Copenhagen vlog

I was asked to make a vlog, so here's my first 3 days in Copenhagen!

Madrid and (holy)Toledo!

Long time no post. Here we go.

Feb 27th: After the rather smooth experience of the night bus, Krista and I arrive in Madrid at 7:30 am. Far too early to go anywhere, we decide to have coffee and toast at the train station. Taking the subway to our hostel, I start to notice that people are wet...naturally I assume its raining outside. NO. It was snowing. Snowing in march in SPAIN! We were none too amused by this. Krista and I meet up with Will (who was joining us for this leg of the trip) and we check in to our hostel. For lunch we found place that served unlimited tapas with the purchase of one beer. Sold. The weather had picked up a bit after lunch, but still gray and kind of rainy. We walked around the downtown core, went to Buen Retiro park and ate chocolate and churros. Krista fed most of hers to the birds. We went to the Prado museum and I bought my dad a t-shirt. Not a bad first day in Madrid.

Buen Retiro Park 

Feb 28th: Free breakfast at the hostel. Much toast was eaten. We then met up with our friend Silas' cousin Dany (who is from Madrid). He was awesome and gave us a tour of the city. He was even knowledgeable of all the history etc... For lunch we went to the Museo de Jambon (not an actual museum). There we had a full 3 course meal for pretty cheap. I also tried this cinnamon rice dessert that was like a soggy rice pudding. I really enjoyed it! We walked down Rio street (a commercial shopping street) and played Dutch Blitz. I must also mention in was POURING rain this day. Of the apparent 37 days a year in rains in Madrid, we experienced 2 of them. After Dany left we went to the Reina Sofia museum. There, we saw paintings by Dali and Picasso. The most famous being Picasso's "Guernica". We caved and had the inexpensive Burger King for dinner (the first time I've eaten at Burger in at least 5 years).

Feb 29th: Toledo time! We woke up early and caught our bus to Toledo. Today was by far the warmest and sunniest of the entire trip. A perfect end, especially because Toledo is a beautiful town. Built on a hill and guarded by an enormous wall, it is very historic with winding little streets and many a church. There was even an old Jewish quarter and Synagogue (no longer in use bien sur). We spent most of the day walking around, checking out museums and enjoying the nice weather. The lunch was also the best by far (maybe tied with the paella). We had loads of bread and sangria and I ate pasta bolognese and a meat dish that reminded me a bit of brisket. Delish! We also had marzipan and gelato. You know, that famous Spanish gelato...cough cough. I also got a bit of a tan (if my face going red counts). That'll do Spain, that'll do.

Toledo!

Feb 30th: Having loads of time before our plane takes off, we decide to walk around and sit in a park near the palace for a bit. There I saw my 9th and final pug of the trip. 9 pugs in 7 days, life just isn't fair. Unfortunately, due to a mis-communication, Will hadn't yet printed out his boarding pass or even checked in online. It was a stressful 45 minute subway ride to the airport. After running and being forced to open up my suitcase going through security (I had a lot of plastic bags I was bringing back for garbage purposes, thinking back that is a tad suspicious), we all made it on to the plane. Even Will caught a break and got his boarding pass 20 min before we took off. Never a dull moment. Once we arrived in Geneva we took the train back to Grenoble. A rather stressful but good end to my Spanish adventures.

Fun facts:

-You must go to Toledo

-Apparently Spain has a deal thingy that if you can prove your family is of Spanish decent, and was kicked out/left because of the Spanish Inquisition or general anti-semitism you can re-gain Spanish citizenship. Why is my family not Sephardic??? dammit.

-I know a great deal more about the Spanish civil war than I did before. Knowledge is power!

-Bar and club promoters will chase and hunt you down to try to get you into their establishment.

Barcelona: land of imported palm trees and sand

Hey! So it's been awhile since I've made a blog post. While I have been up to things, nothing has really been super noteworthy. At least nothing that I think anyone else would want to read. Until now! I recently had another break from school, wanting to go somewhere warm and inexpensive, I chose Spain. So here is a summary of what I did in Spain.

