this will have to do: sentsf8.wordpress.com

sorry for the lack of posts - blog issues

Sicker in Slovakia

So, how many formerly communist countries have YOU been sick in?
Well, put another tally up next to my name. Just my luck.

So like I said in my last entry, Jacob and I decided on a whim to go to Slovakia Friday night/Saturday. What's in Slovakia, you might ask? Well, there's Bratislava, the capital, and that's about all I can tell you. So we boarded our 12:37 am train and were in a compartment with four other people. They were from Spain, I believe and were continuing through Bratislava to Budapest. I popped in my ipod, listening to Wildwood by Chatham County Line (buy it. learn it. love it.) and dozed off probably within 10 minutes, because we'd had a long day. I woke up just a little while later shivering, unable to get warm. UH OH. I bundled up as much as I could but during the 5ish hour train ride, I could not get warm at all. So I basically spent 5 hours getting chills and freeeeeezing. I figured this probably was not good. I would doze off but it would be really fitful sleep. Plus there was a lot of pressure in my head, which was probably not a very good thing.

We arrived in Bratislava at 5:40 a.m. Want to know how much is going on in Bratislava on a Saturday morning at 5:40am? Not a lot. We wanted to check the times for the train rides back to Prague before we left the train station because our tickets were open-ended, so we went up to the ticket counter and of course they didn't speak English. So that was problematic. Fortunately we found one of the screens that showed the train times and there was one around 4 and another around 6. At this point, I was already feeling horrible and would have totally gotten on a train and gone straight back to Prague if there had been an available one.

The train station was only about a 10-15 minute walk to the historic center of Bratislava so we walked there. The area around the train station wasn't super pretty, but the historic area was really pretty. However, at 6:15ish when we arrived, there was pretty much nothing open. So we just walked around and essentially planned everything we were going to see. Most cafes didn't open until 8 and the tourism office didn't open until 9. So while we were making the rounds, we came across a McDonalds, which opened at 7am. Thank you AMERICA. We went in and ordered, escaping the super cold weather. I got a croissant and some orange juice, which I figured was a good idea because I could tell I was getting sick. Unfortunately, it was a bad call because it made me even more cold. Around 7:45, we left and headed over to another, more legit cafe that opened at 8, where I got some hot chocolate and a croissant, basically the two warmest things they had on the menu. The hot chocolate was extremely rich. It was pretty much just melted chocolate, but it was so warm, and I got warm for the first time in ohhhh 8 hours.

At this point, I was fighting to keep my eyes open so Jacob sat and listened to his ipod while I took a 30 minute power nap. Man was that needed. We then walked over to the tourism office, got an official map and set off for Devin Castle, a 13th century castle about 25 minutes outside of Bratislava. There were buses running supposedly every 20 minutes, but it felt longer. While waiting at the stop with a bunch of other tourists, I of course fell asleep. Jacob woke me up when the bus came and we got on, and then I of course fell asleep AGAIN. I actually enjoyed getting some extra sleep in there.


So this castle was SO legit. I wish I had been feeling 100% so I could have appreciated it more, but even when sick, that was super cool.

Obviously since it's so old, there are only parts of it remaining and some parts of it are only morphed stone. It was still really neat. It bordered the Danube river which was gorgeous. Also, major props to Jacob for taking these pictures with my camera because I legitimately was so cold that I couldn't pull my hands out of my pockets for long enough to hold my camera. Pathetic, je sais.

Here's me mustering up all the energy I had for this picture even though at this point, I kind of wanted to just crawl into a hole, not because what we were doing was boring, I just felt THAT bad. I mean, this is legit stuff. 13th century castles? You don't exactly get cool stuff like that stateside.

We then went into the actual fortifications which was really neat. It was cool to see the Danube river from so high up where we had been walking just before. On a side note, before we walked in, I saw two black cats. I hadn't seen a black cat since the Rat died in July (FYI: Rat is a term of endearment for our family cat, Fluffer.)

 Danube river below, from the castle

 Cannot even begin to describe how I was feeling at this point.

All in all, despite how sick I was, Devin Castle was really neat. So Jacob and I caught the bus back to Bratislava, and no surprise,  I fell asleep in all of about 20 seconds and woke up when we got back. Loved it. It was around 1pm so we figured it was a good idea to go someplace warm for lunch. It took us a long time to find a place because there were so many places that looked really good. We finally decided on a cute little restaurant. I figured it probably wasn't a good idea to get any rich Slovakian food, so I got some WONDERFUL chicken noodle soup with coffee (to keep warm) and a coca (because that's what my mom always made me drink when I was sick!) It was so nice to escape the cold. Our food came and it was delicious. I didn't have much of an appetite, but I ate anyways, just because I figured I needed something on my stomach, plus it was WARM.

