The city for Lovers

Hello all, I'm sorry for being out of touch for so long again. I have been quite busy and since my computer has now died, I am at the whim of other traveler's kindness and generosity to let me use their computer. Most of the time it is not during our free time and sometimes I have to sacrifice seeing something in a city in order to get some things done online. Where did I leave you? In Poland, my oh my I have seen a lot since then. Where to begin?

After we were in Poland, we went to Budapest. Budapest had a lot to offer with a pedestrian street and lots of places to eat and best of all..... mexican food! My first taste of mexican food in over 3 months and I had no idea I was so addicted to it. Yum, is all I have to say. I spent an entire day, St. Patrick's Day actually, doing thesis work. But I still feel like I got a good view of the city and saw a beautiful sunset on the river next to a bridge and with some amazing company.

Vienna Austria. An amazing city that I would love to go back and see in a heart beat. So many amazing things to see, but what I enjoy most is hanging out in a park, watching people walk by and play in the grass. Salzburg, Austria, we visited on an amazing Sunday afternoon. There were amazing foods sold at outdoor markets, any kind of souvenir one may want, lots of cafes and the view of the alps in the background. A perfect city to spend a Saturday afternoon and then move on. Onward to Munich, Germany.

Munich was where the computer took a nose dive into the abyss. I don't want to talk about what happened, but my life became much harder after that. And I thought that having to plug my computer into an outlet every 45 minutes was bad, at least it still worked. I went out for the first time in Munich. At first it was just us girls. We went to The HaufrBuauer House which is a famous beer house in Munich that was once a place where the Nazis met. We drank a very large beer and then rode the metro to meet the guys at a club. Everything was going great until my knees started to hurt from bending them while dancing and the night took a down turn for me. We were having so much fun and I started to get mad that I cannot even dance now, and I love and always have loved to dance.

Munich is where the Nazi movement started, this is where Hitler was based. We saw the plazas where he held his presentations or whatever you want to call it. It was interesting to see a city that had been directly affected by the Germans but not in the same way as Poland, obviously. It was interesting to see the occupiers and how their architecture and planning was different because of Hitler. We spent a day and a half in Munich and moved on to Prague, Czech Republic.

I also loved Prague. Our hotel was located in the heart of the city and everything was within walking distance. There were tons of market tents to spend lots of money and to buy original artwork, jewelry and to get your portrait done. There was very historic architecture that told the story of the city by themselves. We spent a lot of time on one particular bridge, St. Charles's Bridge that has a famous view of a layering of buildings that vary in history and architecture, lots of activity with people walking through, people setting up shop to sell their original art. It was just a place for young and old to spend some relaxing time.

Next was Berlin, Germany. This city had some amazing modern architecture as well as some monumental landscape architecture that we had been learning about for years now. We saw the monument for the murdered Jews and the museum underneath it. The jewish museum (yes, these are two different places) mostly we looked at the building in that place, it was a zig zag and was incredibly interesting how they filled the extra spaces left by the corners. Berlin brought me a lot of stress with a 7 page paper due soon and no computer or time to work on it. So instead of going to see and exhibit for landscape architecture with my small group of friends, I borrowed a computer and tried to knock that thing out in 3 hours and succeeded. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. I wanted to skip most of the day, but my friend, Ryan convinced me that I would be in Berlin for one day and there was no way he was going to let me do homework instead. Along this leg of the trip were some long, stuffy train rides, 5 to 6 hours long, not fun.

Next was Amsterdam for the weekend. This was one part of the trip a lot of others were looking forward to because pot is incredibly easy to get here. Les, my professor made a point to tell us not to get into trouble simply because, in the last 2 tours, Amsterdam was the only city every time where somethings really bad happened. As far as I know, nothing happened out of the ordinary, high five WT4!  Many in our group partook in some baked goods and joints and other various drugs. I personally did not partake, I did not feel comfortable in a strange city with people I do not fully trust despite being with them constantly for 3 months. Amsterdam has some amazing modern townhouses where they are expanding their city. But what is most noteworthy of Amsterdam are the bikes. There was one bike rack with 10,000 bikes on it and that was not even a portion of the bikes. They were everywhere and we were warned more than once to watch for them because the bikes yield for no one, including cars. We almost had a casualty, but she luckily got out of the way, just in time. Also there are 1600 bridges over an amazing amount of canals that make the city look exactly the same everywhere you go. We got lost numerous times despite our map and incredible navigational skills (not mine, I stink at that). We drank homebrewed beer at a brewery underneath a windmill, almost got into the Heineken Brewery but the tours were over by the time we finally found it. I really like Amsterdam because of the historic buildings downtown that we leaning and tilted everywhich way because they are on wooden bases and they are not careful with their mortar between the bricks.