Thursday February 21st: Krista, Camila and I were planning on taking the train to Geneva, through a connecting train in Chambery. As Murphy's law states (roughly): what can go wrong, will go wrong. Our train was late and we had to wait for an extra 2 hours in the Chambery train station. We were off to a good start. When we finally got to the airport, we met up with our other friend Pine and we prepared ourselves for our sleeping in the airport adventure. After watching Mulan in french, we all huddled together in or little corner and tried to sleep. It was freezing, the floor was cold and they kept playing terrible 90s soft rock through the pa system all night. Of all types of music?!

Friday 22nd: Considering none of us got a good nights sleep we were all up bright and early for our respective flights. Krista and I bid farewell to Camila and Pine and departed on our turbulence filled flight to Barcelona. We arrived at around 9 am. Once we figured out the metro system and had dropped off our bags at the hostel we were starving. Praise the cheap and plentiful chinese buffet we found. It was amazing, the amount of food we ate. We then made our way to a free walking tour around the gothic quarter. It was a nice little history lesson as I didn't really know anything about Barcelona or Catalan history in general. Krista and I each had a glass of sangria and shared a baguette for dinner (we were still full from our gluttonous lunch).

Saturday 23rd: Free breakfast ftw! Today we decided to purchase a bus tour deal as Barcelona is a big city and this way we could see it all in one day and then determine where to re-visit later. We started our rainy, cold morning a top the bus tour of West Barcelona (including Mont Juic, the Olympic Stadium and Diagonale street). Eventually the weather picked up and the sun began to shine. We decided to treat ourselves to a Paella lunch. It was delicious, and a huge portion, which we gladly ate. Not even the rude English people at the table next to us good put a damper on our meal (they were being embarrassingly fussy and rude to the server). It was time for the second bus tour. On this one we saw the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi area, the beach, etc... Krista and I took advantage of the moderately warm weather and hung out on the beach for a bit. 4 words (5 words?). Crazy old men skinny-dipping. Of all the men in the world for me to see naked at that time, why them? We walked along the famous street "La Rambla" and made our first stop to the Bocaria market. As the sun set we walked along through the old town some more, ate candy, saw a strike and finally went home.

So cold!

Bocaria

Did you know he died for your sins...a lot?

Sunday 24th: We wake up a bit early, so to have a full day of sightseeing. We walk up Mont Juic so to have a nice view of the entire city. For once the weather was absolutely beautiful. We take a teleferic (chair lift) up to the castel at the very top (Castell de Montjuic). It was a really cool fortress but had some more negative times during the Franco era. Once down, we walk through the city a bit and find another buffet lunch (not chinese though). Lets just saw 2 whole bowls of ice cream were consumed. We then went to a free museum with a bunch of statues of Jesus on the cross. I honestly should have counted, there would have been well near two-hundred. There were also a lot of cool collectors items from the area. A room full of fans, receipts and cheques, glasses, canes, stamps....it was pretty cool. We entered the main cathedral in the gothic quarter and saw the tomb of Saint Eulalia (a young christian girl killed by romans). We then saw a little flamenco dancing show and ate more candy, as you do. All and all a full day once more.

Mont Juic Castle

Monday 25th: Or now to be known as the "boring day" of the trip. Basically we had seen a lot of stuff already and as we found out all museums are closed on mondays. Not wanting to spend a lot of money, we were left with not very much to do. We bought a bus tickets to Madrid, walked along the expensive Diagonale street, went and had empanadas at the Bocaria market (and more fresh pressed juice!), we walked for ages back to the beach and had durum for dinner. Thats honestly all. It was nice in the fact that is was a relaxing day, but still kind of on the boring side. One the plus side we discovered the joy of the "goats that sound like humans videos"

Tuesday 26th: We vowed this day would not be boring! We started off with a trip to the beautiful Parc Guell. We spent a few hours walking along, seeing the greenery and the pretty views of the city. We went to our cheapest buffet lunch to date! This was becoming a competition. We went to the Picasso museum and saw a lot of his sketches and ceramics. We then returned to the Bocaria market for more juice...it was just too good! Walking along La Rambla we needed to have some gelato, the day was just too nice not to. I especially liked my Turron flavoured scoop (Catalan/Spanish Nougat). We then returned to our hostel and waited for midnight (as that is when our night bus would take us to Madrid). We ate terrible lasagna and Krista spilled sangria on her new beige pants. It was a good end to a fun 5 days in Barcelona.

