An Israeli Canada Day

Hi everyone,

So I actually wrote a similar blog entry yesterday, but of course it got deleted with no traces left. So here we go again...

I just arrived in Israel 2 or so hours ago, and am now sitting in my room at the Reisfeld Residence which belongs to the Hebrew University of Agriculture, and is across the street from the Weizmann Institute which is where I will be living.

But I really meant this post to be more of a reflection on Berlin. I think its crazy that I only spent 7 weeks in Berlin, but I will miss it so very much. It is a fantastic city, made for living. It is probably the least German city in Germany, but I think its by far the most exciting one. Each neighbourhood has its own personality, and there is something for everyone no matter where you go. But of course these past 7 weeks would not have been nearly as exciting if not for the other fantastic RISE interns which have made my stay in Berlin way too much fun. I think the lifestyle was amazing. The great thing about an internship (unlike a semester abroad, for example) is that you don’t have any homework, and so we went out as much as we liked and as much as we could. Beer in Germany is cheap and good, and this made life that much better. I was incredibly sad to leave and wish that I have done a 10 or 12 week internship instead...but I guess that’s life.

I was however, excited to arrive in Israel. As always, it felt like coming back home. Being able to understand the signs (unlike the German ones) was something new, and hearing all the Hebrew talk around me made me excited to be here. I got picked up from the airport by a family friend. He also gave me an Israeli phone, and when I got to my room here I could access the Wi-Fi right away. In a sense all of this was very different from my first few hours in Berlin when I was completely clueless to my surroundings. But the learning curve was steep. By the end I knew the names and order of many subway stations around where I lived...I also knew the names and personalities of many American universities, but that’s mainly due to the other wonderful interns who made that possible for me J

All in all, my time in Germany was incredible. Those 7 weeks had both some of the best and some of the most foreign moments I have ever experienced. But human beings are incredibly adaptive, and you adapt to everything that comes your way, especially when it is good.  A little off topic, I actually have an entire post about Prague and Amsterdam in the making, and its about 2 pages long so far, but not quite done yet...so I will post that when I can. I am also going to write a long post about my project in Berlin, describing what exactly we were studying and what we managed to accomplish. I’ll give myself 3 days to publish both of these...I know very ambitious when considering my previous track record.

I will also write something about my time in Rehovot so far once I get at least a little bit adjusted and start to unpack. REALLY not looking forward to unpacking considering I just finished packing less than 24 hours ago. Sigh.

Hope everyone back home is doing well. Please, please, please leave me comments, or email me, or send me facebook messages. They are all much appreciated J

Cheers!

Alina

Vienna part II, Prague, and missing trains

Hi everyone!
Let me just mention that the reason I am able to write this post at this time is due the ridiculous timeliness (not quite sure if this is a real word) of German trains. We were supposed to leave to Munich at 4:36am this morning, but due to our own poor time management skills (and a lot of bad luck) we managed to miss our Munich train by about 2 minutes. That being said, this might actually have been for the better because this means that I actually got to sleep tonight in my own bed (versus trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep , sitting up, on moving trains). Of course by the time I actually got home and fell asleep it was 7:15am, so I now have a severely shifted sleeping schedule. All the better for skyping with people from back home :) Anyway, I figured I would finish my story of last weekend, and also upload some more pictures. I know I am uploading them in a sort of strange order (Prague first, even though I haven't written about it yet) but I promise all the pictures will be up at some point soon (including ones from Dresden from 2 weeks ago...)

On the second day in Vienna we explored the old city centre.  We climbed 385 or so stairs up to the top of St. Stephen's cathedral and also went inside it to look at the church (I will make sure to label these pictures so you know which ones are from St. Stephen's. Climbing the stairs was an adventure in itself because the staircase was ridiculously narrow, went up in a spiral, and was the method by which you both climbed up and came back down. So we spent a lot of time being glued to the walls of this particular staircase. We then had really good Gelatto (of the calibre of Il Gelatiere back home- a place at Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton), and walked around some more in search of Motzart's house. There are lots of pictures of other beautiful churches and buildings we encountered on the way some of whose names I don't remember. We went into St. Peter's church, which was actually very different from St. Stephen's...a true experience of church variety (Quick German lesson- the word for church in German is Kirche, pronounced "kirsha"...I managed to mess up this pronunciation about 15 times since I learned this word. In fact the way I learned this word is probably the funniest- on my way to and from work, I bike past a large glass building with a huge sign that says "Scientology Kirche" on it...so I asked my somewhat German speaking friends and then confirmed my suspicion...and laughed at my pronunciation for half an hour :)) .

