Pictures from Prague

I know I haven't posted anything from Prague yet and while I would like to go into great detail about all of the wonderful things I've been doing, it's late so you're just going to get a photo dump. The pictures are the best part anyway, right?

Lovely Views from the Castle Hill

Old Town Square

More great views

AMAZING french food at the Prague Food Festival. That strawberry sorbet and macaroon were the bomb dot com

Prague has been filled with lots of tasty Czech beer

Wenceslas Square at night. Yes, the Wenceslas from the Christmas song.

Delicious Trdelnik. So good!

Yet another view. Dang, this city is pretty

I really liked this graffiti on the Lennon Wall. My parent's didn't give me this trip, but they did light my passion for travel and learning and growing. Can't thank them enough for that priceless gift.

Old Town Square

The Astronomical Clock

Oh yeah...my dad came into town for part of my trip. We've been exploring Prague together in my free time. Yesterday we stumbled across a random car show with some pretty cool antique cars. Not sure why my face is so weird here. Oh well!

Incredible stained glass in St. Vitus Cathedral.

St. Vitus

Books of the lords of the land at Prague Castle

Guard Tommy

Medieval torture chamber. Yikes!

We toured the Jewish quarter today. Pretty incredible and heartbreaking. I'll tell y'all more about it later. This is the old Jewish Cemetery

Took a day trip to Franz Ferdinand's Castle, Konopiste, today. We couldn't take any pictures inside, but it was a pretty cool place. More on that later.

the last few days

Tomorrow morning I say goodbye to lovely Budapest and hello to Prague. I'm super jazzed about Prague because I've heard nothing but amazing things about the city, but first I wanted to share a few photo from the past few days.

I visited the Hungarian Parliament. It is one of the most incredible building I've ever been in.

Just look at this stained glass. Amazing! It was everywhere too! 

  A little blurry, but you get the point

 The tour took us to the grand staircase, the former house of lords lobby, the grand dome and the session hall. They didn't let us take pictures in the grand dome because the holy crown of Hungary is kept in there, but it was really something special. You should look it up! The picture below is from the session hall. Pretty spectacular! 

 

Budapest is also known for its coffee houses. There are 5 or 6 historic houses and a few of us ventured out to the oldest and most famous one, Gerbeaud. This is a beautiful macaroon tower. I bought a poppy seed blueberry mac to go. Yummy!  

 The lovely interior. I was a little bit obsessed with this ceiling. Love the green!

 My insanely rich and delicious chocolate cake!

 In between all of this eating and sightseeing, we did go on a few more company visits. One was to Raba- a Hungarian axle manufacturer. Raba used to make cars and was very famous for this super bus. I thought it was precious! Now they only make gigantic axles mostly for military and farming equipment. One of their biggest customers is John Deere and another is a US government contractor who makes tanks.

 Our next stop was to Zwack, the makers of a very famous Hungarian liquor, Unicum. The company is more than 200 years old and had a fascinating history that included interesting relationships with british and Austrian royalty, the facility being boomed, the owner's family being sent to concentration camps, another owner escaping Soviet occupation by hiding in a barrel with the secret recipe in his pocket. Crazy stuff. The liquor tasted like it could kill you, but it was a very interesting visit!

The have the world's largest collection of minis...

Their oldest barrel. Most of the barrels were destroyed by the soviets, but this one was so large, they couldn't move it. It was massive!

   Tonight we look at river cruise along the Danube at sunset. It was fun seeing all of my favorite building lit up at night.

Goodbye Budapest, it's been real! 

Budapest free day

Today was our first free day in Budapest. I took the opportunity to visit the zoo, do a little shopping at the market, and tour the royal palace.

The Budapest Zoo was pretty dang cool! They let you pet a lot of the animals and some of them are just roaming around the compounds. It's also right in the middle of the city but was full of such beautiful vegetation that it feels like you're out in the country. I was pleasantly surprised with the variety of animals and quality of the facilities- even if I did almost get attached by an ostrich (they don't play around).

The first critter we encounter was a very happy Iguana. Look at that smile!

 I'm not sure what kind of bird this is (all of the signs were in Hungarian) but it is native to Australia and knows how to pull off an awesome hairpiece. 

 These bears were very snoozy (and massive).

 These monkeys were eating orange and it was the cutest thing. It always amazes me how human their mannerisms are. I can definitely see all of the DNA we share.

 A sample of the gorgeous landscaping

 We watched these giraffes for about 30 minutes. We were feeding them apples and they were absolutely precious. I'm going to try to add a video I took of them eating. It was hilarious.

 Baby Elephants are the best!

 The zoo is right by Heroes' Square, which is one of the major squares in Budapest. This monument is called the Millennium Monument and was built in 1896 to celebrate Hungary's 1000th year. No wonder this country has so much amazing history. 1000 years is a long time! 

After the zoo, we went back to the market to pick up a few souvenirs and finally get the langos I'd been dreaming about. Notice the bite taken out of it. I couldn't wait to dig in! Langos is a traditional Hungarian dish. It's a large piece of fried dough traditionally topped with sour cream and cheese (as you see here). You can also get ham, onions, olive, tomatoes, etc. or sweet ones topped with nutella and fruit. Yum!

After a quick stop a the hotel, we headed over the the Buda side and took a ride on the funicular up the hill to the royal palace, also known as Buda Castle. Here is a shot of the Chain Bridge (the oldest bridge connecting Buda and Pest) and St. Stephens Basilica, which you can see in the background. 

 We saw the changing of the guard ceremony. Very cool.

 Look! Proof that I actually am on this trip and not just stealing these photos from Google image.

 This is where I'll be heading tomorrow!