A little piece of heaven in soup form.

At lunch, Jacob figured it was best to take the earlier train ride back, especially since I was feeling so bad, which I was SO grateful for. I might add that while we were waiting for our check, I dozed off. Seriously?

We finished up lunch and then walked around and took some pictures of some of the more touristy stuff in the historic area.

We then made our way back to the train station and took the train back to Prague. I probably slept all but 5 minutes of that five hour train ride. When we got back to Jacob's apartment, I emailed my parents about the situation and they got a tad worried, so I called them on Jacob's phone, because apparently French phones don't work in Prague. Go figure. Then I took some Alleve and went to sleep at 10pm.

We got up the next morning and I had emails/texts from my brother David saying NUGGET, our code word for when his wife Lindsey was going into labor. It was crazy that she would happen to be in labor around 12-12:30 at home when I was waking up in Prague at 6:30, for my 9:40 flight. For once the time difference works out. I texted him and my parents and they kept saying that she was close - which for the record, I don't even want to know what that means - but that the baby wasn't there yet. I drank some tea and we were about to head out the door and I decided to check my computer one last time and I when I logged into my email, I didn't have any news and probably 10 seconds later, my mom texted me saying "She's here."

I responded, logged out of my email and went to catch my flight. Funny how things like that work out. I headed out of Prague and back to Paris. This whole weekend was definitely an adventure to remember. It was a ton of fun and so good to see someone from back home, but it was filled with a lot of sickness. I'd have to say that I liked Prague more than Bratislava, but I think it's just a personal preference. Prague seemed bigger and a bit prettier, but my outlook on life might have been slightly tainted in Bratislava. Anytime you get the chance though, visit either of these places, because they're really neat. 

No worries though, I'm alive and well now. I had a fever still on Sunday, but it broke and I'm completely fine now.

Sick in Prague

So we got up around 9 on Friday and headed out to do the touristy stuff of Prague. Prague is such a beautiful city and it really reminded me of Brussells. It's so unlike Paris and I loved that aspect. First we went to the Charles Bridge which is this amazingly gorgeous bridge that goes across the river around Prague. It's closed to cars, so there were just a ton of tourists and then people selling stuff. There were statues on the sides of the bridge which were really pretty.

 Here's a picture of the bridge before we were on it.

 This is a view from the bridge of Prague Castle, which we visited later.

Another view from the bridge.

You can see some of the vendors here.

This has an interesting legend to it. Apparently the first time you cross the bridge, if you touch the cross on the part here, you can make a wish and it'll come true. Goodness, with so many of these things all over Europe, my wishes better start coming true!

So pretty.

We then made our way over to this place called Old Town. This was the area that really reminded me of Brussells. It was all centered around this one beautiful square. There were two cathedrals that were so pretty. It was interesting because again, they were so different from the other cathedrals I've seen before. I loved them.

If you look closely at the top of this tower and see the red speck, that's a man dressed in medieval clothing playing the trumpet. Apparently he does it every hour. It was the most hilarious thing ever. Everyone had crowded around waiting for it and when he was done, everyone cheered. So neat.

After walking around this square for a while, we headed for lunch. Jacob knew a place that had good, cheap Czech food. He ordered fried camembert and I ordered goulash, both traditional Czech foods. My goulash was really good, but really rich. Jacob let me try the fried camembert and that was pretty good as well. The amazing thing about Prague in general is that the food and pretty much everything else is SO cheap. It was such a breath of fresh air coming from Paris where I always order water with meals just to pinch pennies.

Here's where we ate

 Goulash with bread dumplings - it was similar to a beef stew

After eating here, we headed off to Petrin Tower which is essentially a mini Eiffel tower. It's up on a hill and gives a great overlook of the whole city. We walked about 20-30 minutes to get there and once we got there, we walked up the steps. The staircase was in very tight circles and it took us about 10 minutes to walk up. The views were absolutely amazing.

A small word of advice: If you aren't used to eating super rich food and then you go on a 20 minute hike and then climb up a tall, tight winding staircase, you may or may not get sick - hence the title of this blog. But hey, don't let it ruin your day!

After this, we went over to Prague Castle which was another gorgeous building. This is me with one of the royal guards. Yes, I am THAT tourist.

