Last Friday, March 5th, I traveled with all 85 castle students to visit Prague for our second and final academic excursion. This time the program set us up in
apartments in the heart of the city as opposed to the hostels of the last excursion and every other independent trip I've taken. Needless to say, this was awesome. For two nights in a row I had every intention of going out and hitting Prague at night but ended up just staying in because the apartments were that awesome. Don't worry, I did eventually get the courage to leave the place on the third night and saw some spectacular night views of the city in a park near the Prague Castle quarter of town; but alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.
When we first arrived on Friday afternoon the group was split up into several smaller groups in order to be guided on a walking tour around Prague to start to get to know it. My tour guide brought us to seemingly arbitrary locations in the cold outdoors to convey to us some part of the City's long history. Eventually he took us to a supposedly cubist building, explained why he felt it wasn't the slightest bit cubist, and then brought us inside to buy us coffee. Apparently this is like a "thing" that professors like to do on trips. Which is great.
Saturday led us to the Prague Castle, a fascinating series of structures built on a hill near the city, complete with its own stunning cathedral. It was certainly beautiful, but it was pretty cold and it was snowing pretty hard which put an unfortunate damper on the situation. That afternoon I joined my History of Western Art III: Modern Art class to the National Gallery at Veletrzni Palace to experience some more artworks in person. This was a great gallery, both in quality and in general size, that was eerily uncrowded. It gave our class a chance to interact with a myriad of orginial Rodins and Piccassos and things of that nature without having to deal with lame crowds that seem to be present at most museums I've visited here so far. Saturday night some of the group (includin
g myself) went to get a Czech meal at a restaurant relatively close to our apartments. I ended up sitting at a table with the aforementioned Rob "The Duke" Dukers. The Duke has lived in the Dutch town of Roermond for his entire life and has dinner with his parents every sunday. He also doesn't enjoy Ethiopian food because his true passion in life is pre-gutenburg manuscripts, and handling them with oily food hands is strictly prohibited. You're welcome.
Sunday we took a tour of the Jewish Quarter of the city in the morning. This was a little bit interesting, but much of it was going over Jewish customs and rituals, something I feel I'm fairly familiar with. In the afternoon I joined my Modern Art History class once again to take a tour of the Prague Municipal House which is a ridiculously beautiful, detailed 
and ornate Art Nouveau building. Many buildings are done in this style in the city of Prague, which is very cool. That typical Art Nouveau type-face seems to be the comic sans MS of Prague; that shit was everywhere.
On Monday we visited the former ghetto and Nazi prison camp Terezín. This brought back memories of IST. These kinds of places are very emotional.
After being released from the program I explored the fourth and final quarter of the city that I hadn't yet been to and then took a mad nap. That night I caught a sleeper-car-night-train with my Venice buddy Pat to begin our week long travel break in...
Vienna, or How Stravinsky Raped My Ears for €5
We woke up on a train at 5:00am to the rising sun. After accidentally taking the local Vienna tram the wrong direction and walking for 1.5 hours to the city's center Pat and I found our hostel and checked in. After taking a short rest and recuperation we decided to explore around a bit. We got lunch at a delicious open-air market and visited a beautiful church with two large spires and a view from the top. This church also housed a gallery of modern religious artworks. And as any true David B. Weaver vs. Europe fan knows, this is something I value. Good work, church that I forgot the name of. 
After leaving this church we walked over to see the famous Stephensplatz in the center of town - also beautiful.
Tuesday night we decided to head to the Opera House and snag €3 standing room only tickets for the opera currently showing there: Medea. After sneaking down into seats and staying for the first act I can safely say that this was one of the strangest things I've ever seen. Having obviously not been able to understand the German lyrics, I could gather very little from the performance. Here's what I could tell: A woman wearing white seemed to be helping a woman wearing red somehow; they may or may not have been on the moon; two male characters may or may not be based in a hovering/descendable room; stormtroopers, being led by a witch 
seem to have seriously shamed the red woman. Although glad I saw an Opera in Vienna it was definitely one of the strangest performances I've ever witnessed and certainly not what I was expecting. Regardless, we ended the night on some delicious Weinerschnitzel and Beer.
On Wednesday we visited Schönbrunn Palace - a palace that has housed many Viennese royalty but is especially known for being the favorite place of residence of Emperor Franz Josef I, most famous in my life for being the namesake of the archipelago north of Russia that can be seen very easily from the old world-map shower curtain at the Mead/Aaronson residence. We walked around the extensive and beautiful gardens for a good couple of hours and then made our way inside the palace and saw some of the interior. It was very rad. We then made our way across town to get bus tickets to Bratislava Airport where we were leaving from the next day and then to the city center to purchase tickets to a concert of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin who were to play a Beethoven piece and Igor Stravinsky's "Firebird." These tickets were also standing room only and cost us very little. Unfortunately for the first piece there were some people guarding the seats so us commoners could not sneak into them. However, when everybody 
left for intermission so did the guards. And so Pat and I found ourselves surrounded by old Austrian men that may as well have been sporting monocles in the first section of seats, wearing plaid flannel tucked into jeans. Was this awkward? Slightly; we did get some dirty looks. However, we did pull it off and it was incredibly fulfilling. Seeing "Firebird," a piece that I was somewhat familiar with due to my fanship of the film Fantasia 2000, played live was seriously incredible. And being in the first section we could really see the passion and vigor that the orchestra played with during some of the more intense parts of the symphony. This was the highlight of my Vienna experience. The night ended again with Schnitzel and Beer, because come on, when am I going to get the opportunity to eat Weiner Weinerschnitzel after that night?
The next morning we awoke and took a bus to Slovakia, only to take a plane to an airport in Sweden where we took yet another bus to...
Stockholm: Making Snow Beautiful Again
Stockholm, Sweden is a beautiful place. We weren't there in the dead of winter, nor were we there for the long
est day of the summer; we came during the melty season and it was still stunning. We stayed at a hostel in the Galma Stan or Old Town, which was very cool. Stockholm is a series of islands and the Galma Stan is a very small island located at the very center. Unfortunately it was already dark when we arrived in the city on Thursday night so we just explored the old town a little bit and decided to hit the hay early.
Friday morning we walked over to the Vasa museum as recommended by the very wise and informative Zach Barter. This museum centers around an enormous Swedish warship 
called the Vasa that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628. It was incredibly beautiful, however logistically it failed and therefore sat at the bottom of the water for many, many years. They figured out how to pull it up in the 60's, and ever since it has been on exhibit at this building built around it. We then made our way through the Galma Stan (this time during the day) to the southern island of Sodermalm and browsed around there for a while. Found a pretty cool record store called Pet Sounds. That night we decided to splurge and went to the Absolut Ice Bar, which is a bar made out of ice. It was a little 
bit more like a disneyland ride than an actual bar as you were only allowed to stay in there for 40 minutes and the cover charge dictated that it was more of a spectacle than an actual establishment. But, a spectacle it was! They fit us out with space aged parkas and let us enter what was basically a well decorated freezer. Everything was made 
of ice - the walls, the chairs, the bar, the shot glasses. It was very, as Francine Weaver so hilariously predicted it would be, "cool."
The next morning we were scheduled to fly out but felt as though we didn't get ourselves enough Stockholm so we woke up at 5:00 and watched the sunrise from Sodermalm. It was beautiful.
Europe, you've shown me your true colors over this break - and I like them. Looks like you're score's reached a whopping 238. David B. Weaver, um... let's see... oh! oh my... 239 (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!)
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