My apologies

Yeah, in that last post where I said I'd try to keep things a bit more regular... I lied.

Vefik, my trusty roommate, and I went off to Vienna a few weekends back. We stayed at the Wombat Hostel, which was excellent. In a lot of ways, it surpassed some hotels. There's just that whole "I'm sleeping next to a complete stranger" aspect that holds it back from that.

Our lovely hostel.

Vienna was quite lovely. We went to the St. Stephen's Cathedral, the Schonbrunn Palace, the Museum Quarter, the Bermuda Triangle (notorious bar area where people mysteriously get lost, which was insanely crowded) and the State Opera House (where we saw La Traviata in standing seats for 3 Euro).

St. Stephen's Cathedral

My gleeful "wish you were me" look from the Vienna State Opera

The food was excellent (wiener schnitzel is without parallel), and the wine was good.

After a month of Czech beer, Austrian wine was a refreshing change. The only real problem with Vienna was how expensive it is. They spend euros at the same amount that we spend dollars (like something that costs $3 would be priced at €3), but the euro's worth $1.3, which adds up after a while. That said, at least we knew what we were getting into. Also, sachertorte is the most delicious thing in the universe.



The other thing about Vienna that s
truck me as beautiful was just how friendly they were to tourists. While everything was written in German, even at the less touristy areas they would greet you in English, and usually only speak to you in English. While in Plzen and Prague we've seen this, Vefik and I hadn't seen it on this level. The service oriented environment was refreshing. The train trip was only about 5 hours, which seemed like a lot at the time, but then we went to Budapest.



Yes, after another week of classes, we ventured off to Budapest. Vefik and I went, joined by two of the other International Film students, Riccardo (born in Italy, spending most of his life in Germany), and Eirik (Norweigian by birth, but has lived in Copenhagen, Denmark for forever). We booked a hostel in Budapest (that's right, Hungary) for Friday and Saturday night. We spent Thursday in Prague for a cultural education kind of lesson, and with no class on Friday, we just took the midnight train to Prague. Having gotten up quite early to go to Prague in the morning, I was afraid that I wouldn't stay awake in time to catch the train. Somehow I managed, but I barely ate any dinner (I hate the actual transit part of travelling). We found decent seats on the train (all things considered), and made our way to Budapest, crossing through Slovakia for a short amount of time in the middle of the night.

We arrived early in the morning on Friday, around 8:30ish, and eventually navigated the transit system and found our way to the hostel. European cities seem to have excellent public transportation. Prague, Vienna, and Budapest all are simplified enough that you can buy a ticket for metros (subways) and trams and local buses all for one price. Vienna especially was so well put together that you didn't have to walk very far to get anywhere from a metro stop. Budapest was no different, and it has one of the oldest subway tracks in Europe (second only to the London Underground). But I digress.



Budapest is a beautiful city, but after spending a day in Prague, it's hard to really compare.
The city's divided into two sections (actually three, but they only call it two names), Buda and Pest (no joke, those were the names of two of the three cities that they combined to form Budapest). They're separated by the Danube River, which is lovely.

We spent most of first day and evening wandering around. The food was good, and the architecture was quite spectacular, but we were insanely tired.



On Saturday, we went to an opera during the day (Elektra, which was mediocre), and then wandered around the city again. We witnessed a political demonstration by a right-wing radical group that involved a lot of marching and flag waving. It was quite intimidating. We found a nice little park which for some reason had a statue of George Washington. We spent all of our time on the first two days in Pest, which was where our hostel was. On Sunday, we finally went to Buda, which was wonderful.














We had some Hungarian pancakes (interesting and affordable) at a restaurant where we met a few Americans who were just as confused as we were. We made our way to the castle, finding some adorable kittens on the way. The architecture was quite spectacular. We all came to the conclusion that we should have come to this part of Budapest first. We had a delicious dinner at a restaurant in a mall, which was quite a fascinating place.

By the time we caught our train (which ran a little bit late), we had all decided that Budapest was all right, but not nearly as cool as Prague. It was a lot more expensive than we had imagined, and the government seemed a bit unstable. On our way back, we found out that because we were going a different route, we had to pay extra. This ended up with me feeling even more embittered and broke by the end of the trip, and left me deciding that I'm never going to Budapest again. While I had good times, it wasn't worth it for the hassle.

When we got back to Prague at 6 AM, we caught a bus back to Pisek (lucking out... we ended up getting back very early), but about an hour later we found out that we had a class, even though it was a national holiday and we had been repeatedly reassured that we wouldn't be having class. So we were about an hour late for Production, and we were all exhausted, and we didn't get much sleep.

The rest of the week seemed to be a bit disappointing anyways, as we only had two actual classes, plus a screening of a film. Granted, it was a national holiday week (celebrating the first Czechoslovak nation, which was in 1928 and doesn't exist at all anymore), but it felt like a waste of a week.

So after our screening of Birth of a Nation, Vefik headed to Prague on Friday to see Queen + Paul Rodgers. I caught up with him on Saturday in Prague, and we headed to Vyšehrad, one of the oldest parts of Prague. We also caught sight of the Dancing House, and went to the Eiffel Tower of Prague (not actually its name, but they call it that). I can't explain to you my anxiety over climbing that tower, and my confidence of having overcome that fear for a little while. At night, we did a pub crawl, which was insanely fun. Eirik joined us halfway through that. The next morning, we headed back to Pisek.



This week's been intense, but one of the better weeks of classes here. Monday, we had Film Laboratories, which explained a lot about film processing and how careful you have to be with legitimate film stock, which we'll use next semester. Tuesday, we had a camera instruction exercise, and then film grammar (intense as ever). Wednesday, we had Film Theory/Directing, which was the same as it usually is. Thursday was Czech Culture and History, which is a fascinating thing. Then on Friday we had Production again, which was extremely intense. Monday, we're studying cinematography. I'm looking forward to it.

We've all decided to spend the weekend in Pisek to recover and to do some research. We're getting ready to shoot a project of Vefik's, hopefully. I'm working on something that we might attempt to shoot before Christmas, but who knows.

Also, a little thing happened on Tuesday night that might be worth mentioning. I don't know if anybody heard about this, but apparently the U.S. decided to hold a little election, and Barack Obama freaking won!!!!!! The reaction over here has been quite positive. I've been congratulated by several. I've had several people tell me that I've changed their perception of the US and of Americans in general, which I'm flattered by. Everyone seems to see this as a step in the right direction, and I feel optimistic about it. I don't think many Americans realize how badly we're perceived, and how many bridges we've unnecessarily burned. And this Obama guy seems to have a positive attitude towards progress. I don't want to get too political here, but it's refreshing to see a political campaign that's not designed to scare people into voting for a candidate. We had a little election night party here late on Tuesday, and it opened my eyes to how much it matters to others beyond ourselves.

Another side note, while I'm uploading images onto this blog: Music's been a pretty big thing to me on this trip. I had to put as much on my ipod as I could before I left, and I've rediscovered my love of certain things: Nirvana, Beatles, Elton John, and James Taylor. While I listen to them pretty regularly before, they make travel more interesting. Also, I found that the Raconteurs are excellent to travel to (especially on flights across the ocean), and Jack Johnson makes bus rides slightly more comfortable. I don't know what I'll do when I get overly sick of these things, but I'm a very patient person.