Austria : Goodbye Kathy and Michi

June 3rd

I packed my travelling schedule but I had to absolutely see Kathy and Michi one last time in their cities!

Kathy studies in Linz, the Austrian capital of culture :) Being such, it had a participative "art exhibition" on the roof tops which it hosts every summer since 2009 named Höhenrausch (high-altitude euphoria). We went to it after the lovely Kathy prepared me a delicious breakfast

<3 <3 <3 

The theme of the Höhenrausch this year was birds, so there was a room full of humans making bird sounds, art made of birds or flying related objects, actual birds in a huge cage and, the best, a merry-go-round and a trampoline to feel like a bird:

Spinning and the sounds were playing from the centre to make it seem like I was a bird flying

Looking down over the city as if I was flying. Almost feels like there is nothing below. 

All photo creds to Kathy! Thanks for taking such good ones :D

We then headed to refresh ourselves by the water side until we got hungry again and went to eat pizza at an Italian restaurant (but the best part was the strawberry marscapone dessert omnomnom). Sehr schön :)

We said our last goodbyes at the train station. Hoping that she will get an internship in Toronto or that her travelling passion leads her to Canada! I have learned much from Kathy and aspire to be as mature and put together as her.

From Linz, I headed to Vienna to spend time with Michi. She showed me the new pedestrian street. the Naschtmarkt, District 5 and her home. We ate at a typically Austrian restaurant with her boyfriend where I ordered a stew of beef organs (the waiter was surprised that a woman was ordering such haha). The restaurant had a beautiful backyard terrasse and so we stayed and ate slowly and talked and joked. Always good times.

Michi gave me good directions to make it to my cousin's place and dropped me off at the metro. Saying goodbye was also difficult to such a smart, funny and strong woman.

These women* are incredible, intelligent, down to Earth and inspiring. Meeting them on this exchange was a blessing and I have no doubt in my mind that we will be reunited, be it one on one or all together. Some people make acquaintances on exchange, but we built real friendship. Through good and bad, I could count on you and I know I still can :) Good bye for now!

*Lisa too <3

Prague

May 31st to June 2nd

I met my Brobro in in Prague for three nights and two days.

We were in this amazing hostel (Mosaic House) that really felt like a hotel. However, we were of course sharing the room with two others. They were two Brazilians on vacation and their first destination was Prague. Quel luxe!

On the wall of the hostel

Fun fact!

(which I did not know well enough to win a point in Trivial Pursuit in Dresden...)

Arriving in the Czech Republic after so much time in Germany and France was quite a shock: going from understanding everything (France), then being able to guess mostly everything (Germany), to having no idea (CR)! I am happy I haven’t decided to travel to too many places where I haven’t studied the language because I feel so lost and obnoxious for making people speak English in their own country (except my friends who love to practice English with me).

Sunday, May 31st

The first, most important thing to do when I arrived in Prague in the evening was FOOD. Robert had been in Prague since the morning so he scouted out maps and one was student created with great and cheap restaurant recommendations (but let’s be honest, Prague is cheap no matter the place on average).

Here are our food pictures :

Café-Pub atmosphere

Potato dish and salad dish

05/31

idem

Le Mistral

Full breakfast with rolls, yogurt, fruit, oats, corn flakes, tea and freshly squeezed juice

06/01

Street stand (they are eeeeeverywhere)

Trdelnik (like a tree trunk)

06/02

Lehka hlava

Homemade ginger lemonade

06/02

Lehka havla

Vegetarian restaurant

We took the everything mix platter :D

06/02

The one thing we will retain from Prague is the chilled and delicious meals we had. We often forgot to take a picture of eat before digging in :P

During the night of the 31st we walked across the Charles bridge. Completely packed -___-

Monday, June 1^st

Happy June J Summer has arrived already :D

We woke up relatively early to catch a free tour at 11am but we missed because we took our time with our great breakfast. We walked around and planned to catch the next one at 1pm.

We walked to the Valdstejnska Zahrada home of the Czech Senate

Robert : "Carpe diem" 

We watched this male peacock try real hard to seduce the female on the right.. He aight got enough swag

Albino peacock

As we arrived at the main square, there were numerous tour groups and a sea of people. We had to find a blue umbrella in front of the astrological clock.

As we walked towards the clock, I saw the small white one on the right side and wondered what the heck is special about this thing. Here is a little picture story of what my mind went through:

"What the heck is special about this little thing? People come from all over the world to see THIS?!"

