Un Petit Peu de Stress

So the last week my friends and I have actually had a decent amount of work to do. Finals are coming up for our seminar classes so the last few days we've been scrambling a bit; primarily for my cinema class. We were assigned to turn in 10 photos of different kinds: plan poitrine, gros plan, tres gros plan, surcadrage, etc. (Medium shots, close ups, extreme close ups, framing devices, etc.) These things are fairly simple after spending 3 semesters taking photography classes in high school. The thing that's been causing me, and everyone else, some stress is the final video which we all procrastinated on. Well, to be fair, we got the details for the assignment about 2 weeks ago:

A 1-5 minute video...
Using at least 4 different kinds of shots + one traveling shot + one pan.

That's it.

Sounds easy right? Well when it can be about anything and you've got two weeks--it's a bit of a challenge. At the moment I'm taking a break from my editing to blog a bit about it because I'm actually, despite my stress, excited about what I decided to do! I mean I am a film production major so this should be what I like to do...

So a few weeks ago when I was on the bus to Nice to go shopping, I was listening a song by Stromae called "Quand C'est?" I just started imagining a bunch of imagery that I spent the last week filming with my actors, my roommate Grace and my friend Rob who were so awesome in willing to be in it! Anyways I'll have it done by tomorrow since we have to have it emailed by Saturday and I leave for Ireland tomorrow night; however, I just felt like posting some stills I've taken from the video footage which I have to say I'm surprisingly proud of considering it's just been me and my Nikon.

I've been struggling a bit with the editing just because I don't have anything besides Windows Movie Maker... I'm making it work but I actually miss Avid--something I never really imagined myself saying, which if you've ever used it, I'm sure you understand.

Wish me luck! I'll post a link soon!

By far one of my favorite shots.

What I’ve Been Up to These Days…

Well, this last week or so has been very relaxing. The weather was beautiful all last week so we were at the beach pretty much every day after class which is SO nice.  We’re coming up on the end of our seminar classes with the film festival quickly approaching so I’ve got some finals and some real work to do. However, the French mentality is to take your time with things and enjoy life so I’m not stressing out too hard over it.

The last three weekends I’ve stayed in Cannes which has been really nice. I did so much traveling in March and April but these last two months are a lot more laid back. I went to a mall last weekend with some girlfriends. We took a bus to Nice for the day to shop and came back which was really fun and made us feel like locals in a way. 

This weekend a lot of people are gone from the college; a lot of the other AIFS students are in Provence for the weekend. So, it’s pretty empty around here. But today’s been really nice as I woke up and had a really amazing brunch, then spent the day with my roommate and best friend, Grace, going to the beach, going to Leader Price, laying on the terrace, etc. Tomorrow we’re thinking of heading to some cliffs/beaches that we passed on the way to St. Tropez a few weeks ago. The trip along the corniche was SO pretty so earlier I looked up how to get there. Turns out they’re in St. Raphael which is only 20 minutes from Cannes by train and I found the bus lines for when we get there!

Other than that life in Cannes has been really great! Classes are good. The weather’s been great. The Festival is on its way. It’s starting to get more and more into the season here, so more people are showing up.

There’s a bit of bittersweet-ness I think for everyone because we’re quickly heading into our last month here. And we all try not to think or talk about it but it does come up and then we all push it away pretty fast. It’s just hard to believe we’re almost done being here! Only about 5 more weeks! But the best we can do is enjoy this place as much as we can these last few weeks.

And after that, I’ve got to plan for my two weeks of independent travel before leaving Europe! Ah!

L'Hédonism en Plein Forme: L’École Buissonnière

Preface: For class last Thursday, we took an excursion to a beach in Antibes which resulted in probably one of my favorite days here yet. This post is the follow up assignment in which we wrote about our very hedonistic experience—so, yes, it’s in French. But I also translated so no need to be too worried. But it’s also rather poetic and a nice way to walk everyone through the experience.

