The United Nations Command, the United States of America, and the Republic of Korea cannot guarantee the safety of visitors and may not be held accountable in the event of a hostile enemy act.

There’s even a section about not interacting with the soldiers on the other side too.

Fraternization, including speaking, making gestures or associating with personnel from the Korea People’s Army/Chinese People’s Volunteers (KPA/CPV) side, is strictly prohibited

Anyway, the full text is here for people who are curious

See the post for Day 1 and 2 here

We woke up in the morning to find that the hostel staff restored the hot water again.  So after a nice long shower, we resumed our sightseeing.  We would have liked to have breakfast at the hostel too, but we took too long (or woke up too late).  Instead, we had to find a supermarket to buy food.  We carried the bread, ham and cheese to the Coliseum and ate it there.

The Coliseum

We sat outside under the shade of the massive structure and just took out all the food.  While we ate though, bees kept annoying us and went after the package of ham.  It made no sense to me.  I thought bees only wanted nectar.  After spending a bit of time killing the bees, we resumed eating.  After finishing up, we walked around the Coliseum until we found the entrance.

From the outside, we could already see the massive structure.  It was clear that much of the structure had fallen apart since it was built.  Entire layers of the coliseum had collapsed over time.  What remained didn’t look that sturdy either.  A lot of preservation work must have been done to it to prevent the whole structure from collapsing.  Even on the walls, one could see many holes in it that used to hold up ornaments and other decorations when the structure was still in use.  The structure is certainly a great feat of Roman engineering.

Now that the structure is used purely for tourism, a lot of street vendors naturally set up shop here (it’s kind of weird sometimes because every single one of these street vendors I’ve seen are black).  It’s quite funny to see them all pack their stuff up really fast (it’s like they’re used to it) when cops showed up.  It really reminded me of those food vendors on the street in Hong Kong except without the carts.  Even better were the people dressed up as Roman Legions that got their pictures taken with people.

Because we purchased the Roma Pass (thanks to my friends European travel book) when we arrived at the airport, we were able to get free direct entry into any two museums in Rome (as well as unlimited travel on the metro system) for 3 consecutive days.  We used our pass at the coliseum and walked straight inside.  We didn’t even have to wait in line.  As we walked, everyone seemed to look at us wondering why we didn’t have to wait.  It was like being a VIP.

Walking into the main arena area of the coliseum really reminded me of the movie Gladiator.  The floor of the arena had long since collapsed so looking into the center only reveals the hidden rooms and passageways that used to serve as the barracks for the other gladiators.  To show what the area would have been like, there was a reconstructed portion of the arena floor.

The seating areas of the coliseum seems to have collapsed as well.  At first I wondered where people actually sat when watching shows.  We pretty much walked around the entire circumference of the coliseum and did not find any.  They must have all collapsed, which could explain why some areas had concrete poured over it to preserve the structural integrity.  At least that’s what I think based on the slabs of concrete that covered a lot of the area.

Some parts of the coliseum featured exhibits of its history too and that was quite interesting to see.  After going through the exhibits, we tried to go up to the third floor, but it had been closed off for some reason.  Somehow, a few people managed to get up there anyways.  Since we didn’t know how to get passed the locked metal gate, we saw whatever else we could and then afterward, we went to the Roman Forum.

Forum Romanum

Again, we used our Roma Pass to bypass the line and it felt so good being able to do that.  The Roman Forum was a large excavation site and so there was a lot of Roman ruins in the area.  It was basically the ruins of an entire city.  Looking on the map, we saw that there was so much to see there.  In the few hours that we were there for, we didn’t even go through it all.

We hadn’t completely recovered from all the walking we did the day before and the walking at the coliseum so we took it easy.  It would be interesting to see just how many kilometers we had all walked since the start of the trip.

Memorial to Vittorio Emanuele II

We ended up staying at the forum until the attraction closed and then afterward, we went to the memorial to Vittorio Emanuele II.  This memorial was the largest memory I’d ever seen.  It seems that this person was so important to the Italian people that they gave him a giant memorial with ceremonial guards. Seems kind of pompous to me actually. I looked up this person on Wiki and apparently, he was the first king of a unified Italy.

When we looked at the whole memorial, we wondered how long the ceremonial guards stayed out there for and how the guards would change shifts.  As we were discussing it, we saw three guards march out from the memorial to relieve the current ones.  The new guards switched places with the old ones by marching into their previous standing spot.  The relieved guards would then march away.

Trattoria Der Pallaro

By now, we were really hungry and after looking at my friend’s guide book for restaurant recommendations, we decided on going to a place called Trattoria Der Pallaro.  The cool thing about that restaurant was that it had no menu for people to pick food from.  Guests were served what the restaurant chose to serve.  For 25 euros, people got served a multicourse meal and didn’t get to choose what food they got.  It seemed like a really cool idea.

When we sat down, the waiter asked us whether we wanted red or white wine (probably the only choice for the entire meal).  After we answered, he returned with jugs of wine that amounted to about half a liter per person.  We all thought that was a little too much wine.  Next up was some bread and side orders of olives, ham/smoked meat, lentils, tomatoes and these fried fish balls (I don’t know what they are called).  That amount of food would have been enough for most people.  But knowing that was only the first course, we knew that there’d be more food to come.

For the next course, we were served a penne carbonara.  Half of it had this really delicious cheese sauce while the other half had a less delicious tomato sauce (but still super good compared to other pasta I’ve eaten).  I think that was the best pasta I’ve ever had, but then again, I don’t eat much pasta.

While we ate, I observed how the restaurant functioned since I reasoned that the place would be really efficient at cooking since everyone got the same dishes.  Indeed it was true.  The chef cooked batches and batches of the same thing and the waiters just scooped out the proper proportions for serving.  All they needed to do was keep track of which part of the meal each table was at.