*Looks to the left*

"Ooooooooh that's the special clock. Oops"

I think we found the free tour, but we couldn’t hear anything and the guide seemed rather dull so we decided to take matters into our own hands and rent bikes to do our own tour. Little did we know how unsafe the city was for bikes and that the ride was going to be mostly uphill to reach the castle. All in all, it was still pretty amazing. It was beautiful weather and it felt good to do so real sport :D

Here are a couple things we saw and took the time to photograph (Robert has more pictures on his phone that he will likely post on his blog bobbybrais.blogspot.com later):

Several pictures of the view from the hill

Our bikes

The Metronom

People had fun wasting shoes...Looks like a shoe clothes line actually

See it moves

The view from the Metronom place

We also made to the Palace but the pictures are definitely in Robert's phone

Tuesday, June 2^nd

After a good brunch, we decided to burn it off with a little boat tour... or rather a paddle boat tour. So relaxing 

Charles Bridge wedged between our heads

Dipping his feet

Then we broke off and Robert took care of some school stuff while I went for a Thai massage (which are advertised everywhere around town). I went to a nicer place than the super touristy/trashy ones. I didn’t really know what a Thai massage was but when I heard my neighbour getting massaged and the masseuse asked: “are you alright” and the customer answered: “well, I am still alive,” I feared a little for my life haha. The masseuse was putting all her weight in her knees into my gluteous maximus and digging in pretty hard into my back. She cracked many of my joints and pulled my limbs in many directions but all in all it felt goooooooood haha. Quite the experience. I would do it again. Plus, it was not very expensive as you can imagine.

Robert and I joined each other for one last meal and went to bed relatively early considering I had to be up at 4 to catch a train to Linz at 5:30 and him early enough to meet a friend for breakfast and catch a bus at 10:30.

Once again, sleep is a luxury on vacation....

Dresden

May 29th to 31st

After travelling solo for a while, I was excited to find Lisa again in her hometown. Dresden is the capital of Saxony. It is beautiful (one of the only beautiful big cities of Germany apparently), and historical. It's a great city but really what made it amazing was the great people!

Friday, May 29th

Lisa and Max (her awesome bf) arrived at the Neustadt train station at the same time as me and we all made our way to Lisa's parents' house. 

We took one of those trams that travels up and down hills.... no idea what they are called....

L'aventure commence!!

The view of ...something

Too busy having fun; didn't take any pictures

That night we went to a bar for her friend Josie's birthday which we celebrated into at midnight! In Germany, you cannot say happy birthday the day before you HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL AFTER MIDNIGHT :P Then there was a homemade quarkcake (like cheesecake) by Sandra (who was with us in Berlin) nomnomnom (I was staring at the time waiting for it to be midnight so that we could eat it). Then we went dancing until 4 am at the Mensa (the student restaurant) turned into a club by night. It was sooooo hot even though there weren't many people but we just danced right through it until Lisa would burn her eyes with the dripping sweat down her face :P The guy friends that joined us were amazing dancers. I could have just sat there and watched ;)

Almost home and the sun was coming up as well as workers were unloading merchandise from their trucks already :)

Saturday, May 30th

Oh beautiful day

I love brunch

Made my pancakes for Lisa one last time ;') nostalgia already kicking in

We met Sandra and Caro in the afternoon to do the historical tour!
Max basically explained everything to me. Everyone was impressed :P

Inside the Church of our Lady which was completely burned down during WWII and reconstructed only recently about 10-15 years ago

Schlossplatz

Hi

Mural of all the important leaders in Dresden

Each one has a title like August the Strong 

The most original one was "the bitten," the ruler as a child had to be hidden with other babies so as not to be murdered and so the nanny had to bite him to recognize him and save him afterwards :P

 Dresden Zwinger AKA Rich people's party place ( I do not know why this panorama ended up so weird. Ignore Max's extra hand)

Pretty

Nymph fountain

View from above

Afterwards, we walked ourselves to a Beer Garten which are very popular

I am sorry this is a terrible picture of everyone!! But I needed to show how stereotypically German our snacks were.

1. Beer

2. Kartoffelsalat (in front of me)

3. Bratwurst

4. Bretzel (in Max's mouth)

Don't matter if it is cold outside. It is always time for ice cream!

(yes this is from the kiddie menu.. don't judge me)

We spent the night at the pub where Max works : Barneby Spielbar

Game pubs, aaaaw yes

We played trivial pursuit : no one won. We are all winners! :D

Learned some random, trivial stuff indeed

And we played "Who am I" : I was Corbie Smulders.... that's not racist

Sunday, May 31st

Last day in Germany :'(

We went to visit and measure Lisa and Max's new apartment for when they move in together (so exciting). It was big and beautiful (I'm not jelly...) and then we went to the Hygiene Museum. Apparently there are only two hygiene museums in Germany and so they try to make them international. We saw the new exposition on Friendship, which seemed very appropriate because this semester I made friendships in a completely different way and leaving them behind and living them from afar is going to be very difficult. The museum had this great design in which we have our own bracelets with a beacon that identifies us. Mine recognized that I was anglophone and so all I had to do is hold up my beacon to the information screens and they would change to English, yay! The Germans had more questions to answer for their profile and so the screens could tell them that some room of the museum, based on their profile, would not be interesting for them and the room's lights would dim. Pretty coooooool!

I also did not think to take pictures on this day :S 

Finally we had a softeis nomnomnom and headed home to get our stuff and drop me off at the train station.

Saying goodbye to Lisa and Max was really sad and I really did not want to. We will try hard to meet again but who knows when.... siiiiiiigh
Saying goodbye to Germany was also difficult. Being in a country for which you are learning the language is so stimulating and learning about the culture and history was so interesting because I feel I have an education gap for this region.

Auf Wiedersehen Deutschland!