Stockholm, Paris, Barcelona, Seville, Venice, Prague

It has now been a month since I got back from my incredible Eurotrip, and since this term is incredibly busy I am going to just combine all these cities into one blog post. Here's the best and worst parts about every city!

Stockholm

The Best: We went to the Nobel museum and learned about all the different prize winners and how they came to success.

The Worst: The highest temperature the entire time was 35°F, so we had to buy winter gear. 

Here is a Nobel Peace Prize

Here is the view of the Stockholm waterfront (maybe you should say icefront...)

Paris

The best: I would call Paris the best city in general - the best architecture, the best museums, the best palace, the best food

The worst: It was gloomy out for most of the time we were there. Fortunately the weather was incredible the last day we were there.

 Our hostel was a block away from the Moulin Rouge

 Eiffel Tower at sunset, when we saw the sun for the first time in 4 days

Notre Dame from the side with the cherry blossoms

Barcelona:

The best: Climbing to the top of the mountain, where we could see the city below us in every direction

The worst: Finally going to the beach on the last day and realizing we could only stay for 30mins because we had to get to the airport

Here's the view from the top of the mountain overlooking the city and the Mediterranean

Seville

The best: Having good friends to show us around the city (they even took us out on a boat!)

The worst: I didn't get to see the inside of the palace because it closed earlier than we thought it did on our last day

This was just outside our hostel, in front of Seville's cathedral

The River Guadalquivir by night

Venice

The best: It is incredibly beautiful - unlike anywhere else in the world.

The worst: There are way too many tourists in this city. It felt really fake because there is almost no authentic Italian culture - 90% of the population is tourists and the other 10% all make money off the tourists.

The Grand Canal

Here is the view from the window of our hostel

Prague

The best: We heard members of the Prague Symphony perform Dvorak's Czech Suite - it was really cool to hear them play music by their most well-known composer.

The worst: Our hostel was pretty sketchy (aka dodgy for all the Brits reading this). Someone came into our room at 4am yelling about things like drugs, etc.

Here is the view from the faux-Eiffel Tower that they built at the top of the mountain

Part of the Royal Gardens

I hope this was interesting - let me know if you want to hear more about any of my travels. T-minus 38 days until I return to the states!

My Thoughts on Berlin

As you guys probably know, I just returned from an incredible trip around Europe thanks to my really long Easter vacation at Oxford. Even though I believe that the best way to form opinions about places is to visit them yourself, I am going to share my opinions with you since I know you might not have the opportunity to go to these places, and if you do have a chance to go to Europe this might give you an idea of which places you would like to see.

First, we went to Berlin, which is the capital of Germany. The history of Berlin is a dark, sad story, but you can tell that the city is trying to reinvent itself. There is lots of post-modern architecture, especially in the fancy shopping districts. There is also a youth sub-culture which decorates the city with graffiti. However, there is plenty of architecture left from pre-20th century times such as:

 the Berliner Dom

the Brandenburg Gate

The thing is that for each of these impressive sights, there is a sad story to accompany it. For example, the Berliner Dom is a result of Emperor Wilhelm II's desire to "compete" with other European countries. Specifically, he wanted to show up St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, so he destroyed the church on this sight and built the Dom to be as ornate as possible. He viewed the Dom as a way to show off and increase his own power.

The Brandenburg Gate is one of the most famous landmarks in all of Europe, and it serves as a symbol of Berlin. However, during the Cold War it stood directly next to the Berlin Wall and the Soviets even covered it with red banners when JFK delivered a speech there in 1963, which prevented anyone from looking into the East. It is hard to imagine what it was like to live in a city which would not even permit you to visit relatives 5 minutes away from your house, but that was the reality in Berlin up until the end of 1989.

Other sad stories of Berlin are commemorated by memorials around the city. For example, there is a monument at the famous Humboldt University which reminds visitors that the Nazi burnt thousands of books on their campus in 1933. Also, there is a memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe and a memorial for "the victims of war and tyranny." While Berlin has moved on from days of war, there are still things that sadden me, like the fact that 80% of the population has lost or never had faith in God. Also, there are gypsy women all throughout the city at the major tourist sites asking for money for food, etc - our tour guide informed us that it is part of an organized crime operation and that they must turn over all the money they receive to a group of powerful men who essentially own these women.

For these reasons, I can't say I love Berlin. However, I think that it is an incredibly interesting place to visit and that there are a lot of impressive historical sites, so I would recommend going if you have a chance. Also, I would wait until mid-April because in the end of March the weather was getting warmer, but the trees and flowers had not yet blossomed.

On Tuition Fees

Back in December, there were crazy protests here in Britain about tuition fee increases after the government voted to raise tuition to £9000 per year. I think that most people in the states really didn't know why it was such a big deal, so I thought I would try to explain it. £9000 seems really low when compared with tuition fees at American universities, but that's because American parents pay for some, if not all, of their kids' education. In Britain the student is generally expected to pay the entire cost of their education, which means that the average student will graduate with more than $40,000 worth of debt under the new system. When you compare this with the debt they currently accept, which is less than $20,000 for their entire degree, you can understand why they are upset. This extra debt will especially affect students from low-income backgrounds, because their parents won't be able to take up some of the slack. There are tuition fee waivers and bursaries (which help pay for your daily living costs) for low-income students, but it remains to be seen whether they will be sufficient to make up for the huge increase in cost to students.