In the third course, we got another serving of bread, but this time with veal, mozzarella balls, zucchini, and potato chips (I guess that random food thing can be a hit or miss on some dishes).  During all this eating, we kept drinking the wine, and I’m sure we would have gotten really drunk (or at least really buzzed) from it if not for all the food we ate.

In the fourth and final course, we were served this lemon cheesecake (at least I think it was cheesecake) with a small glass of peach juice (probably the size of a shot).  Best juice I’ve ever had.  The cheesecake was super good too.  We ended up finishing all the food and the wine.  Despite how expensive that restaurant was, it was totally worth it.

Basilica of the Sacred Heart

The next day, we tried to go to the National Museum of Rome, but we didn’t know that it closed on Mondays.  Instead, we went to the nearby Basilica of the Sacred Heart.  When we went in, this old man who was part of the church greeted us and started talking with us.  He asked us the usual questions like where we were from and what not.  He also talked about the history of the church.  It really surprised me how good his English was.  I didn’t even expect an old Italian man to know it.  He seemed like a really nice guy. He showed us around and insisted that we take some free postcards of the church.

We stayed at the church until it was time to take the bus back to the airport.  We bought our bus tickets from a fellow that I thought looked kind of shady and for some reason he insisted that I put my backpack in the baggage compartment of the bus.  I did as I was told, but I worried so much for my stuff.  I really hoped that no one would steal anything while the door was open when the bus waited for people to board.  From where I was, I wouldn’t have seen anything if someone stole my bag.  I asked my friend sitting close to the window to spot my bag for me just in case.  When we got to the airport, I got my bag and made sure everything was still there.  My friend then told me how he saw the man that we bought the tickets from rummage through someone’s stuff and it looked like he could have stolen something too.  If my bag had been stolen, I would have lost everything.  I guess that taught me to keep all my important documents on my person.

Going Home

On the way back, my friends and I had a nice and long conversation about our views on certain things in life.  It was a super random conversation, but it was fun to talk about this like our childhood and how we were raised.

When we got off the plane and walked towards our bus, we got stopped by these two police officers.  We showed them our passports when they asked for them, but then they walked away with them for a little bit.  When they came back, they asked us if we were in the military.  We all thought it was an odd question and just told them no.  Then they said, “ok”, gave our passports back and we were on our way.  It was really weird and random.  Did we stand out that much in Germany?

During the two hour train ride, we talked about more random stuff.  During the conversations, I realized a lot of things in my childhood, the way I was raised, and my culture that really affected who I am today.  The whole conversation just seemed really profound.

We got home at around 7 pm and after cooking and eating dinner, I sat down to blog and upload my pictures as I always did after each trip.

More photos here

Using the Germanwings “Blind Booking” promotion, which randomly (kind of if you don’t know how to work the system by seeing which flights are full) selects a destination from a predetermined list for passengers at a fixed price.  Using this promotion, we got to fly to Vienna.

We were even planning to go to Budapest as a day trip from Vienna, but that turned out to be too expensive, and that there was plenty in Vienna to see.

Flight to Vienna

While waiting for our flight at Stuttgart International, we saw two double sized Foosball tables set up to go along with the Women’s World Cup Soccer.  By double sized, I mean that instead of only four rotating sets of players per side there were eight per side.  They took up so much space that one had to quickly hop to the other size to control the other set of players.

We played this for a little bit until the rest of our party arrived.  Once everyone arrived, we went to get our boarding passes and then to the security checkpoint.  One thing that really surprised me there was that the airport security wasn’t very strict at all.  All I did was go through the metal detector and got my backpack checked by the X-Ray.  They didn’t open it up/search it or anything like that.  They didn’t do that to anyone.  They didn’t check my bag for liquids either.  People could easily smuggle prohibited items on the plane.  Once we passed the security checkpoint, we waited until we could board.

We boarded a small Airbus A319, which looked like it could probably only fit about 100 people on it.  I noticed that each passenger was given a barf bag (I’ve heard of people getting nosebleeds while flying, but not nausea).  On one side of the barf bag, there was a chart that showed at what levels of nausea would cause one to puke and the caption that was written for the top level was “the price of our competitors”.  I’m guessing that their price is so low that people will puke?  Either way, I thought it was pretty comical.  To be fair though, Ryanair typically has lower airfares in my experience (I hope I didn’t sound like I’m advertising these airlines).  The flight itself took only about an hour.  The plane went up to 28000 ft. briefly before having to descend again.

Food

Since we arrived in the evening, we got hungry pretty quickly after dropping off our stuff at the hostel.  We looked around for a restaurant to try some Viennese food.  Apparently, Vienna is known for their Wienerschnitzel.  With that in mind, that’s what we ordered.  Every single one of us in our group ordered that except for the guy who was vegetarian.

What puzzled me about that meal was that the restaurant served the schnitzel with rice.  I thought it would be served with something like potatoes.  I guess that’s the choice of the restaurant.  It didn’t matter to me though since I just wanted the schnitzel.  The schnitzel itself was basically a huge piece of boneless pork coated in breadcrumbs that was fried (not deep fried).  I thought it tasted good, but it wasn’t amazing to me.  Pork isn’t that high up on my favourites.

A Bit of Relaxation (Kind Of)

After our meal, we went to a park to relax a little bit by throwing a Frisbee around.  It was kind of strange to me since we hadn’t done any real sightseeing yet and it seemed as if the others went to Vienna to throw a Frisbee around.  They even went to the grocery store to buy a few six packs of beer!  We all had the impression that Vienna was a really classy city, but what we were doing didn’t really seem classy at all.

While we played Frisbee, we noticed an insane amount of flies, mosquitos and other pesky insects.  Apparently, the others encountered the same thing when they biked to Austria one time.  These flies flew around in groups and were so annoying, especially the mosquitos that kept buzzing around my ear.