On to Paris, where I am currently. We get to stay here for 4 whole nights, which is a complete luxury. I actually unpacked....just a little. This is the longest we will stay in one place and luckily this is a city where there is an infinite amount of things to do. Immediately after arriving in Paris, a group of us went to see the Eiffel Tower at night and I was in complete awe. There is no way to describe it. It was one of those moments where you cannot believe you are here looking at this and you have to pinch yourself to make sure its real. I felt this same feeling at the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China. These monumental places that everyone has heard of their entire life seem to be an absolute illusion in real life until you are actually there standing in front of it. It still hard to believe. We went to the Louvre, saw the Mona Lisa again and again and again because we were getting to turned around in the place trying to find another wing. We would walk around trying to find stairs and we would turn a corner and there she would be again and we were left wondering how we managed to get here again.
The rain stayed away for most of the day until we were at the Eiffel Tower again so we could see it during the day. We saw the ominous clouds and booked it towards the metro and made it just in time before it started pouring and it had stopped when we got off half an hour later near our hotel, perfect timing.

The next day, today we were on our own all day and were able to get up when we wanted. I chose 8:15 although, for some reason I am unsure of, I set my alarm for 7:15 on purpose. I fell back asleep before I ever knew I was awake. We saw Notre Dam, a famous building by an architect I cannot remember at the moment. It had a living wall meaning it was covered with plants that they replace and water. But what I enjoyed more than that was the garden underneath it. It was a very natural garden that had rough planting materials, varying ground planes, creative lighting. It was one of the greatest gardens I have seen outside of the US. We walked around for the rest of the afternoon, looking at buildings of interest, another by the same architect I cannot remember and ended up at a city-wide lookout just in time for it to pour on us and forced us back into the metro to get back to the hotel.

We have the pleasure of cooking for ourselves tonight, which we also did in Prague. We are in apartment hotel rooms, so we have kitchens and the ability to cook for ourselves. So what did we make??? PASTA! of course. Its cheap and easy with little resources and everyone loves pasta. Chicken, red peppers, and pasta. Pretty incredible and exactly what we needed. A little taste like home to recharge us when the trip is getting harder and harder.

Now that we are in such incredible cities, how can I possibly spend a day in the hotel working on homework? Now that I no longer have a computer there are a lot of things I can no longer work on and I have simply thrown in the mental towel to working on them before I get home. I am now working on rough drawings to trace over for final drawings when I get home. I am pretty much done designing, although I have not decided on my facade of the building I designed. This is not something I have ever done before and I want to make sure I see everything on the trip before I decide on what I want it to look like, not too bad of a decision, eh? So I am feeling very confident in comparison to my companions here that are still in the rough stages of their projects and struggling to make themselves work on it as well. But they do not have the amount of other work that I have, so they can afford the time needed to finish their designs and do their drawings as well. I knew this wasn't going to be easy, and it isn't. But I will get through and I will shine with brilliant colors, or I will try to, we shall see.



We are realizing now that there are only 11 days left of this trip and we are torn. Being home would be great for about 4 days and then we would want to come right back. Its going to be hard to come back, but I am also anxious because I know the amount of work that awaits me there. I want to get it over with so I can graduate and get on with my life. I unfortunately have not had a lot of time to search for jobs, although I have contacted a few firms and gotten a few positive responses, nothing is really coming from that yet. There are so many firms out there, but it is very time consuming to search and contact them and I simply don't have that kind of time. But since there is no deadline for a job, I will just have to see what I can do after I get done with my hectic college career and see where I am at that point. Wish me luck, I will need it.

Sorry, no pictures, I know you would love to see some, but I lost most of them to my computer and it takes quite a bit of time to add them and it is now past midnight and I need to get some rest, we are going to visit Versailles tomorrow morning, lets just hope it doesn't rain like it did at the Villa D'Este. So long!

Polly Want a Krakow?

Krakow, Poland is just how I pictured it, cold, rainy/snowy and bare. We visited the old Jewish sector that was once a place where all of the traditional Jews lived before WWII. We took a walking tour around the city which we have not done since we were in Rome, possibly. It felt nice to walk around for a 4 hours instead of walking on and off a bus all day.

Next we walked to a castle that many royalty have inhabited and was greatly damaged by the destruction of WWII. We did learn that Krakow didn't get hit by the Germans nearly as bad as Warsaw did, and was able to rebuild itself a lot easier than other cities. The guide made a lot of references to Schindler's List which I have not seen, but I imagine I will get a lot out of it if I were to watch it now. This courtyard was apparently in the movie or one just like it.

