Midway through March!

After last weekend's fun in Salzburg, I had a lot of school work to catch up on. I had my first midterm in Business Strategy which went alright considering how vague that professor is with instructions and expectations.

Deposits for Budapest and Croatia trips were due this week and Robin, Axel, Sarah and I booked out trips to Italy for Easter week. Originally, we had planned to stay in a villa on Lake Como but we found a cheaper one on a lake not far from it. The weather will be warm enough for us to spend the week on the beach and for our day trips to Switzerland and Verona. There is a boat rental with our villa so I intend to make use of it.

I also had to pay for my gym membership this week. I ended up making friends with a banker at the Bank of Austria while doing this who seemed delighted a Canadian was visiting his city. He also told me that Halifax is where all Austrians aspire to travel to because of the fall colours. He certainly wasn't the typical Viennese; I felt like tI was talking to a Maritimer after he gave me his life story. :)

Wednesday evening was spent on a skype interview with the lovely Kelly Lynch, Editor in Chief of Symmetry- MSVU's Communications Dept online publication. I've written for it before but never been the subject of an article before! Kelly will be profiling me and my adventure- I just hope I didn't ramble too much.

My German class concluded early so the majority of us could leave for the bus to Prague for the weekend.

Prague- wow. It's hard to put it into words. I had high hopes for it but it exceeded my expectations tremendously!

We caught the bus at 1pm and we arrived exactly 4 hours later from Vienna. We checked into our hostel late afternoon and had a few minutes to relax before our group went out for traditional Czech food.

A few days before, I had over-extended myself at the gym and was now playing for it. It felt like I had fallen down the stairs! Not fun for excessive walking or sitting on a bus.

The Czech food was great! The traditional dishes all include lots of meat and very few veggies. I got the lamb which wasn't bad but I was highly disappointed with the potato dumplings.

Trying to figure out the exchange rate on Czech Crowns from Euros then back to Canadian Dollars was proving to be a challenge- even if it was cheaper!

There isn't very many times you can go to an ATM machine and pull out 2000 of something- but it was equal to about 80 Euros. At least you 'feel' wealthy there.

The next day was St. Patrick's Day, and we started the day with a city tour. Our guide looked very much like k.d. Lang- but with blonde highlights. Very competent and patient with out large and loud croud.

We visited the Palace, St. Charles' Bridge and finished in the Old Town with some traditional Prague ham on a spit for Lunch. Yummm!

We found a nearby Irish pub to listen to Celtic music (played by Czechs no less) and get a few souvenir hats. Sarah and I made friends with a few Aussies and left our group to tour around with them. It's something to be said for not getting lost in a new city- Sarah found our way back to the hostel for some social time with our group.

We were all up early the next day to go find the John Lennon Memorial Wall and take a few last pictures of the city.

The weather was a balmy 22 degrees and sunny- couldn't ask for better weather! We caught the bus at 1pm to head home. Most of us took advantage of the 4 hour drive back by napping. What an amazing weekend!! I was sad to return to Vienna and all the school work that was waiting for me.