travels of a deaf girl

Interruption

I am interrupting my progress to putting up posts about my Prague trip and the last few days of Norwich with the statement that I arrived home in USA about a week ago, and has been on a windwhirl since then! 

Kids, culture shock for coming home does exist… The first day I was on my own and going around the place driving, I kept having the weirdest feeling ever, where it felt like home but at the same time it felt foreign to being home.

But now, it seemed to have faded, but I still got a little itch in me wishing to be in England or it feels like I am visiting my parent’s home then going back to my own home, which is a screwed sense in my head currently. Norwich had grown into my home, and now I have to change that perception again. In a way I am hating that feeling where I am constantly changing homes, where I go to school in a completely different area, I live in a completely different area during the summer, and I grew up in a completely different area also. Home is where the heart is, but where is home when the heart longs for different places in the world? 

Anyways, I am loving being home, but that has to wear off soon where I have to face reality and start my internship and volunteering positions for the summer… 

Let’s go there!

One of the biggest tourist attraction in Praha is the Astronomical Clock located in Old Town Square. We happened to be in the area at the perfect time and quickly learned that there is a show with that clock at the hour. It was just right before 3 pm that we saw a massive crowd of people gathered at the clock waiting for it to hit 3 o’clock.

I am kind of wishing I took a video of it, but it really is better to just see it yourself and hear it yourself. What happens at each hour on the dot is a show pretty much where the clock plays music and has these characters that pop out of the doors. It goes on for about 5 minutes I think, and it is really cool to see it coming from a clock that was made 400 years ago.

After we saw that, we decided to get an afternoon tea and coffee while deciding where to go next. That became the beginning of really using the public transportation system to its full potential where we could not understand the writing, but on the map it had many little symbols of buildings at a certain stop and we became curious of what each building was. By the end of our time in Praha, we managed to visit most of them. The first one we went to visit was a place called Vytaviste. It turned out to be an unusual place, where it seemed like a forgotten place of prague to visit, where there were many fun little things to do there, including a closed up amusement park… which got creepy a bit.

Meanwhile, we grew to love the Tram, and kept using it to find our way around town…

That night, we finally had a proper czech beer, pilsner urquell which is delicious!

The mission to find John Lennon

After we had walked halfway across the Charles Bridge, I realized that we were close to where the John Lennon wall was and it was one of my missions to see that while in Prague.

This mission made me realize how I managed to lose all sense of direction in Prague… I do not understand how I could possibly lose my sense of direction, but throughout the entire time when we thought we were going in the right direction, we always found ourselves going in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. Therefore, we did a lot more walking than intended and grew to love using the Tram and the Metro just to get to where we wanted to go.

Anyways, we walked in circles for quite a while trying to find the John Lennon wall, round and round where it was. Eventually we turned down a small street and there it was, a wall covered in so many colors and quotes.

I could have just sat there with a cup of tea and stared at it for hours trying to read the layers and layers of graffiti and paint on it. It’s amazing how that wall changes so much over time and yet it’s always with the same idea of using it to express peace and love.

Here are the lot of photographs that I took of the wall, and funny enough I managed to find Warren again among the wall, not my boyfriend but just his name.

Oh and there also was a small section nearby the wall that had locks from lovers just like there is in Paris.

Lunch and Ugly Babies

The tour of the city continues…

But first, a good cold and raw lump of beef is my lunch. While in Paris, I discovered how amazing steak tartare is, and when I saw it on the menu in Prague, I just had to get it. 

Please don’t get grossed out by the picture, I just want to show off how delicious it is. There are many rules that you have to keep in mind as a traveler, and one of those rules is to not be afraid to try different things. If you do not try any of the specialties of an area, you seriously missed out. It’s just like me trying oysters when I go to Wellfleet on the Cape (in Massachusetts for those who do not know where the heck the Cape is…). Steak tartare is not quite a thing to try when in Prague, but it is a thing to try if you are in Europe. I’ve had it in Paris, and I just wanted it again!

Meanwhile, Morgana got a specialty of Czech food, Goulash. She said it was delicious, and it was obvious when we both kept smacking our lips and saying yummmm!

After our lunch, we wound up at the Charles Bridge, and that was the most touristy spot in the whole city… The bridge was just packed with people walking over it. At one point we noticed that everyone was stopping to rub these metal plagues… I really don’t know the story behind them. It would be nice to find that out!

One of the things I noticed while in Prague was the beggars and how they begged… I was sneaky and took a shot of a man begging, but he didn’t look like he was homeless due to his clothes being pretty new and I could not make sense of why they were doing it, but then again I was a foreigner and did not know customs of the region at all.

It’s a bit depressing when you see them in every city you visit, but it’s just the reality of life.

Now you must be wondering what I am talking about with the title being ‘ugly babies’… I’ll show you.

We found these statues of babies with no faces… and we later discovered that they are climbing up a tower in Prague, the Zizkov Television Tower. It is quite unusual… from far off, they look like ants but then I had the horrifying realization that they were babies… Not the best moment for me.

Prague has been very interesting thus far… and now, I had a mission when I came to the city, and that was to find the John Lennon wall, NEXT POST! 

