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!