The Castle in Bratislava

Super-tiny car!

In this photo, you are looking at three different countries - Slovakia in the foreground, Hungary in the far left, and Austria in the far right

Again, red geraniums - I am not kidding when I say that they are obsessed with them.

Guss Gott!

Today was a little bit of a whirlwind. It was pretty cold this morning when we took off for class, I was just in the classroom today. Grabbed Spar for lunch, and the sun was really shining, so I ate around the fountain beside the Opera House across the street from the institute. Then our bus took off at one for Bratislava, Slovakia. It only took us about 1 1/2 hours to get there, then our tour guide (her name was Blanka) hopped on the bus with us and took us up to the castle at the top of a large hill in Bratislava. We were able to see 3 countries at once, which was pretty cool. And after that moment, my camera died :( We walked around the old city some, saw a guy who was completely green from head to toe who looked like Old Greg sitting by one of the fountains (he creepily stared at us as we were walking by too...) and then headed over to a restaurant for dinner. There we were served an interesting appetizer of lunch meat ham wrapped around some kind of root with a butter dollop and pepper slices on top - what strange fine cuisine. They also brought us out some of Slovakia's famous(?) hard liquor - it smelled like really bad cologne so there was absolutely NO way I was going to taste it - yuck. Anyway, the main course and dessert were actually really good, but dinner had an interesting start. After that, we headed over to their new Opera house that they just completed last year to see the tragedy of Tosca - it was a good experience, but I don't see myself falling in love with operas anytime soon. The opera went from 7-10, so afterwards we loaded up the bus and headed back. Borro (our driver) turned on the EuroCup game on the radio, and for a short while we were following another tour bus that actually had the game playing on their TV. Borro was tailgating worse than usual during that time :) Turkey won tonight, kicking Switzerland out of the tournament, and even if I hadn't found that out on the bus, I would have found out as soon as I got off. Rachel and I have to walk down a street that it more like a shopping center on the way to our U-stop, and their was pretty much a parade of screaming Turkish fans, and we got caught in the middle of it. It was at this point that I was really ticked that my camera batteries hadn't given me more of a warning. However, we decided that this is going to be happening a lot during the next two weeks, so I'll be sure to catch one of them on camera. The parade ended at a block party type thing in front of St. Stephens, right past our stop, so we were able to easily hop on the U and head back home. Now I just need to get some sleep so I am ready to take on tomorrow.

Some random things I've experienced:

• I forgot to tell you this in the Hungary post, but in order to use the public restrooms you have to pay 100 forints (150 forints = 1 dollar). Kendra, never visit Hungary.
• I heard the song "Hey there Delilah" playing in German in one of the stores on our way to the institute, and two girls behind me on the U were singing "Ridin' Dirty" in German - it sounded SO strange.
• We really should get more excited about soccer in the US, they are CRAZY about it over here and it's really a lot of fun - watch for a post soon to be dedicated to all the hype about the EuroCup around Vienna.
• 3 oz. of coffee at the end of a meal does NOT need both a full packet of sugar and a full packet of creamer.
• Always make sure to include the color black in some part of your outfit when going to the opera, otherwise you scream hometown girl.

I really need to get some sleep, so I hope to hear from you guys and I will talk to you later!
Andi