“Yeah, Jim is good with the ladies…”

Prague, or Praha for the learned, was a beautiful city for sure. There is not one building in Gainesville, or any surrounding city for that matter, that matches up to the lowliest of buildings in Prague. As our [crazy] tour guide mentioned, “Prague has more statues than anywhere else in the world. Not per capita or per city…just more.” He was right. Buildings have statues, roads have statues, light posts have statues, and statues have statues.
Our hostel in Prague was nice but the roommates were not the best so far. We had three different pairs during our two days there. The first were two nice guys from Holland. No problemo. The second pair were two more guys (as you stay in more hostel you gradually realize that girls are much better roommates, as much as I don’t like to admit this), one from the New England area and his friend from the Netherlands. They were smelly and their clothes were smelly and they made the room stink for two days. OK, we can deal with that, they were nice guys nevertheless. The third pair, that took the Holland Guy’s beds, was disgusting. They were from some Scandinavian country, apparently one with no standard of living. They smelled too, but they offered so much more. They stole our key card (by an obvious accident- but still), they had dirty…stuff…scattered everywhere. The final straw was when we woke up to check out; one of them had vomited in the only sink. Whatever, lets hit the streets of Prague...
Prague was awesome. We had entered the part of Europe where everyone was starting to look like a supermodel (the more east/south we go the more this seems to be true). We left our hostel to find a good place to eat. We decide to stop at a pizza place with some nice tables by the road. Incredible pizza. They are cheap and described as 10 inches across. I decide 10 inches is (measures with hands) this big so we each order our own pizza. Turns out I am not a reliable measurer without a ruler. We shortly receive two enormous pizzas. Mine has four miraculously melty cheeses and is eight times delicious. Ronak’s vegetarian pizza is stacked with brick oven veggies and smoldering cheese and would make anyone happy to be vegetarian. So far, we like this city. On our way back to the hostel to relax and sleep we spot a place to eat for breakfast the next morning. Enter Bohemian Bagel: a simply, classy “bagel” shop that serves genuine American breakfast. Ronak devoured a thick, heterogeneous mixture (omelet) of fluffy egg and chopped veggies. My eyes, and stomach, were full with a fat, phat pancake curled around two sausage links with butter and warm syrup that comes standard with café and a bubbly mimosa. At this point we are ready to move here, and we haven’t even been to the real city yet.
As I inferred earlier, the architecture is just amazing. Prague, uniquely, had only one building destroyed during WWII. This makes it one of the very few cities that did not have to rebuild in Europe. In other words, everything is OLD. A 200-year-old building is not impressive in this city. The “old town square” is filled with tourists and restaurant promoters. Ronak and I decided to hop onto a free tour (the same company we used in Berlin) and soon discovered our crazy guide. He spoke at least 4 languages. He was from Los Angeles and English is his native language, we heard him speak Czech (he has lived in Prague for eight years and is a fluent speaker). We heard him speaking fluent Spanish to some Chilean kids. Some Slovakian people walked by and he spoke with them for a couple of minutes (he said his college roommates were Slovakian and so he just picked it up). While we impressed with this, Isaac, our guide, was funny, offensive, loud, absent-minded, oh, and did I mention offensive? Luckily, he offended everybody equally, so it was hard to get mad. The city has a very rich history and it really, really cool. I, however, do not remember most of the history so you’ll have to check Wikipedia for that because this blog is already too long. So lets skip to the nightlife.
Ronak and I join up on a bar crawl. We did it in Berlin and it seems like the best way to get an idea of the nightlife as it visits 4 bars and one club. As we are waiting for the ‘crawl’ to start we bump into three American guys and we cling with them because the other people are sketchy and we are mildly xenophobic. It seems that we had met three people more nerdy than ourselves. One guy was about to begin a computer job with Amazon.com. Another was a music major and made awkward jokes. The last was the least nerdy (including Ronak and I in the group) he was an econ major and his name was Jim. We start the parade to the bars with our group of 5 guys and we meet lots of different people. It turns out, the nerdy guys like to party. The three guys we meet start pounding beers and are quite the socialites. The night starts to fly by and before we know we are in quite a cool club with four large underground rooms. There are flashing lights but you can’t see anything. The music is blaring but you can’t hear anything. We find our American friends and regroup. These three nerdy guys have started quite the party. They met a group of Brazilian girls and have managed to keep them interested. Ronak and I are thoroughly impressed with this. The Brazilians are pretty nice and they have a very hilarious French friend who helps Ronak and I with our Paris trip a little. By next bar we can tell our makeshift group of Americans and Brazilians is starting to fall apart. The girls seemed bored and annoyed and suddenly we realize why they were hanging out with our nerdy friends in the first place. In a dark corner, on a couch, I spot Jim (the less nerdy one). He is with one of the Brazilian girls, for lack of a more accurate description, necking with a side of tonsil hockey. Very amused I grab the musician’s shoulder and shout, “Hey! Check out Jim with that Brazilian, I can’t believe it.” The Musician-nerd loses his smile and says with a hint of emotional pain, “yeah, JIM is good with the ladies.”