Alors… Voilà ce que j’ai écrit envers « L’École Buissonnière »

So… Here’s what I wrote about our « Ditch Day ! »

« En arrivant, le bleu de la mer, miroir d’un ciel vaste et couleur d’azur nous a bouleversés. Nos pieds nous on guidés vers le sentier au bord de mer et les rochers, nous arrêtant souvent pour tenter de saisir cette vue de la Méditerranée avec les Alpes et Nice ne arrière-plan… »

Upon arrival, the blue of the ocean, a mirror of the vaste, clear sky above, overwhelmed us. Our feet lead us down the path along the ocean and the rocks, stopping us frequently so we could attempt to savor the view of the Mediterranean with the Alps and Nice in the background.

« Il y avait des photos, des rires, des blagues et des moments de silence partagé. Un silence confortable, entre amis venus d’ailleurs, venus ici avec des histoires et des expériences différents mais qui, à ce moment-là, ressentaient le même bonheur. Puis le silence est vite remplacé par des discussions et des rires, encore… »

There were photos taken, there were laughs, jokes, moments of shared silence. A comfortable silence, between friends from other places, who’ve come here with different pasts and different experiences, but who, in this very moment, share the same happiness.  And then the silence is quickly replaced by discussions and laughter once again.

The class stopping for photos.

« Même joie simple au petit café, même ambiance de complicité et de bien-être... »

Same simple joy at a little café. The same ambiance of peace and sense of well-being.

The little cafe we sat at while drinking coffee and eating crepes!

« Les assiettes se vident, c’est l’heure de rentrer, de quitter le rêve… »

Our plates empty themselves. It’s time to go back, to leave the dream.

One of my closest friends, Elsa. <3

« Mais le retour se fait sous le soleil, le vent dans les cheveux, la musique à la radio et nos voix qui se mêlent pour que tout le monde entende notre bonne humeur. Être hédoniste, on le devient facilement dans cette espace et en cette compagnie.»

But the return takes place under the sun, wind in our hair, the music playing loud from the radio with our voices mixing so everyone can hear us. Being hedonistic comes easily in this space and with this company.

Elsa and Alex.

Left to Right with Nationalities: Alex from Brazil; Elsa from the U.S.;
Myself; and Hans from the Netherlands! Partying in the car!

The rest of the day continued in similar fashion. After coming back from class I was lucky enough to have class cancelled so I could soak up the nice weather at the beach. It was probably one of the most relaxing and memorable days I’ll have this semester and I feel very lucky to have had that experience with so many great people.

Dining and Dirndls: Spring Break Stop #3: Munich!

We landed in Munich after a really nice hour and a half long train ride, found our hostel, and had checked in by about 2 PM. We pretty much instantly fell in love with the hostel. It was called Wombat’s. The staff was super friendly, funny, and helpful, especially this Australian guy, Tom. They also had signs up everywhere that were just really funny like one that was a comic of batman slapping someone who was asking for the wifi code without even saying “Hi” first. The rooms were nice and clean, sheets and towels were free, they had a really nice courtyard, cheap breakfast, laundry facilities, and so on. So, would also highly recommend it!…And now I’ll stop this little plug for them.

The Glockenspiel!

We spent the first afternoon walking around downtown. Munich actually reminded me a bit of LA because of the big city feel of it—except that I couldn’t understand any of the signs and the buildings are significantly cooler. We saw the Glockenspiel and one of the most beautiful churches I’ve seen. I loved it because it was SO different from the Gothic architecture that’s all over France. There were these beautiful little paper birds all flying towards the front. The colors were pastel pink and yellow and blue. And as usual, it was just incredibly ornate.

A huge highlight was walking into a dirndl shop (lederhosen are for men, dirndls are for women.) We had seen a ton in Austria but they were really expensive so we went into this store and ended up trying some on and they were too cute NOT to buy them. It was still a bit pricy for me but not bad in comparison. I suffered about 20 minutes of buyer’s remorse afterwards but had great girlfriends to help me justify it. And realistically, when would I be back in Germany buying one? Plus I now have a great Halloween costume and Oktoberfest outfit for when I’m 21!

