Blog 2, New Years Eve/Prague
The train arrived in Berlin and we had plenty of time to hang out before we went out for New Year’s Eve. We checked into the Hotel Alex and went up to our rooms to relax. We ate a quick dinner at a place just across the street that we have nicknamed “Ali Babba’s” after the owner who works there. He is a really friendly guy that is thrilled to have people from Texas coming in to eat at his place. They have really good schnitzel and curreywurst, along with many other things. This place has come to be one of our main eating places while in Berlin.
The New Year’s Eve party was really fun. Being at an outdoor party with over a million people is a pretty unique experience. There was basically a big stage at one end with bands performing and then a ferris wheel at the other end. We got there pretty early, around 7:00, and mostly just walked around for the first bit. We decided to ride the ferris wheel and then walked around for a bit more. The food and drinks at all of the stands were amazing. The only problem was, after awhile, we all had to go to the bathroom. It turns out that in Europe, people like to charge you for going to the bathroom. It was going to be 50 cents to use the horrible port-a-potty’s they had set up so we decided to take to the forests surrounding the party area. After walking through some deep snow there were plenty of good trees around. Later in the night David Hasslehoff made an appearance on stage, we sung the Aggie War Hymn in front of a giant crowd, and we met a group of Polish people who spoke terrible English but were thrilled to make friends with Americans. Overall it was a great night and definitely a unique experience.
We ended up just staying up the whole night and catching a train to Prague at 6:30 the next morning. After sleeping through most of the ride, we arrived in Prague. Prague is a bit strange in that some of the buildings on the outside of the city look kind of poor and run down, but after you get into the old town area, where our hostel was, you find beautiful and old buildings. There is a very unique astrological clock which is one of the main attractions in Prague that was literally a minute’s walk from our hostel. The first day there we spent walking around the old town, looking in little shops and eating at some of the food stands that sit outside. I would have liked to do more, but we were all pretty tired after New Year’s and so we ended up calling it an early night after going to a nice little restaurant.
The next day was the famous castle visit. It ended up being just me, Katie, and Nathan since a few people had gone the day before and some people didn’t want to go. It’s kind of nice sometimes not worrying about having 10+ people in the group and just being able to have a small group to kind of go wherever we want to go. The castle itself is very big and very old. It has a real moat all the way around, which was of course frozen over, and guards patrolling at the main gate. There are holes that you can pour boiling oil or shoot arrows out of, which I’m sure my brother would have found to be particularly cool. There is a big cathedral in the middle of the castle, but it was unfortunately closed for mass. Climbing up many stairs to the other side of the castle there was a kind of look out area where you could see the whole city. It was a great place to take pictures from and relax for a bit. After the castle visit, we stopped back by the hostel and then took the train back to Berlin that evening, where we once again went to Ali Babba’s restaurant.
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