Rock Me Amadeus

Heyyyy America (and a handful of Italys, Israels, and Spains)!

So its been a little while...here's what's up. Its November in Praha, and November is pretty much synonymous with rainy here. Thanks to the weather, I've been stuck indoors a lot. I've lightened up on the touristy stuff. However, I HAVE managed to hit up the Jewish Quarter. My program organizes trips around town every week, and I usually go on them. I think its pretty clear that I jumped at the chance to go on the Jewish Town tour. Well, yours truly was the only one who signed up for it, so I had a private tour with Z and Jana, two of the people who work for the program. Z's real name is Zdenek, but Z is so much easier. He's this awesome tour guide who pretty much knows everything in the world.

Being on that tour was pretty much like being back in Hebrew School and I spent half the time trying to answer Z's questions about the holidays and people and stuff. I ate it up, you know I did.

Anyways, that's not the highlight of this email. This past weekend, AIFS took us to Vienna. Let me just say, aside from Israel, Austria is my favorite country. Its just so beautiful and classy. Its not hard to see how Mozart and Beethoven and all of these other musicians and artisians came out of the Viennese woodwork. We got into Vienna in the evening, and walked around town for a few hours. I got lucky, my main group of girlfriends all went on this trip (we usually end up going on different dates), so it was nice to experience it with them. Since we're all cash-strapped, and the Euro has a shit conversion, we dinnered at classy McDonald's for dinner, where I had my first ever Big Mac. We ended up staying there for several hours, just talking and having fun. Saturday was where the real party was at. Z took us on a tour of the city, and we may have seen it all...we saw a Holocaust memorial, Beethoven's birthplace, one of Mozart's houses, Parliament, EVERYTHING. Also in Vienna there is this hotel where a kind of chocolate cake was created, called the Sacher torte. We were all determined to get it, so we found the hotel and ordered cake and coffee. However, I thought it would be a good idea to get the coffee with cherry Schnapps. It was not. It was probably the most revolting thing I've had since the Polish lard. But I downed it like a champ and enjoyed my cake. We ended up staying there for four hours, eventually ordering wine so we wouldn't get kicked out. At one point, the waiter came over and asked us to at least pay the bill, because the staff was turning over. It was most certainly a nice, warm, fuzzy afternoon.

That evening some of us decided to go to the opera to see Othello They have standing room tickets for 2 Euro, but you really get what you pay for. Jess and I got stuck on the side of the gallery, against the wall, so we just sat and couldn't see a thing for the whole first act. However, it DID sound lovely. By the second act, it had cleared out a little bit and we were able to get spots where we could see. I would really like to go to an opera again, especially there...the theater was beautiful and majestic and had that ornate European charm. It was really an exceptional place.

Sunday we hit up a palace on the way home. Its where the Hapsburgs ruled for hundreds of years, and its so well preserved I wanted to cry. For any of you who enjoyed AP Euro with me, well, this palace would have made Sully melt. On our way out, we stopped to get apple strudel, which is a big thing in Vienna, and I learned why as soon as I took a bite. It was way better than apple pie, applesauce, appleanything. Eat it.

That's all I've got. Its Monday afternoon now...6 of us just bought tickets to go to Hungary and Slovakia on Thursday, so I'm looking forward to that. I turn 20 in less than two weeks, so I've also got that to look forward to. Things, all in all, are great here. I just had an interview at The Prague Post for a summer internship, and it went well, so we'll see how that goes. I'm all registered for classes at Maryland, and working on my apartment lease stuff. hat's really it for me. I hope you all have been doing well (the emails have slowed, and I miss your updates!). Take care everyone!

Love and Sacher torte, Melissa