These are just a few images of Krakow and what it has to offer and you can easily see what I meant when I said it was dark and bare. But soon after this the sun came out and it really changed my point of view. It was incredible how a little sun can change a perception of a city.

We ended at the Market Square that has a lot to offer a starving student. I had the most amazing kabab there that was huge and incredibly cheap which is always the best combination. Next we headed back to the hotel to do some homework and then meet again to go to a group dinner at a US Consolate's house that is the father of a friend of one of our group members that joined us for spring break.  Follow that? They have a personal chef and servers that had what seemed to be an unlimited supply of beer for a while as we ate DELICIOUS food and mingled amongst ourselves.

Today we went to Auschwitz. I was somewhat dreading this because we all know the incredible horror that went on in that place. We were required to read Primo Levi's book "Survival in Auschwitz" for class so we were somewhat familiar with more detail about what went on there. On the way we watched a movie on the coach that was only in Polish or German so the guide muted it and did commentary. The images I saw were unbelievable. Although I feel as though I know a lot about The Holocaust, I still learned so much just from that movie. The images that stuck out the most to me where the experiments that they did on small children and identical twins for absolutely no good reason. I just have so much trouble understanding the hate, the complete disregard for people. They tricked them into thinking they were going to take a shower when they were actually going to be exterminated in the gas chambers. They brought suitcases of all of their most treasured belongings because they thought they were just moving to another place instead of going to Auschwitz. Some even had to buy the train ticket that brought them to the camp that was jam packed with people with no food or bathroom and no air.

Its just so tragic. Everyone was silent as we passed through rooms filled with shoes, glasses, hair, and combs. All of these items were just a small sample of what was actually collected and sold to Germans for profit.

Block 11 was nicknamed Hell Block. This is where they took prisoners to be held in a cell and be tortured, and starved.

This is called the wall of death. This is where they lined people up to shoot them. The flowers were laid there by family members honoring their loved ones. The windows and entire courtyard was closed off so no one could see in or get out. Yikes.

This image is from the larger camp Auschwitz II that was 12 times larger than Auschwitz I where we took our tour. Here are just rows and rows of barracks that housed hundreds of thousands of people in impossible living conditions. The barracks themselves are rebuilt because when the Germans were evacuating, they tried to bomb most of the evidence that they had ever done any wrong. The thousands of bodies were enough evidence.

This was a hard day as you can imagine. I'm still reeling from it all and I just thought that you all would be interested in seeing some images from the museum. The hard to stomach images that were taken at the time of The Holocaust were inside barracks which are not allowed to be photographed. This was fine simply because that is not something that I wish to look over again in the near future.

I made it through though. I was able to make it through the incredible emotional taxing day without crying even when we toured the gas chambers and I saw the claw marks on the walls. Its just....

The Batlic States, more than a spot on the Monopoly board

Oh the Baltic States in Eastern Europe. They brought me stress and realization that I have a lot to get done before I get back and then even more to get done after I do get back. I loved Helsinki. I think I would live there if it weren't so incredibly cold in the winter. I would imagine the landscape architecture is nice underneath 3 feet of snow, it seemed that way at least. We actually got to see some modern architecture here though. Lots of housing and things like that, but we have been seeing a lot of historical architecture and when we actually see modern design, everyone crowds around and takes a ton pictures. ohhhh modern!

 It seems to me that we did not really do or see much except the inside of a coach and a whole lot of Boroque buildings. Boroque architecture is described as wedding cake architecture. The outside of the building is done up so much that it resembles a fancy, done-up wedding cake.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are a complete blur. We went through them in one week and I am still reeling from it. So pretty much nothing special happened to me in the past week. I started to miss home a lot and with the increasing stress from looming deadlines makes it worse.

In Tallinn, Estonia, I enjoyed Old Town. Old Town is the medieval town that is still quite cozy as it once was. The buildings are all short and close together and there are practically no cars and the ones that do show up actually yield to pedestrians. I could hardly believe it. 

It is very likely that this post will be quite dull and full of my rantings about stress because that is simply what this past week has been for me. The Baltic States are cold, snowy, but everyone tends to speak English.

 A friend of mine was in the Nike store looking for sweatpants in Riga, Latvia and went up to a salesperson to ask if the price was in Lats or Dollars (no idea why he thought they would be in dollars). I think mostly it was becuase the price was so expensive. One Lat is two dollars. The price was the same in Lats as it would have been at home in dollars. So the sweats were 40 Lats which is $80. But at home they would be around $40. So anyway, he lead with the question we have all learned to start with when asking anyone in a foreign country a question. "Do you speak English?" the salesperson answere "Of course" in better English than we speak. It was quite funny and if you do not agree it is probably because of my delivery as it usually is when I tell stories.