Other side of Sagrada Familia

Fun Facts:
-Catalan is way more similar to French than Spanish. Although not easily understood while spoken, it was a lot easier to pronounce and read.

-Go to the Bocaria market, it is awesome and delicious. I had 4 cups of fresh juice in 5 days. 

-There is a square called "George Orwell street", it is the most surveillance camera ridden square in all of Barcelona. Oh the irony!!!

-Mont Juic is named after a Jewish cemetery that used to be there. 

- I stood in a square where King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus stood.

-All of the palm trees in Barcelona were imported for the Olympics. The sandy beaches too! The sand apparently comes from Egypt.

Cayda y Chuck Norris en Salamanca

This is my summary of the 4 day vacation I spent visiting my friend Sarrah in Salamanca, Spain. Sarrah is my friend from high school who is also studying abroad this year. Benefitting from this rare occasion of knowing someone who lives in Spain, I crashed at her place. 


Saturday January 12th: I took the train to the Lyon airport, which was oddly empty for a Saturday night. It was quite creepy. While running for a shuttle bus, I dropped my apartment keys, student card and Grenoble transit pass. Smart move Cayda! Luckily, the bus driver was super nice and drove me back to Terminal 1 where I found them 30 minutes later. Sigh of relief. Later that night, I watched that show "Once Upon a Time" in french. I also watched this really stupid '90s french show called "Les femmes à côté".

Sunday January 13th: Early morning rising to catch my plane. Surprise surprise, I get patted down at the security check! C'mon security guards, shake it up! The flight was a short one, only about an hour and a half. I arrive in no time to the Madrid Barajas Airport. My bus to Salamanca departs 4 hours, time to play the waiting game. While sitting and reading my book, I kept getting people coming up to me asking me questions in Spanish. One note on the Spain spanish accent: the soft "c" sound is pronounced like a "th" sound. Besides the fact that I do not speak Spanish, it sounded like everyone was lisping! After staring blankly and saying "no habla espanole" (which is incorrect spanish in and of itself), I would be left alone. I finally get on the bus and in 3 hours am seeing Sarrah. The most beloved sight in the world as this point. We go back to her place. Sarrah and her roommate Viola, show me around Salamanca, we have dinner and watch Walker Texas Ranger and Harry Potter in Spanish. Long day.

Monday January 14th: I woke up and decided to go on a little stroll of Salamanca by myself. Being a little town, I saw the majority of it in about an hour or so. Salamanca is a very pretty town. It was honestly what I had envisioned when I think of Spain. Old buildings with red terracotta rooves. I loved the old architecture in contrast to the relatively new infrastructures in Grenoble. I also loved the sun! Oh god, Grenoble is very grey in the winter. Everyday is overcast. How I loved the sun shining in Spain. We then hang out a bit in Sarrah's apartment and go grocery shopping. After a delicious homemade pasta dinner, Viola makes some Aqua de Valencia (a regional drink) and we play King's Cup while watching Troy in Spanish. I think the alcohol greatly influenced the positif view of the movie.

Tuesday January 15th: Sarrah and I walk around Salamanca again, this time taking pictures! I needed proof I went there, you know? Oh and in a very European fashion, there was a strike going on! For lunch, we decide to do some sort of tapas thing.We order 2 types of Tortilla dishes (Spanish Tortilla is a potato and cheese dish, contrary to a flour tortilla), and churros and chocolate (a thicker than hot chocolate drink). Back at Sarrah's we watch A LOT of "Los Simpsons", which wasn't actually that hard to understand. More Walker Texas Ranger! AW YEAH! After making dinner, Viola introduces me to an Irish tv show called "Moone Boy". We take a shot of gin and go out so they can show me some Salamanca night life. We go to a bar called "Chiqueria" (which means shots), then to another called "Pan y Agua" (bread and water). Alcohol, nay, everything in Spain is a lot cheaper than France. I picked the wrong country.

Wednesday January 16th: Sleep in! After I finally get up, I make some scrambled eggs and watch "What not to wear" and "Love it or list it". I am completely baffled by how "Love it or List it" and "Walker Texas Ranger" are so popular in Spain. I say thanks and goodbye to Sarrah and Viola and take the bus back to the Madrid airport.  At the airport hotel later that night, guess what I watched? Walker Texas Ranger IN ENGLISH! His voice in Spanish is much more manly.