Melinda, Emily, London and I posing in our dirdnls!

Emily, London, and myself.

We did have a lot of fun just trying them on, however. You wouldn’t believe just how many varieties of colors and patterns you can choose from. The little shirt and the apron are separate pieces so you can mix and match those. We also learned some pretty cool cultural things about them. For example, where you tie the apron basically tells people your relationship status! My friend London had walked out with it tied behind her back and the girl helping us with them told her not to do that because it means she’s widowed. So, left hip is single, right hip is taken/in a relationship, and the middle is for younger girls who shouldn’t really be identifying as any of the above options.

Also, we had sincerely wondered if they were just a tourist thing. But NO! People actually where them. We saw girls and guys in them not only during the day walking around, but also in clubs and bars at night!

We had a pretty relaxing night with some dinner and hanging out in the bar in the hostel. A few of us went and tried out a club later which was pretty fun but also a bit bizarre. I say that because people in Europe dance very differently than Americans, which I may have mentioned before, but in case I hadn’t—Europeans kind of… rock side to side (and not all of them, but the vast majority), whereas my friends and I just kind of goof around and dance like idiots which translates into us sticking out like sore thumbs. But we had fun, so that’s all that really counts right? Maybe? Oh well.

The next day we woke up early and caught a train to see the Neuschwanstein Castle! We literally walked up to the train station ten minutes before the next train left and hopped on one. It takes a while to get to the castle between the train, a bus, another bus, and then walking around once you’re there, but it was totally worth it. You could pay for tours to go inside but everyone I’d talked to about it said it wasn’t necessary. And thanks to London, our personal history major and tour guide, I got to learn about the king who built the castle and of his very mysterious death. We got lunch in the town below the castle and headed back.

Inside the courtyard of Neuschwanstein.

The view from a bridge that was incredibly high up and
therefore pretty scary for me, but worth it!

That night we had a blast checking out the beer gardens and meeting lots of people from our hostel who were from all over the place. It ended up being probably one of my favorite nights out for the break.

Our last day ended on a more somber note for sure, but also on a very powerful one. We went and took a tour of the Dachau Concentration Camp which was the first camp in existence. It was also one of the biggest and was used as the model for all of the following camps. We were informed that Auschwitz is the place to go to see the full extent of the Nazism and the camps, but Dachau was where it really all started.

We were very fortunate to take a tour with a great guide who approached everything from a very intellectual level. He didn’t want to glorify anything and said we weren’t there to re-enact events from that place, but that it was a historical site to be studied and to approach realistically. That approach was absolutely fascinating and I learned a lot.

However, the experience there really isn’t something you can put well into words. And I want to do it justice. So all I can really say, for me and my personal experience there, was that it was pretty surreal. To actually be in a place where something you’ve learned about over and over in history classes and in movies and even, for us, that we’d talked about in the previous countries we’d just been in, is pretty hard to wrap your head around. And I felt I was constantly in this weird place of not wanting to think about what had happened in the place I was standing, but having that be the reason I was there—to think about it.

There really is a lot I wish I could say but at this moment I’m struggling to figure out how to say it exactly…

…Because I really can’t fully express the heaviness that permeated the entire place, the overwhelming sadness and horror that came over me, personally, walking under the entry gates, or the almost numbness I had to feel standing in front of the crematoriums or walking through the gas chamber. Dachau actually hadn’t been a major extermination camp when The Final Solution was implemented. It started out as a sort of “reformation center” for all of Hitler’s enemies. However, the torture was present day in and day out—not just physically but mentally and emotionally. Those facilities were in fact used. And as our guide frequently reminded us, if one person had died there and a million had died elsewhere, that’s still 1,000,001 deaths and each and every single one is a tragedy.

