Better Late Than Never

So this post is only 3 months overdue.... Oops. In my defence, I've had a very busy summer! I'm sitting at my parents' beautiful home on Kootenay Lake in Nelson, enjoying my 10 days of vacation after a crazy summer of tree planting and fire fighting, and figured I should get this out of the way before I head back to school and completely forget about it. 

There's a lot of pictures here so to keep this semi-short, I'm going to keep the writing to a minimum since I just wanted to wrap up my time in Prague with a post about my last few trips (and also because it seems like ages ago that I was in Portugal and I don't remember specifics anymore..). 

Witch burning on April 30th, a Czech tradition to give a final farewell to winter

Hanna and I at the witch burning on the shores of the Vltava in Prague :)

A day trip to Karlovy Vary, a spa town in western Bohemia, which produces Becherovka, an herbal bitters

Lunch of goulash in a bread bowl. Yum!

Something I'd been looking forward to all semester was a week-long trip to Portugal in May! I traveled there with my good friends Kasia and Kasia from Poland and Georgi from Bulgaria, and aside from enjoying what the country had to offer, we were there to visit our friends Marcelo, Mariana and Hugo who we had studied with the previous semester. The trip started out in Berlin, which we bussed to in order to fly from there to Brussels then onwards to Porto.

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

Francesinha, a Porto speciality made of bread, ham, cheese and a beer sauce

Beautiful Porto!

It was May so not exactly the warmest weather, but that didn't stop us from going to the beach :)

In Coimbra, the city our Portuguese friends study in, we arrived straight into the middle of Quiema das Fitas (Ribbon Burning), which is basically an annual week-long student party. We mingled in with all the dressed-up students in the parade, which was quite the experience. Beer is flowing like water in this parade, which weaves its way through the city, and the students on the floats are intentionally pouring and spraying beer on their fellow classmates. We may not have been students there but that didn't stop us from getting covered in beer! It was a great time though, and cool to see how passionate the students are about their respective faculties.

Chants and cheers were non-stop all afternoon

Sticky and smelling of beer but having a time! L-R Hugo, Kasia, Georgi, Kasia and me

After two nights in Porto and three (crazy, party-filled) nights in Coimbra, we bussed down to Lisbon where our friend from Prague, Mariana (a different one) showed us around the beautiful capital.

Padrao dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) on the Tagus River estuary, celebrating the Portuguese Age of Discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries.

Lisbon!

I had a 24-hour turn around in Prague after the Portugal adventure before taking a night bus with Hanna and Tanja to Salzburg for a weekend trip. The weather was horrendously rainy for the majority of our trip but that didn't stop us from seeing the sights of both Salzburg and Vienna. We couchsurfed, all four of us, with an absolute gem of a guy who has the cutest little bungalow on the outskirts of the city. Quick shout out to Benny: you were an amazing host! Thank you!

Salzburg from the Festung (Castle) Hohensalzburg, one of the largest medieval castles in Europe

Look who I found in a park in Salzburg! So great to spend some time with Lauren in Austria and Prague :)

Mozart's birth-house. This entire city revolves around the composer.

Adding to our 'Countries we've run together in' list :)

There was a 6km run through a nearby zoo that Benny had signed up for on the Saturday that we were there so despite the rain, we all went to watch.

Strong start from our host! 

The biggest pizza I've ever had in front of me, covered in a forest of arugula. Best thing ever though!

Salzburg at night

After two nights in Salzburg we took a morning train to the Austrian capital, Vienna. Luckily for us, the weather got quite a bit better for the last stop of our trip. I didn't find Vienna to be overly exciting (maybe because I was feeling a bit under the weather), but there are definitely a lot of substantially large, ornately-decorated buildings to look at in this city.

By complete chance, we happened across the first live performance by the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest who just so happened to be an Austria, Conchita Wurst. We were a little confused when people on the streets started handing out paper beards to put on our faces. I was convinced it was a visor (and actually used it as such to shield my face from the sun for a while) until we saw others wearing them on their chins:

Tanja, me, Lauren and Hanna gearing up for the concert

I was pretty happy we came across this concert! We didn't really know what was going on, as everything was in German, but it made Vienna much more memorable and fun for me.  

Schonbrunn Palace. 1441 rooms in there! 

We rented bikes for just 1 euro each which were great for zipping around the city and taking in the sights a bit quicker.

Lauren spent five days in Prague with me after Austria and I took her around to many of the sights, some of which I hadn't even seen yet such as the dancing house:

The house is nicknamed 'Fred and Ginger' after the dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

The Vltava river and the castle in the background on a beautiful May afternoon

A traditional Czech meal of smazeny syr (fried cheese) with potatoes and cranberry sauce

Well, it was quite a year. I'm so thankful to everyone I met or who helped me along this year, I miss you all very much and will always have fond memories looking back on my time in Prague and throughout Europe. You're all welcome to come visit in Canada, anytime, and I hope we get to meet again sometime in the future.

This flag will have a place of honour on my wall at school this year :)

And thank you to everyone for staying with me all this long time! Hope you enjoyed hearing about my adventures and misadventures. Time to put the blog to rest while I finish up my studies. Until next time, blog world..

Cheers,

Sonja :)