Schloß Schönbrunn by Night

After about an hour of Frisbee, we walked a little further to the schloss.  The schloss used to be the imperial summer residence back in the day.  It is now one of the most famous monuments and one of the most visited attractions in the country.  Since we arrived really late, the schloss had already closed and the guard there told us to leave when we tried to enter.  We ended up taking pictures from the outside.  Since there was nobody around to take a group picture for us, we set up an improvised tripod using the box from a six-pack of beer and used the camera timer.

Afterward, on our way back to the hostel, we came across two guys from Prague asking us if the park was a good place to sleep.  We were all kind of puzzled since we figured everyone would just book a hostel or something like that.  When we mentioned going to a hostel, one of the guys just made the subtle finger rubbing gesture to show that it was out of their budget.  While talking to them, a friend of mine with a beer in his hand just said “na zdraví”, which meant “cheers” in Czech and the guy was really surprised that he knew it (we learned that from Prague).  We ended up directing them to the park and then went back to the hostel to meet up with another friend who was joining us later on.  He came by train since he decided to come with us after we had already arranged our transportation.  Once we met up, a few people in our group decided to go a bar and somehow ended up back at the hostel at around 3 am.

Wien Mitte

The next morning (glad I went to sleep instead), we took a trip to the city center, which is usually where a lot of the touristy stuff is.  One of our friends decided to take a nap at the hostel instead since he came back so late the night before.  The first place we went to was the St. Stephen’s Cathedral.  What annoyed me a lot here was that the cathedral was under maintenance.  The face of the cathedral we were supposed to see had a large construction cover over it.  The inside, however, was super nice.

After seeing the church, we just walked in a random direction until we saw something cool.  The worst part about walking that day was that the temperature was at least 30 degrees Celsius.  It was like walking around Las Vegas in the middle of summer (ok maybe not as bad).  I didn’t pack any shorts and ended up partially rolling up my jeans.  I even took some paper to make a fan out of it.

One thing I noticed that was very common was that the locals here really liked wearing fedoras and giant hipster glasses (more prominent at least, but it’s not like they’re everywhere).  Even better was that they looked good in them.  It really added to that impression of classiness that we had from the beginning.  Even the H&M stores looked classier than the ones in Germany.  The way the Austrians spoke German sounded a lot nicer too.  It sounded more “clean” because they spoke slower and enunciated more unlike the Swabian German that I’m used to hearing.  Apparently, Vienna is tied with Vancouver for cities with the best quality of life.  I can see that.

Memorial for Mozart

Afterward, we headed to the Hofburg Palace.  Along the way, we came across a memorial to Mozart.  It was a statue of him posing majestically and in front of the statue was a garden with flowers arranged in the shape of a treble clef.

I guess when it comes to Austrian music, Mozart is a big deal since he was born in Salzburg.

Maria-Theresien-Platz

After we walked a little bit more, we reached the Maria-Theresien-Platz. This area contains two of Vienna’s major museums: the national history museum and the art history museum (more classy stuff).  While I was there, I took a picture of both buildings, but looking more closely at the pictures, it seems like the two buildings are almost identical.

At the center, there was a giant statue that basically acted as a giant shade and a lot people just crowded there.  It was reallyyyyyyyyy hot that day.  While headed to the Hofburg Palace, we came across a public water fountain, which gathered a rather large crowd of people.  The funniest thing about that water fountain was that it had the words “Wiener Wasser” (literally “Viennese Water” in German) printed on it.  Maybe I’m immature, but I still think it’s funny.  Maybe even funnier, the water from that machine tasted really good.

Hofburg Vienna

Eventually, we ended up the Hofburg Palace, the former home of some of the most powerful people in Austrian history, such as the rulers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Currently, it is the residence of the President of Austria.  In contrast to the Schloß Schönbrunn, this was their winter palace.

Outside the palace, there was the Volksgarten for people to enjoy.  In the garden, there were flowers (typical of a garden I guess), and the Theseustempel, which was intended to be a replica of the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens.

After walking around this area, we reached the government district of the city.

The Parliament and Rathaus

Although we only walked by the parliament (why we didn’t spend time there I don’t know), I did manage to get a quick shot of the building.  Walking a little further, we reached the rathaus (city hall).  Both of these buildings had really impressive architecture.  Looking back at the photos, the Austrian parliament building bears some resemblance to the German Reichstag and the rathaus bears some resemblance to the Munich Rathaus.

When we were there, the city had set up a giant screen and a bunch of chairs for the open air theatre for opera and concert films.  We planned to check it out later, but we never got to that.  We also met up with our friend who chose to nap at the hostel instead of coming with us to see the tourist sights (sucks that he missed out).

The Burgtheater

Across from the rathaus, was the Burgtheater, one of the most important German language theatres (the ones for plays and not movies) in the world.

Near the top of the building, there were busts of famous playwrights such as Goethe and Schiller.  They even had a bust of Shakespeare, even though he wrote English plays.

Liechtenstein Museum

Our next destination was the Liechtenstein Museum.  Along the way, we passed the University of Vienna and the Votive Church.  Eventually, after walking several blocks, we reached the museum.

The museum mostly contained old works of art and also a really impressive horse carriage used by family members of the House of Liechtenstein.  Also in the museum was an old library.  The interior of the library looked like something out of Harry Potter – full of old books (but without the dust and the screaming people).

Somehow I don’t think I was supposed to take pictures of any of these things.  I took a close look at a lot of these books, and there were titles from a variety of genres like science and literature.

Mozart’s Requiem at the Karlskirche

Knowing that later in the evening, we would be going to see Mozart’s Requiem being performed at the Karlskirche, we went back to the hostel to wash up before heading out (we felt so sweaty and gross for pretty much the whole day).  While we waited for the others, we played a few games of Pool at the hostel.  Originally, the concert was supposed to be at the Vienna State Opera (at least that’s what the website said), so we were kind of disappointed when we found out that the performance would be at a church (even if it was near where Mozart died).

