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This was one long, tir­ing, frus­trat­ing adven­ture, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t amaz­ing. Berlin, Budapest, Sara­jevo, Bel­grade, Sofia (then back to Bel­grade), then to Zagreb, Split, Supetar, and then finally, Dubrovnik. Lots of dif­fer­ent hos­tels, dif­fer­ent peo­ple, and dif­fer­ent experiences.

Berlin

So, Prague was offi­cially over. We said our good­byes, packed out bags, and headed off to our first des­ti­na­tion, Ger­many. Going to Berlin wasn’t the best start­ing point in terms of con­ve­nience, but it was one of the cities I had to go to, but never had time to dur­ing the semes­ter. So, we bought our 50 EURO train ticket to Berlin and headed out.

Back­packin’ Berlin

Upon arriv­ing in Berlin, we were greeted by plenty of peo­ple look­ing for back­pack­ers in hopes of rent­ing rooms from their apart­ments, but we opted to look for our own hos­tel dispite the fact that her offer was very fair. Meet­ing fel­low back­pack­ers is a lot more enter­tain­ing. On our jour­ney with our filled 60L back­packs, we hap­pened to run into a free out­door clas­si­cal music con­cern, which only obsc­tructed the direc­tion we needed to go. We even­tu­ally found our des­ti­na­tion and booked a hostel.

Reich­stag

It was odd being in a city thats so new and mod­ern, after being in Prague for so long you get used to see­ing build­ings older then the coun­try you’re from. Although, there are a ton of things to see in Ger­many that are still quite old, such as the Reich­stag, the Berlin Wall, Check­point Char­lie, and a cou­ple other mon­u­ments that are rem­i­ni­cent of past Germany.

Some of the remains of the Berlin Wall

We stayed in the Meininger hos­tel, which was a decent place to stay. Clean beds and nice show­ers, although there wasn’t many peo­ple stay­ing at the time, and there wasn’t a com­mon room type of area, just a bar in the build­ing next to the hos­tel, so meet­ing trav­ellers wasn’t very easy. The staff were very friendly though (besides the first guy who tried to charge us 24 EURO for a night, we got it down to 18), and they told us where all the good areas to check out dur­ing the day were, and where the good bars were at. On one of the nights in Berlin, Tighe and I decided to go out and find some bars, and so as per rec­om­men­da­tion, we took a bus to a cer­tain area at around 2am, and although it wasn’t as lively as expected, it was cer­tainly inter­est­ing. We found a cou­ple of bars that were rec­om­mended, but I believe it was in the mid­dle of the week, and May isn’t exactly the most hap­pen­ing time in Berlin, so there wasn’t too many peo­ple out, but we did find THE creepi­est bar in all exis­tance (at least the creepi­est one I’ve ever been to). The work­ers inside were doing magic tricks, there were what seemed to be reg­u­lars chill­ing on beers, and there was also another group of peo­ple who seemed like they were in the same boat as us. We had a beer, secretly took some pic­tures, and made an exit.

Wierdest place I’ve ever been to

The next night, we met up with Tighe’s cousin Brian, who is also from Long Island. For half the night I was stuck lis­ten­ing to fam­ily rec­ol­lec­tions of which I had not par­tic­i­pated in, but thats alright, since I hap­pily sat and drank Becks, my new favorite beer. We moved from bar to bar, and later on in the night, Hor­atiu caught up with us, and we con­tin­ued to drink, and I finally had some­one to talk to. After­words, while being slightly drunk, we all decided that it was time to get some food, and of course, Hor­atiu and I were hop­ing for our favorite don­air place of all time to be open (Mustafas Kebab — mustafas.de), but to our dis­ap­point­ment, it was closed for the night. But for­tu­nately for us(well, maybe unfor­tu­nately, depends if your ask­ing me, or my arter­ies), the fast food stand Curry 36 was open. When we went to the stand, we saw a ger­man man order­ing some­thing we thought looked quite tasty, so we asked for the same thing. But we are sup­pose to get two kebabs in it each, but since he only had enough for one and a half for each of us, he threw in a Ger­man sausage. The com­plete meal con­sisted of one and a half meat kebabs, one ger­man sausage, a bunch of french fries, caramelized onions, all topped with ketchup, bar­beque sauce, and mayo. I man­aged to fin­ish it all with­out much effort, while Tighe, Brian, and Hora all strug­gled, but in the end, we fin­ished it off, and after­words, we went to sleep. It was known there­after as the heartat­tack special.

