It was ok though, because at least we had a ride to Paris. It left at 11 pm from Munich and arrived in Paris after 9 am. Fortunately, we rented out bunks in a 6-person room. Even though it was pretty crammed in there, I slept for most of the night. The beds were pretty comfortable, and they were plenty long enough so I didn’t have to curl up in order to fit. I was lucky and got the bottom bunk—I felt bad for the Mexican couple that had to sleep on the top, since there was a ladder that you had to climb to get up there, and once you got up there, it wasn’t very easy to get back down. But then after I felt sorry for them, I remember how when we were getting on the train and looking for our compartment, Andrea overheard them talking in Spanish, saying something like “I hope we’re not staying with these stupid….” and I can’t remember the word she used, but it was some sort of derogatory term for an American. Serves them right… I would’ve liked to have seen their faces when they realized that Andrea was from Guatemala and understood every word they said (in the morning they were having some small talk in Spanish, so they definitely realized at that point that Andrea knew Spanish).

We arrived in Paris on New Year’s Eve day. We found our hotel, then walked around the city. We figured the lines at all the tourist places would be huge, so we decided just to check out the Cathedral of Notre Dame. As we were waiting in line there, Blake wasn’t feeling good, so he walked over to the bushes and puked. I didn’t quite see it, but he said there were a lot of people laughing at him. Would’ve been funny to see that. Anyway, Notre Dame was cool—really big inside, but it wasn’t any better than some of the other churches we saw. I’m not really sure why this church gets so much recognition. Anyway, we went back to the hotel and I took a short nap. Blake was still feeling really sick, so he decided not to go out that night. I felt bad for him, especially since this was New Year’s Eve, in PARIS of all places, but he just didn’t feel good. So Andrea and I went out.

We decided to go by the Eiffel Tower, since I had read that there would be some fireworks there. So we went out to eat, then found some beers and champagne, and sat by the tower for about an hour. The crowd was pretty rowdy. There were a lot of people with their own small fireworks, and I’m pretty sure everyone there was drinking. All of a sudden, when it turned midnight, the Eiffel Tower started flashing with many lights. It was neat, but it wasn’t that suspenseful. I was hoping for some sort of countdown, especially since there were 1,000’s of people here. I was also confused as to why there wasn’t a big fireworks show. I later talked to my students about it, and they said they read in the news that for security or safety reasons, they decided not to have a fireworks show. Dang.

Anyway, we left the Eiffel Tower, and went to the Champs-Elysees, one of the most popular shopping streets in all of Europe. On one end of it is the Arc de Triumph, while on the other end was some Place de la Concorde. There were TONS of people walking around on this street—they had closed it off for New Years. I don’t know if there was any sort of show here, but I had read that this street was also a great place to be for New Years. I heard it was kind of crowded though, so I didn’t wanna go there. We walked around even more, and before we knew it, it was past 1 am. So we decided to head back. However, the problem was that the subway and lightrails shut down at 1:15 am, so we ended up having to walk back to our hotel. I think it was about 3:30 am by the time we got back. Andrea wasn’t too happy about this walk (I didn’t mind), but we made it back eventually. We decided to sleep in the next day since we got back so late.

The next day was New Year’s Day, and I only had 2 more days here in Paris. So in the afternoon we went to see the underground catacombs, where there are 1,000’s of bodies buried, but unfortunately it was a holiday, so it was closed. Then we checked out the Arc de Triumph, the Champs-Elysees, and the Army Museum. The Army Museum is where Napoleon is buried, but once again, it was a holiday, so that was closed too. We then checked out the Moulin Rouge, but that wasn’t nearly as big or as exciting as I thought it would be. We decided to save the Eiffel Tower until the 2^nd, the last day I was in Paris.

