Carnival Week!!!

Well, last week was a fun yet busy week. I'll try to keep it short since I have a week to cover. Brace yourself. It was Carnival week! In other words, it was my spring break which meant a bit of traveling, costumes, and a little craziness here and there. Carnival is a celebration that is held in different cities throughout Europe. It's similar to Mardi Gras in the states in which it's leading up to the Lenten season, but Carnival is a little intense, to say the least.
Everyone dressed up crazy all day everyday beginning Friday until Tuesday. It was an interesting experience, and I really liked getting to dress up and see everyone's crazy costumes. On Sunday, we tried to catch the parade, but it turns out we had just missed it by the time we got to the square. It's okay though, we got to see everyone's cool costumes and dress up ourselves! Even at twelve in the morning, people were drinking at the parade. It was pretty funny. So we stayed in Maastricht to celebrate Carnival since they make a huge party out of it, but then on Monday noght we headed to Prague. I got my first night train experience: it wasn't the best. I literally got no sleep, so when I arrived in Prague, I was exhausted.

The World Famous Astronomical Clock

 

However, my tiredness did not deter me from enjoying the splendor of Prague! I am going to start off saying I loved it! It was absolutely gorgeous. We did another one of the free, Sandman tours which I always love because they really do give you so much information about the city and give you a feel for its history. The best part about it? It was beautiful weather. It brightened my spirits immediately, and the sun was shinning all day. Afterwards, some of us took a relaxing boat ride down the Vltava River. It was absolutely gorgeous. I loved walking around the city, plus the food was super cheap which was great to not be spending a ton on food for once! It is such an old city, and it's cool to think I was walking around the city that was once the center of the Holy Roman Empire.

The next day we decided to take a tour of the Praha (Prague) Castle. I really enjoyed it. When we reached the top, we had a gorgeous view of the city. It was also another beautiful day making all our walking around the castle great. When I say castle, I mean a small little village. The King evidently went to church a lot back in the day because we went to about 5 different churches just within the castle itself. Despite being a little worn out, it was great fun! Then a few of us decided to go to church since it was Ash Wednesday, so we went to The Church of Our Lady which is a huge church that we weren't allowed to go in previously. I couldn't take pictures of the inside, but it was really neat to attend a mass in Czech (even though I had no idea what they were saying). The down side? The church was absolutely freezing. I forgot that European churches don't heat their old cathedrals, so it had ended up being colder inside than it was outside. I wasn't adequately dressed. It was really neat. Afterwards, we did a little bit of shopping in the market where they had a bunch of shop and grabbed a bite to eat.

Now, the next day we left Prague and headed to Vienna. At first, I was a little miserable. I was sick and when we arrived it was raining and quite honestly, all I wanted to do was sleep. I resisted the urge, and I'm glad I did. First we went to the palace of the Hapsburg Palace which was huge to walk around. It made me think a little bit of Potsdam and Versailles combined. Following, most of us decided to go to the city center which was really fun. We found a place to eat and walked around the city. It has this really neat architecture and nearly all the buildings in the City Center are white. The downtown area was really beautiful. We had packed a lot of walking and sight seeing in one day, so we were all pretty exhausted so we went back to our hostel to relax for a bit. We were staying at The Wombat which had recently opened a few weeks before. It was lovely. Everything still smelled new. (We had stayed at The Wombat in Berlin which had been really nice). At night, we all hung out and then some people had to leave early the next morning since our group had split up a bit.
The rest of the weekend was something like sleep, a little bit of homework, more sleep and yes, sleep, as I tried to recuperate from being sick. (I know, it was so unfortunate to be sick in Prague-I loved it so much!) I'm feeling slightly better, but I think some naps may be in order this week as I try to get through the plethora of papers I'm going to have to write. This weekend? Paris! And I get to see my friend, Cara, so I'm super excited!!! :)

Preggo?!

Fun Fact of the trip: Meaning of the word "Preggo".  In Italian, so nothing like short for pregnant or something silly. Anyway, our entire time in Milan people kept saying "Preggo!" We kept speculating different possible definitions. At first we were convinced it was "You're welcome" or then "How are you?" or maybe even "Whoever's next" (I deduced that one from the grocery store). Anyway, it seemed like with anything, they would just throw in the word Preggo. Maybe it meant "um" or "like". In all honesty, I was so lost to the actual meaning by the end of the weekend, that I was totally surprised when I came back and looked up the word. It means "Please". Well, that makes a lot more sense (most of the time). Either way, people in Milan used the words way too much for it just to mean "Please" so we made a fun guessing game out of that word. I was amused anyway. 

But I digress. As you might have detained, I returned this week from Milan, Italy. Last Friday, we flew (and I slept) to Milan where the group of us 5 attempted to find our hostel and figure out the Milanese transportation system. It was more difficult than it sounds. Eventually, however, we made it there, and I'm sure you can imagine the first thing we did: we ate pizza. Yum. After that, full of good food and wine we did what any normal people would do...nap. We had a really nice hostel though, so it was okay. We were just making use out of it! It even had a balcony. It was super nice!

So after a quick nap (in my defense, I was running on very little sleep), we headed to the city center to see the City Center and the Duomo. It was very cool. There was a huge mall that had all of the designer brands in it such as Gucci and Prada. It was also the prettiest mall I'd ever seen which I guess I should have expected coming from the fashion capital of Italy. We also ended up seeing the end of a fashion show which we thought was cool before hitting up some gelato and doing a little more of shopping before dinner. Let me tell you now-I'm in love with gelato. I'm convinced that if I lived in Italy, I would be diabetic for that sole reason: eating gelato with every single meal. Absolutely delicious. 

Now, on top of food and shopping, we found out the next day that there was another fashion show that we were allowed to sit in on. Why? It was fashion week! It was so cool because afterwards we just walked around seeing all sorts of people that were in, watching models make their ways from one place to the next. It was pretty good timing to spontaneously to go to Milan. We had gone to Milan because we did something called "blind booking" where you pay up front and then it takes you to a random place of their choosing-nerve racking, I assure you.  Anyway, I had more pizza this day too, but it was still very good, and then early Sunday  morning we made our way back to Maastricht. 

Additionally, Saturday we had a picnic on the steps of the Duomo which was wonderful (despite the vile pigeons surrounding us). It was great fun even though our plans to visit Pisa had fallen through. It was nice to have a more relaxing trip. Besides, it was sunny! You have no idea how wonderful the sun is when it’s been so rainy here. It was absolutely beautiful. All and all, a fantastic last evening in Milan.  

Now, this next coming post will be all about Carnival which I'm excited for since it's supposed to be all sorts of levels of craziness. Apparently it's similar to Mardi Gras + some. I can only imagine. I promise to take a lot of pictures (since I've been stealing photos due to some camera issues). No worries and I'm also excited for a week off of school! This week I guess I should be buckling and down to get it all out of the way. Besides that, Milan was fabulous, and I'm anxiously awaiting for Carnival. On that note, until next time! :)