→Budpeschhht

"Don't even think about trying to steal"

Berlin would have been a fantastic city. If we spoke German. The Germans, it turns out, are not terribly hospitable. Despite this little bump Ronak and I had a great time in Berlin. We took a free walking tour with a company called New Berlin (whatever country this tour is in assumes the country's name...New Prague, New Paris, etc). Our tour guide was fun and energetic and we got a really nice tour of Berlin. Because I do not know what to do with html, I am just going to set up photobucket or webshots for the pictures because I have a lot of photos. More on that later.

Ronak and I saw the Gates of Brandenburg where, totaling over 10 million, the allied and soviet troops finally converged on Berlin and the last shots were fired for WWII. We saw a very neat Jewish memorial park (best way to describe it I guess, I'll post a picture).
(Ignore that girl in the picture, she is not part of the memorial)
We saw the apartment of the man who said the words that effectively brought the Berlin wall down.

One of the cooler stories was of how eventually, the German police protecting the checkpoints in the Berlin wall were surrounded by thousands of Germans shouting "We are the people!" Earlier in the soviet rule of East Germany, the German police would have fired shots into the crowd of their own people. But as time wore on, the police were feeling the same oppression as the people. As the multitude of chanting Germans finally broke through the checkpoint, the German police just stood by and watched, a symbol that they cared more for their people and country than the government who ran it.

The food in Berlin was pretty good. Specifically, a sausage called Curry Wurst. They take this "wurst" and cover in curry ketchup. Then they pile crispy french fries on top, more ketchup, curry and seasoning. MMmmmm. And just so you guys know, the streets of Berlin are flooded with Dunkin' Donuts, KFC, McDonalds, Ben and Jerry's, just to name a few. Breakfast however, is not quite the same. Outside of the U.S., no one can really get breakfast right. As we sat in our hostel dining room, we were presented with a 6 Euro buffet. They had bread, meat, hard boiled egg and butter. All cold. Ronak and I preceded to make out breakfast sandwiches. Mine, cheese, salami (I think?), egg whites from the hard boiled egg. It's not that it tasted bad, it was fine, it's just that no one makes a hot breakfast like the south eastern United States. Really Ronak gave a better example of this. As my Indian friend symmetrically prepares two sandwiches (ingredients laid out like synchronized swimmers) he decides that this will taste best: bread with butter, slather ketchup over the buttered part. On the other piece of bread, put cheese and salt and pepper. Ronak is ready to mangle his hard-boiled egg and take the shell off so he prepares a napkin for the mess. As he strikes the egg on the table a very intimidating German man walks up behind him, leans over and says in the meanest sounding German accent your brain can muster, "Don't even THINK about trying to steal." He then picked up a flyer that was 10 inches from Ronak's face and moved it, dramatically, two inches closer. We are not sure if he was telling us not to take the abomination on Ronak's plate or maybe there was something more valuable around us that we did not see. It must have been the ketchuped abomination, however, because as Ronak took his last bite, the German soup nazi (is that not an appropriate Seinfeld reference because he is German? If not, I apologize) left the dining room. The room was still full of about 50 people besides us.