After we bought our tickets, we proceeded inside and enjoyed the design of the interior of the church.  When I walked in, I was totally surprised by how impressive the inside of the church was.  I did not expect something so amazing, especially the design of the altar.  The bright light around it made it even more amazing.

While listening to the concert and the sound of the violins, I felt a strong urge to take up violin.  It’s also something I always wanted to learn, but I wasn’t sure if I’d end up sticking with it.  The concert wasn’t quite as I good as I expected it to be.  I felt that the concert in Prague sounded a lot better, but it might have been because of the acoustics of the room.  The church we were had didn’t have very good room acoustics.  However, the singers sounded really good.  Despite that, the audience liked their performance a lot and clapped for a few minutes.  Some people even stood up and clapped.  After the concert, we came out in the middle of a thunderstorm some distance away.  I tried to take photographs of a lightning bolt, but I couldn’t react fast enough with the camera to get the shot (even on long exposure).

Wombat Hostel Bar

For some reason, when we got back to the hostel at night, we went down to the bar and started drinking.  Maybe it was because we wanted to take advantage of their amazing deal for shots – 1 shot for 1 euro.  We ended up having six shots in an hour – not counting the Jaegerbombs we had before that.  We ended up mixing a lot of different shots together like Tequila, Whiskey, Vodka, Schnapps, and Gin.  I forgot the last one.  Now that I think about it, the last one we had was Sambuca, which tasted like liquorice and it sucked, but I think the Schnapps were worse.

The coolest part about the Jaegerbombs was how the bartender arranged them.  He arranged the glass of red bull in a line while a shot of Jaeger sat in between two glasses.  He knocked over one shot into another and they all fell in the glass of red bull like dominoes.  After having so many shots among all of us, we could almost build a pyramid using only shot glasses.  We could have, if someone didn’t break one.  When the bartender saw us, he was really surprised at how many shots we had, but I think he just felt super uneasy at how we tried to build a shot glass pyramid.  At the end of all of that, I didn’t really feel dizzy – maybe the alcohol hadn’t got to me yet.  The others then decided they wanted to go out to another bar, but I declined and went to sleep instead.  I didn’t feel like coming back super late and not having energy for the next day’s adventure.

The next morning, I found out some of us came back at around 3, while others came back at around 4 or 5.  One of our friends didn’t even end up sleeping at the hostel and ended up sleeping outside at a cafe.  That was REALLY bizarre.  I would never do something like that.  Because they came back so late, some of them ended up missing the hostel breakfast and slept in until around 12 pm.

Those of us that had breakfast got to enjoy a great breakfast buffet.  The hostel had a sandwich maker so we stuffed as much stuff in our sandwich as possible and got the whole sandwich toasted.  I never thought cheese, salami, ham, cucumbers, and peppers in a toasted sandwich could be so good.  I think I had around 3 of them.

Schloß Schönbrunn by Day

Since we weren’t able to go to the schloss at night that day, we returned to the schloss after we had the breakfast at the hostel.  Just like the day before, the temperature was super hot (probably about 35 degrees or so).  From the outside, the schloss just looked like the same setup as the Neues Schloss in Stuttgart.  It had the same U-shape and the fountains out front.  However, we found that the schloss had a giant garden in the back, kind of like a smaller version of the one in Versailles.  It also had a labyrinth with walls of hedges and also had a zoo. 

Behind the garden, at 60 meters in elevation higher, there was the Gloriette structure. From there, we got a nice view of the whole city.  Inside the building was a cafe and it had really delicious ice cream (although it was kind of expensive).  Outside the building, a bunch of people set up tripods with their DSLR’s and everyone had these filters for their lens to tweak with the color of the photographs since the sky was so bright.

We could even go up to the top to get an even better view.  On our way up, we bumped into someone we knew from Bosch, but at the time I didn’t know for certain who that was.  It was only afterward when I realized it and by that time, it was already too late to say hi.  When we finished seeing the Palace, we took the metro to Danube Island (Donauinsel) for a bit of relaxation (hard to call it that when the weather feels like fire).

Donauinsel

The metro station here was in the middle of a giant bridge and when we walked out, we saw two people just sitting on the edge of it.  All of a sudden, one guy just jumped into the water and started swimming.  And then the second guy followed and made a giant splash when he hit the water.  It must have been at least 25 meters or something like that.

On one side of the shore, one could see the older part of Vienna and on the opposite side, the newer part.  There were quite a few high-rises on waterfront property.  On one shore, there was a set of trampolines set up over the water and that was really cool.  The whole area had tons of tropical themed cocktail bars and seafood restaurants.  That really gave the place a huge tropical vibe.  One of the things that people do in tropical areas is swim in the water and that’s what some of us did.  I didn’t though.  I don’t even know how to swim (I wouldn’t swim in a dirty river anyway).  None of them brought any swimming trunks or anything like that, so they just went in with underwear (kind of strange if you ask me).

While people swam, I walked around exploring the area and saw a TV tower.  Near the top, there was a walkway that protruded from the building and apparently it’s used for bungee jumping.  I don’t think I’d have the balls to jump off that.  After everyone finished their swim in the river (it was a little bit dirty too), we went to the Vienna State Opera.

Wiener Staatsoper

We arrived pretty late, so all the tours of the inside were already over.  We only looked around the outside and figured out what time the tour would be for the next day, which we did end up going to.

We also found out that the opera has a “summer vacation” in July and August.  The only shows there during the summer months aren’t part of the state opera and are just borrowing the location.

Sand in the City

Since there wasn’t anything to see in the evening, we ended up going to the Sand in the City, which was just a collection of cocktail bars and pubs in a place that had a beach feel (minus the water).  The whole area literally had sand all over and many people sat in beach chairs.

Also here was a shisha bar.  People got to take the hookah to their table and just smoked it until it ran out.  I didn’t know what shisha was at first, but I found out that it really is just flavoured tobacco inhaled through a hose from the hookah.  I figured I’d try a little bit.

