Buda buda buda pest rockin everywhere

Nerdy title...sue me.  Anyway, I just got back from Budapest and it was fascinating.  This was our school sponsored trip so everyone from our program went including a few faculty members.  Budapest is actually two parts (similar to Prague) with a Buda side and a Pest side.  The city sits on several hot springs and Budapest literally means hot water.  Our trip was led by this guy Uli who teaches @ Stanford sometimes and looks like Pierce Brosnan.  He has a penchant for walking ten feet ahead of a group, globalization, and apparently Elvis (I'll explain later).  This trip was part school, part leisure, so we went to several lectures throughout our three days there.  I have to say the lectures were pretty interesting because I knew so little about Hungarian politics or attitudes.  Several of our speakers were rather negative, especially about the economy and about Hungarian interest in the EU.  Apparently the vast majority of citizens don't feel that their EU membership (starting in 2004) has done much for them.  I think everyone would say they learned a lot from these talks, but probably the funniest one was a talk about Hungarian economics in a really small room where seven people were sleeping at once.  I had to pretend I was picking up something from the ground because I almost burst out laughing while looking at the sleeping people.  Needless to say we did a lot of walking and were worn out for a lot of the trip!

During our limited free time I was surprisingly able to do and see a lot.  My favorite thing I saw was a museum called The Terror House, which commemorates Nazi and Soviet occupations.  The museum was in an old execution house that also housed high up party members.  The exhibit was super angsty and unlike any other museum I've ever seen.  Every room had eerie music and it's all a pretty dark representation of everything that happened.  It was visually incredible and in every room there was a hand out about what the room represented and the history surrounding everything.  Look it up online...it was intense.  

Some other highlights were going to a gorgeous Synagogue, exploring the huge central market, visiting the historic parliament building and the Budapest Castle, and going to a Turkish bath.  So yes...the bath.  I forgot my swimsuit in Berlin so I ended up buying a cheap tacky ass Euro swim suit so I could partake in a bath.  The bath I went to is one of the oldest in Budapest and is situated in a really nice area.  The funny thing was that after we all changed my friend said we'd have to go back upstairs and I got confused because I had imagined that we would be going down into some cave-like hot springs.  I was picturing more playboy mansion grotto than what it actually was--several outdoor and indoor pools of varying temperature that resembled a resort in Cabo or something.  We still had a great time though!

Going out in Budapest was pretty fun but also relatively lame given the fact that we had to get up early all the time.  I did however manage to see two Elvis impersonators.  One night I went with a group to a bar where there was a 1950s cover band playing...strange sight.  There was an Elvis impersonator there for one song.  We only got in because we were "from" California and we "know" Schwarzenegger.  Anyway, I made some nice Hungarian friends and was able to dance to Thunderstruck once the band left and a DJ took over.  Really fun times.  Then, last night, Uli chose for us to have a group dinner at a restaurant in part because there was going to be an Elvis show.  Apparently the impersonator has won a bunch of awards and travels throughout Europe.  The whole thing was pretty hysterical and also embarrassing because the singer expected us to know all the songs because we're American and as he said, Elvis is our king.  Some images never fade...

Adios, Ellen

The Theater, the theater...

Sorry for that weird font size change last time...not quite sure what happened.  This week has been fantastic so far.  On Tuesday night our group went to a place called the Weinerei to meet our German language partners.  When you go in you pay 1 euro for a glass of wine and then when you leave you pay how much you 'think you owe.'  Surprisingly people are pretty honest.  I made some German friends at the event and have hung out with them a couple of times since then.  Two of the people I met even lived in Minnesota for a year! 

Wednesday night was the opera MacBeth at the historic Staatsoper (The State Opera House).  Our seats would've been considered "obstructed view" on ticketmaster, but I still enjoyed it.  Lady MacBeth was batshit crazy though...her hair and costumes were so different every time I thought there were about three extra characters.  Thursday night I tagged along with the theater class here and went to Fruhling's Erwachen (Spring Awakening) at the Berliner Ensemble Theater.  The play was all in German and is what the musical is based on in the US.  The play was written in the late 1800s and to me the content was very shocking for the time.  The staging for this particular production was really quite something with modern looking black and white swiveling panels contrasted with old fashioned costumes.  There was a scene at the end where a dead guy is back as a sort of ghost and is holding his head separate from his body and it was very reminiscent of the makeup used in Beetlejuice.  

