Leeds to Mannheim

Ahoj!

After spending a long weekend in Prague, I have decided that they definitely have the best way of saying hello. I have finally finished all my exams for this half of the semester and managed to fit my first solo trip in between the last two!

The beginning of last week was so busy as I had my exam and then tried to get as much work done as possible before leaving for Prague. On Monday, after my accounting exam (which actually want really well), I met Cecily for a quick catch-up, to buy sunglasses (you may notice in my Lucerne pictures that one of the arms was missing off the pair I was wearing) and for some vegan dessert! We went to a vegan ice cream shop called eis eis baby. I had cherry crumble and cookie ice cream which don’t really go together but were amazing nonetheless.

On Tuesday, after a day of work and packing, Kathrin arrived, and we prepped for the running dinner which we were taking part in that night. Like last semester, the running dinner is where you prepare a dish for the course you are given in pairs and then visit 3 different apartments, meeting 4 new people and eating a different course at each. We were given the starter, so we made camembert with homemade croutons, sweet peppers and guacamole. The guacamole was a bit random and last minute because Kathrin insisted that we buy an avocado and then we weren’t really sure what to use it for. Strangely, the camembert cooked like a souffle rather than melting??? None of us had ever seen that happen before and we were very confused and I’m still not sure how we managed to cook cheese wrong. However, it still all tasted delicious and we just had to cook the cheese rather than dip the things in it. The people who came around were all lovely and interesting too. We then went for mains at a different house. This time the hosts were vegetarian, so they made vegetable curry. It was nice but the veg was a bit hard! This was by far the best group of the night though as everyone was so chatty and lovely. Our final course was tiramisu minus the coffee (which is good because I don’t like coffee) and with bananas. It was the best course of the night in terms of food, but it was so awkward as by this point (just past 11pm) I think everyone was tired and so there was barely any conversation. Kathrin and I left quite quickly after eating as I had to be up early the next morning for my bus.

I left Mannheim around 7am the next morning on a seven-hour bus to Prague. I had a seat on the bottom floor of the bus, and it was practically empty which was good since I was going to be on it for so long. When I finally arrived in Prague, I was so excited to not be sat down anymore! I went straight to my hostel, (Hostel Ananas) which was right in the city centre in a beautiful, posh shopping centre, and checked in. In the room I met two German girls, Sarah and Blanca, who had also just arrived, and they asked if I wanted to explore with them. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering around and exploring and we had chimney cakes (not as good as in Budapest) in front of the Astronomical clock.

As Thursday was my first full day, I had booked a walking tour so I could see all the important bits of the city in one go. The tour started at 10 so I explored the area around my hostel while I was waiting and found a cute little farmers market and a huge shopping centre. At 10 we set off one the tour which started in the old town and ended in the new town. First, we were told about the buildings and statues around the old town square and the astronomical clock. Then we moved on to the smaller streets, an opera house where Mozart had played and the newer streets and city gates. After about two hours of walking we stopped in a pub for a quick break and I got talking to some other people on the tour. One lady from the US even gave me her mobile number and email in case I’m ever in Seattle! After the break we went around the Jewish quarter of Prague and heard about how it has changed over time, especially since the second world war. The tour finished by the river near the famous Charles Bridge.

After the tour I went to get some lunch. I ordered Goulash with potato pancakes and dumplings and it was incredible. The dumplings were strange, very similar to round slices of white bread, but it was all amazing. The restaurant was cartoon themed and had drawings all over the walls. People were encouraged to write and draw their own pictures on the walls too, so I commemorated my first solo trip.

To burn off my lunch I decided to walk up to the top of Petrin Hill which has a mini version of the Eiffel Tower and amazing views of Prague. The walk was a lot further up than I expected though with so many steps! I sat at the top for a while, taking pictures, relaxing and admiring the view. On the way down the hill, I stopped outside the Franz Kafka museum. Franz Kafka is a famous German writer who spent most of his life in Prague. Outside the museum there is a statue of two men weeing, I only actually went to see this as I read somewhere you could get them to spell things out with their wee but I couldn’t find how to do that (I think it might have been a lie). It was entertaining though!

I finished my solo part of the day with a visit to the Museum of Communism. This was really interesting as it went through the story of the rise of communism and the USSR but focused on Prague. I knew quite a bit of the USSR history from my GCSE’s, but I’d never heard much about how it affected the Czech Republic. Some of the stories were horrible and it’s incredible to think how much the country has changed in the past twenty years.

