Don't Forget to Say Rabbit(New Year's Weekend)

(As written on the train ride from Praha to Berlin and the night after)
Rabbit! It's time for a New Year and what better way to usher in the New Year with luck than by saying "rabbit!". If only the New Year's weekend was only that...

Friday: What a stay in Bonn we had, but now it was time for the fun to start. The five hour train ride(the calm before the storm of a weekend), was rather uneventful, as train rides usually are. It was just 5 hours of reading. When we got to Berlin, I was amazed at the number of people that were just in the train station. The story was no different outside. Now that we were in a new city, it was time to learn a new train system. A much more intricate system, that turned out to be extremely useful to get around Berlin the following week. When we arrived to our hotel, we had a short time to rest-up for the upcoming night, so I ate a place that was near the hotel(I would later come back to this place at least 5 more times in our stay in Berlin). Once the time arrived for us to move out, we set off to the train station. Upon arrival at the train station, and once again the sheer number of people left me awe-struck. We managed to cram into a train cart to go to the Festmile stop. I can honestly say i have never been in a more crammed situation than I was on this train. When we arrived to the Festmile location, I was amazed again by the sheer number of people. I realize its Berlin, on New Year’s but seeing that many people is just astounding. There was hardly any room in the front towards the stage so we made our way to the back of the crowd.

We spent the majority of our time here, visiting stalls, getting food, and walking around. The 4 hours till midnight seemed to fly by quick, because before i knew it, it was time to usher in the New Years. By this point the crowd of people had grown and spilled all the way back towards where we were. We watched the New Year’s ceremonies on a large screen behind a Ferris wheel. We followed up the countdown by doing a group Aggie War Hymn. This had to be one of the most fun experiences I have had in Germany, as everyone was enjoying themselves and the atmosphere around us was perfect for it. After a couple more hours of enjoying ourselves at the Festmile, the bitter cold started to take its toll on us and we remembered we had to catch an early train to Prague the next morning for our free weekend. We managed to find the way back to the hotel amidst all the congestion, ice and emotion that was that night. By the time we arrived it was three in the morning and we had to leave the hotel by five thirty. Despite the hour, I was not feeling tired, but I still tried to fall asleep, and only managed to fall asleep at four, knowing well that I would have to wake up in thirty minutes to pack and prepare for the weekend trip.

Saturday-Flash forward thirty short minutes later. I prepared myself and my small backpack for our weekend trip. We caught the tram to the train station in time, and barely managed to catch our S-Bahn train to the Haupbahnhof in time. When we arrived, it was still a good hour before our train would leave, so we scattered to look for food at the train station. Still feeling sluggish after the short night of sleep I had a coffee, and a Coke. Before we knew it the train had arrived and it was time to board. I took the opportunity when we passed a small shop to get another coffee before we boarded the train. By this point I had the level of caffeine only present in college students around finals time. Expecting a lot of people traveling on New Year’s, we were met with an almost abandoned train. This gave our group the opportunity to spread out and try to get more sleep after the short slept night. Unfortunately for me, the caffeine in my system began to take its effect. I took this chance to be the lookout for our arrival in Prague while others slept, and to read more. Another five hour train ride flew by, only this time when we looked out the window we were not greeted by a city scape like Berlin, but a cityscape of a very Eastern European variety. It looked like something straight out of the movies, and not in the incredibly charming way. However, once we embarked at the train station, it was a different sight all together. As soon as we were the tiniest bit familiar with the German language and the German train station, we were thrust back into the world of the unknown Czech language and train station. It was also time to have experience with a new currency. Our experience with the Euro was not as foreign to us as the Euro conversion rate was similar to the US, so judging prices was easy. Enter the Kroner. Meet the Euro's "25 of me equals a Euro" sibling. This threw me off throughout the whole weekend when it came to paying for food and souvenirs. We also had to navigate a new city extensively for the first time since our arrival to Bonn.

We managed to make it from the train station to the Old Town Square and to our hostel. Unfortunately for us, the hostel lost our reservation and we were forced to split into two rooms. The hostel also didn't allow check in until 2, so we had to spend some time in the city before we settled our belongs in Prague. This proved to be no inconvenience as the Hostel has a locker for us to store our belongings and as we had plans to explore the city. We headed straight for the Old Town Square and got some food from a stand. A bratwurst and coke. Incredibly delicious. We explored some of the Old Town Square but we had a small agenda on what we wanted to do in Prague. We tried to purchase a train pass, but the pass machine only took coins, and the only Kroner we had were large bills. There was no change machine nearby so we spent a good amount of time looking around the area for a way to make change. In the end some of us managed to make change at a McDonalds (I took the opportunity to get another coffee), and our group split into groups of five, two and six. The group of five, the one I was in, traversed our way through a new rail system to go explore the palace and cathedral that sat on a hill overlooking the city. The cathedral was another awe-striking cathedral and the palace was no different. This was another city which history was everywhere. After exploring the city we went and took a look at the city from on top of the hill. Seeing the cityscape from the hill is one of the visions that will stay with me a lifetime, as it was one of prettiest sights I saw in Europe.