Check­point Char­lie; A very impor­tant land­mark from the Cold War

We had a great time in Berlin, and if I was to ever work abroad, I would def­i­nitely con­sider Ger­many as one of my des­ti­na­tions. Hora stayed in Berlin one more night, and after­words con­tin­ued on his jour­ney through­out Ger­many, while Tighe and I headed to Budapest. If you want to read about Horas trav­els, check out halmaghi.com

Budapest

Now, for those of you who’ve fol­lowed my blog, you know I’ve been to Budapest before, and had an amaz­ing time. Well this time, it wasn’t so amaz­ing, although it wasnt due to the city, it was due to bad choices. We stopped in Budapest for one night just so we could get to Sara­jevo on the next, and so we headed for the hos­tel we booked clos­est to the train sta­tion, and it was one of the nicest hos­tels I’ve ever stayed in, and by far the nicest shower. The only prob­lem was we were the only ones there, but it didn’t mat­ter since we were only there for one day anyways.

We headed to the baths dur­ing the day, which are always a good choice in Budapest, but our first mis­take dur­ing that stay in Budapest was get­ting three McDon­alds cheese­burg­ers and an ice tea. I’ve either been cook­ing in Europe, or going to restau­rants, and so my stom­ach isn’t as good as it used to be for extract­ing energy from fast food joins as it pre­vi­ously was. Next, we found a bar which we real­ized was a much older crowd, and on our con­tin­ued quest for food and a bar, we came very close to our hos­tel, and were about to call it a night. We also didn’t have much money, so we were going to pack it in, but unfor­tu­nately, we saw an ATM, and decided to give Budapests nightlife another chance. We found a club and decided to go in, only to real­ize it was a bit too sketchy for our tastes, so we decided to have a beer and get the hell out of there. That was our biggest mis­take; the menu, which had a dark pur­ple back­ground, had small red hard-to-read writ­ing that said “First drink costs 9000 HUF “. That roughly trans­lates to 40 EUROS, and being in a for­eign coun­try thats for­mer com­mu­nist, and with two big bounc­ers stand­ing in front of you, we prac­ti­cally had no choice, we coughed up the money. So the next time you go to a club in Hun­gary, make sure you read the sign, VERY carefully.

Our next des­ti­na­tion, Sarajevo.

My last four months have in Prague have been noth­ing short of amaz­ing. I’m not sure if I can describe it in words, but my time in this city is every­thing I hoped for, and more. The trav­el­ing, the dorm expe­ri­ence, the free­dom, Prague was some­thing that I sim­ply needed to do, and thank­fully I did it.

In the last four months, I’ve done more trav­el­ing then I have done in my entire life. Budapest, Ams­ter­dam, Vienna, Malmo, Copen­haggen, Istan­bul, Bradislava, all dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, but all great ones. While in Budapest I met a lot of cool peo­ple that were actu­ally study­ing in Prague, so because of Budapest I met them, who I’ve hung out with on a bunch of dif­fer­ent occa­sions (1 per­son in par­tic­u­lar). The hos­tel we stayed at, Carpe Noctem, was also one of the best times I’ve ever had at a hos­tel, they took us on a pub crawl that really let us expe­ri­ence the city’s nightlife. Ams­ter­dam showed me how lib­eral a city can truly be, with its pot stores on every cor­ner, and red light dis­trict, it was def­i­nitely not your typ­i­cal city. We also biked across the coun­try­side, which was a great expe­ri­ence as well, its not often you get to see so many old wind­mills. Vienna had a great charm to it as well, my high­lights being the palace, and the don­airs with mas­sive blocks of cheese. Malmo was alright, it wasn’t that excit­ing when we found out the only place we could get alco­hol was at des­ig­nated stores (just like Van­cou­ver), but we still man­aged to have a great time. Copen­haggen was great, liv­ing at a Dan­ish girls house, fol­lowed by a night of sleep­ing on the street, it def­i­nitely gave me a new found respect for the home­less. Istan­bul was by far the most dif­fer­ent place I’ve every been, with its dense pop­u­la­tion and mer­chants around every cor­ner, and quite pos­si­bly the best meals of all my jour­neys, it was amaz­ing. Bradislava was a great expe­ri­ence as well, thank­fully to Luke, who knew exactly where to go and what to do.