Finally, before going back to the hostel, I stopped at one of the side food stalls and tried a Czech take away dish. I can’t remember what it was called but it was effectively fried potato, cabbage onions and ham. The dish was okay, but it was quite cold as it had probably been ready hours before! When I got back to the hostel I bumped into Sarah and decided to go on a night walk with her and Blanca. After they had eaten, they came to meet me, and we walked around the old two and along the river at night. It was stunning, especially the view of the castle which was all lit up.

On Friday I left the hostel early to get to Prague castle as it opened and avoid the queues. This was perfect as when I arrived (which involved walking up a lot of steps again) there was no one there so I got in straight away and was able to look round the grounds completely undisturbed. Other tourists soon arrived though, and I can see why the advice is to get there early because soon all the grounds were packed. It is a beautiful palace but a bit disappointing as you can’t actually go inside any of the proper palace areas, just look around the outside. I stayed in this area for the rest of the morning and then found a very cheap restaurant for a 3-course Czech meal at lunch. I really wanted to try Czech pork knuckle, and this was part of the menu, so I ordered that as my main alongside the fixed starter and dessert. The starter was goulash soup which was lovely. However, as a main the waiter brought me chicken dippers and chips. I then noticed everyone else also had this and didn’t want to complain in case his English wasn’t great! The dessert was an apple cake thing which wasn’t great but the whole meal was only about £6 so I can’t complain!

After lunch I decided to try and find some of the sights that I had missed. This included the John Lennon Wall, Dancing House and Hanging Freud. By the end of the day I’d walked around 40,000 steps so I went back to the hostel to rest for a bit before getting tea with Blanca and Sarah. As they are vegans, we went to a vegan restaurant for tea. I had a ‘kebab’ wrap and mixed fries which was a lot nicer than actual kebab. The whole evening as lovely as I got to know them both a lot better and I am going to go and visit them in Berlin at the end of May.

Saturday was my final day. First, I went with Sarah and Blanca to a raw vegan café for brunch. I had raw pancakes with cashew crème and blueberries which were lovely. It was really interesting because as the name suggests nothing was cooked so everything was made with natural ingredients that had usually just been blended together. The cashew crème on my pancakes was delicious. After eating, I went with Sarah to find a farmer’s market. The Prague marathon was on and at one point we accidentally ended up walking in the middle of the runners, but we got to the market eventually. It was very small but was really nice as it was mainly a market for locals so wasn’t full of tourists. Sarah bought some more raw vegan treats and I bought an apple strudel. We then walked around this quieter part of the city for a few hours. The walk took us through a huge park on a hill above the river and eventually through to the royal gardens. We actually ended up back at Prague castle and Sarah hadn’t been there yet, so we stayed and looked around again.

After crossing back to the main side of the river we split off to get lunch. I was really lucky with my visit timing as they have Easter markets which opened on Saturday. I wandered around these to find lunch and ended up buying a pulled pork sandwich. The Easter markets were in three locations; Wenceslas Square, the Old Town Square and in front of the Museum of Communism. It was fun to look around them, but they did all sell the same things (a lot of grilled chicken skewers, sausages and chimney cakes!) By this point it was nearly time for me to get my bus. I had a quick walk around Hamley’s as I didn’t know they had shops outside of London and then went back to the hostel to get my stuff ready to leave. Sarah came to meet me, and we sat outside and talked until I had to go. The journey back was long with one bus and two trains. Deutsche Bahn also messed up my ticket completely so my train got in 30 minutes later than it said it would (before delays) and actually ended up getting in 10 minutes later than that. This would have meant I’d miss my connecting train but, being Deutsche Bahn, that was also delayed by an hour. In the end I got back to Mannheim just after 2am.

The trip left me pretty tired, so I had a relaxed day on Sunday, mainly spending time catching up on TV and learning my German presentation. Cecily came to mine in the evening to practice together and I made a vegan chilli and vegan cake so that we could eat. We only actually practised together once in 4 hours because we both had so much to talk about!

The beginning of this week was mainly just lessons and learning the speech with a quick break for my weekly Zumba. I finally got the presentation out the way yesterday and have now officially finished my classes before Easter! To celebrate last night, I went out for the first time this semester. We had a girl’s night and attended the 90s and noughties party in Chaplin. It was so lovely just having all the girls together and Chaplin was nice, but the music was terrible. I’m sure only five songs in three hours were from the right time period and most of them were terrible remixes. We had fun though and because it wasn’t great, I wasn’t forced to stay really late which was good as I had to help with an experiment at 10 this morning.

I’m spending the rest of the week catching up with revision for after Easter, meeting people and packing ready for my trip to Krakow on Saturday!