So although I’m sure I’m depressing everyone taking the time to read this far, I think it’s important to share it. And on a maybe slightly better note, I’d like to add that what also hit me pretty hard was seeing this monument that was designed by survivors of the camp. It’s a monument of an unknown prisoner: “To Honor the Dead, to Warn the Living.”

Memorial to the Unknown Prisoner at Dachau.

So after a relatively somber day we went back to the hostel to get some rest. Because we had an early flight the next morning we had to wake up at about 3 AM to check out of the hostel, catch a subway to the airport at 3:48, and get checked in to our flight. We had a slight hiccup when we got downstairs with our keys and sheets and the reception desk was closed! So we woke up real fast thanks to the stress of searching for someone to check us out and give us our IDs (which they had behind the desk in exchange for the room keys). We ended up having to leave since the next subway wouldn’t be until 4:48 and we’d most likely miss our flight. So we put the sheets in a bin, shoved our keys through a little space in the desk, and left! They emailed us as soon as they could apologizing—apparently one girl had been on duty and had to help an extremely intoxicated man find his room and get taken care of, so she had had to close everything down. They mailed us the IDs without a problem which was nice.

Then after a lot of free time in the airport, some face-timing, a short flight, an hour and a half bus, and a 20 minute walk to the college, we made it back just in time for brunch followed by pretty much an entire day of sleep.

SO: in conclusion to my spring break posts—it was a BLAST. I was so happy I found friends who wanted to do something besides the beach for the break. I was thrilled to have taken advantage of the 9 day break. And on top of that I was very happy with how much we were able to cram into those 9 days (if you’ve read all of the blog posts, I’m sure you can tell) without completely wearing ourselves out! In 9 days we conquered 3 countries, tons of new experiences, so much incredible food, a lot of laughter, and a ton of stories and memories that I will definitely be keeping with me forever.

Vamos a la Playa ? Une Belle Journée à Cannes

So I know I haven’t finished my blogging about spring break, I’ve been procrastinating a bit. However, I feel like I haven’t posted enough about life here in CANNES and today was the most incredibly nice day so I felt I’d go a bit out of order and write a bit about it.

My roommates and I all seemed to be in a Mexican stand off as to who was going to actually physically get out of bed first. We had our standard breakfast in the cafeteria which for me consists of 3-4 pieces of bread with apricot jam and hot chocolate from a bowl.

My class was really fun today. The theme this week is food! So, today we did an exercise where we partnered up, blindfolded one person, then had them smell things and describe any memories/images that came up for them. I’m very lucky that I got to stay with the same class because when we hit the two month mark, most people changed teachers and moved up levels. However, my teacher, Giselle, who I adore, really enjoys our class and fought to keep us because she says she finds us very intelligent, open-minded, engaged, and refreshing. So, my class of 6 main people has gotten very close. And I get candy pretty much every day. At the moment, there’s Elsa and I from the AIFS group, Patrick and Jeannie from the Texas group, Hans from the Netherlands, Alexandre from Brazil, and then a new girl, Alexandra, from Germany who is here for two weeks.

Anyways, the day started out decently but then became of my favorite days in a while since it was finally warm enough to go to the beach and I didn’t have afternoon class today! And by warm enough I think it was about 70 degrees, which is funny because for me because, coming from Southern California, that’s not very warm at all.

I ended up spending a few hours there with a big group of girls. We were easily the whitest people on the beach since most of the locals in this area are of Latin decent and are just naturally darker than us. It makes us a bit jealous but we’ll keep working on it.

Anyways those few hours were pretty magical. The sand was warm. The sun was shining. The water in the Mediterranean Sea is the clearest, purest, prettiest blue. It was pretty cold to go into at first but we went in twice and got acclimated pretty fast. I got to just relax and “ne rien faire” which is something I do SO rarely back at home. And it’s something I get to do here yes, because it’s study abroad and, yes, the homework load is lighter. But it is also a cultural thing. Whereas the U.S. has a materialistic, success-driven, every second of your day needs to be useful mindset; France is a hedonistic culture where: “Le vrai bonheur, c’est les petits plaisirs de la vie,” (real happiness comes from little pleasures we take in life.) It’s why they sit and talk and eat their meals for 3 hours, or play pétanque, or spend time simply doing nothing rather than having their heads consistently wrapped up in tomorrow’s schedule. Needless to say, I enjoyed just listening to my music (mainly Zac Brown Band), talking and laughing with some of the girls, and getting a tiny bit of a tan.