 After visiting Prague Castle, we decided to head back to Jacob's place and take it easy until dinner, and figure out what we were going to do the next day. An hour or two later, we went to a place called Bohemian Bagel. I needed something light on the stomach so I got a bagel with egg and cheese, and it was really good. Since I was feeling better, I figured I should at least try the beer that the Czech Republic is famous for - Pilsner. Since I mostly drink wine in France, and since Pilsner is a reaaaaally strong beer, I didn't enjoy it and drank about half of the glass. Oh well. All for the experience, right? Plus, I kid you not, beer is cheaper than water in Prague. I thought it was a myth, but oh no, so very true. So I didn't feel bad about not drinking the whole glass because it cost a little over 1 US DOLLAR. Seriously?  Ano ( oui in Czech!) Something like that would have cost between 3 and 5 EURO in Paris. Unbelievable.

At dinner, we still tried to figure out what we were going to do. We'd seen pretty much everything there was to see in Prague, so we figured we would go somewhere else. We had some different ideas, but after going back to Jacob's and checking train times and prices online, we randomly decided to go to...Slovakia! What's in Slovakia, you might ask? Not a ton, but we google imaged the capital Bratislava, and it looked pretty. Living life on the edge is a lot of fun. The best part was, that Slovakia was 4-5 hours away, so we had to take a midnight train. So about 9:30, we looked up times online, decided on Slovakia, and walked over to the train station and booked our tickets for a train leaving at 12:30am.


So, off to Slovakia.

Czechin' out PRAGUE

So sorry it has taken me so long to update on my weekend travels!

Last Thursday was probably the most stressful day EVER, however it had a good reward. First of all, I am an extreme worrier. Plain and simple. I could probably add many years to my life if I stopped worrying so much. Like I said in my last post, I had about 30 minutes to get from my first class to the Louvre. My prof for that first class just happened to let us out FIVE MINUTES LATE. oh man. Talk about stressed. So the two other girls and I jetted over to the Louvre and made it right at 11am. Fortunately, my prof let me go drop off my backpack at the coatroom so I wouldn't have to carry it all around the museum. The tour was really cool and I enjoyed actually having someone walk around and explain different pieces and give more of a background on them.

When we got out, I had to go across the street from the Louvre and wait at a random address that my host-dad had found for me to give to the taxi. So of course I sat there and worried about whether or not the taxi would actually come and whether or not it would actually find me because honestly, Rue de Rivoli is SUPER busy. But lo and behold, the taxi driver found me.

Here's where I was standing. You can imagine why I was just a tad worried he wouldn't find me.
Rue de Rivoli

On the taxi ride to the airport, I just sat there and stared at the clock. My ticket said that sometimes they closed the gates an hour before departure so I was super worried about that. I tried to calm myself down by listening to Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas Friedman on my ipod, but after about ten minutes, I realized I hadn't heard a word that he said, so I turned it off. To top it off, it felt like the taxi driver was going SO slow. People were passing us! Come on, man. This is Paris, right? You're supposed to drive fast! IT'S IN THE GENEVA CONVENTION!

We got to my terminal at about 1:55, and hour and FIVE minutes before my flight. I was super worried about once getting into the terminal, whether or not I'd find the place to check in with the company SmartWings. What if I had read the computer wrong and it was actually one of the other terminals?? So much could go wrong. What if there was a long line and I missed the hour cutoff? Yikes.

So I walked in the terminal, and the first kiosk I saw was of course, SmartWings. Huge sigh of relief. I checked in and then made it through security.  I found my gate and even though my ticket said boarding time was 2:00, they didn't board us until 2:30 and incase you're wondering, they did NOT close the gate an hour ahead of time. Lies.

So we boarded the plane and I was kind of sad to see that my row was the one row on the whole airplane that didn't have a window. This would happen to me. However, a nice perk is that there were only two of us on the row made for three, so I got an aisle seat when I was supposed to be in the middle. Yes! I was really tired so I fell asleep for the first 20 minutes or so, during which I sadly missed the food! Sad day. However, I did wake up in time for the drinks. Helloooo Coca Light. I love it. Surtout when it's free. The flight attendants were making all of the announcements in Czech and English which I found really interesting. I couldn't fall back asleep so I decided to study some vocab for our test monday to calm my nerves. ça fait du sens, non? The best way for me to learn vocab is to write down the words/definitions over and over. So I whipped out my first list of slang words from a violent song that we studied. Honestly, I don't have a clue as to why Olivier (mon prof) wanted us to learn these words. About halfway down the list, after I had written down words such as bailloner and fumer quelqu'un, which mean to gag and to shoot someone respectively, I started to realize that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be doing this list on a plane...the people might think I'm a terrorist or something.

