Long time, no blog

Hey everybody! Many of you have informed me that I have been slacking off on my travel blog, (and as Samantha put it, Brit has been kicking my butt) so I will do my best to get caught up.

Let's see, after our weekend trips we had our first week of real classes. Everyone was pretty thrilled to be done with the core course because the intense schedule was wearing on us. Classes are pretty good so far. I really like my Gender and Culture class, and my professor, Pavla Jonssonova, is so cool! She was in an all-girls underground punk rock band starting back when the Czech Republic was under the communist regime. Apparently they were moderately well known, because they still play benefit concerts from time to time. You can check find her myspace on google, haha.

Anyway, the next weekend I went to Berlin! There were 9 of us from my program that went together, and it was a really fun weekend! Plus, it was planned by someone else, so that was nice, haha. We took a train on Friday evening, and when we got there, we went to the top of the TV tower in the eastern half of Berlin which was right near our hostel.

The next morning, we went to the Gemäldegalerie to look at some awesome paintings. There were a number of famous pieces that I actually recognized, so that was pretty cool. Then we went to catch the FREE walking tour, which was fantastic! It was a 4.5 hour walking tour around all the most important sites in Berlin. We saw a national museum where Hitler made speeches from the steps, a square where the Nazis burned books, Checkpoint Charlie, the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate, etc. We even went to the site of Hitler's underground bunker. The bunker itself was destroyed and removed after the war, but it was neat to stand on such historically significant soil. Hitler lived out his last days in the bunker, and committed suicide there. His body was then burned above ground so that it could not be found by the allied troops. An important site, to say the least. After all of the walking, we wandered over to the Reichstag building, but decided not to wait in the epic line to go inside. It was impressive enough from outside. We also went to the Pergamon museum that evening, which had an excellent exhibition on Babylon. Lots of really cool, ancient stuff, and there were even a few items that had been in my textbook for my boring class last year (that I dropped) on ancient mesopotamian art.

Later that night, we went to a club/bar that our tourguide pointed out to us. The bar is actually an old rundown building that an artists' group basically took over as squatters. A company bought the building almost 10 years ago and wanted to tear it down immediately, but the artists put up a huge fight, and the company decided it would just be easier to let the artists sign a 10 year lease (for like, pennies a day, haha). So, the lease actually expires in December, and the company is still promising to demolish the building, so it may only be around for another 2 months. Anyway, the bar was SO COOL. It had multiple levels, and the entire interior of the building was decorated in graffiti. It was very artsy, chill, and fun. I'm glad that we had a chance to see it while it lasts!

Sunday morning, we went to the Jewish museum, which was very interesting, but sort of rushed, so I didn't really get to explore everything. Then it was back to the train station for the trip back to Prague. Overall, it was a great weekend! Updates to be continued in a separate post...