I came back to my room very relaxed and proceeded to do basically nothing. Took about an hour long shower. Laid down in my room. Went on Facebook. Then I went to dinner which was carbonara so that was exciting.

I then rounded out the night by heading back to the beach with some pretty amazing young women who I am very thankful to have as friends here, and we spent a good hour and a half just talking and laughing. I think one of my favorite things we talked about was whether or not we feel/think/behave differently here than we do at home. And truth be told-I do! Which maybe sounds weird but I think I've been able to be more "authentically" me here. So it's not like I'm a "different" person so to speak, but I just think there's new sides to my personality that have been able to come out here that just... didn't have the opportunity to present themselves as much as home. And that was kind of scary at first, but is actually pretty cool.

And now here I am, blogging, and ready to go to sleep.

All in all, it wasn’t the most productive day, that’s for sure. But it’s days like these where I can sit on the sand after class, staring out at the Mediterranean Sea in Cannes, France that I’ll will definitely stand out in my memory for their peace and simplicity and for the simple joy I take in them.

Other than that, life has been much more laid back here the last week. Didn't make any travel plans so I could just enjoy life here a bit. We did get to do a cool excursion to St. Tropez last Sunday which was pretty gorgeous. We have a long weekend this weekend but I might go to Nice for a day since it's about a 1.50 euro bus ride and I'd like to do some shopping and maybe get dinner. And on top of that it's Easter weekend! So, I promise I'll wrap up the spring break post soon, then try to post a bit more about my day to day here.

À bientôt tout le monde et bisous!

The Hills Are Alive! Spring Break Stop #2: Salzburg/Salzbourg

It took about 6 ½ hours by train to get to Salzburg, during which I spent a lot of time listening to folk-y music and doodling in my journal. I actually really enjoy taking trains in Europe because I tend to listen to Mumford and Sons songs (or something along those lines) and they just fit so perfectly with the European countryside passing by through the window. <3

Sitting on the train.

We got into Salzburg and got a bit lost with the busses so it took us a while to find the hostel. Once we did we were starving but thank goodness there was a MacDo nearby for us to eat a ton of food from.

The next day we took a Sound of Music Tour, which was one of the biggest highlights of the time we spent there. But instead of just taking us around to the Mirabelle Gardens and the steps from the movie, they told us where we could find them on our own, and then drove us out into the mountains where a lot of the opening shots for the movie were filmed. My goodness was it GORGEOUS. On top of that they actually played music from the movie during the drive and we all sang along which was pretty great. We ended up getting some time to check out this tiny little town called “Mondsee” where we all got some apple strudel at this place our tour guide recommended. I got mine with half vanilla sauce and half ice cream. Plus we made a stop at the famous gazebo, which was the photo in the second to last post.

View from Mondsee!

The Gazebo from the Sound of Music!

After that we decided to wander around on foot. We found the Mirabelle Gardens and pretty much had no other option but to sprint and dance around and be incredibly tourist-y. But it was super worth it.

We then made our way to the fortress which is actually the oldest medieval fortress in Europe (if not the world?). We took this funny elevator thing up to it and then wandered around and checked out the museums.

I got to try “Bosna” which is a super popular snack. It’s made of two sausages with onions, mustard, and curry powder on top! For dinner we had schnitzel and fries at the biggest beer-hall in the town which was a fun experience. We were pretty tired from all of the travel so we called it a night after that.

Bosna!