Thursday January 17th: Taking a free shuttle bus from my hotel to the airport was never more difficult. Apparently, I wasn't on the list and since I didn't speak Spanish, nor did they speak any English, we had a really hard time communicating. Basically, I ended up sitting in a bus locked from the outside by myself for 30 minutes. It was sketchy and weird. I finally got to the airport! Oddly, my flight was slightly delayed as there was an unidentified backpack on my plane. Great, I think, are we honestly playing with the notion that someone intended ill-actions on the cheapo Easy Jet flight from Spain to Lyon? Good on you! You messed with a plane full with 50 people too cheap to fly through a nicer company! Anyway, eventually they flight attendants figured out who the bag belonged to.

That pretty much sums up my trip. I arrived back in France, to snow! Quelle surprise! Sadly it metled within the week. Not that I'm complaining about the warm weather, but snow is always pretty.

Fun Facts:
-Salamanca's animal is the frog
-Jesus do they like to eat pork in central Spain!
-Salamanca has one of the oldest universities in all of Europe (which Sarrah attends)
-Chuck Norris is a bamf
-Agua de Valencia (cava, gin, vodka and orange juice) is delicious and dangerous

Berlin: Gloomy day, fun night.

Sorry this took so long. I'm sure you've all been waiting with baited breath.

Thursday December 20th: We all woke up and decided that we should buy some snacks before heading off for the day's events. After finding a little grocery store near our hostel, I bought an apple, some trail mix and a doughnut that tasted a lot like those timbits that are kind of raw in the center. Happiness thy name is uncooked dough! We took the subway to Brandenburg Tor again to catch our tour for Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. 

Although none of us had the appropriate train tickets (suck it controllers!) we left with the group. It took about 45 minutes to get out of Berlin and into the small town of Oranienburg. Creepily, we were informed that these are the same routes and train tracks many people would have taken to get to the camp when it was in use.

Work will set you free

Once at the camp, we had about a 3-4 hour tour of its entirety. Upon writing this, I wish I had written this blog a lot earlier as I seem to have forgotten much of the really interesting details. Basically Sachsenhausen was mainly a POW camp and held mostly Soviet soldiers (including Stalin's son!). Although there were also some political prisoners and some Jewish people there too. We toured the Jewish barracks, the grounds, the medical facilities, where the gas chamber once was, 'death trenches', etc... All and all an uplifting experience.

Jewish Barracks

Its odd. Although I really wanted to go, for history's sake, personal family stuff, learning in general, etc...the moment you get there, you really want to leave. I'm not one to be incredibly spiritual about things, ultimately I'm more of a cynic, but there was definitely a "vibe" you get from being there. Maybe it was because it was a colder day, maybe due to it being terribly grey and cloudy, maybe it's all mind over matter, but standing in this huge empty walled in area, you can't help but notice this great feeling of despair. We were right next to a train route, but you couldn't hear the any train. No birds, no cars, no people. Eerily silent.

Remains of the gas chamber

I highly recommend it for anyone who has the chance. I learned a great deal and was shocked by how much I really didn't know. To ease off the tension my friends and I referred to Sachsenhausen as a "baby concentration camp", as in size and importance, Sachsenhausen was quite small. Still, it made all statistics seem ridiculous. If so many atrocities happened in this one little camp, the whole picture becomes unimaginable.

Doom and gloom aside. We took the train back to Berlin and met these two very nice German guys. We talked about "How I met you mother" and " The Big Bang theory" and we all laughed when one of them asked us what "ixnay" meant. He thought it was a real word and tried to look it up in the dictionary. I had a great amount of fun explaining Pig Latin to him.

That night, we decided to go and have dinner at the Alexanderplatz christmas market. I don't really remember what I ate, except that it was delicious. Mushrooms and sausages and gravy....something like that. Listening to the music and drinking our Gluwein (mulled wine), we met a really nice group of people. Two sisters from Germany, a Spanish girl and a man from the Netherlands. We talked and drank for an hour and a bit before heading back to the hostel.