To the Castle!

I’m thinking monty python quotes in my head now… 

Anyways, for the second day in Prague Morgana and I decided to just walk around seeing the tourist sites and go visit the castle. That part of town became my favorite part of town to see.

The morning started with a waffle, cup of strawberry and a hike up the hill. One thing I seriously dislike about castles is how much work or effort it takes for me to get up to them. In other words, hiking… Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy hiking but I hate it when I am not really prepared for it. But my day was brightened at the fact you can just buy a whole cup of strawberries as it is and eat that! It is a brilliant idea… 

Waffle on a stick, also another brilliant idea.

Also I just realized that in almost every trip I take somewhere, there always is one day that is all about climbing to the highest points possible everywhere. It happened in Paris, Edinburgh, and a few other places. No surprise when this particular day was all about climbing up hills to see the view. It always offers the reward of a great view, but you always end up regretting it later on when the rest of the trip becomes agony to climb stairs. Stairs are a complete love/hate relationship. So in relating to that realization, we ended up climbing 287 steps up the tower of St. Vitus Cathedral inside the Prague Castle. 

Here is the view.

Gorgeous view. And we continued to climb around up there, where we left the castle and went onward to Petrin Hill for more views. Stairs became our enemy…

But the funicular became our best friend.

And now I’ll conclude this post… But let me remind you, it is only 12 am at this point… We really did a lot in one day, too much to fit in one post, or even two, or maybe three. It may get long. Lunchtime was next on our minds. 

Sidewalks

One of the first thing I noticed about the city of Praha is that they are colorful and unique in their design throughout the city. Therefore I developed an obsession a little bit of taking pictures of sidewalks…

Here is the majority of what I took photographs of.

I’m serious, the WHOLE city, even out in the outskirts of the city had these for their sidewalks, it was not just in one part of the city. I loved how the patterns changed often and it was always fun to walk on them. We even saw them replacing a part of those kind of sidewalks with a new pattern. It seemed like it will always be a tradition to have these sidewalks in the city no matter what. 

Overnight in an airport

This is one of those moments that just seem to happen at least once while you are studying abroad… having to sleep in an airport overnight. Since we fellow college students are quite cheap, if you want to travel, we usually only have the option of taking a super early flight or a super late flight in order for the price to be cheap. Now to get to Prague, we opted for the super early flight thinking we rather arrive in daylight to a city we did not know instead of at night to a city we did not know.

Saturday night, Morgana and I departed on the coach from Norwich to London to catch another bus to the airport we were leaving from. London simply are ridiculous for having 5 airports and they are not even remotely located in London… We were departing from Luton airport, which is actually like 2 hours away from Norwich but there are no public transportation to that airport easily enough, and cheaply enough. A lot of the airports we use are located north of London, yet we always seem to have to go into London just to get to the airport or back to Norwich. 

We arrived at Luton airport around midnight for a 7 am flight, which is mad annoying due to no cheap public transportation running between midnight and 4 am… 4 am would have been too late to catch our flight. 

That night was the longest and miserable night ever for me… We found a spot on the floor in a corner and tried to sleep. Morgana managed to sleep a bit, but I just could not sleep due to the floor being freezing. It was tile, and that was so cold that I felt like it was not worth dying trying to sleep on that so I spent all night sitting and people watching. There was a huge number of people at the airport surprisedly and it felt good to know that we were not the only ones who happened to be in the same situation of not having a way to the airport later. 

After a few hours, we were able to go through and get to our plane, off to Prague we went. We arrived there around 10 am, and went through customs so easily… They did not even ask any questions, just took my passport and scanned it in. I swear other countries are so relaxed that it’s really refreshing instead of having to go through London or United States customs and answer questions about your intentions in the country… 

Our hostel was a small hostel located near by the national museum, and we quickly figured out the public transportation in Prague, which included us taking a bus to the metro, which is nice and simple like the T in boston, with only three lines. 

The hostel we were in felt like we were living in someone’s flat, and it was nice to be in a place that was not overrun with college students, which the place in Edinburgh was like. 

The first day we spent it just walking around and seeing the city, and we discovered that we happened to arrive during a marathon in the city so it was qute busy!

After we wandered around for a while, we ended up having a late lunch and our first meal of czech food and ate at this restaurant that was in a vaulted basement with dim lighting… a bit romantic. It was called Klub Architektu and had such delicious food for cheap!

I got a homemade dumpling meal complete with red cabbage. It was amazing… I am in love with the food there, which was just basically meats and potatoes done so good compared to how the british and irish do their food… We realized that we had been eating bland food for quite too long!

Oh my, looks so delicious, I want that plate of food again. Anyways, this is getting long. I realized now of how much we managed to do! Next post is going to be about an obsession I developed while there…

Jumping shots and Free Beer

The last day in Scotland was marked with more rain yet again. But we kept upbeat, checked out of the hostel and left our stuff in the storage room while we explored the city one last time. 