Oh! One thing that is noteworthy is that I saw a movie. One of us has been hankoring to see a movie and the two of us thought Riga, Latvia would be a great a place as ever. Mostly it was because we spotted the movie theatre and saw that they were playing Alice in Wonderland in 3D. So the two of us told two others and then the group quickly grew to about 20 without my even knowing it by the next day. I haven't been to a 3D movie since I was 7 in Disney World when I saw Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. So I was pretty pumped.

We asked the guide what the movie situation would be. We figured that since it was an American movie that it would be in English with Latvian subtitles. The guide agreed and so we made a bold move and went to the theatre. All the previews were anamated movies and were in Latvian. We started to get pretty nervous until the Alice in Wonderland started and the title came up in ENGLISH. The entire movie was in English with Latvian and Russian subtitles. It was the perfect movie to see in Latvia. We were all anxious to see it and it was even cheaper there than it would have been in the states. Only $7. No pictures of myself in these glasses exist, so you all will have to settle for my friends, because Jake is wearing mine in the picture..

My spirits were low this week. My computer is giving me some trouble with battery life and the temptation to throw it against a wall is ever increasing. No battery life is just fine when you have an outlet nearby. I don't tend to have an outlet nearby most of the time. I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Yesterday we were on the bus from 9:30 am until 10 pm with two bathroom stops, one that doubled as a lunch stop at a convenience store and one bathroom for 45 people and 15 minutes to do it in, and no dinner stop at all. Since there was such a time crunch with the bathroom, most ended up peeing outside in a not so secluded area with cars whizzing by (no pun intended). Oh, life on the road. We arrived here i Krakow in the late evening and luckily knew where some quick food was that we could easily get to from our hotel.

I fell asleep at 11 on Krakow time, which is another hour earlier than my previous time zone in my clothes, minus pants and then waking up at 9am to get the day started. It was a glorious 10 hour sleep that was much needed despite my lack of activity on the bus.

So now, for my lack of energy, I am going to just post pictures because I have no more commentary to go with them. So enjoy.

Chiner... a place that will make you cry to get a taste of food you prefer not to eat at home... McDonald's

Hong Kong is pretty darn cool. Its been such a long time since I was there, things are starting to fade away. Right now I am doing this instead of doing much needed work on my thesis project. Oops, we all have our priorities I suppose. After a 2.5 weeks from Facebook and Blogging, I would not have survived without HBO and endless movies on the TV. Is this sad? Probably, but there is so much to share and almost no way to share it.

Anyway, on to my life for the past 3 weeks. China... Shanghai was beautiful. The weather was amazing and it was interesting, and our hotel had a pool and hot tub, our first to have one. We took advantage... when we had time of course. I discovered that I do incredibly enjoy Chinese gardens. They offer a sense of discover and adventure with rocks to climb on, pools of fish, pagodas and the complete works. They are perfect for inner reflection, which I tended to skip and just walked around and sketched... most of the time.




Next, we went to Xi'an which is a little hazy with pollution but still pretty warm. We took a bike ride around on top of the entire city wall (9 miles) and enjoyed the entire thing thoroughly. I had a Chinese Gina (my bike) it was a Giant who's kickstand failed to stay up and dragged the ground. It was bumpy but I had a blast.




We also went to visit the Terra Cotta Warriors that a farmer found in his field a couple decades ago. No two warriors are alike... it was really cold in the pits that we went to see them in.




Next, we went to Beijing after a sleeper train that put the Egytian sleeper trains to rest, and saw The Bird's Nest (olypmic village), Tian'ammen Square, and The Forbidden City. We were unprepared for the bitter cold that awaited us this day and were freazing and forced to skip lunch for no apparent reason.

Tian'ammen Square


The Forbidden City


my face before I found hot tea and popcorn inside the nest to supplement lunch




The Water Cube

my face after I found the hot tea and popcorn =)

The next day in Beijing was the day I had been somewhat mentally preparing for for months.... THE GREAT WALL!!! In preparation for the 9 mile trek up and down the treturous conditions of The Great Wall, I took 2 pain pills. The path getting up to the wall was steep and already had me taking off layers when we go to it. We hiked on a less touristy part of the wall and it had just snowed that morning so it was nice and slick in places that made the trip even more exciting.

After an hour of hiking, I decided to take another pain pill because I was still struggling a little. Don't get me wrong, I was still near the front and not really having too much trouble physically, but my knees were not loving the down-hills. We all stayed quite toasty througout the entire journey and I was quite comfortable. There were AMAZING views and I was acutely aware of the amazing things that I was doing.... CLIMBING THE GREAT WALL!!





