I’m about to start midterms next week, so I”ve basically been staying at home studying this weekend. Kind of lame I know. I had my German midterm Saturday morning (I have no idea why on a Saturday morning), and that wasn’t too bad. After all of this is over though, I”m going to Munich, Germany with my roomate Trang. I”m so excited because most of October I”ve basically stayed in Vienna.

So far, the only other places I”ve been is to Croacow, Poland, Budapest, Hungary, and Prague, Czech Republic. It was part of my ten day field trip for IES to Eastern Europe, and it was amazing! Prague was beautiful with its architecture, and I went to a soccer game there. It wasn’t as cool as the Rapid Wien game (no one looked like they were about to jump into the soccer field and start a fight), but I love experiencing the games here when they’re not as popular in the States. Of course, I got a tour of the city and there is no way I could possibly begin to describe everything that was there. One thing I thought was really cool was this chain of locks aligning a bridge in Prague. Supposedly, once you’re married you put you and your spouse’s names on the lock because your heart has been “loced away”. A little corny, but so is our tradition of whoever you kiss on the kissing bridge at Wittenberg is the person you’ll marry.

 In Croacow, I went to a salt mine (yes, a salt mine). They showed us the underground place where they used to work, and there were whole rooms (even a ballroom) where the floors, walls, everything was made of salt. It may sound kind of stupid, but if you actually saw it was actually pretty good. The other important thing we saw was Auschwitz. It was a very sad thing to see, and you could see some clothing, hair, and other items belonging to the prisoners. I won’t go too much into it because it’s a depressing topic, but it’s one of those places that’s important for everyone to see.

In Budapest, our group had a little more free time than the other trips. We saw some of the Roman ruins in the area, and I went shopping for some souveneirs in their mall. The mall was an interesting setup. It was like one of those outdoor markets with the owner sitting behind the table of their spot/in front of their spot but packed inside. I got one of those stereotypical nesting dolls (those wooden dolls that have layers and you keep taking off the layers and it gets smaller and smaller), and a ”secret box” with a key hidden inside the wall to open it.

I”m so glad I got to go on this field trip to Eastern Europe because I know I probably wouldn’t have gone otherwise and the inflation in these countries made everything so cheap. And since it was the week before classes, it was a chance to relax, travel around, and have some really fun nights before classes actually began. Munich will be the first place I’m going to since then, and next weekend I”m going to Venice, Italy. Hopefully I’ll be able to work out going to Barcelona for the second week of November, but money may be an issue. We’ll see. That’s all that’s really going on right now. And now to start studying…