It didn’t have the pungent odour of cigarettes and just had apple flavoured smoke.  I didn’t really like the taste, but I did learn how to blow smoke rings and that was the cool part.  It’s not something I’d do any again though.  Not long after doing the shisha, I must have had a strong allergic reaction to it.  My nose ended up being plugged for hours and I couldn’t stop sneezing even though I only had three puffs.  When I went to bed, my nose was still plugged.

Tour of the Wiener Staatsoper

The next morning, we went on a tour to the inside of the opera house.  The interior of the building had such an intricate design.  A lot of the design had a theme too.  For example, above the busts of famous playwrights and composers, was a painting of a scene from their most famous opera.  The interior could have looked even nicer, but parts of it were destroyed during World War II.

The tour guide showed us around most of the building too.  One room in particular, the Tea Salon, was a lot nicer than all of the others.  Apparently, the royalty used to use that room.  Nowadays, the room is used for super special occasions or when the media needs a really nice background to show when doing interviews for the opera. 

The tour guide also showed us some of the intermission rooms, which weren’t as nice since they were part of the reconstructed portion of the building.

While there, the tour guide explained to us the history of the place (which I don’t remember), and little factoids like how there’s an underground tunnel to the building that stores the costumes and how trucks deliver set pieces and other materials before shows.  Finally, the tour led us to the main auditorium of the opera house.

Apart from the movie theatre style seats, there were balcony seats all around on many different floors.  The tour guide explained how much different seats in the opera cost and apparently they can go up to tens of thousands of euros.  Behind each seat was also a display for subtitles, since the lyrics of the opera weren’t always in German.  Together, I think the capacity of the theatre could be about 2000 people, not counting the standing spaces.  We even got to go backstage to see some of the mechanisms on the stage.  The tour guide explained how the multiple platforms could move such that the stage scenery could be exchanged on the fly.  Coming to this place was probably the best part of the whole trip.

Flying Home

We ended up killing time at a park with the Frisbee before we had to go to the airport.  We didn’t do much else.  There weren’t anymore attractions that we wanted to see or had time to see.  When our flight came, we went on it and just went home.  We all pretty much had the disappointed feeling of “oh man, we have to go to work the next day.”

More photos here

Our latest trip took us to Prague, the capital of Czech Republic.  After going there, I’d say that Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The city managed to retain its wonderful architecture because the city was not heavily bombed (relative to other cities) during WWII. Otherwise, we could not see this wonderful architecture today.

Since I lost my wallet, I couldn’t use my Bahn25 for my discounted tickets anymore, so I ended up cancelling my train tickets and instead went with others who were going by car.  We met at around 7:30 in the morning and began our journey.  As usual, I slept for most of the car ride.

The Mosaic House Hotel

We first went to our hotel to meet up with the others.  When I first walked into the hotel, I was surprised at how nice everything was and we only had to pay 72 euros for 3 nights.  The lobby of the hotel was also a restaurant/pub and each night, the hotel would hold events/parties.

The hotel room even had the coolest shower.

Normally, I don’t post about showers, but this one was too nice to ignore!

Czech Crowns

Since Czech Republic didn’t adopt the Euro, we had to go to the currency exchange.  Before leaving we learned that the rate was about 1 euro for about 24 crowns.  When we got our currency exchanged, we felt so much richer because of all the extra zeroes.

The Czech bills look cool too, but maybe that’s because I’ve never seen them before.  I really hate the change though.  Apparently a 1 crown coin exists and those were really annoying to carry around.

Old Town Square

At the old town square we saw some of the most well known historic landmarks in Prague such as the Týn Church, Jan Hus Monument, St. Nicholas Church, and the Prague Astronomical Clock.  We went here on the first day as well as the second day when we went on the free walking tour.  Many of the historic landmarks survived throughout the Second World War unlike many other cities because this city did not get bombed as heavily as other cities.

The tour guide talked about the history of Czech Republic briefly and explained the significance of the buildings and interesting factoids about them.  For example, he explained the story of how Jan Hus was burned at the stake, how the astronomical clock doesn’t actually correctly predict the correct positions of the sun and moon since it assumed that the Earth was in the center of the universe, and that the designer of the clock was blinded by people who did not want him to build a similar/identical clock elsewhere (what a terrible way to be treated after such an accomplishment).  He also talked about the defenestrations that occurred in Prague prior to the Hussite and Thirty Years War.  He even told us about random facts like how pedestrian lights in Prague only stay green for 9 seconds.

Random Frisbee Game

On our way up to Prague Castle, we decided to stop for a beer nearby.  I got to try one of the Czech beers called Gambrinus, a type of Pilsner.  It tasted similar to all the other kinds of Pilsner I’ve tried.  Afterward, we came across a grass field and decided to play some Frisbee.  While passing around the Frisbee, we somehow got the Frisbee stuck in the tree and spent about 10 minutes trying to get it down.

We even played a game of Ultimate Frisbee too. I ended up running so much, and I surprised myself as to how long I ran for. I guess going on all these trips and walking around all the time really boosted my endurance without me realizing it.

The Tears of Stalin

While walking toward the castle, we came across a giant metronome on the hill.  In front of it, a huge sign read “The Tears of Stalin” with some missing letters.   According to our tour guide, he said that the area used to be the site of the world’s largest representation of Stalin until the statue was destroyed in 1962.

The picture is crooked because I took it while crossing the street, but at the top of the hill, the words can be see (although some letters are missing).

Prague Castle

When we arrived at the entrance to Prague Castle, we saw two palace guards dressed in a really formal uniform and they behaved like the guards at Buckingham Palace.  Each one wore a blue uniform with a rifle fitted with a bayonet.

When we reached the courtyard of the castle, we came across a bunch of people coming out from the cathedral while chanting.  They even had people wearing backpacks with a giant speaker coming out of it.  I remembered that the day was Corpus Christi and that would probably explain what was going on.