When I was done, we struggled up the last few stairs 2 hours and 2 and 45 minutes, I discovered the laterway we were getting down was a zipline.... amazing! I was one of the first on the bus and after eating to recharge and waiting for people to all get on, I took another 2 pain pills... mistake. I was hurting a lot and I just wanted to ease the pain. Soon after we started rolling, I started feeling REALLY tired and dizzy. I slept some of it off and then we stopped for dinner so I was able to get over it pretty quickly... never again.

Next, we moved on to Dataong... why, I am not sure. There is nothing to do in Datong, the local guide even said so. We drove long distances to get to places outside of Datong that were interesting though. We went to see The Hanging Temple that is snuggled on the side of a cliff. It was pretty cool.

and of course we went in it!



It was around this time that I was starting to go crazy from entire group dinners around a lazy susan where we all had to share and be cordial and get a little bit of a lot of different dishes. One tiny little glass of drink max. I couldn't look at one more piece of rice, meat, and veggies in a sauce again. One night at dinner, we had a particularly horrible looking, smelling, and tasting dinner and i couldn't take it anymore. I wouldn't eat it. I couldn't eat it. I started laugh/crying and begging to go to McDonald's just to have something not Chinese. 3 meals a day for 16 days is a long time to eat the same food.... ugh. They felt sorry for me, so one of my roommates offered to buy me McDonald's and myself and 7 other people took a very cheap 15 minute cab ride to the McDonald's and it was the most amazing food I have ever had... or it seemed that way. It wasn't that I wanted McDonald's, its that I just couldn't eat anymore Chinese food and that was the only option, that or KFC. Everyone has told their friends, parents, and journals about my yet another breakdown. I am soooo famous.

We went back to Beijing for a night and then started an 8 hour plane ride to Moscow and then St. Petersburg with a negative 5 hour time change... longest day ever.
I am still recovering. We stayed in St. Petersburg at the sbuzziest hotel I have ever encountered that we have guessed used to be a hospital. It was dirty and the showers made you feel dirtier than before you got in. The first day in St. Petersburg, we drove around a little, went to Peter and Paul's fortress Cathedral, walked around and got some lunch (beef and potatoes, typical Russian), The Hermitage and then called it a day.

The Hermitage... what can I say about that. The Hermitage is a museum of art. We spent a few hours getting completely lost and narrating inappropriately to the paintings to pass the time. We found the internet cafe that was near the exit. It was cheap and I had been a day or so without internet, so I decided to get on. Before I knew it, it was time to get to the bus, I had 5 minutes. I look around and it appears that everyone has left me and I have no idea how to actually get to the exit. I got down one hallway, nope. Go down the other way, nope. I find a familiar place and go out of the turnstile... mistake. It's not the right exit where we were meeting. I can't get back into the museum part anymore and very few people speak English. I start panicking. I find a security guard that speaks English and lets me back into the museum and tells me that I need to go down to the right. I get to the end of that hallway and then find the correct cloakroom that we were supposed to be meeting at. Of course they are all gone and I am now 7 minutes late. The lady at the cloakroom is yelling and pointing to the left telling me to hurry, I can only guess. I run to the left and out the door and see my group and bus out there. I run through the parking lot while the person that left me takes my pictures and I struggle to restrain myself from physically hurting him. I immediately get on the bus and learn that if I had not turned up in 2 minutes, I was going to be left there... and then what? Shit. I had no way to get back to the hotel that I had no idea where it was. But I made it, that's all tha matters now. Then we went back to the hotel and then went on an adventure to find Pizza Hut, another restaurant that I don't particularly like at home. It took us quite a while to find the place that I happened to spot on the bus tour that morning... we made it and it was better than any pizza I have had in the US. An amazing end to a rough day.





Russian architecture is crazy. Bold colors with white trim, quite interesting...

The next day... this morning, we went to a few palaces and our interest fained to see overdone rooms and portriats of people we don't know. But we had a nice lunch!


After that, we boarded a plane to Helsinki and we got to an amazing hotel with free, fast internet, ate a DELICIOUS buffet that was NOT CHINESE FOOD and now have spent the evening getting everyone up to speed on the last 3 weeks or so on my life instead of doing homework... it's worth it as long as you all appreciate it. I love all of your comments... good or bad (anonymous, I know who you are and where you sleep) I hope you all enjoy what I have to say and I just want to end on the note of saying that there are a lot of very attractive Russians and I would not mind being near one =)(Richard, that one is for you)