We finally ended up in the museum district. The museums themselves look like castles from the outside. We wandered around some more (the weather was amazing!) and finally ended up in what turned out to be my favourite thing in Vienna- the Freud museum. Located in his old apartment (where he lived for 47 years before fleeing to England in 1938 to avoid the Nazis). The best part about the visit to his apartment was that we managed to stumble on a lady giving a tour of it in English and so we tagged along. I was way too excited about being there, probably because I learned about Freud in so many different classes. I felt like my education hasn't completely gone to waste :)...I think that the pictures I will post will do much more justice telling his story than me. I do want to say how much I loved seeing the waiting room where his patients sat, the couch where he had his famous Wednesday night meetings, and some of his other possessions. There was even a room dedicated to the concept of Freud's couch in this museum. It had pictures of how far this couch concept has infiltrated (including Andy Warhol's work).

After this, we went to the market, which is ...well a market. It has lots of stands selling food (the funniest part is that most of them sell the same sort of food...not quite sure how they compete with each other). The best part was that we had lunch at this place called Tewa (means Nature in Hebrew), and after seeing the menu I got a feeling that the food was very Israeli. Sure enough, after asking, I got introduced to the owner and we talked a bit in Hebrew about Vienna...It was a lot of fun (I really miss speaking in Hebrew to people...). After the market it started raining quite a bit, and we somehow miraculously found a subway station, grabbed our backpacks from the hostel and left to Prague.

I think I will write a separate post about Prague because there is quite a bit to say...for now you can look at my second album of Prague pictures :)

Feel free to leave lots of comments!

Cheers :)
Alina

Vienna: The Beginning

Hi everyone,
It has definitely been a while! We had a 4 day weekend here in Germany, and so we went to Vienna and Prague for 4 days. I just got back late last night so I am still in the recovery phase. This post will be about Vienna, and I will write 1 or 2 more to finish off the story of Vienna and Prague.

We took the night train to Vienna. We did our best to sleep, but the seats did not recline (at all) which made this a little bit difficult...We got to Vienna nice and early on Thursday morning. After checking in to our Hostel (which by the way was amazing!) We went to a nearby Schloss! So Schloss is one of approximately 15 German words I have learned so far (10 of those are the numbers from 1 to 10 :)), it means...Castle!

Now a North American might think that this is single handedly the most useless word you can ever learn in German. However, in the last 3 weeks I have been to SO SO SO many of these Schlosses, that I am starting to think it is the most useful word I learned so far. This particular one was called Schönbrunn. Its a huge palace with any beautiful gardens, located in the south west corner of my map of the Vienna centre. We actually did a tour of its inside, and to be honest it was a little bit more impressive than Casa Loma. This specific castle was home to Franz Joseph, who I believe was a ruler in the early 19th century. His wife Elizabeth also lived there, and apparently she is famous under the name Sisi (There are movies about her under this name...). His mother (who also lived there during her reign) was named Maria Theresa, and she ruled the Kingdom of Austria before Franz Joseph. She was actually the mother of Marie Anoinette...and 15 other children. The interesting thing is that she would marry her children to the right people for political favours. And so Marie Antoinette ended up marrying into the French royal family. Anyway, we saw a bunch of nice rooms and the beautiful gardens. Pictures should be uploaded to facebook once I sort through them (there are far too many as you might expect...)

The other really curious thing about this palace is that it seems to be the place to jog. Almost everyone we saw could be grouped into 2 categories- tourist or jogger. It seemed like the place to be if you like to run. The same day we visited the Botanical gardens (plus a Schloss there...see pictures:)). We also walked around the Vienna centre for a while. One of the most impressive things was a World War II memorial erected by the Soviets (it was in Russian)...you will see pictures of that as well! All the buildings in the centre were beautiful. It will be hard to return to skyscrapers and rectangular buildings after this...

That night we went to the Opera. You can get standing room tickets for 3 euro, and you don't have to dress up super fancy which is a plus when you only brought one backpack of clothes. The opera itself was called Simon, and it was in Italian. The singing was beautiful, and we got really lucky in the sense that there were English subtitles on these small screens below where we stood. Yay! The storyline was still difficult to understand even with the direct translation. But the singing was great!

We finished the night with a ride on this ancient Ferris Wheel, in an amusement park. The amusement park is open 24/7, and unlike the CNE there is no admission fee to enter, you just pay for separate rides. This specific Ferris wheel is famous because it was built in the 19th century, and has been spinning ever since! You get quite a good view of Vienna from above...and that's when you realize that Vienna has very few sky scrapers. I think really the big (and perhaps only, in terms of aesthetics) benefit of sky scrapers is that they make the sky line look beautiful at night. So the ride on the wheel was fun, but not breathtaking like standing on the top of the Empire State building at night (New York has crazy sky scrapers AND ridiculous lights)...

We then went back to our hostel and practically passed out...walking around castles all day gets pretty tiring!
I will try to write about part 2 of Vienna tonight :) And will post pictures once I wade through them!

I also think I fixed the commenting. So comment away!

Alina