Heineken tour in Amsterdam

Hen­rich, the Dan­ish man we met on the streets of Copen­haggen (and also his girlfriend)

Istan­bul

Trav­el­ing was amaz­ing, but out of all those cities, I can truth­fully say that Prague was my favorite, and for more then one rea­son. Never in my life have I expe­ri­ence liv­ing on my own with com­plete strangers; for me, the dorm expe­ri­ence was every­thing I had hoped for. See, at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity, its more of a com­muter uni­ver­sity, mean­ing most peo­ple gen­er­ally live at home while going to school, which is fine and all, but I always felt as though I got cheated out of that core Uni­ver­sity expe­ri­ence, and luck­ily Prague sat­is­fied that crav­ing. The ECES (East­ern and Cen­tral Euro­pean Stud­ies) pro­gram is the pro­gram I enrolled in for my exchange, and thank­fully, the pro­gram rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of trav­el­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing Europe, rather then high forms of aca­d­e­mics. That meant that while it was for school, I spent most of my time going out and hav­ing a good time, trav­el­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing the city at its fullest.

Peo­ple from the dorm Kolej Komenskeho

In my suite, Hora and I lived with eight oth­ers, all of whom were all Amer­i­can. We were basi­cally known as the 220 crew (since our suit was called 220, and was famous for hav­ing the most peo­ple shar­ing one kitchen). There was four from Long Island, and four from Syra­cuse. Oh, and the rest of the dorm was full of Amer­i­cans, mostly either from Wash­ing­ton, New York, or Boston. At least all the peo­ple I hung out with any­ways. Of course, being in a new town, meet­ing new peo­ple, you’re excited and you’re very much want­ing to go out almost every night, and that’s exactly what I did. By the end of the first week after the Amer­i­cans arrived, I seri­ously did not under­stand how any of them got work done, as I fig­ured this is what it was going to be like for the rest of the semes­ter, but in some ways I was right, and some ways I was wrong. Some of the peo­ple toned it down after the semes­ter started get­ting under­way, which some (such as a cou­ple room­mates of mine), had no inten­tion of slow­ing down. Some of my favorite places in Prague were U Sudu, the bar you go before a club, it has cheap wine; Mecca night club, a club that we went to most Wednes­day nights since it was free, one floor of oldies and one floor of techno(walked here once for two hours from a ran­dom bar when no one else wanted to come, because I knew the girl I was inter­ested in was going to be there, it was worth the walk); Karlove Lazne, the clas­sic five story club with all types of music, half the peo­ple I know loved it, and half hated it;  PoPo café, the place we went to every Mon­day night for live Mex­i­can music. But, place that was the most fun in Prague in my opin­ion was Cha­peau Rouge, which was a bar above, a bar/dancefloor below, and a rarely entered strange dance floor at the bot­tom. The bar was a lot of fun because no mat­ter what night of the week it was, it was always filled with both Czechs and tourists alike, it was filled with inter­est­ing stu­dents to talk to from all over the world. It was just always full of char­ac­ter, and always lively, which is why it is above all the rest. I’d say that the biggest enemy I’ve made on this trip has been my liver. But that’s not to say that all I’ve done in this city is gone out and par­tied, that was gen­er­ally reserved for the night.

