So I know that I didn’t go to a place as crazy as Amsterdam last weekend, but I thought I would post about my trip to Berlin and save the really crazy stuff for Colleen. But instead of my usual format where I type wayyyy too much, I have decided to list just a couple of things I learned/saw in my travels.
Before I do this, here is a random photo montage that I for some reason can't get to match up with my list. Enjoy.

Jen is excited about Social Media Week 2011

Molli's Dessert

Washing down the Wodka

No ticket for lack of metro ticket

Why is the formatting on this blog so difficult?

Guess those drinks people bought you were a waste

Jen defaces a historical landmark

German's cant take pictures

1. Free food makes everything better. (social media week 2011 had an open bar and free food. Not to mention all of the stuff we took from the hostel breakfasts for later)

2. In America, we take a lot of free things for granted (condiments, public restrooms, water)

3. Germans use Capri Suns as chasers for tiny bottles of vodka (self-explanatory)


4. Public transportation in Germany is expensive, but they hardly ever check your pass. (Be careful with this one. You could end up having your metro boarded by like ten German ticket checkers at once and your only escape is to get out of there as fast as possible)

5. There is a little door in the Berlin Wall! So cool. I love that place.

6. Germans will not borrow their mom’s car in order to take you sightseeing, despite their many drunken promises the night before. (Sebastian and Mo, such disappointments)

7. Some people sleep better in bars than they do in Hostels.

8. You’re not allowed to write on the Berlin Wall.

9. Streets get shut down for the Berlin marathon, and you may have to play some ultimate Frogger to get to the other side of one.

10. Berlin is awesome. Go, go go!

So, Bill did a pretty great job of giving a summary of our EXCELLENT OKTOBERFEST ADVENTURE, but here is a little photo journal of the weekend for those who are craving more. Which is all of you. Let's be honest.

9 AM: 

Stake out an outdoor table, conveniently located next to some Italian men to keep things entertaining.

Best Oktoberfest group ever :)

10 AM: 

Bill and Ted pregame Oktoberfest.

         

Such class.







11 AM:
Bill and Ted get antsy.

This happened.

Practice makes perfect.

Fake beer cheers.

Noon:

 Let's get this party started.

We are so happy to see you.

1-5PM.

Very eventful.

One, and umm... not done.

 One beer = one liter.

 Things Oktoberfest taught us:

1. If you tell your friends that you are in the Eingang tent, you probably aren't. And that is because eingang means entrance.

2. If you try to make international friends at Oktoberfest, make sure they do not turn out to be from Florida.

3. Avoid grenades. 

At Oktoberfest, time can be tracked by the progressive tilting of the beer on the Oktoberfest hats.

Ready to go.





Slightly off (beer hat twin in the background clearly got off to a late start).

Location of beer unknown.



6PM: Celebrate end of successful Oktoberfest. Clearly handled it better than these kids/grown men.

10PM-10AM

Sleep for 12 hours and awake to possibly the best breakfast ever. HUGE thank you to Laura and Laura for an AMAZING Oktoberfest!

So much deliciousness, Bill doesn't even know where to start.

Oktoberfest: Ano, ano ano. Dva, dva dva.

Oh hey there. So, in case you didn't know, Bill and Ted took Oktoberfest this weekend, and it was filled with pretzels, feather-filled caps and pivo. Wow, wish I had made that second thing start with a p, because alliterations are awesome.

Anyway, we arrived in Munich at 11 pm on Friday, and we were very tired from all the drinking/lack of sleeping on the train. Plus our compartment had seven people and six seats. Very cozy, indeed.

Our train was named Alex, although judging from the signs all around our compartment (very Harry Potter-esque), we thought that Alex was the brand of the food cart. After our Chinese takeout, beer, wine and paprika trips were eaten, we started yelling for Alex to make a visit to our compartment. There were jokes of chocolate frogs and Bernie Bott's beans making an appearance, but what we ended up with was some overpriced chocolate and beer. We were unimpressed.

But then Colleen and I went to our hotel (courtesy of Laura and Laura). We stayed at the Marriott, which was really awesome. The beds were comfortable, so we ended up being pretty well rested when we showed up to Oktoberfest. We had to wait until noon to start drinking, because we had drank all of my pregaming beer on the bus. To be fair, I was lame and thought two beers would be enough and thought I wouldn't want to drink on the train.

Things started to look up at ten AM when Laura and Laura bought Colleen and I hats, and we braided our hair so we could fit in with the German people. Above is a terrible and equally terribly formatted picture of the two of us. I believe this was beer three. I definitely think this beer went unfinished, but I started another beer anyway. Neni problem, neni problem!

Oh, that's another thing. Oktoberfest Lindsay and Oktoberfest Colleen were badasses. We snuck into a couple of bier gartens, because they were only letting in people who spoke German. Colleen and I kept saying Dva, dva, to see if they were just weeding out the Americans, but it was all non-Germans, so we had to just run inside really fast and not look back. Please take a look at the beer position on Colleen's hat. It is almost 3/4 of the way tipped over, because after every beer, we took it and tipped it a little more to the side. By the end of the day, it was tipped all the way over. Colleen has much better pictures of us with our fake beers. Plus, she makes better captions, so I'll let her explain all.