So the next day we got up, moved to another hotel (ours didn’t have any more availability for this night) and then in the afternoon we went to the tower. The lines were long, but this was the only thing we had left to do this day, so I didn’t mind. We walked up the first 2 levels, which I think was something like 700 steps. When we got to the 2^nd level, it was just about to start raining. We saw some amazing rainbows over the city. If you haven’t seen my facebook pictures yet (I will get them up shortly), you gotta check out the pictures of the rainbows. There were 2 rainbows. And not only were there 2 of them, but from up high, the rainbows weren’t a half-arc like you usually see, but they were complete circles! I had never seen anything like it. Well, while this rainstorm was destroying us with rain, we noticed that the line to take the elevator to the top was tiny, mainly because it was on the side with all the rain, and no one wanted to stand there. So we braved it out for a few more minutes. The top was closed, because of the wind and the rain, but that was fine with us—we only had to wait like 10 minutes in this line. They only allow so many people at the top of the tower. The only way up is to take the elevator for like 5 euro. I imagine a lot of people left the top because of the weather, so by the time the rain had stopped, the line we were in was HUGE again and when the ticket booth opened back up, we were basically ready to head to the top.

The view from the top was awesome! I think the Eiffel Tower was probably my favorite thing that we saw in Paris. Part of the reason I liked it so much was because of the rainbows and the clouds, and the sun popped out just for a few minutes too, which made the city look amazing. We stayed at the top for about 30 minutes, then headed back down—it was FREEZING cold! The wind was terrible up there. We headed back to our hotel, but not before we stopped and had some crepes.

The rest of that evening we just hung out at the hotel. I decided to stay up until 2:45 am and watch the Badgers lose the stupid Rose Bowl, and because I had to get up at 4:15 am, I didn’t get much sleep. My flight left at 7 am, so I wanted to be the airport by 5 am, since I’ve heard that Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris is notorious for long lines and inefficiency. Since there were no buses or subways open at 4:30 am, I had to pay 50 stupid euro for a stupid cab. Ugh… that’s like $70 US. Not cool. But I had to do it, or else I wouldn’t have got to the airport. And I wasn’t too keen on sleeping at the airport, although looking back now I really could’ve done that… Blake and Andrea didn’t fly out until the next day, so they went to the Palace of Versailles on the day that I flew home.

To make matters worse, my flight schedule on that day was from Paris to Zurich, Zurich to Slovenia, Slovenia to Prishtina. So what really should’ve only been like a 4 hour plane ride turned into an 8-hour day. I didn’t get back to Prishtina until about 3 pm, but that was ok, since I had time to do laundry and just kick back for a few hours. So that’s what I did. Oh, and I got my 2^nd carepackage from mom and dad, so I spent some time playing my new Modern Warfare 3 video game (thanks again for all the goodies!).

Looking back, it was a great trip. I saw so much stuff that I’ve always wanted to see. However, I don’t think I’ll ever go to Germany or France again. Well, I should get back to Paris when more stuff is open.

And I guess being in Germany especially made me feel like being back at home. Things were so much more efficient, clean, and organized. So maybe I’d go back there again someday too. I guess the biggest thing that I didn’t like was the prices. SOOOO much just for small things that shouldn’t really cost anything. I’ve been pampered my whole life I guess though, since the Midwestern US isn’t that expensive to live in. And Guatemala and Kosova are pretty darn cheap too. Either way, if I get another vacation, unless my family wants to go to Germany or France, I’ll probably use my future vacations to go to new places. I don’t want to keep visiting the same areas that I’ve already seen. There’s so much more out there in Europe for me to see. I haven’t even been to Italy yet—flight there are less than 100 euro, so I’m sure I’ll be heading there sometime soon. Alright, well, I’ll update all you guys in a few more weeks probably. Nothing really exciting happening at school. We’ve got finals week coming up. The weather here has been cold and snowy. Not much snow on the ground, but most of the ground is white, so that’s kinda neat. I guess I have my b-day coming up in another 2 weeks, and I’m thinking about having a small party for that, since I haven’t really had any guests over to my apartment since I moved in here. We’ll see though. Ta ta for now!