Holidaze!

HAPPY HOLIDAZE!

Over the next two weeks, I will be traveling a grand total of 21,484 miles. For scale, the circumference of the globe is 24,901 miles. I'm missing it by 3,417 miles. Damn.

The magic formula of this mileage looks a little something like this:

Baltimore > New Jersey > Dulles > Doha, Qatar (layover) > Abu Dhabi (layover) > Amsterdam (layover) > Prague (for 2 days) > Amsterdam (layover) > Abu Dhabi (5 days) > Doha, Qatar (layover) > Dulles > Baltimore

= #YOLO?

= #guaranteedflu?

= #whiskeytangofoxtrot

This holiday season, I decided to do...everything! Spend Christmas day with the entire extended family, fly to Europe (via Abu Dhabi because, believe it or not, is was almost $2,000 CHEAPER to do so) for two days to be with The Gentleman's family who are overseas visiting Prague, and then to Abu Dhabi to spend New Years and also begin moving into our new flat which is available January 1. Huzzah! Exhaustion! Emergen-C! 

In between all of this, I am wrapping up my final paper for a year and a half long certification I've been doing through University of Baltimore, and gearing up for the last 3 weeks at my job when I get back in January. And packing up my existence and moving to another country by February 8. 

You know, no big deal.

One of the things I am most looking forward to in my expatriation is the opportunity to unpack my suitcase and LEAVE it unpacked for more than a couple of months. To just breathe for a few months and not gear up stress about time off of work, customs, time changes, currency exchanges, the potential of lost luggage, and standing in line for security. 

Do you have any idea how much of my life has been spent standing in line for airport security?

A lot.

I plan to sleep through most of February upon my arrival.

I am certain that this will not be the end of crazy travel at the holidays, especially in the future when we will not only be crossing the Atlantic multiple times a year but trying to see family and friends on both coasts of the US, but it will (happily) be the end of this chaotic long distance relationship. I'll gladly take the trade-offs. 

And it really is amazing to think that, within the span of a week, you can spend Christmas day with all of your extended family, then hop on a plane(s) and be in the Christmas markets of Prague with your partner and your partner's family, and then hop on a plane(s) again and be in the Middle East in the lovely 75 degree weather. Can't complain about any of that.

Thus, I embark on my two weeks of insanity starting today with a drive up to New Jersey to be with the whole family for Christmas day. Which I'm quite excited about. 

I just need take a metric shit ton of vitamins and Emergen-C. And possibly wear a SARs mask.


TECHNICAL SIDE NOTE FOR MY FELLOW BLOGGERS:
After The Big Move, I have grand plans for a blog redesign and re-launch. I'm thinking about moving to Wordpress or Squarespace. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Beverages - Prague and Berlin

It's snaining out.

Basically, it means we've all gotten a day off of work (at least those of us in the government/education/nonprofit sectors, and everyone who works for Yahoo! because they can't work from home) for the fact that it's cold, windy, and spewing some sort of snow-rain combination from the sky. The National Weather Service keeps promising that the snow will begin in full force over the next couple of hours, and that we're guaranteed 4-8 inches (heh heh), but I have my doubts.

Nonetheless, I am embracing my day off in true "snow day" style - yoga pants and my old University of South Florida sweatshirt, cinnamon gingerbread coffee, and a mimosa. (Duh.) My plans for the day include finishing up this blog, and then going back to "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (which I CANNOT PUT DOWN) and perhaps some more episodes of Downton Abbey later on, although I can't say that I'm particularly pleased with the current plot line. I'm still catching up on Season 3, and I feel like I've spent the last couple of episodes transitioning from sobs of despair to tears of joy and back again. 

So, it seems like the perfect day to listen to some Stan Getz, drink mimosas, daydream about the fact that in less than 3 weeks I'll be in Cancun, and reminisce about all the delicious things we drank in Prague and Berlin.

Now THAT is an Irish Coffee. Strong, barely sweetened, with lots of real whipped cream on top. And full of caffeine! So that you can stay up late and drink more drinks!

So, let me be clear and say that neither my boyfriend nor I particularly LOVES absinthe. I am not a fan of liquorice to begin with, and a very strong alcoholic beverage that smacks of anise and liquorice is not my cup of hallucinogens. Which brings me to another point: despite popular opinion, no where in the world still sells wormwood-laced absinthe. This is not the Green Fairy of legends - it's just a super strong, gasoline-smelling, thick liqueur that people order for the sheer thrill of ordering absinthe. But it's making a comeback in America. Absinthe was big in Philly when we were there a couple of years ago; I remember it being a key ingredient in a lot of cocktails at various bars. And that we enjoyed as well, because when mixed with the right ingredients, absinthe can really pull a cocktail together.