The next day we awoke and got some pastries at a random “bakerie” which we then proceeded to eat with some coffee at a café outside of Starbucks! Which was actually really cool and I wish the Starbucks in the U.S. were more like that. We literally had a waiter come take our Starbucks order and we sat outside of Mozart’s birth-house and drank our coffee. Also mine was about the size of my face and was loaded with whipped cream soo I could get used to that.

My Starbucks with Mozart's house in the background...
And my friend Melinda.

We used our Salzburg passes (cost about 24 euros for 24 hours of transportation and entry into pretty much anything you wanted) to check out Mozart’s birth-house which was significantly more interesting to me than I expected it to be. We got to go in the actual room he was born in and see his childhood violin on display. Also, my favorite part was reading a letter from him to his wife. I loved it because he sounded like such a normal guy dealing with a lot of the same things we do today. He opened the letter by apologizing for not writing earlier but they had had problems on the road and got there (wherever it was) later than expected. He asked how the kids were and hoped they were behaving. And on top of that he wrote about half a page about how much he loved and missed her—it was pretty adorable.

Bretzels!

We pretty much spent the afternoon doing some shopping before getting a real Austrian dinner at an Augustiner. We all got different dishes and ended up passing our plates so we could try everything! I had ordered this “Farmer’s Plate” that had sausage, smoked pork neck, some other kind of pork, dumplings, potatoes, and sauerkraut (which was actually pretty decent!). Oh and they brought us pretzels instead of bread which was pretty great.

My dinner. Soo good.

We walked around and checked out the city that night, but didn’t stay out too late since the next day at 12h00 we had to be on a train headed to our final stop: Munich! And since there wasn’t a ton of time to head into town in the morning, we just took our time getting ready so we’d have lots of energy once we landed in Germany! We got MacDo for breakfast—don’t judge us too harshly, fast food is very non-existent in Cannes, and the MacDos are different in every country so it’s kind of fun. Anyways, I had spent more time learning Czech phrases than German and ended up accidentally ordering 2 breakfasts with a cappuccino and a tea when I thought I had ordered orange juice. Oops. So that was a funny note to end on. Then we said “our feet are the same” to Salzburg, as our tour guide has taught us, and were on our way to Munich.

The river that runs through the middle of Salzburg.

Dobry Den! Spring Break Stop #1: Prague/Praha

So getting to Prague in itself was a bit of a challenge. We used this website called e-dreams to book everything and all 7 of us ended up spread out on 3 different flights. But we managed to make it to the hostel fine. An added bonus was that I ended up sitting next to some really cool people on the two flights I had to take—from Nice to Frankfurt I talked to a German chemist, and then from Frankfurt to Prague talked to a Czech businessman. I felt like taking advantage of the opportunity to ask them about their cultures a bit because let’s face it—we live in a society where we play on our phones most of the time rather than talk to the people sitting right around us. So, despite how awkward I felt striking up a conversation, they were both very friendly in answering my bizarre questions about their education systems, how they perceive Americans, their cultures, the problems going on in their countries, etc. (May seem like a weird question but it came from a place of genuine curiousity.)

Prague by night when we first arrived.

Our first day in Prague we got breakfast for free at the hostel, Hostel Santini, which I would highly recommend to anyone for its cleanliness, super friendly and helpful staff, and really awesome location in the city! (I’m not getting paid to advertise for them or anything, but it really was a great place.)

Getting settled in at the hostel.

We started out the day with a free walking tour. All we had to do was walk over the Charles Bridge to the Old Town Square and find a guide. Now, in all fairness, I knew next to nothing about Prague or the Czech Republic… but I loved the tour and fell in love with the city. Not only was it absolutely beautiful EVERYWHERE, but it’s jam packed with history and a culture that’s just completely different. I learned about the Astronomical Clock, the Defenestration of Prague (defenestration has been my favorite English word for quite some time now, so I enjoyed that), the invasion of the Germans during World War II, the end of the war within Czechoslovakia, the beginning of the First Republic and communism there, the “Velvet Revolution,” and the “Velvet Divorce” into the Czech Republic and Slovakia which was really only a little over 20 years ago!