Friday the 21st- Time to leave. I wake up around 4:30, trying to be as quite as possible and not wake up my friends, and I make my way to the airport. Being told there was an express train, I desperately tried to find it. Of course I'd ask the only German person who didn't speak any English is she could help me. Through sign language, we made it work. Two hour wait and one flight later, I'm in Geneva. Woohoo! Just in time for my 3 hour wait until a train going to Grenoble shows up! Boredom, boredom, boredom, reading, reading, reading. AHA! Grenoble. 2 hour wait until my Lyon train. Print off tickets, get on train. LYON!!!! OH GOD FINALLY! I make my way to an airport hotel and go to bed.

Beyond that point is Cayda on transatlantic flight and Cayda in Canada time. So there is the conclusion of my time in Berlin!!

Fun Facts:
-The Nazis tried to ruin the British economy through inflation by printing exact copies of pound notes. (They intended on dropping them in an air raid) They never got around to doing it though.

-Even after WW2 Sachsenhausen remained open and became a Soviet camp for containing their prisoners of war. Do as I say and not as I do, eh?

-Travelling, nay, waiting to travel sucks. I honestly think I've spent at least a full day merely waiting for transportation.

Eins, zwei, drei!!!

Hello! Welcome to my Berlin blog post part eins (1).

Monday December 17th: Krista and I made our way to the Lyon Airport. Regretfully, we took the wrong train, ending up at another station in Lyon. An absurd 14 euro and 20 minute tram ride later we arrive at the airport with several hours to spare. Better safe than sorry. We chill. We hang. We stare at walls. In a couple of hours we are in Berlin! 

Upon arrival we make our way to the nearest S-Bahn we had to buy a ticket. NEWSFLASH: neither Krista nor I can speak/read German. God help us, it may as well have been written in Kanji. We manage to buy an incorrect ticket and get on the train. Starving, we make a detour and have our first German Kebab. Delish. We then make our way to our lovely, awesome, kick ass hostel. 

Fun Fact: While rolling my suitcase through the snow I somehow manage to roll over some dog poo, then proceed to lift my suitcase to carry it (unaware of the poo of course), thus rubbing the bag against my pant leg. You can picture the rest.

Tuesday 18th: Krista and I wake up and decide to start walking toward Brandenburg gate. Hungry, we stop in to a little pastry shop and both order a croissant. Order being the key word as I freaked out realising I don't speak German. I just pointed to the pastry and said "croissant!". Rude and embarassing, score! We walk around, see museum island, Berliner Dom and take loads of pictures. We then make our way to Brandenburg gate to catch up with the 3rd Reich tour. I'm glad in hindsight that we did this tour as we got to see a lot of things I would never have realised were there. Such as: Roma, Homosexual and Jewish memorials, 'Hitler's bunker', Luftwaffe headquarters, Nazi ministry of Propaganda, Berlin Wall, SS and Gestapo ruins, the old Jewish region, cemetary, 'death street', the house of the German 'Schindler'. 4 hours of walking later, we are starving and try to find a famed Mexican restaurant....which was closed. Chinese it is! We go back to the hostel and Cara and Estelle arrive. Much rejoicing.

Fun fact: I ran out of cash the night before, so the entire day Krista was paying for me, as I searched for a bank machine. We finally found one after dinner. After that, they were everywhere! I think they all hid from me.

Wednesday 19th: We all wake up and take the S and or U-bahn to get some food. I have dunkin' doughnuts for the first time! I also have a pastry I could not pronounce. We walk out of the Alexanderplatz station to see...a Christmas market! WOOHOO. We walk around, drink it all in and vow to come back. We then make our way to Brandenburg gate to take the free walking tour of Berlin (as Cara and Estelle had not yet seen anything). We essentially saw all the same things with some more added, such as: Checkpoint Charlie, some pretty churches, the book burning memorial, and the fancy xmas market. We decide to be fancy and go to a prore restaurant for dinner. It was incredibly bizarre as the place was apparently famous, was a huge location but besides 3 other groups, we were the only ones there. I had the famous currywurste (total fusion cuisine) and loved it. We spend a really long time at the restaurant. Atleast 3 hours.

Fun Fact: We hung out at the hostel that night and got in trouble for laughing too loudly. Sorry my joy is harshing your mellow German hostel security guard!

To be continued....

Pre-Berlin/Christmas Vlog

Hey! My friend Jaslyn asked me to make a vlog ages ago, which I did, but never uploaded it. oops
Sorry it kinda sucks.