Old Friends in New Places

Two weeks ago on May 8 I took a trip up to Brno, Czech Republic to visit Rachel, my friend since my freshman year and roommate since sophomore. I arrived in Brno and Rachel met me at the bus station. We walked all over Brno, taking lots of pictures along the way. She also took me to the Starobrno brewery restaurant where I had an amazing meal. That night, I got to meet Rachel's friends who, no surprise, were amazing.

The next day, we took a trip to Bratislava, the capital city in Slovakia. That morning Rachel and I left for the train station arriving with a few minutes to spare to catch our train only to discover that our train was delayed by 80 minutes which began the start of our fun with public transportation of that day. The good news about that train was the it meant it gave Rachel's friend time to catch up with us and join us on our trip. Since we had extra time, we grabbed a coffee and pizza and Rachel's excellent math skills ended the meal with a great tip for our waitress. We finally made it to Bratislava and set off into the city armed with a map. We walked all over town and found all of the hidden statures in the city. We had a good meal in a funny little restaurant with a toilet that had to be a former broom closet. Next, we set off towards the train station. At the time, we had plenty of minutes to spare, so we thought, for a stop at a bread stand. It wasn't until we made it back to the palace, a good 20 minutes walk from the train station, that we only had 8 minutes to make the train. We ran from that point on, and it was at that point that I realized that am in no shape to run. Despite our efforts, we missed our train by about a minute. The next train didn't leave for 4 hours. Fun with public transport #2. We spent our extra time gained by finding a bar with some live music, unfortunately the club also had an extra cover charge. Moving on to the next place, we hung around leaving with plenty of time to catch the next train. We made it to the train with plenty of time and thought that we were home free. However, the ticket taker on the train told us other wise. She told us that we had to move to the back part of the train because the front part was going to split away and to go a different destination...she told us this in Slovak. Fortunately, one of the girls sitting near us heard what she was saying and translated. We moved and enjoyed the remainder of our trip getting to know our new friend/translator (Transportation joy #3). We finally arrived home if not a little later than expected.

Saturday, we continued my tour of Brno. We went to the Gregor Mendel Museum of Genetics. Which is to a Biology major what Graceland is to a Elvis fanatic. Rachel also took me to a crypt where I got to see some dead people. We spent the rest of the day with Rachel's friends and grilled out that night at her dorm.

The Next morning...if you can call it that...I woke up at 3:15 in order to catch a bus to the train station to catch a train to Bratislava, to catch a flight to Dublin! In Dublin I met my friends from here to spend our Monday and Tuesday holiday from classes. Once on Dublin, we immediately went on to the Guinness Brewery where we took a tour of the Storehouse and learned how to make beer. We went on to have an Irish dinner and enjoy a little of the night life. The next day, we caught a train about 45 minutes out of the city to a town called Bray where we spent the day enjoying the beauty of the Irish coast. For our last day in Ireland, my friends who had spent more time there than me, showed me around some of their favorite parts and we enjoyed some time eating in St Stephen's park.

We flew out on Tuesday back to Salzburg where we were going to catch a train back to Linz. Little did we know that the last train to Salzburg left a few minutes before we would get to the station. So, with about 4 hours to burn we walked from closing restaurant to closing restaurant until we finally gave up and spent our remaining time waiting in the train station for the 2 am train (fun with transportation #4). The good news was that we got back to Linz at about the time that the buses started running at 4. I got back to the dorm, slept for a while and spent the rest of the day laying out at the lake in Linz. For those of you wondering, classes of that week had been canceled on Monday and Tuesday and my only Wednesday class meets at 9 pm.

To complete our visit, Rachel came into Linz with her friend Nikki on Friday. I took them around Linz on Friday where I amazed even myself with my horrible sense of direction. That evening, we happily found out that Linz was having a weekend festival of local wine makers. We sampled a little wine and went back to the Raab Heim, my dorm.

Saturday, we went on to Salzburg where we took the Sound of Music Tour. I many of the places where the scenes of the Sound of Music were shot. Lets just say I was channeling Julie Andrews. We walked a little around the city and made it home with time to spare for the train. Sunday we had planned spending at the lake, but the rain stopped us. In stead, we went to a Cafe and Rachel and Nikki tried the Linzer Torte, the oldest written recipe in the world. We went on to the Modern Art Museum in Linz and had dinner at my favorite Austrian Italian restaurant. Monday, we had a little shopping trip before Rachel and Nikki had to head back home.

All in all a busy two weeks to say the least. It was great to see Rachel and meet her Czech friends! Check out the pictures I put up with my new camera!