Breakfast Nazi behind us, we toured a concentration camp, but one that seems to have more history under soviet control (political prisoners, german prisoners) after WWII so it was not exactly what we were expecting but obviously still had an imposing history of suffering and oppression. I cannot spell the name of the camp, spoken it sounds like Sauchsenhauser.

Hearing again and again that Berlin is THE PLACE to party, we joined a pub/bar/club group tour. This consisted mainly of 40 our-age-youth being cattle herded around Berlin's bar area. The bars were pretty cool. The first place we went was, on the outside, a graffiti-covered alleyway. Once we mustered enough courage to walk all the way through the alley we were rewarded with an awesome, outdoor, Bahama style bar. Beach sand, with palm trees and very hip decor. Bathtubs with a side cutout to be a couch, car axels with the tires on them as benches. Creepy but unique metal sculptures that would breathe fire adorned the roofs of their respective bars. We met up with a group of 5 people we had made friends with earlier that day at the tour. Four Americans and one canadian. We traveled to some other bars, avoided free jeagermeister shots (I would expect the first time 20-somethings refused free alcohol at their bars). The final club we ended up at was cool, nothing too impressive though. It was large with several rooms boasting different sytles of music. One part playing American alternative and rock, the middle- and largest section- playing electronic and the other parts I could not discern. What did stick out about this club was the bass. It wasn't even loud, I could speak without full out yelling. But the bass I could feel travel through the back of my neck and forcing my adam's apple into matching its frequency. Incredible bass, like I've never felt.

And that, in a nutshell, was our trip to Berlin. We are now, after a five hour train ride in Prague. So far, outstanding pizza, more to see today after a good nights sleep.

Stay Classy,

Ricky and Ronak

Plenty of Time!

So our plane to Cincinnati, Ohio was delayed. Then delayed a little more. Ronak and I were worried that we may miss our connecting flight to Frankfurt but our flight attendant disagreed. Mr. Flight Attendant insisted that we would have plenty of time. "Plenty!" he said. As predicted, it was the opposite of plenty, it was literally negative time. Ronak and I sprinted through the airport without regard for elder or disabled. We made it, huffing and puffing, but we made it. Our flight was good and we landed in Frankfurt very tired and decided, for lack of a good hostel, to head straight to Berlin. With both of our cloudy brains and the help of a lot of different, random people we made it on to the train to Berlin and we were in the wall-less city by 5. We explored a little, found a good hostel and are definitely ready for bed tonight.

We are in a dorm with 14 other people (I know you parents will love that) but we've chatted with several of them and they have all seemed nice.

Berlin so far has been good. The "fashion" has really stood out to us...mostly as very odd. People seem to be able to get away with whatever they want. Ronak and I are wearing dresses tomorrow to test this theory. Just kidding. The city is beautiful and seems very efficient aka German. Every other car is a Mercedes or BMW or Audi and we are enjoying this :). We only explored for a few hours but there will be more to come as we go on some tours tomorrow and the next day.

UPDATED ITINERARY

Berlin

Prague

Budpest

Venice

Florence

Rome

Pisa (day)

Zurich

Paris

Amsterdam

Frankfurt --> home

Almost ready to go and a test run

So this is my first blog. Ever. Tomorrow also starts my first trip to Europe. Ever. As a little background for everyone, my good friend Ronak (Roe-nack) and I are taking a big trip before we are stuck for the rest of our lives in school and all the other little bonuses life holds that tend keep a person in a day job. Ronak is starting dental school at UF in late August and I am applying for medical school so this was probably one of our last chances to spend three weeks around the world before retirement in a few years (OK, a few may be 40 years... whatever). I should have a lot to write about and certainly I am very excited. I am also very tired from studying and cleaning and being unprepared for this trip (until just a few hours ago when Ronak and I finished shopping). Anyways, this is really just a test blog to introduce it and to see how it works.

Here is a list of the cities we are visiting in order

Frankfurt (short time)

Berlin (longer)

Prague (longer)

Budapest (shortish)

Venice (short)

Florence (really short)

Rome (longer)

Milan (short)

Paris (shortish)

Amsterdam (longer)

Frankfurt to fly back!

Thanks for checking out my first blog, check back for stories and pictures soon!