The Good Times Continue!

Once again, internet has been spotty and so the blog has not been updated. But here we go... starting in Vienna!

First we took a driving tour of the City, getting a look at the city, and learning about some of it's landmarks. Vienna is a stunning city, with every street looking like it should belong on a postcard. It was described to us as being beautiful, but so beautiful you are almost afraid to break it. Following our driving tour, we headed to our hostel, where we got changed into our classy clothing, and headed back into the centre of Vienna. After a quick walking tour of Vienna, seeing areas the bus could not reach, I suddenly realized that my passport was not where I thought it was. Rocky and I headed back to our hostel, where, after much freaking out, my passport was found (in a pocked of a jacket in my suitcase) and we headed back into Vienna. We still had a little time to explore Vienna, but just as we got back downtown, it started raining! We hid out the rain by exploring some shopping stores, and when the rain finally broke, we decided to head for the park where we were meeting the group before heading to dinner and a concert. Just as we got to the park, it started raining again, even harder than before! We first took shelter under a tree, but it soon became apparent that it was raining to hard for the tree to be of much use, so we headed to a gazebo. This provided some protection from the rain, though we still got very wet. We finally had to wander out into the rain as it was time to go to dinner, and in the process we got very wet. By the time we got to the restaurant, we were very very wet. Luckily, dinner was TOTALLY amazing, so we weren't concerned about our wetness for too long. For dinner we were at the "Ribs of Vienna" where we had absolutely awesome ribs! So good. We then headed to a classical Viennese concert, where there was classical music, dance, and opera. It was surprisingly entertaining.  We all felt very classy as during intermission we went onto the terrace and had Champagne. It was decided that the only thing that could have made things more classy would have been if we weren't soaking wet.

The next morning we headed towards Prague, first however, stopping at Mauthausen, a concentration camp during WWII. It was the last concentration camp liberated, and over half of the 100,000 deaths that occurred here happened in the last 4 months before liberation. It was a very somber place. We then headed into Prague.  We got to Prague just before dinner, and then most of our group headed into the center for a walking tour with our tour leader, and to explore the local nightlife. I wasn't feeling the best (at this point nearly everyone on our tour is sick-- I believe the exact number is that there are 6 of 40 who are feeling fine as of leaving Prague), so I stayed in and got to sleep early!

The next day was a free day to Explore Prague. Rocky and I slept in, before heading into the centre. We were meeting some friends for lunch, and as we had slept in, we mostly did some shopping in the morning. After lunch we headed to the Charles bridge, a very old pedestrian bridge that is one of Prague's landmarks. We then headed up the hill to the castle and cathedral. While there we saw 4 different wedding parties having their photographs taken! We also saw the clock tower, where every hour the statues move around, and during the day a trumpeter trumpets. We then had dinner and headed back to the hostel.

The next day was Berlin! We stopped for lunch in Dresden, where we had "Curry-wurst," which were sausages with curry sauce on them. We explored the city, before heading into Berlin. Once in Berlin, we had a driving tour of the city, including a stop a the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, which has since been painted with murals by over 100 different artists. We then headed back to the hostel for dinner and a quiet evening.

Today we spent the day in Berlin! We started the morning out with a walking tour of the different areas associated with Hitler and the 3rd Reich. We learned a lot of history, and also saw many of the places that we had only heard about in History class and Social Studies. The most interesting (for me) was the Bunker where Hitler died at the end of the war, which is now a parking lot. After the walking tour, we explored the area around Checkpoint Charlie, went to a fabulous chocolate shop, ate lunch, and did some shopping, before once again heading back to the hostel.

Which leads us up to about now, Rocky has gone with many in our group on a Pub Crawl, while I have decided to get some much needed sleep, as our bus leaves the parking lot at 7:30 tomorrow morning! There are going to be a lot of sleepy people.

Later days!

Kathleen.