Alexander Ciorlian

In the morning, we went to go visit the historical Green Vault. It was destroyed after the second World War but was rebuilt to be the same as its original form. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the museum. The Green Vault consisted of priceless handcrafted jewelry made of golds and other special rare gems. There was a room filled with ivory handcrafted figures and statues that had so much detail. The architecture of the room designs were also astonishing because the walls were made of stone and filled with mirrors to give the illusion that the room was endless. It was beautiful seeing all the precious relics of jewelry and history of the royal pieces that survived the war.

After leaving Dresden, we set off to go to Germany’s capital, Berlin. After visiting Germany so many times with my family, we never made it to Berlin so I was excited to experience the city with the students who lived in the city for a few years. Once we arrived in Berlin, we visited Alexandrplatz. It was a huge area where people would gather to shop, eat, and gather to socialize. People were playing guitars and singing. It was a great time. We went to a hotel that had a viewing area on the top floor so you could see majority of Berlin. My friend Sanny told me that a couple of years ago, she actually went bungee jumping off the side of the hotel!! I could never do that. She said it was one of the best experiences of her lives.

The next stop after Alexandeplatz was the Berliner Unterwelten. It is a tour of a remaining bunker that wasn’t destroyed during WWII. It was incredible to actually walk through where citizens during the War were staying for protection. It was as if we traveled back in time because the structure of the bunker was preserved so well. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures so that was disappointing but I highly recommend visiting the Bunkers of Berlin!

The trip for today included visiting a flood protection area, traveling to Dresden, and then having an authentic East German dinner. Unfortunately, there was a fire near the flood protection area so we were not allowed to go visit it. The next best idea was to go hiking and exploring in the East German Mountains. It was a beautiful break to visit pure natural forests after being in so many cities. We all got reconnected with nature. The mountains have a small canyon so we decided to walk down and it was so nice and relaxing. What we forgot to realize is that we have to hike back up in order to get to the bus. The was a challenge. On a tour map it says the hike back up is about a 3 hour walk, we finished it in 90 minutes but we were all so tired. Back to the bus to get Dresden!

During the bus ride, it was dead silent. Everyone including myself were sleeping until we arrived in Dresden. It was a glorious nap. We arrived to Dresden and you could notice how the past affected the area but the city was slowly getting back to being rebuilt. The architecture was absolutely stunning and it was amazing to see how these old buildings survived the war. The city rebuilt the Women’s Church in the past decade to represent freedom throughout the city.

Later that night after exploring the city, the whole group went to a restaurant called Planwirtschaft. This restaurant included a huge selection of East German authentic food. The meal I ordered was spaghetti pasta with tomato sauce and sausage. It was really good! Also the Kilmer beer was good. Kilmer translate to “basement beer” meaning it is brewed in a basement-like area. The Kilmer beer is also very “suffig”, meaning that the beer is very light and easy to drink like water. It was delicious. After dinner, a couple of students and I went bar hopping to explore Dresden’s nightlife. The main street was filled with so many people. People were playing music, socializing, and just enjoying the beautiful night with the full moon in the sky.

Today we visited “The Park”. It is a new work office development that incorporated a workplace and comfort within a natural environment. The office buildings have many small green areas surrounding them for employees to enjoy as they work through out their day. It was a really cool place to see because important companies such as IBM and Sony work there and majority of the employees spoke English. It was cool to see how people from all over the world came to work in one area that had more productivity due to the natural outside setting.

After visiting the park, we toured the Prague Castle and toured St. Georges Cathedral. The best part of the Cathedral were the stained-glass windows. They were filled with bright vivid colors and the detail was extraordinary.

From the Cathedral we traveled down Kings Street stopping at almost all the street vendors and looking at the interesting stuff they were selling. We crossed over one of the oldest bridges in the world, the Charles Bridge. It was long walk on cobblestones but we finally reached the end of the street at the militia tower where all the weapons were kept. The tower was placed furthest away from the Prague Palace just in case it didn’t explode from a fire. Overall Prague is a beautiful place with some much culture and historic architecture. I definitely recommend spending a week in Prague to get a better chance to visit all of the amazing places. (Pictures will be posted soon)

Today we set off for Prague in Czech Republic. It is about a 3 and a half hour drive so it was nice to catch up on sleep before reaching the first stop before Prague. The first stop was a palace/park called Chateau Lednice. The palace had one of the largest parks in the area with the oldest greenhouse in the world. The park only has 5 employees which is unbelievable considering the massive size of the park. The park is unique because the originals owners of the palace wanted their green outdoor areas to be influenced by different parts of the world. The park includes North American, English, Turkish, and Chinese garden styles in separate areas. In the far end of the park, there is a Turkish Tour that 302 steps to the top. Leg day was real walking up the tower but the view was worth it. After walking around the park, we went to the greenhouse. It had a spectacular collection of exotic flowers and plants.

After Lednice, we made it to Prague and had sometime to relax and re-energize for the night time party boat on the Vltava River. So what did we do in our free time? We rallied! There was a ping pong table in the game room and the German students introduced a new game to me called Rally. We had up to 12 people running around the table hitting the ball back and forth. Competition is always a given so we all got loud and rowdy but it was fun to play! I even won a couple rounds.

After taking the metro into the city, we walked to the city center and saw the beautiful historical buildings. My favorite building in the area was the Church of the other of God before Tyn. I loved the style of the two black towers. The party boat was amazing to see the highlights of Prague and to get an idea of what to do the next day. Everyone enjoyed the beautiful night on the river and I really liked how the buildings were always shining from the lights.

Our trip for today consisted of visiting a district city outside of Vienna, a guided-tour of the Museum Quarters, and exploring around for the last night in the city. The first destination was to a new developing city called Seetown Aspern, that incorporates the idea of producing a green city. The city has a goal to inhabit over 20,000 citizens by 2028. One of the project’s main focus was traffic. It wasn’t vehicle traffic. The project’s main priority was to get rid of the need for the use of vehicles and focus on pedestrians. So everything in the city (stores, markets,  was in a 10-15 minute walk. The coolest part is that I learned about cities like Seetown Aspern in my Environmental Planning class. The term for these fully environmental green cities is New Urbanism. In America, new urbanism has been produced in places like Seaside, Florida and a couple other cities. It was really interesting to see everything in reality and the endless possibilities of developing a city that is safest for humans and the environment.

The next stop of the day was back in Vienna’s 7th district, the Museumsquartier (Museum Quarters). The quarter has two museums of modern and historical art and includes Austrian cultural. We meet up with an architect who owns his own company in the city and he showed us how he transformed a busy street with cars into a public, open area for people to walk around and shop while minimizing traffic usage. He showed us how the area become popular with tourism compared to previously being run-downed and poor area. A perfect example for the new street creating a new area for tourism is like the High Line in New York City except it isn’t a park. It is unbelievable what planning can do to a bad area to transforming the area into a booming place for everyone to enjoy.

After visiting the destinations for the day, I had the decision to either go back to the hostel to sleep or go explore the sight-seeing of Vienna with a few other students. Although a pillow sounded amazing, I couldn’t resist to the exploring on my last night in Vienna. So the exploration included visiting the palace Schonbrunn which is pretty much like a mini Versailles and then going to Prater which is a small amusement park.