This is a view of the palace from the chain bridge. Such an enormous palace and so beautiful.  (I have a better picture somewhere, but can't find it and I'm sleepy so I'm not looking too hard)

These are the ruins of the original palace dating back to the early 13th century.

 The courtyard behind the palace.

 A ridiculous fountain with a hunting theme. That's a dead deer on the top and hunting dogs on the bottom there.

They didn't let me take any pictures of the inside of the palace, but it now houses a fine art museum and the Museum of Hungarian History.

It was a fun, but exhausting day so I'm off to sleep! On tomorrow's agenda: visiting Parliament, St. Stephens, and maybe one of the Turkish bath houses.  Later Gators!

A Taste of Budapest

Howdy folks! Today was the first full day of fun on our trip. For those of you who don't know, I am chaperoning a group of undergrads who are studying strategic management and international business. Throughout the trip we will be going on several company visits and economic lectures to learn about the economy of central Europe and the way businesses are structured and run round these parts.

We had our first company visit today at MOL, a Hungarian oil company. It is a very successful and pretty cool business even though oil seems pretty straight forward. They have exploration and production operations in some pretty unstable countries (Angola, Iraq, Syria) so it was interesting to hear about their relationships with those government and the risk/reward calculations they have to make. They are also researching heavily in second generation bio fuels and other alternative energy sources. Neat stuff.

Enough learning! Let's get to the pretty pictures. After our company visit and a lecture from a government agency on Hungarian investments (Also super interesting if you're into that sort of thing, but I'm guessing most of you are not), we took a walking tour of the city. It starting raining about halfway through so I only have pictures from the first half, but I plan on revisiting some of the places tomorrow or Sunday whenever the rain stops. 

Buda and Pest were two different cities for a long time and they were united together into a single city 1873. Buda is on the west-bank of the Danube and Pest is on the east and the two cities are joined by several bridges. All of the bridges are very different in looks and each was built during a different era in Budapest's history. This is the Liberty Bridge. It was built in 1896 and is named for its proximity to the Soviet liberation monument (another story for another time).

Next stop was the Budapest Market. This was one of my favorite places the first time I visited Budapest. It's enormous and full of fresh spices, cheese, meats, and beautiful leather and linen goods. They also sell one of my favorite foods here, lango. It wasn't meal time when we stopped by but I plan on eating a lango tomorrow and will share pics then.

 

After the market we crossed the bridge and headed into to Buda, up to the Fisherman's Bastion for some amazing views of the city.

Up on the hill we also went into Matthias Church. It's an incredibly beautiful and unique catholic church. The wall paintings in the interior perfectly capture the Ottoman, Russian, and Austrian influences prevalent throughout the city of Hungary. So cool!

We ended the day with gigantic calzones from an incredible Italian restaurant by the hotel and beautiful rose shaped gelato from Gelarto Rosa

It's always a good day when there is gelato involved :)

Summer travels

Okie dokie artichokies! As most of you know, I'll be traveling through Europe for the next few weeks. I'm going to attempt to blog during the trip to keep you guys updated, share photos, funny stories, etc.

We'll see how well it goes. I'm going to try super hard, but right now I'm tired from a full day of travel and will be taking a pre dinner nap in my super chic hotel room in Budapest. Pictures coming soon!

Lots of love,
A

Cultures and Traditions

Two weeks ago my department welcomed a visiting PhD student from Belgium to come study with us for the next 5 months. It’s been a lot of fun getting to know Laurence and I’ve already had the opportunity to help introduce her to two very American traditions: football and pumpkin carving*.

I have always love spending time with people from other countries and cultures, which is part of the reason why I love traveling so much. It makes me happy to know that there is this big world out there and that we’re all pretty special and unique. I love witnessing how people can live such different lives but how there are still some things that are common to the entire human race that bind us all together. Okay. I’m getting a little too kumbayah here so I’ll move on!     

Clay and I took Laurence to the Auburn vs. FAU game last weekend and it was super fun watching her enjoy all of the pregame festivities, sharing Auburn’s traditions with her, and trying to explain to her the rules of American football. Some of our traditions are so silly and ridiculous when you stop and think about them or try to explain them to an outsider. Take Boda Getta for instance. It’s a cheer full of made up words. I have no idea how it started or why we always yell it at the tops of our lungs but I also don’t really care. It’s a fun cheer that is uniquely Auburn and it plays an important part in bringing us all together to show support for our team.  

Side note: football is such a complicated sport and incredibly difficult to explain to someone without completely overwhelming them. No wonder the Europeans aren’t into it. But hey, I’ll still take football over soccer any day!

Anyway, last night (yes, November 1^st) some of my fellow doc students and I introduced Laurence to pumpkin carving. Better late than never, right? After a few scary encounters with the carving knife (we had to teach her that you always point the blade AWAY from your hand), we had a great time! I had bought my pumpkin several weeks ago when the pickin’s were still good, but the rest of the group had to settle for the leftover reject pumpkins and gourds.  I love a good, weird pumpkin though and thought everyone’s turned out great!

Yay, pumpkins! I think my pumpkin could eat those other shorties.

The artists! Please excuse me for looking like a hot mess. It was a long day.

Yep. I'm the weirdo who didn't have a pumpkin for the whole month of October but finally lit one up on November 2

Hopefully I’ll have some more opportunities to show Laurence some of the great things America has to offer. And don’t worry; we’ve already introduced her to Chick-Fil-A, which is one of the most awesome things American has to offer. She loved it!  

*I know pumpkin carving didn't originate in America but we're definitely the ones who carry on the tradition the strongest. Besides, Laurence had never herd of such a thing so it was still new to her.