The Charles Bridge!

We also got to have a 30 minute break at a restaurant where we tried goulash for the first time! I didn’t have any idea what it was but oh my goodness was it delicious. It’s basically really tender yummy beef drowned in some really good sauce with onions on top and is served with this bread that is soft and simultaneously heavy yet delicious.

After the tour we got a bit lost on the way to the Lennon Wall where we took some pretty sweet pictures. We didn’t have a tour guide to really explain the history of it but had met this guy who told us that while Czechoslovakia was communist, citizens couldn’t do much of anything without getting into trouble and would come and graffiti the wall as a form of art and protest.

Says "Life is Beautiful Chaos" but my jacket covered up the "s."

At night we went out to an amazing place to dinner where we tried a number of different things. Then we ended up going to this club that had 5 stories, each one with a different theme of music. We were having a blast and stayed until about 4:30, realizing that the time had shifted an hour over here in Europe and it was later than we thought.

The 5 story club! 

My dinner of beef in cream sauce with bread and dumplings.

The next day we slept in a tiny bit but then went and checked out the Prague Castle—the largest ancient castle in the world! That’s not just me saying that. It was more of a town than a castle as I normally would imagine one to be. But we bought student passes that let us into the HUGE cathedral as well as some of the other buildings.

Inside of the cathedral in the castle.

One of the sausages we
bought from a street vendor.

Got a sausage from a street vendor for lunch and ate it in the Old Towne Square. We checked out a very random but cool Tim Burton exhibition. Then we went and napped a bit before having literally one of the best meals I have had in Europe. We didn’t want to walk far so we went to a restaurant two doors down from the hostel that had a special of potato soup, goulash, and apple strudel for 190 crowns (which is a little less than $10!). It was this adorable little place in a courtyard where we got blankets on the seats to keep us warm. Since we’re getting used to meals in France we ended up sitting there for two and half hours just eating and talking and laughing. It was by far one of the big highlights of the trip.

Our last day there we had a train leaving for Salzburg at 13h33 so we spent the morning walking around, doing some shopping, and revisiting the Jewish Quarter which we had passed through on the tour. I found some really awesome “Europants” as I call them. Then we bought one last “trdlenik” (?), which was this cinnamon bread roll thing that was DELICIOUS before getting on the train and heading to our next destination: Salzburg!

View of the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle at night. <3

Spring Break 2014: An Introduction

Alrighty well, it’s been an eventful last nine days because of Spring Break! On Friday the 28^th, which feels like forever ago now, six other girls and I left Cannes to explore three different cities in three different countries.

Whereas a lot of people decided to go to places with beaches, we wanted to use the break to get to see some places all of us had been wanting. So, we started off in the Czech Republic in Prague, a place most of us knew nothing about and therefore had zero expectations for. After taking three different flights to get all seven of us there we spent three days there before hopping on a six hour train to Salzburg, Austria. Then, we rounded out our trip with the last three days in/around Munich, Germany!

So, since I’d like to give each city/country its own fair amount of space, I’ll be posting separate blog posts for each, like I did with my 4 days in Paris! We packed an incredible amount of stuff into the 9 days. I got to see and do so many fun things as well as experience some cultures that are not only very different from my own, but from France which I’ve been getting pretty used to the last 2 months! Overall I was very thankful for the opportunity I had to do so much traveling. 

Also, a huge part of what made the trip was the company. So I’m very thankful for all of the amazing young women I got to spend every waking minute with over the last 9 days—we got sat on planes and trains together, met people from multiple different countries, gorged ourselves on amazing food, got lost together, laughed (a lot), and even bought dirndls together. So special thanks to Rachel Lebowitz, Emily Gregor, London Lunstrum, Melinda Wenrich, Hannah Powers, and Yvette Zhang! 

Our group in front of the Sound of Music gazebo in Salzburg!
From left to right: Yvette, Hannah, Emily, Melinda, London, Rachel, and myself!