Once the people passed, we saw the St. Vitus Cathedral up close.  It seemed as massive as the cathedral in Cologne.  Apparently, this cathedral here is the largest in Prague.  We didn’t get to go in though because of the Christian holiday.

Everywhere around the castle were examples of really well kept architecture from hundreds of years ago.  It was quite an amazing site to be able to see all of that.

On our way down the mountain, we took tram 22.  Before going to Prague, I had read on the travel report for the city and it explicitly stated that lots of pickpockets operate along that tram route specifically targeting tourists.  So in order to prevent myself from getting pickpocketed again, I was extremely vigilant in watching my surroundings and protecting my stuff (I think I’m quite paranoid with that now).  Nothing happened and I didn’t notice anything suspicious either.  I guess the time that we went wasn’t exactly the peak traffic time.

Church of St. James

The next day, we went on the walking tour around the city.  We began at the old town square where our tour guide explained a lot of Czech history.  He also took us a number of other locations.  The next location we went to was the Church of St. James, where someone happened to be getting married that day.  That’s a pretty cool and unique sight if you ask me.

The tour guide also went on to talk about the history of this place.  In particular he told the story about Vratislav was buried alive by accident in the church.  Story says that the man climbed out of his coffin, but could not get past the stone doors.  Some thought his screams were because his spirit could not find peace so they tried to resolve the problem using holy water.  When the tomb was opened several years later, people found his dead body outside of his coffin.

Also in the cathedral is a statue of a mummified forearm which belonged to a thief who tried to steal from a statue of Virgin Mary inside the church.  Apparently the statue grabbed his hand and refused to let go.  After the thief’s hand was cut off, it was kept at the church to serve as a warning for all thieves.

Franz Kafka

Moving on to the next destination, the tour guide showed us a statue of Franz Kafka, a famous author from Prague.  The statue represented him conquering his demons in his dreams.

Before Kafka died, he did not want his works to be published.  He requested that all his works be burned, but the friend that he entrusted this task to felt that it would be a waste to do such a thing.  After publishing his works, Kafka became very well known and is now considered to be one of the best writers of the 20th century.

The Jewish District

Our next destination was the Jewish district of the city.  This is where we got to see a lot of synagogues build hundreds of years ago.  One of the synagogues, the Spanish Synagogue, had a design unlike most synagogues.  The tour guide said that the synagogue looks more like a mosque and could be due to the fact that the synagogue was built with the help of Muslims and the mosque-like design served as a thank you to them.

The next synagogue we went to was the oldest synagogue in Europe.  Known as the “Old New Synagogue”, it doesn’t look very beautiful as far as architecture goes.  If the tour guide did not mention that it was the oldest in Europe, I would have walked past it thinking that it was just any old building.

The last synagogue we saw was known as the “High Synagogue”.  Unlike the other two, this one didn’t have as interesting of a history.

After seeing the Jewish District, the tour proceeded close to the Vltava river, the river that runs through Prague.

The Rudolfinum

Near the river, was the Rudolfinum, which is a music auditorium.  It is also the home stage of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

Walking further along the river, we could see the Charles Bridge.  And further in the distance up in the mountain, we could see Prague Castle.

Charles Bridge

The Charles Bridge, named after Charles IV, used to be the only bridge across the Vltava river and therefore, this bridge was used extensively as a trade route between Western and Eastern Europe.

While on the bridge, it started to rain and all the artists selling painters instantly covered up their art to protect it.  Unlike last week in Munich, I brought an umbrella.  On a different part of the hill, we could also see the tip of what looks to be a lookalike of the Eiffel Tower.  Apparently, it is an lookout tower and a transmission tower.

One the bridge, there were so many statues across its length.  One of them however, according to the tour guide, was of John of Nepomuk, who was thrown into the river hundreds of years ago.  This man is usually portrayed with a halo of five stars.

For some strange reason, the weather couldn’t really make up its mind at the time, so I got interesting pictures of the bridge with rain clouds and white clouds hovering over it.

Epic Karaoke

That night at the hotel, they had an karaoke event.  Those who were brave/drunk enough, went up on stage to sing for everyone.  When we were there, it was quite rowdy, and our group had quite a bit to drink too.  Some of my friends went up to sing “Summer of ‘69” by Bryan Adams.  They were like the Backstreet Bro(y)s.

While they were up there singing, the audience was really into it too.  People were dancing too.  I guess that’s a good thing.  Just for kicks, I took my friends lighter and started waving it back and forth like at a real concert.  Later on, with some “encouragement” from my friends (probably peer pressure), I went up with them too.  Never went up on a stage like that before, but I guess it worked out.  Afterward, the others went to the largest club in Prague.  Apparently it has six floors.  I didn’t go though, because I really hate clubbing.

International Music Festival

While in Prague, the International Music Festival happened to be on and so we went there to check it out.  I wasn’t that excited for this, since I’m not exactly a fan of any of the music they played there.  What was cool was that the event people shipped a truck full of beer and hooked it up to all the beer taps.  It’s like a dump truck (but with a smaller container that didn’t spin) carrying beer being transported over water.

When we left the festival, we came across the weirdest demonstration of modern art.  Just looking at it confused the hell out of me.  It just made no sense.

Modern Art

There was an modern art exhibit that people could walk through.  We didn’t go in it, but as we walked past the exit, we looked inside and saw some pretty strange stuff.  There was a couple standing in a room with glass windows on all sides and all they did was hug each other.  They stayed in the same hugging position and didn’t move.  Another exhibit had a tent with white cloth draped all over it with someone inside dressed in a similar way (I didn’t notice at first until he/she started moving) and all he/she did was move around randomly inside.  It made no sense.

