MAR-GOES

Another week! Wow. Time is flying it’s crazy. I had a nice relaxing weekend and week this past week. Greg and I thought we would have to makeup some classes on Friday, so we scheduled our travel plans just for Saturday to Sunday. Little did we know, all of our teachers cancelled Friday’s classes so we had a whole day to explore Prague. We decided to visit the Prague Zoo. I have been talking about the Prague Zoo for the past 2 weeks so needless to say I was excited. The zoo is on the outskirts of town but it was easy to get through with public transportation. Every time we successfully get somewhere by public transportation I give myself a little pat on the back. Anyways, I had my heart set on getting a season pass since it was a good deal for students and I knew I was going to want to go back. At the ticket window I asked for a season pass.. the woman, confused, looks at me  and goes “like for the whole year?”. Heck yeah! I live here woman, disregard my blinding American accent. (The same thing happened at Sephora yesterday when I tried to get a loyalty card. She looked at me and goes “oh sorry you need an address here to sign up”. ‘Scuse me, I have one of those thanks!) Ok, ok, I need to settle down, I only have 2 more months here, I’m no Czech native. Anyways, I got the season pass, so now I’m #official at the zoo. Let me tell you, the Prague Zoo is AWESOME. It’s 4 times the size of the Philadelphia Zoo, which is big already, and has some awesome animals. I was most excited to see elephants since they aren’t at Philly Zoo. They have a baby elephant, Rudi, that was born this past fall. He was PRECIOUS. It took us about 4 hours to see everything. I did laugh seeing squirrels and deer in their own exhibit. I paid 400 Kč to see what I can’t get away from at PSU and what hangs out in my backyard at home. I do have to say that the Prague Zoo is a very well kept zoo. I also noticed that almost all of the animals seemed to have enough space, they seemed to be happy. I know it sounds a little bit ridiculous because they are in a zoo and not in the wild, but I stand by that they seemed ok there. (Also I did some researching, and the Prague Zoo acts more as a rehabilitation center for many of the animals.) Here are some pictures from the zoo trip, we were given an extremely beautiful day.

By the way, Friday was my half-birthday and I received no warm wishes… I’m disappointed in all of you.

On Saturday morning we woke up at 4 am to catch a 6:00 flight to Berlin! Thank God Berlin was only a 40 minute flight because traveling is exhausting. Having only 2 hours of sleep we were praying for a miracle that our hotel would let us check in at 8 am. I know that’s a crazy wish, I knew it was going to be a “I’m sorry check in is at 3 pm”. Miracles happen people. One happened at the Scandic Berlin Postdamer Platz Hotel. The man at the desk got us in a room at 8:00 am. Bless his soul. At first though, he gave us a room number. Excited, we went up only to find a family still in the room!! Horrifying. We quick ran back down stairs with a feeling of despair that that was the one room we could get at that time. The same man apologized and gave us another room. Hesitantly, we swiped the card and walked in. Nothing but us and a clean room. We made the executive decision to take a quick nap so we would have the whole day with energy. We headed out on the town around 11. Berlin was very different from Prague. That’s my favorite thing about Europe, every place is so different. Berlin does, however, have a kind of depressing feeling looming over it. Berlin is the home to so so much sad and unfortunate history. When Greg and I stepped out of our hotel we saw a piece of concrete coming out of the ground. We looked at it and joked, “Ha look there’s the Berlin Wall right there, that’s all we can leave now”. We walked closer to the concrete and saw that is was an actual piece of the wall. It was a cool moment to see where the actual wall once was separating West and East Germany. It’s fascinating because although the wall obviously isn’t up anymore, where it was, there is a line that runs across the ground all the way through the city. As you walk with the line, you come across pieces of the wall here and there. It’s cool to see history that up close but it’s also a painful reminder of a rough time. While walking through Berlin, we came across a powerful monument called, “The Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe”. We took a minute to pay our respects to the victims and remembered the tragic, horrible, events that took place in this area of Europe. You could live in Berlin for a year and not even get to half of the museums they seemed to have. A lot of heavy and tough stuff, but all very important. Unfortunately, we only had abut 24 hours there. All sadness aside, Berlin is a very lively city with live music and people going about their days happily. We stumbled upon a pop-up market. I bought my mom and I matching handmade bracelets. Because I was immediately interested in the separation of East and West Germany, we went to a museum about life in East Germany. Again, I find it unbelievable that this stuff happened so recently, like the Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. We went to a really nice park afterwards and sat in the 60 degree sun with some beers at an open beer garden. It was a very lovely afternoon. We ate a nice dinner and then went to find a rooftop bar we had heard about. We get to the bar which was pretty hidden and walk up to the door. The door has a sign on it that read, “the door will be opened for you”. We see the bounced looking at us through the window and… the door was never opened for us. #sad. Apparently we don’t have good style or are unattractive. I’m guessing it was our sneakers. We decided to go back and have drinks at the hotel bar.

We woke up Sunday morning, went to brunch, and found another museum to go to. It was a film and movie museum with a cool exhibit on the creation of effects in sci-fi movies. We boarded our flight that afternoon and headed home. Well.. temporary home.

It was a really good weekend that made me think a lot about the past and how we must all learn from what has happened, not only in Germany and Europe, but around the world. I refuse to let anything similar in that nature to ever go on again. Blah blah I’m not here to get all political and sappy but this is #serious stuff. I hope you take a minute and reflect on this, I will be happy if you do. So do it.

Another school week passed and I’m really in the swing of things now. Prague is getting sunnier and I’m getting happier. This was a good week because it is Penn State’s spring break and some familiar faces came to Prague. Greg and I’s friends, Chris and Pete had their girlfriends here, so it was nice to have some girls/couples around. We went out to dinner with Chris and Lauren last night and it was so delicious. We went to a super fancy restaurant that overlooked Old Town Prague and treated ourselves to some wine, lobster bisque, and steak. (Greg got roasted duck. I was hesitant to try it and it was pretty good, not my favorite though.) IF YOU THINK YOU’VE HAD GOOD LOBSTER BISQUE.. TRY AGAIN. I swear this lobster bisque was sent to me from heaven. The lobster melted in my mouth and the broth was perfectly seasoned. The steak was also amazing. We went out for drinks and went to a club to end out the night.

Well that’s all for now, I hope you all had good weeks/spring breaks. Have a good weekend too, and if you’re wondering, “hmm, where will Margo be this weekend?” The answer is: Geneva, Switzerland and Chamonix, France. I’m sure that’ll be a fun blog to write about.

Ta-ta for now.

xx