Hi Dad, thanks for your e-mail. Hope you all had a happy Easter at Baba’s; I bet she cooked a great dinner. We spent Easter morning in Vienna getting up bright and early to see the Vienna Boys’ Choir. They were terrific, but they only perform as part of a Sunday Catholic mass and, as we got the free standing area tickets, it was a rather long couple hours.
Prague was a very old-looking and pretty city, as many of its buildings are quite well preserved. We spent a lot of time walking around downtown and Monday night we went to a black light theatre show. There are several of these around town and it looked kind of gimmicky to me, but Brian and Kody thought it looked worthwhile so we checked it out. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a pretty silly, tourist-trap show in a small theatre. The following night, however, we went to the fabulous State Opera and saw a good production of Anton Dvorak’s “Rusalka” (think Disney’s The Little Mermaid without the happy ending). We also decided to spring for box seats — as they were only $24!! That was definitely a worthwhile part of the experience and, although the production had a few flaws, it was still a very solid, lavish, professional show, and made for a terrific night.
Today we took the five-hour train to Berlin and arrived at our hostel this afternoon. This hostel is definitely the funkiest and biggest hostel we’ve been in. With 905 beds, it’s the largest in Germany (it’s sister hostel in London is also the largest in the UK), and it’s sci-fi theme lends a slick ambience. It’s quite clean as well, which is always nice. It sounds like there’s going to be a lot to do and see in Berlin, I only wish we had more time. We pretty much lost the whole day today due to travelling. It might just be lately, because we’re all getting tired after a non-stop month, but I wish we could have gotten an earlier train and had the better part of the day to make the most of our stay. It’s really kind of frustrating when I think that it cuts off nearly a third of our visit and that (as our trip draws to a close..) I won’t be able to afford to visit all these places again any time soon. I mean, I guess I just want to cram more in than they do and go at a more strenuous pace, but I can’t go out and start seeing things on my own because I’ll probably just wind up seeing the same things with them all over again the next day. Anyway, hopefully we’ll get to walk all through the downtown, see the Brandenburg gate, the remains of the Berlin Wall, the Jewish museum, the Reichstag, maybe the film museum, and maybe a classical music concert if it’s affordable.
I’ve also started to look into plane tickets home and I’m doing my best to try and find something really cheap. The best confirmed seat I can find is for $420, which is too much. I’m trying to find out how I can get last-minute seats, as the airline companies don’t do standby anymore. A site called air-tech.com has deals with certain airlines and offers a $219 Western Europe to Northeast U.S. ticket. They tell you availability of flights each week and when one comes up that you want, you tell them. There are also things called “bucket shops,” which receive last-minute tickets from airlines, but I don’t know where or how to find those yet. I’ll research more once I get back to Leeds. Anyway, I hope everyone’s well, and I’ll talk to you in five days!
Love,
Michael
Tags: Heavy Things, Life
Hii Mike just got through reading your account of your trip and it sounds like you reallly had a great time. I think it is wonderful that you had the opportunity to make it. You got to see alot in just the short time that you had.
Gosh, you have no idea how much I want to visit Prague. Hopefully I will next summer, before my study abroad in Budapest :D
(Btw, this is mad or mad4u689 from runescape and the_end, if you remember me… the hug girl. :D Hope your life is going swimmingly! Though, the blog should tell me that.)