6 weeks in 6 sentences + pictures

1. Winter here is perpetually 40 degrees and rainy with no end in sight (still debating whether this is better than the sub-zero Chicago winter).
2. I have gotten to watch a lot of debate in the student government over tuition fee increases, and I believe this, combined with my more personal conversations with Brits, has given me a better understanding of the cultural differences here.
3. One of the reasons I wanted to come to Oxford was that I thought I would have more opportunities to play music, and I was definitely right - it is amazing the stuff I have gotten to do here, from playing in different orchestras to forming my own chamber group to performing with NU alums.
4. I went to a tea party today, so there is proof that the stereotypical afternoon tea is not dead even if Brits don't do it everyday.
5. This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the Founder's Dinner at my college, which is the fanciest event of the year complete with pre-dinner champagne and desert mints marked with the St. Anne's crest!
6. It was a lot of fun until the guest speaker from the Royal Opera spoke for over 30 minutes about Anna Nicole Smith: The Opera (he called it a masterpiece).

 I got to eat at formal hall in Christ Church (Harry Potter fans, be jealous)

This is me competing at the St. Anne's Music Competition. 

I got a scholarship for music lessons because of this!

This is Stephen Isserlis, one of the best cellists in the world, before he performed the Dvorak Cello Concerto with OUO (the orchestra I was in last term) - definitely in the top 5 concerts I've ever attended.

Scotland and Ireland

This past week I was fortunate enough to spend traveling around to Scotland and Ireland. First I took a bus to Edinburgh to see Liz, Noah, Ariel, and Katie from Shepard, which was a lot of fun. Ariel was hosting a Hannukuh party so I got to meet a bunch of Edinburgh students. Also, I played my first ever game of dreidel, which I almost won!

The next day I met up with my two Oxford friends Kaitlin and Max, and we went on a day trip to the Highlands. We went by bus across the country into Scotland's snow-capped mountains. We were lucky to go on a really clear day, so you could see for miles. Our tour guide did a great job telling us the stories of the Scots and all their violence. However, the best part was taking a boat across Loch Ness. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. On the boat, they showed us the sonar machine that detects the massive creatures swimming around underneath us. They showed us a picture of the sonar of the largest creature they have detected - it is 38 feet long and swims at 40km/hr. You might think that it was just a glitch in the machine, but he has detected the same creature 19 times in the past year alone. I will leave it to you to decide whether the Loch Ness monster is real!

The next day we went into Edinbugh to see the city. We saw the cathedral, statues of David Hume and Adam Smith, and the Edinburgh Castle (though the inside of the castle was closed due to the snow). The city was especially cool at night time, because they have a German-style Christmas market and tons of Christmas decorations. The only bad part about Edinburgh was the inordinate amount of snow there - the worst snow in 47 years according to the newspaper. They had gotten about a foot of snow the week before we arrived, and they got a few more inches after we got there. Our hostel was outside of the city, so it was a nightmare trying to get into town - none of the city buses were running and the taxis were in really high demand. Also, our bus to Glasgow was cancelled due to the snow, so when we finally left Edinburgh we had to catch a train.

We were only in Glasgow for a little over a day, but it was still really nice. There was a fresh layer of snow on the ground, and it made the city look pretty. We saw the University of Glasgow and Kelvingrove Park the first day. The next day we took a tour bus around the city because it was so cold (around 20 degrees) that walking everywhere was almost unbearable. The architecture in Glasgow was really interesting - very modern. My favourite part was the Winter Garden, which was a huge tropical garden inside a glass room. Overall, it was a cool city, even if we were only there for a short time.

The worst experience we had on the trip was getting to the airport in Glasgow. We asked someone in the train station which bus to take, and he actually directed us to the wrong airport. Once we got there, we couldn't find our airline, and when asking someone at British Airlines where we could find RyanAir she said, "You're in the wrong airport. The one you need to go to is over an hour and a half away!" I stared blankly at her for a couple seconds with my mouth wide open and then I started to walk away and she yelled after me "You're welcome!!" while laughing. It was horrible. As it turned out, the airport was closer than she said and our flight was delayed 20 minutes, so we got to the airport in just enough time to make the flight. It was awesome.

The last leg of our trip was Dublin, Ireland. We went on a free tour which was given by a native Dubliner who is studying history at University, and it was incredible! It lasted three hours but he kept our attention so well the entire time. It climaxed in his speech about the fight for Irish independence which was really passionate. He also explained to us that Dublin is the pub capital of the world, and that the Temple Bar district is the pub capital of Dublin. That night, we went to the Temple Bar to experience the culture, and the live music was great, even though there was no traditional Irish music. Instead, they were playing CCR and  Lynyrd Skynyrd covers, which made me a little homesick and excited to go home this week. Here are some pictures from the trip.