There was also this thing called a “Sleeping Box”.  I guess it works really well for people who want to block the sunlight while sleeping outside.  Or maybe it was part of the modern art thing.  I don’t know.  The weirdest part about it were people randomly walking around holding a copy of “The Great Gatsby” that had an iTouch/iPhone taped on one of the pages and walked around reciting lines from a play.  It just didn’t make any sense.

The National Museum

Since the modern art exhibit was close to the box office for tickets to the opera, we decided to see if there were any tickets available for that.  Unfortunately, all their tickets had sold out.  Instead, what we did was go to the National Museum to see a mini classical music concert.

The concert played music from famous composers such as Vivaldi, Bach and Mozart.  When I heard the sound of the violins playing, it sounded so nice as I heard the instruments themselves as well as the echo.  I really admired the skill that these people had in music.

Food

In addition to just visiting landmarks around the city, we also tried some of their cuisine.  For food, I got to try their pork knuckle and their goulash.  They also served more mainstream things like perogies and burgers.  The perogies and burgers don’t sound very Czech (maybe not the pork knuckle either), but it was still very delicious.

The menu said that the pork knuckle was only 250 grams, but when they served it to me it seemed more like a kilo of just pork.  Somehow, I ate all of it (except for the really fatty part).

We also went to another restaurant called the “Iron Curtain”.  It was set up using the most stereotypical communist way.  It was underground and in every hallway was some paraphernalia from the communist times.  They were items like propaganda posters, or really old motorbikes.  They even had busts of Stalin and Lenin.  The front cover of the menu even said we’d have a “propaganda experience” and indeed we did.  The item with the best name on the menu had to be the CCCP Burger, where CCCP stood for the “Classic Capitalist Cheeseburger Plate”.  Oh the irony.

The “Iron Curtain” had the best restaurant atmosphere I’ve ever seen.  We left them a generous tip and the waitress was very happy about that.

Drinks

Many know that Pilsner beer comes from the Czech Republic, so everywhere in Prague, people drank Pilsner.  They had lot of brands, but the two most common ones were Gambrinus and Pilsner Urquell.  Apparently, the original Budweiser, came from Czech Republic and not from America.

We also tried another drink called Absinthe.  It is highly alcoholic (45 – 74% ABV).  According to Wiki, it says “Absinthe has been portrayed as a dangerously addictive psychoactive drug” and so, many countries banned it (Canada included).  However, it isn’t proven that the drink is any more dangerous than other types of liquor.

We prepared it by lighting a mixture of sugar and absinthe on fire and then dunking that mixture in a glass of water.  By lighting the mixture on fire, the sugar would caramelize and the absinthe would lose some of its alcohol content.  Apparently, that is one of the mainstream preparation methods for the drink.

We drank it and depending on the concentration of sugar, the drink would either be too bitter or too sweet. I didn’t like it very much. We even tried it without the sugar. We just lit the absinthe on fire and had a flaming shot. That drink just burned as it went down. Someone mentioned that it was kind of like Bacardi 151.

Going Home

On the morning of the fourth day, we went back to Stuttgart.  On the whole, the trip wasn’t very expensive.  It only cost me about 200 euros with transportation and accommodations included.  We even ate out at a restaurant every night.  If I had a wallet at the time, it wouldn’t have hurt at all.

More photos here

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to travel to Heidelberg to see many of the historic monuments and architecture that the city had to offer. To get there, my friend and I took the Regionalbahn and the Regional Express. When I got on the train, I happen to see a group of Asian tourists and they kind of gave me a strange look. The only reason I can think of to explain that is that they probably don’t see a lot of Asians around here. In fact, seeing Asians other than myself surprised me too. While taking the train, I realized how much more I enjoy train rides over car and airplane rides. Probably my biggest pet peeve is the lack of leg room. The train I took was quite spacious and didn’t have a lot of people riding it so I was able to extend my legs as far as I wanted without disturbing anybody.

Upon arrival, we found the nearest tourist information center and got a map of the area. We knew which sites we wanted to see, but didn’t know how to get there. A short walk later, we reached the Neckar River, the river that separates the two sides of Heidelberg. Walking a bit further, we reached the Old Bridge (middle and right photo), situated in the Old Town (Altstadt), the historic city center.

Walking through the historic city center exposed us to a lot of the baroque style architecture left over from the past (left photo). Instead of asphalt, the ground was made of cobblestone. Walking through the town made me feel like I was an anachronism. The only things that made the area feel modern was the addition of signage for cars, plumbing on the sides of buildings and the street lamps. In addition to the architecture, there was a German man that ran a souvenir store at the side of a church on Marktplatz speaking to group of Taiwanese tourists in Mandarin. That totally surprised me. He knew enough Chinese to have an actual conversation with the tourists.

The church that the man stood near selling souvenirs is called the Church of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkirche), one of the three major churches in the city. The other two is The Church of the Jesuits (Jesuitenkirche) and St. Peter’s Church. The atmosphere in the Jesuitenkirche was so silent that when I put my backpack down and placed it on the pew a little too hard, a loud echo could be heard. It seemed almost disrespectful to make such a noise. I sat there for at least fifteen minutes just looking around before getting up. The paintings themselves seem to be the originals since upon close inspection, the cracks in the paint could be seen.

Each of these churches are located near the main street (Hauptstrasse), where a large number of tourists frequent. Along the street are mainly souvenir stores, cafes, restaurants, and ice cream places. The picture I took of the main street doesn’t look like there was a lot of people there, but later on the street became packed with people. I also saw a some modern franchises such as H&M. Every time I saw a store like that, it felt like these large businesses were slowly taking over the town.

However, the main attraction here has to be the Heidelberger Schloss. Anybody that doesn’t visit this castle when visiting the town is definitely missing out. Situated on the hillside, the castle could be seen from the ground. It looks quite high up, but the walk up there isn’t daunting at all. It’s probably the fact that there was so much to see along the way up so people don’t remember that they’re getting tired. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good enough angle to take a huge picture of the entire front side of the castle.