So I halted the studying and went back to worrying. What if I couldn't find Jacob once I got to the airport? Prague is a big city. What would I do? I had his number, but what if it didn't work? Well, we landed in Prague, I got out my phone, turned it on and fortunately I had service. When I went to call Jacob, the call wouldn't go through. UH OH. So I crossed my fingers and got off the plane. I didn't check a bag so I found the door for the exit, super terrified that Jacob wouldn't be outside and that I'd have to walk around looking for him and never find him. So I turned the corner and wanted to cry, because there Jacob was.

Moral of the story? STOP WORRYING. Facile à dire mais trop difficile à faire!

We used three modes of transportation to get to Jacob's apartment - bus, metro, and tram. Pretty cool. Their apartment is really nice. It's sort of like a dorm, but still an apartment. Hard to describe. We quickly changed clothes and headed over to the place where we were going to see the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. On the way over, Jacob taught me some useful Czech phrases, such as thank you, good day, good evening, excuse me, etc. So we got to the door, he hands me my ticket and says, just go up give them the ticket, say good evening(in Czech), listen to what he says and then say thank you (again with the CZECH) and walk away. Right after saying this, Jacob walked up to the door to hand in his ticket. I felt like I was being thrown to the wolves. I walked up to the guy, had this huge cheesy grin on my face, and completely forgot how to say good evening, so I figured it was best to say nothing. Then the guy said something and I just looked at him, probably with the most confused look on my face, to which he said, "to the right." Ah, english. I adore you. Of course Jacob thought this was hilarious.

So I figured my Czech interactions were over for the evening, but apparently we had to do the exact same thing once we got to our section. I was a little braver this time, so I walked up to the lady, handed her my ticket, she said something or another, and I took a deep breath and mustered up my best děkuju (thank you in Czech) and made it in. Although it was definitely rough, I think I get an A for effort. We went and sat down and the inside of the building was even prettier than the outside. Sadly, you couldn't take pictures. Sad day. Although I am no music connaisseur, I really enjoyed listening and seeing them play. Jacob's quintet director was playing in it so that was really cool. I lasted maybe an hour to and hour and twenty minutes. I can't really remember. It was neat though. Such a cool experience.

Here's the building where the orchestra was, taken the next day with better lighting.

Travels

Yesterday, for my French Society and Culture class, we went to the Musée Cluny which is the museum of the Middle Ages. My professor met us there and gave us a tour. It was nice to have our own personal tour, but the information was not super exciting. Fortunately it only lasted two hours - not the normal three hours of that class.

Today, I'm going to my Composition class at 9. That class ends at 10:30, when I have to BOOK it to the Louvre for my Art History class. We're supposed to be there at 11. Hopefully I'll make it. There are two other students in the same situation as me, so I guess we'll just run over there together.

Then once that class is over at 12:30, I'm catching a taxi to the airport because I'm going to PRAGUE! I cannot wait! I am SO SO excited. I'm a tad nervous about not speaking Czech, but hopefully Jacob will take care of all that! Tonight we're going to see the Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague which should be really neat.

I'll definitely post stories on Sunday when I get back, if not before!

Miss and love yall!

Old friends

Today was a really good day.

I found out online that there were fitness classes at the American Church of Paris Community Center and I decided to go to one last night. I was really nervous about it, but it turned out SO well. It was basically 45 minutes of cardio workouts to music and then 15 minutes of toning. I really enjoyed it and definitely want to go back. There were 7 or 8 of us in the class, plus the teacher. Her name was Alison and she was probably in her late 50s. She was so nice and everyone else was too. They made me feel so welcome. I definitely worked up a sweat. To top it off, on my way home after it, I gave directions to some lost American couple. They asked me where I was from and I said NC, to which they replied, ahhhh we heard it in your voice! Love it.

Today I got up, went to classes and then went to meet my from Russell from Wake. He's doing the WF program in Dijon and they're in Paris for the week. It was so so good to see him. I ran up to him outside the metro where we were meeting and gave him the biggest hug. It was so good to see someone from the states. We grabbed lunch and walked around some, just catching up, hearing about each other's semesters so far. He studied abroad with me last summer in Tours.

It made me so excited to see Jacob this weekend in Prague, Stephen the next weekend here in Paris, Laura two weekends later in Morocco, and then MY PARENTS  the weekend after that. October is going to be absolutely fantastic.