We decided to go visit Carlton Hill, which had the greek architecture buildings and Edinburgh is dubbed as the Athens of the North due to these buildings. While walking up to there, I realized that we had no jumping shots yet and that had to change! Once at the hill, Emily and I started jumping… It took us a good half hour and many photographs later just to get one of us up in the air!! Marika could not figure out how to time things right when taking the pictures, so Emily and I just got goofy with it and jumping forever. It is quite tiring to jump forever! 

After that we climbed up onto the buildings but it was freezing, and my camera started to die… That’s one of the terrible things about traveling and thinking about the camera and what to do with it pretty much. With my camera, you need to bring the charger with you or the battery will not last more than two days of constant usage! When traveling, a charger is one of the last things you want to pack… or one of those things that I never think to pack. It seems silly to need it, but I have learned my lesson now.  

After hanging around there, we had to get going on back to Norwich and catching the train. This trip back to Norwich was a long one and required us to change trains twice. It’s easy enough to change trains though, just gets tiring after a while where you have to keep moving seats pretty much! But it is nicer and simpler to switch trains rather than airplanes… I realized that it takes a while to switch planes where there is customs to go through again before getting onto the next plane. It seems a bit overboard to need to do that! Especially if you are just passing through, but security is a huge factor to everyone’s comfort level… 

While on the first train, and the rest, it was amusing how Emily and I seemed to get seats next to each other assigned and Marika was always on her own at the other end of the car. On the first train ride to York, Emily and I kind of were sitting in the middle of two huge commotions, one being a big family with kids and that is always an adventure in itself of traveling by train. Then we get a group of men all drinking and partying behind us! We could not figure out if it was a bachelor party or just a birthday party. One of the things that is pretty great about the UK is the ability to have alcohol anywhere… like in public. It is quite nice at times, where you can have a beer outside or on a train and that’s not a big deal. After a while, one of the guys behind us started offering Emily and I some beer due to make up for them being rowdy. I accepted the first one, Emily accepted the second time around that he offered. It was a highlight to get free beer like that! 

Here’s Emily with her beer.

Upon arriving back at my dorm, it felt nice to have my bed again but that was not going to last long due to having to leave for Prague the next night. Originally we were going to come back from Edinburgh on Saturday morning, then I would leave Saturday night for Prague… I am super glad that we did not do that! Oi, too much catching up in blogs to do… Today is going to be about catching up everyone before I fly back home and this blog may die a little or change into travels around USA. I do have a bunch of plans already so I can keep blogging about my life and those plans since people seem to enjoy my travel writing. 

A shot of Whiskey

Starting off the day correct with a shot of whiskey…

We rose and had breakfast at the hostel which was just cereal, bread roll and juice. Simple. 

It was a raining day in Edinburgh, but that was not going to stop us, even if we were freezing the whole time. We were going to go visit the Edinburgh Castle, but found out that the price was 11 pounds, and we had two other things we wanted to see also, the Whiskey Experience and the Mary Price’s Real Close, which was a tour of the underground city of Edinburgh. Those things also cost about the same price, and we realized that we needed to be smart about the things we saw. At this point, we all had seen more than enough castles… Not that it could get old, but it was not something that we felt compelled to see while in Edinburgh. The outside of it was already impressive enough!

With that decision made, we started the day at the Scotland Whiskey Experience. It certainly was an once in a lifetime experience… It started off with us getting onto this barrel ride which took us through the whiskey making process literally, with the heat and the sounds and the looks of it all! 

After that ride, we were taken to a room where we learned about the four different kind of whiskey from around Scotland; Highland, Lowland, Islay, and Speyside. Those were different regions, and they each had something special about their region; Highland- Vanilla, Lowland- Citrus, Islay- Smoke, Speyside- Banana. These flavours or smells is what made up the different styles or tastes of the whiskeys. 

I picked the Islay, and it certainly was smokey… Emily got the Speyside? Wow I cannot remember which one she picked, but Marika got the Highland one. 

The rest of the day is very unphotographed due to places we visited not allowing photographs… It stinks! After this place, we went onto a tour of the underground called Mary Price’s Close. Apparently the city decided to build on top of houses as a way to save money and use the foundations of the houses as a support and a way to make the area more level. Edinburgh is laid out like a ridge, where the Royal Mile is on top of the ridge leading up to the castle, and the rest of the streets go off of that street but it is a very steep slope on both sides. It’s difficult to explain things sometimes, so I really hate when they do not allow photographs! I honestly do not understand why certain things cannot be photographed, it’s always beautiful to look at photographs and it also has become my dependent thing to remember what I did… at least I am writing it down here on this blog as another way to remember. 

Coming back to this post, which I started before I left for my trip to Prague, and now I have to hit my head over and over to try to remember things about Edinburgh. It really is a sad thing that I do not have many photographs of everything I did!! Oh well… But I’ll remember what I can!

Mary Price’s Close, underground and creepy. After that, all I remember is going on a pub crawl with the hostel where we hit up 4 bars of the 5 planned. We left after the fourth bar when we realized that we did not want to spend any more money. We went to two irish bars, and an australian bar. It was an interesting experience, but could have been better if we all had money to drop. Edinburgh was turning into an expensive trip quickly and we had only been there a day and half so far. It was a good thing we were going home the next day. Next post… train ride?