Anyway...last night was yet another performance night.  During the day yesterday I went to Sachsenhausen, which was one of the first concentration camps.  It was mostly used for political offenders at the start of the war and was eventually used to punish German soldiers after the Soviet invasion.  I was surprised by how little emotion I felt there.  Even with exhibits and a guide it was still pretty hard to imagine.  It was still interesting to see though.  After that, I went to the opera with my two visiting professors...yes I'm a nerd.  We saw La Traviata and it was absolutely gorgeous.  As soon as the music started I thought no way! This is the opera they go to in Pretty Woman! I'm embarassed to say that I knew most of the music from that movie.  This was my favorite opera by far and the whole night with my professors was maybe one of the best I've had in Berlin so far.  They're so nice!

However, I am not just kicking it with the profs.  After the opera I met up with some friends at a bar in Kreuzberg, which is relatively trendy.  The bar we were at had live music and the band was really cool.  It was hilarious though because they played this one song twice where the chorus was, "the penis is lost. the penis is lost. the penis is lost in space...3X" We were all kind of dumbfounded at first because the song was sort of bizarre.  The song was actually pretty catchy though and by the end the whole crowd was singing along.  After that some of us tried to meet up with German university students but probably to none of your surprise, I still get really tired and can't be out until the early morning, so I guess that last part of the night was a wash.  Tonight I have one more performance to cap off this week's art week...wish me luck!

Ellen

Czech Me Out...Prague

I'm not that clever...that was the title of a t-shirt we saw this weekend in Prague.  Prague was a blast!  I went with 9 other people from Stanford and we had a fantastic time. The city was so beautiful--almost fake.  It reminded me of Disney World.  The city was largely untouched by the war so there are many styles of architecture still represented throughout the city.  Prague is essentially two cities.  The old town is where the castle and many other historic buildings and churches are, and there is a newer part with their history museum and several clubs, restaurants, and casinos.  I loved old town.  It was beautifully decorated for Easter and there were several market stands with dyed eggs and other crafts.  On Friday we really wanted to see the famous cathedral but since it was Good Friday there were more masses than tourist hours.  So...all of us went to mass just to see the church.  It was gorgeous and worth sitting through an hour of Czech. 

The nightlife in Prague was really neat.  We went to two clubs, one of which Mick Jagger has spent time at. If it's good enough for Mick, it's good enough for me.  The second club was the largest club in central Europe--or at least the sign said so.  It was six stories with different music on each floor.  I was finally able to hear some rock.  Overall the party aspect of Prague was really fun. 

However, the trip was not without snafus...six of us got fined 700 crown (20 euro) for not having validated tram tickets.  Balls in my face. My friend Lily refused to pay and it was pretty easy to tell that the ticket checkers were calling her a bitch in Czech.  She was a baller though.  

Anyway, the best part of the trip was going to a church just outside of Prague.  It is decorated with human remains to commemorate the deaths from the plague.  It was oddly beautiful and probably the coolest thing I've seen so far.  There were 40,000 full skeletons throughout the church...creepy.  

I got back on Monday afternoon because that was still a holiday and now I have a super busy week.  Opera tonight, play tomorrow, opera Friday, symphony Saturday, soccer game Sunday.  I'm calling it my patron of the arts week.  More details to follow...

Ellen

Food for Thought

Almost happy Easter!

I'm going to Prague for the weekend with about 10 people from the program.  We're staying in some hostel that we got a great deal at.  Easter is a big deal here and every grocery store has massive Easter sections.  

Yesterday I went with my good family friends to Brandenburg, which was a city in East Germany.  The city still has traces of communism but it is expanding quickly.  It's funny because the old customs building for the former DDR is an Ebay headquarters now.  Anyway, we went to Brandenburg to get their car fixed and after we went to a white asparagus farm.  It was pretty hilarious.  There were wooden statues of white asparagus at the entrance and there were playgrounds for kids, mini shooting galleries, and a huge bouncy thing that I played on for a half an hour with the family's 10 year old son.  We had the asparagus with dinner and it was pretty tasty.  I've been so glad to have these friends here and it's nice because they always make me feel so comfortable and at home.  I'll miss them when I'm in Frankfurt for the summer.  