Instead of taking the train back to the Old Town Square to meet up with our other group members for dinner, we walked down the hill and took the chance to cross Charles Bridge. Our walk through Charles Bridge and the sights we saw from Charles bridge were again another atheistically awesome experience. After we crossed the bridge, we were near were we needed to be to meet with the others, but we still had an hour to kill. We took the opportunity to go see a concert at the church titled “The Four Seasons". While the playing wasn't anything grand, it gave us time to rest and just decompress after a long day. By this point in the day we were cold, tired and hungry, and being somewhere were no thinking or walking needed to be done was ideal. We finally made our way back to our hostel and moved our belongings to our hostel rooms. No one else was in the rooms so we still hadn't met our hostel roommates. We met up with everyone again and went to an Italian place near old town square. By this point, my three coffees and cokes had worn their stay and extreme tiredness had hit me like a bus. By this point in time, I had only slept 30 minutes in the past 38 hours. I barely made it through dinner awake. Dinner consisted of a Hawaiian pizza and tiramisu. I was glad to get back to the hostel after dinner, as I needed some much needed sleep. We had another long day ahead of us the next day which included travel back to Berlin.

Sunday: We woke up later than we normally would have, and ate a quick breakfast before we made our way to our next point of interest. Today’s excursion was dedicated to the Jewish Quarter . This day ended up being an incredibly educational day as we not only found out more about Jewish life in Prague before and after WWII, but we also had the opportunity to visit various synagogues. Two synagogues stuck out to me. The first one was a synagogue converted into a memorial to the Czech Jews who had died as a result of the Holocaust and WWII. The synagogue had walls and wall of names inscribed with the victims, their home location and the dates of their birth and date. There must have been at least 20 walls covered with names. This was an incredibly somber sight to behold, as the sheer quantity of names hit a nerve. It gave me a much better understanding to just how many victims there were as a result of the atrocities from 1933-1945. The next synagogue that stuck out was one called “The Old Spanish Synagogue”. Apparently this is one of the few Moorish inspired ornate synagogues. It reminded me of how some cathedrals we visited looked, minus all the Christianity artifacts.

We finished our tour of the quarter at around lunch time, so we took this opportunity to head back to the old town square and get some lunch and do some last minute souvenir shopping. I ate some sort of fire roasted ham and a bratwurst stuffed in a mini baguette. Another great meal. After lunch we did some last minute souvenir shopping. This was incredibly stressful as the conversion rate made choosing what to buy a little difficult. During our shopping we realized we had fifteen minutes to make our way back to the train station and catch a train back to Berlin. So we powerwalked the 1.5Km to the train station and made it with three minutes to spare. However, once we arrived at the platform we realized that the train was standing room only, and we did not feel like having to stand for the five hours back. We decided to make seat reservations for the next train, and have a little bit of “decompression” time. This however, was not the case.

When we arrived at the ticket office we tried to make a reservation for five people, only to be met by a woman speaking a Czech-English garbled mix. She kept repeating that train reservations “were not necessary”. “Not necessary”. She also kept saying “Two, no problem. Three no problem - Five problem.” She sent us three counters down because “English was perfect” at that counter and we could find some help there. We made our way to the counter only to be met with the same Czech-English garbled mix, telling us to go down one counter. When we got to the right counter we were met with “Sorry I cannot help you. I cannot do reservations here. Reservations over there”, pointing to the counter were we initially were. Defeated and frustrated, we decided we would try our luck and get on the train without a seat reservation. We camped out near the screen which told us the platform which our train would arrive, as our platform was not set yet. After an hour and a half, our platform number appeared and we quickly rushed towards the platform, to make sure we were assured a spot on the train. We boarded the train with no problem and set our course towards Berlin on yet another five hour train ride. Once we arrived back in Berlin, the feeling that hit us was a feeling like being home. Although we had only spent a night Berlin, being back in a German speaking city, with a semi-familiar train system, was a sigh of relief. Once we arrived back at our hotel, we took some time to rest up and headed out to the restaurant near our hotel to eat and just relax after a taxing day and weekend.

Three five hour train rides, one amazing New Year’s Party, five cups of coffee and 3500 Kroner later, our weekend had come to a close. It was a weekend that would be one to remember for ages to come. Although I had forgotten to say rabbit with all the excitement of the Festmile, I say, who needs luck when you can have adventures like we’ve had this past weekend.I'll gladly take a year of average luck to have another New Year's weekend like this.