Get­ting ready to head out for a night in Prague

Us from the Kolej chill­ing in Popo Cafe

Dur­ing the day, there was a lot to see and do in Prague. I think one of the best things I’ve gained in the last four months is my inde­pen­dence, do to the fact that the only one I could rely on to wash my clothes and fill my stom­ach with food was myself, and that’s exactly what I learned how to do. I came into the Czech repub­lic know­ing how to make myself a bowl of cereal, mac & cheese, and per­o­gies. Well, cereal was never ate because peo­ple in the suite always stole milk, they def­i­nitely didn’t have mac & cheese, and sur­pris­ingly no per­o­gies either. So, I had to cook, and in doing so, I learned that not only is it not hard, but its also awe­some, and now one of my favorite pas­times. I’ve learned how to make a great meat sauce, highly raved alfredo sauce, juicy chicken, and a mean steak.  But I started this para­graph talk­ing about what I saw and did in Prague, so enough about how I kept myself fed.

Deli­cious food I’ve learned how to make

Dur­ing the day, when we weren’t attend­ing classes (class atten­dance was manda­tory, each class you missed cost you a let­ter grade), we were gen­er­ally find­ing places to eat, going to some of the national mon­u­ments, or shop­ping at the famous Tesco super­mar­ket. Actu­ally, one of my favorite activ­i­ties in Prague was watch­ing hockey games, one inter­na­tional game ver­sus Fin­land, and one local game, but very excit­ing, both at which my team lost. But the Czech fans were amaz­ingly spir­ited and into it, I’d say even more wild then GM place.  The 220 restau­rant favorite was Pic­colo Mondo, which was a small Ital­ian place that served Pizza, Pasta, and of course, Pivo (Slavic for Beer). Beer was a com­mon­place at din­ner time; with it only cost­ing 1.50 CAD for a 0.5L, it was cheaper to get a beer then water, and you couldn’t get free tap water, so its going to be dis­ap­point­ing not to have a Pil­sner Urquell or Gam­bri­nus along­side din­ner.  Czech food was also very good, gen­er­ally the meals were either cuts of chicken or pork (beef too, but its much more expen­sive, and not very Czech), and you also picked your side of pota­toes, and it’s always served with cab­bage.  I liked to go to Namesti Miru for my Czech food, it’s the area with the most res­i­dents of Prague near the cen­ter, and it isn’t very touristy. Now, in terms of national mon­u­ments, the places to check out are the Prague Cas­tle, with its amaz­ing cathe­dral and great his­tory; the Charles bridge which was made in the 13th cen­tury and is still impres­sive to this date; Petrin Hill is a great hike which at the top, con­tains a scaled down replica of the Eifel Tower with a great view of the city; Wences­las Square, which is sit­u­ated right by the National Museum, and a great place for shop­ping dur­ing the day, and for bar hop­ping dur­ing the night; Old town square, which was great for us stu­dents when it was cold and freez­ing when we arrived, but I found that it was def­i­nitely packed with too many tourists later on closer to the sum­mer, although its def­i­nitely still worth check­ing out. There are a ton of other places to check out, but those are my favorites.

View from Vysherad

First hockey game in the O2 arena

Sec­ond hockey game

View with me and the Charles Bridge

So, that’s all I can think of to talk about from my expe­ri­ences in Prague. I hope you’ve enjoyed fol­low­ing my blog of my expe­ri­ences as much as I have actu­ally expe­ri­enc­ing them, but the four month exchange is now over. Trav­el­ing was amaz­ing, I’ve met friends that I know I won’t for­get, I have a lot of great mem­o­ries in this place in the four short months I’ve been here. But that’s exactly what they felt like, very short months, and I’m dis­ap­pointed to part from all the great friends I’ve made, and from the city I’ve come so accus­tom to, but life goes on, and next up is my back­pack­ing adven­ture in the Balkans. Till then, Na schledanou!

220 crew, miss you guys, as well as the rest of the Kolej

For more pic­tures of my trip, go to the photo link at the top of the page