That was a good food story.  This is a bad one.  Charlton and I were at dinner in my neighborhood the other night and he ordered something that looked good in German.  Then his plate came.  Picture a bunt cake but made of raw beef.  That was the main dish and there was even a nice raw egg in the little hole in the beef cake. . . we both just stared at it for a good minute before we burst out laughing.  He ate it because he was so hungry and handled it much better than I would've.  

All for now--hope all is well!

Ellen

The View from Saturday...or I guess today is Sunday

Guten Tag,

It's been a great week here in Berlin, and I guess a great week of school...right...we're here to study.  We go to school in a beautiful old villa called Haus Cramer.  It's located in a gorgeous part of Berlin called Dahlem, which is the area where the Free University is.  Here is a link to the history of the house.  It's pretty fun to be in class and to see the rose garden right outside of the window.  I thought the other day that if Taylor/TMob were here we would've already come up with some crazy story about how we lived in the villa and either were super rich or Cinderella type villa dwellers waiting to spring into high society.  Anyway, I'm taking a history class that is balls boring and an environmental class that compares US and German attitudes towards green technology and climate change.  I think I'll really like the environmental class and I'm not giving up on the history one yet.  German class is actually really fun because we basically choose what we learn and my German has already improved a lot. 

This week was a great sight seeing week, although I still have a lot left to visit.  I went to the Eastern Viewing Gallery on Tuesday, which is the longest stretch of the Berlin Wall that's left.  It has several murals and general graffiti art, but they've recently been removing some artwork to reinforce the wall, much to the dismay of the artists.  Even seeing the wall it was hard to imagine what it was like to live in a divided city.  After that we went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche, which is the bombed church that still stands in what is now a huge shopping area.  We were too late to go inside, but it was an odd site from the outside.  At this area (called Zoologischer Garten) we found a European version of the dollar store, where my friends Molly and Charlton tried to buy wine.  They were carded, much to their disappointment, because the legal age to buy wine here is 16...Later this week I also went to the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which is you guessed it, the history museum!  It was really a fascinating museum, especially because of the section dedicated to Nazi history and WWII.  It's been interesting talking to Germans about the war because there is still a large sense of guilt, but at the same time people don't want to admit their families were involved.  Apparently everything is very directly addressed in schools, but discussion in families is pretty restricted.  My host dad was telling me that Germans didn't feel like they could send troops to Iraq because WWII is still too recent for them.  I thought that was interesting.  

I've been pretty hungry in Germany, so I was very ready for the Bing dinner this week.  The Bing family endows the Stanford study abroad program and sponsors a few dinners for the group each quarter.  Our director here also said that they're called Bing dinners because it's the noise our wine glasses make after a toast.  We had a ton of great food, but the potato sausage soup was probably my favorite.  The free wine wasn't bad either.  

This week was another week of club fun.  We went to a club Friday night with a bunch of Irish and German students.  It was a special salsa night on one of the dance floors and when we walked in it was something straight out of Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights.  I had a great time dancing with a Colombian student from our program and it was a step up from Famous Daves salsa Tuesdays in high school.  Another dance floor played current hip hop mixed with pop hits from 2002, but yes Jeff, they played 'Let it Rock!'  Overall it was a great night, except having to pay 4.5 euros for a Corona...when in Rome.  

Yesterday was a fantastic mix of activities.  During the morning I went with friends to a flea/produce market on Winterfeld Platz.  We bought fresh ravioli and vegetables, which were great for dinner last night.  Then, in the afternoon I went to a soccer game at the old olympic stadium.  On the way to the game I was waiting for the train and all of a sudden saw a guy in a Hooters shirt.  My first thought was yay! America! Sad, I know, but then I saw what else was written on the shirt: Bloomington, MN Mall of America.  FML that is how Minnesota is being repped in Europe.  Anyway, soccer.  Fucking crazy here.  The game was Berlin against Dortmund, and Dortmund's fans happen to be the most loyal fans in Germany.  We sat right in the middle of their section and it was ridiculous--so many coordinated cheers and bouncing in seats.  It was a blast even though Berlin lost.  

That's about it for now, except I went running this morning and got horribly lost.  I've never been so excited to see G-Bar 53, which is the strip club on the corner of my street. 

TTFN,

Ellen