Loch Ness

 The Highlands

Edinburgh

Trying to find a bus into Edinburgh

Glasgow University

Live music in Dublin

Now I am back in Oxford for a couple days before I go to Baltimore for Christmas. Can't wait to see everyone!

Thanksgiving and Christmas

Not to sound critical, but the British really don't understand Thanksgiving. It's kind of funny. Some people think that we are celebrating our triumph over the Native Americans, and others think that we are celebrating our high obesity rate. I think that if they had a chance to come to Thanksgiving with my family they would understand. 

I went to a Thanksgiving dinner at one of the halls at Oxford, and it just wasn't the same. The evening started out with champagne and servers walking around the room offering hors d'oeuvres, which was funny enough. Before we went through the buffet, we were warned that "it's not like an American buffet where you just get to eat everything - make sure to only take the vegetarian entree if you signed up for it!" I think they were afraid we would eat too much. Fortunately, we got a good amount of food. We had turkey, ham, gravy, fried potatoes, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce, dinner rolls, and pecan pie for dessert. I know that doesn't sound like very much by American Thanksgiving standards, but compared to my other meals here, I was grateful for the variety. It didn't feel very much like Thanksgiving without the family, but it was still nice. The best part of the evening was when two British guys thanked the Americans for allowing them to celebrate Thanksgiving with us by singing John Denver's "Country Roads." It was great.

Since Oxford term ends December 3rd, they start celebrating Christmas in Oxford the last week of November. The official beginning of the Christmas season was on Friday November 27 with the Oxford Christmas lighting. It reminded me a lot of Who-ville because there was a parade of thousands of kids with lanterns and some of the kids were playing in a marching band. The whole city was packed with people. There were food stands everywhere selling sausages and mince pies and other stuff, and there were also some carnival rides. Eventually, they counted down and lit up all the street decorations and the Oxford Christmas tree.

This week I finished my last essay of term which was a GREAT feeling. The rest of this week I will be playing in Christmas concerts and doing other festive stuff (as well as trying to find a summer internship...). On Friday, I am heading up to Scotland to visit some friends, which should be a lot of fun - I'm especially looking forward to my first ever Hannukuh party! I will be going with two of my friends from Oxford, and in the 10 days before I leave for Baltimore, we will be seeing Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin!

 Here is the Christmas parade with the band and the lanterns in the background.

Here is the St. Anne's Christmas tree in our quad.

Here is a picture of Oxford I took this week from the top of the University Church of St. Mary

Can't wait to see everyone - I will be back in Baltimore December 14!

Burning People Alive and Breaking World Records

Hi Everyone!

The past couple weeks have been OK. Two weeks ago I got a pretty bad cold, and I immediately realized that this academic system doesn't allow for that, at least during term time. Fortunately, I am all better now, so I will try to impress my tutors a lot the rest of term! It's funny that I'm thinking of impressing them, because I don't think that impressing my professors would have crossed my mind last year. I noticed when I first got here that everyone talked to impress, and now I know why - when you meet with your professors 1-on-1 every week, there is a lot of pressure to impress them with your knowledge. It is especially important for visiting students because our professors determine our grades subjectively at the end of each term.

Last Saturday we went to a carnival for the Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes Night) celebration. They had fireworks (that would be considered pretty bad by American standards), they had some carnival rides, and then they had a HUGE bonfire where they were burning a wooden replica of Guy Fawkes! I was shocked that a town with a history of burning innocent people alive would celebrate the capital punishment of Guy Fawkes in such a grotesque way. But it happened.

We left the carnival and had to find somewhere to eat (the dining hall isn't open on weekends), so we went to an amazing Spanish Tapas restaurant in Cowley, one of the neighborhoods outside the city. After days (or maybe even weeks) of being disappointed meal after meal, it reminded me what it's like to have a really great meal. The stereotype about British food is true - it makes McDonald's look pretty good. Note that this is coming from someone who has never complained about a dining hall before. I think we are going to start cooking in the dorm kitchen more often because it is relatively inexpensive, and you have a lot more to choose from by buying your own food.

About 1 in 10 days is sunny, so yesterday was great even though it was really cold (can't believe it hit 70 in Evanston the same day!). I biked down to the Iffley Road Sports Complex, where Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile. There wasn't much to see, since the track has obviously been redone since he ran there in the 1950s, but it was still cool to go. Also, I checked out their sports fields, and they were kind of sad compared to American schools. It looked like Rugby was the biggest spectator sport, and the stands fit about as many people as the Towson High School football "stadium." University-level sports here just don't matter. In fact, most professional sports players drop out of school as soon as their talent is realized (around age 14-16). I think that's why University sports are so bad - none of the talent actually goes to college.

 Here is the hall where Harry Potter was filmed! I ate there.

Here is the bonfire and the effigy.

This is the Tapas Restaurant and my friends Max and Clare.

That's all I have for now. Wish me luck - I have a concert tomorrow! It's going to be awesome!!