From the Czech Republic...

So the strangest thing just happened to us here on our first night in Prague...there are fifteen or so of us in the lobby of our hotel on our laptops (the internet is free here), and a guy from the next group over just asked us if he could take our picture because he and his friends had never seen so many new laptops before.  Definitely puts our lives in perspective a bit.

So what we've done since my last post...hmm.  For our free day in Vienna yesterday, we started out by heading over to the Freud Museum.  It really wasn't that exciting...just a few rooms in the apartment where he had his practice in Vienna (before he had to relocate to London because of the Nazis).  Two of my friends here are psych majors, though, so they absolutely loved it :-)

After the Freud Museum we went to Schonbrunn Palace, this gorgeous palace in Vienna a few miles outside of the city center (it's said to be one of the only palaces in Europe that can rival Versailles).  It has acres and acres of gardens surrounding the actual palace which are beautiful and amazingly well-kept.  Out of all of my friends, I was the only one who decided to fork over the euros to go inside, which was totally worth it.  It was incredible, and I learned a lot about Austrian history.

For our last night in Vienna we had another concert for music class--this time we got tickets to the Vienna Philharmonic, which was arguably the most incredible classical music concert I've ever attended.  The only problem was that we had standing room tickets for the second night in a row (only 6 euro, so I can hardly blame our trip organizers for choosing them), and my feet were ridiculously tired by the end.  Afterwards we went back to our favorite pub in Vienna (yes, we had one after only four days) for a last dinner before leaving for Prague this morning.

The drive to Prague was short compared to the other trips we've had thus far (only four hours), so we arrived here around 2:00 this afternoon.  Prague is definitely unlike any place I've been before--for one thing, I can't even pretend to figure out the language, unlike any of the previous places we've been.  We haven't really seen the city center yet, but it's definitely been an experience thus far.  Tonight we went to the Mozart House here to see a string quartet concert and then went out to dinner--nothing that exciting, but we're all exhausted so no one really cares :-)

Speaking of which, I should probably be off to bed--my friend Kathryn and I are heading off early to go to the Jewish Quarter, which should be interesting at the very least.  If you're interested in Vienna pictures, here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015213&id=1326450024&l=51d194ba62

Lots of love,

Dara

PS: Weekends in Oxford have finally been finalized!  Here's the list:

Weekend 1 - Day Trips in the Southern UK (Bath & Cotswald)

Weekend 2 - Lisbon, Portugal with Trevor Hancey from CTY

Weekend 3 - Amsterdam, Netherlands with Amy & Bryan

Weekend 4 - Dublin, Ireland with Amy, Bryan, Dustin, Jeremy, Kathryn & Andrea

Weekend 5 - London, UK (our grand finale)