Basically, the day was epic. I attempted to speak only in Czech and ended up just saying ano and ne and neni problem the whole day.

I'm done. Letting Colleen explain the rest! Dobry den, followers!

A Hezky Vikend Indeed

Bill and Ted take Lucerna

Flat mates :)

After hitting up Lucerna for some more good times on Friday night, we were not as smiley on Saturday morning, when we had a 8:45 wake-up call for our program-sponsored trip to Kunta Hora.

What is Kunta Hora? Well, we weren’t really given too many details about the trip (or if we did, I didn't get the memo), so Saturday was unexpectedly awesome.

Just chillin'

Our first stop was the bone church, which might have a slightly more official name, but basically it was built with the (real) bones of over 40,000 dead monks. Creep city. Really cool, but I felt bad for the dead monks. I do not think they ever thought that their final resting place would be in a chandelier.

Weirdd

                                                                                      

Coat of Arms for the House of Creep

After the church, we had some traditional Czech food, and then our next stop was to the actual town of Kunta Hora, where we went into a silver mine. This sounds boring, but it was actually really interesting. We got the chance to go down into the mines, but first we had to do a test run in this short little mine thing to see if we would get claustrophobic. (At this point, Bill was in a different group but she also passed the claustrophobia test and would make an excellent, or should I say awesome, miner). After we proved that we wouldn't freak out in the mine, we walked down a lot of steps and then wound our way through the mine for about 20 minutes. At one point we turned off our lamps and experienced “total mine darkness,” so that we couldn't even see our hand in front of our faces. I may or may not have used that term several times since, in various situations such as “Omg don’t turn off the lights or there will be total mine darkness,” or “Omg it got dark so quickly, it’s almost like total mine darkness.” I think it's catching on.

Rachel blazes a trail through the mine

Clearly mining is all about the outfits

Next, we walked through the town and went to Santa Barbara Church, which is the second largest church in the Czech Republic and also pretty epic.

Mom's Church :)

After getting some zmrzlina (aka ice cream what? what? look who's speaking Czech like a native), we drove back on the bus to Prague. That night was the Prague Grand Prix run, which is a night run through Prague. Even though a group of us hadn’t registered, we jumped into the race (badass), and I am so so glad that we did. Prague at night was breathtaking (and not just because I hadn’t run in a month haha ahh i crack myself up!).  The race atmosphere combined with the city lit up at night cannot be described as anything other than the bomb.com.

Even though we were too tired after the run to make it out on Saturday night for our daily dose of pivo, it was one of my favorite nights in Prague so far. Magical.

On Sunday, there was a wine festival at Troja Castle. There are tons of wine festivals in Prague during the month of September, and most have a special wine called burcak, which is "young wine," or wine that is partially fermented so it is super sweet and super alcoholic. Basically, it is the best part of September.

Troja Castle

Vineyard at the castle

Will sing for burcak

So now you might be asking yourself, omg that's so cool, will any weekend live up to this one? Umm why yes it will because bill and ted take Oktoberfest TOMORROW, and everyone will hear all about it shortly :)

O hey there, Oktoberfest

HEY HEY HEY

The first week in Prague has been a complete whirlwind, but here are the highlights J

The schedule for the first week was basically orientation sessions in the morning, followed by afternoon walks in the city,

Photo credit to Maria :)

and exploring the city at night

The view 2 blocks from my apartment

In fact, the first 2 days were so busy that Bill and Ted did not even see each other until Friday! 

Unfortunately, attempt 1 of Bill and Ted navigating Prague was unsuccessful. My apartment is conveniently located 15 minutes from Bill’s in real time and 2 hours in Bill and Ted time. Clearly we both were not paying attention during the afternoon city walks.

Clearly Bill does not have Googlemaps on her ghetto T9 Czech phone

Luckliy, we still had fun after the many detour(s) that were made by dancing to 80s and 90s music. Thank you, Madonna and the Backstreet Boys.

And then it was the weekend!

My first weekend was adventure-packed.

On Saturday, there was apple picking and sightseeing from the Petrin tower, which has amazing views of Prague.

View from the tower

Juggling skillz

On Sunday, we visited Karlstejn Castle, which is located about 40 minutes outside of Prague and is absolutely beautiful.

Basically a fairy tale town.

After the long weekend, it was time to hop on the struggle bus for  Intensive Czech for beginners, which started on Monday.

Interesting things about learning Czech:

1. Czech is hard.

2. The number four is impossible to pronounce (čtyři).

3. New goal: pronounce 4,444.

4. Bill’s favorite number is 8 aka osm (pronounced awesome).

5. Czech is hard.

6. “Ano” actually means “yes.” Tricky, tricky.

7. “Sul” does not mean sugar. Do not add a half cup of sul to the peanut butter cookies you are making unless you are positive that it is sugar and not salt.

8. Even if you are really excited about the two words that you can actually pronounce in Czech, you probably should not say them to every Czech person you meet because then they will talk to you in Czech. And then there will be confusion and disappointment and you will awkwardly walk away.

After Czech class this week, we also went on some field trips during the week, one of which was to Prague Castle, which was pretty much the bomb.com

O hey there

Sightseeing at Prague Castle

O hey Prague, still looking awesome

Those are pretty much the highlights of week one! I'm off to a super classy wine festival at a castle, but more to come soon!