Through many of the wars in the middle ages that this castle has been through, lots of damage could be seen on the castle walls. The main one is the destroyed turret. Due to an explosion, a section of the wall fell down in one gigantic chunk.

At the top of the castle, one can almost see the entire city of Heidelberg. The old bridge, the churches and the market square can be seen from above. I managed to capture this gorgeous view.

After reaching the top of the castle, we decided to hike up to Konigstuhl, the very top of the hill. We learned that the hike would take an hour and that the destination was 350 m above where the castle was situated. We had already walked around for a great deal of time, but for some reason, I agreed to do the hike. Much of the hike was on muddy or icy paths that went uphill. One wrong step would mean falling at least ten meters down the slope. I dubbed it the “Stairway to Heaven”. If I fell, I’d die and end up in Heaven. It was already tough enough going up the slope, but I saw a mountain biker who dared to bike down the mountain despite a sign clearly stating not to bike down the hill. We were literally on a slippery slope. Somehow, we managed to get lost along the way, but one of the park rangers (I’m not sure if they’re even called that here) gave us a map and showed us the direction to go. As I walked up, I could feel my leg muscles burning with every step. But our timing couldn’t have been better. We made it up as the sun was setting and I managed to get a picture of the sun’s rays shining through the layer of clouds.

After spending some time walking around the peak, we took a bus back down. It was a nice break. It had been a long day of hiking around, but it was very rewarding, to be able to finish the hike up to Konigstuhl. In the evening, we took the train back home. By the end of the day, I had taken 112 pictures of the historic place.

More photos here

Computer Specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 Processor
2 GB RAM @ 667 Ghz
Intel GM965 Chipset
nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g

Installation

I was lucky enough to only need the Retail Snow Leopard Disc (10A432) and the myHack Installer 1.0.1.  I pretty much followed METHOD 2 in this guide (method 1 didn’t really work out for me, but it might have had something to do with the disc restoration part of the guide):

http://prasys.co.cc/2009/08/installing-snow-leopard-for-osx86/

For the myHack installer, check the box for the kext that says something about PS2 in it.  It will enable the laptop touchpad and keyboard.  Also, read the description for each kext to see if you need it or not.

When I used method 1 in the guide, I had some trouble with an installation error that said “Could not verify BaseSystem.pkg” or something along those lines.  That error appeared at about 10-15% installation progress.  It went away then I used method 2.  I did read somewhere that it may have had to do with the restoration in Disk Utility.  Either way, it worked the second time around.

Once SL was installed, I ran the myHack Installer on my drive to get the Chameleon Bootloader on there so I wouldn’t have to use my USB to boot all the time.  Also, be sure not to install GraphicsEnabler as it will prevent your computer from shutting down completely (more on that later).

Graphics

Since my laptop uses an nVidia card, there is an issue that prevents the computer from shutting down completely if the “GraphicsEnabler” option is used in the myHack Installer.  I believe NVInject, NVKush, and NVDarwin all suffer from this same problem.  What happens is that when the shut down command is invoked, the computer’s screen will turn off, the HD will turn off, but the power stays on.  When the nVidia graphics kexts aren’t used, this problem goes away.

I’ve tried generating an EFI String and loading that with EFI Studio, but it didn’t do the job.  The resolution is still 1024×768 and I have no QE, CI or OpenGL support.  What I did later on was install PC EFI to see if that would fix things (I didn’t really know what I was doing here at this point).  That didn’t really work, but I did later find out that EFI Studio allows me to add boot flags.  I added “Graphics Mode”=”1280x800x32” to the boot flag so now it boots with the proper resolution.  It gives the proper resolution, but still no QE/CI or OpenGL.  This guide has information on how to test for QE (Quartz Extreme) and CI (Core Image): http://prasys.co.cc/tag/enable-qeci/

Another thing I tried was to modify my DSDT to get my graphics card working using this link: http://tonymacx86.blogspot.com/2010/01/advanced-dsdt-fixes-nvidia-graphics.html.  I managed to get the card recognized using the DSDT code, but when I got rid of the graphics kexts, and the boot.plist options as specified in the guide, I lost my graphics acceleration.  I know my DSDT code is working here still since System Profiler tells me what card I have with the exact same names that I gave in the DSDT.  It seems that having graphics acceleration and shutdown/restart working properly just isn’t meant to be.

The tradeoff:

I either could have proper graphics acceleration and no shutdown, OR I could have shut down and no graphics acceleration.  Graphics is the clear winner here, but I still hate having no shutdown.  I have not found a fix for this.

Power Management

There was a problem with high CPU temperatures with the laptop.  I installed the VoodooPowerMini kext located here (http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,1095.0.html)

Audio

After looking for various kexts, I found that VoodooHDA worked for me.  It can be found here (http://www.kexts.com/view/70-voodoohda_(32–_64-bit,_recompiled_by_prasys).html).

Wireless

Works after installation.

USB Ports

They work since it can recognize my mouse and USB drive.

Battery Indicator

I used the VoodooBattery kext located here (http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,1092.0.html)

Card Reader

I don’t use this so I didn’t install the kext for it.  It can be found here: http://www.dailyblogged.com/retail-snow-leopard-installation-guide/ or SD Card Fix (more direct).

Touchpad

I had an issue where I couldn’t tap the touchpad in order for it to “click”.  I fixed this issue by installing the VoodooPS2Controller kext (check the Trackpad option during the installation) (http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php/topic,235.0.html).  Then I installed the preference pane (this allows configuring the Trackpad through System Prefs) here http://www.dailyblogged.com/retail-snow-leopard-installation-guide/ (command -f to find it).  I opened System Preferences and pressed the Show All button, and I saw a “Trackpad” option, so I opened it and the option was there.

Webcam

Works after installation.

Conclusion

Everything I listed here works except for video and the card reader.  There are other things like Ethernet, but I don’t really use it.