That all having been said, there's a pomp and circumstance with straight absinthe that almost makes it worth the taste, and for this alone The Gentleman and I tend to order it whenever we see it on a specialty bar menu, just to compare presentations. So, naturally, our first night in Prague when we saw absinthe on the menu, we ordered it. 

At this particular Czech establishment (Staropramen Brewery in Praha 1), it came with its own pitcher of sugar water. Normally, there is some sort of sugar-cube/fire/dripping water process, but this one just came straight up with sugar water on the side. All absinthe is meant to be drank with sugar and water, but this was the first time we'd had to do all of the work ourselves. It was exhausting.

Because we were there a few days after Christmas, all of the Christmas markets were still up and running. Wooden stalls selling sausages, beers, mulled wine, and trinkets line pedestrian areas. And you can buy alcoholic beverages and walk around on a cold winter's eve with warmth in your hands. I AM STILL NOT OVER THIS.

Warm honey mead at a stall at one of the Christmas Markets. It basically tastes like warm, alcoholic honey. It was a bit sweet, but I could totally see adding this to some hot tea for a delightful toddy.

After we sampled the absinthe at Staropramen, I ordered an apple liqueur. It tasted like apple-infused gasoline and warmed me right up. 

One night, without any real plans in mind, we stumbled luckily across the Prague Beer Museum.  Here, you can order flights of beer selected from their impressive (and detailed) menu. Each beer is outlined with its own history, tasting notes, notes on the brewer, and interesting facts about the brewing culture at the time the recipe was originally brewed. We sampled about 14 flights of beer. No, not really. But kind of. Maybe.

Damn, Prague has good beer. And it's not stingy, either. Competing with Germany for Largest Stein:

I mean, it's basically the size of my head. And that beer drank like a meal. I think I finished about half of it and gave the rest to The Gentleman who drank that in addition to his own Giant Stein O' Beer. Because he is badass.

 Because we were in Prague for New Years Eve, we'd booked tickets for a Jazz Cruise. Don't be fooled - it's not nearly as swank as it sounds, but it WAS fun. It was definitely Czech-down-homey, complete with a "welcome drink" (a shot of schnappes) and jazz that definitely sounded more "OOMPAH" than "BA DA DAAA". I think the tickets were like $75 each, and included champagne, welcome drink, and a buffet dinner. The rest of the drinks we had to pay for, and while they weren't the cheapest drinks we'd had in Prague (where a Giant Stein O' Beer will cost you about $4), they were certainly cheaper than anything you'd find stateside or in the rest of Europe. I think a bottle of champagne was about $20, and individual glasses of wine/beer were about $7. 

We shared a table (because you have to share tables on this cruise) with a young British couple who got engaged that night. We celebrated their engagement with champagne and shots (Jeger for the boys, Sambuca for the girls). At midnight, everyone went up onto the roof of the boat for the fireworks that exploded up and down the river. It was a perfectly beautiful way to ring in 2013. 

The first round.

Later that evening....

I mentioned there was a vineyard next to the Prague Castle.I should also mention that the wine served there is....young. Very, very young wine. The kind that makes you suck in your cheeks. And possibly your eyes might water a bit. Just tell yourself it's the breathtaking scenery. 

A typical order in a typical Czech restaurant of: a dark beer and a white wine, please. Someone in this picture is getting gypped. 

I have no idea why, but there is some obsession in Prague with cannabis-flavored everything. Teas, beers, energy drinks...I can't imagine why you'd want to flavor a perfectly good beverage with the taste of my college roommate's breath.  

One night, we went out to "Europe's Only 360-degree Rotating Bar" at the Fusion Hotel. I had expected some sort of giant tower/rotating floor situation, but it turns out that the room stays still and the bar ITSELF moves. It was still pretty awesome, and they played good music and had a nice crowd. They also have side rooms with Playstations and couches. My God, I love Prague.

Drinks at 360 - this was some kind of whiskey strawberry concoction that looks a lot fruitier than it tasted.

We stayed at the Boscolo Hotel in Prague, and I fell in love with the bar in the lobby. 

I WANT THIS. Glass rack at lobby bar, Boscolo Hotel.

To Go-sie mulled wine at a Christmas Market. At 8:30am. IF THEY'RE SELLING, I'M BUYING.

There were also Christmas Markets still set up in Berlin when we arrived on January 2. SELLING MULLED WINE AND BEER AND SAUSAGES. Hooray!

Drinks at the rotating bar at the top of the Berliner Fernsehturm. Mine was some sort of cranberry-bourbon-spritzer thing that was deeeelisshus.

For a hotel bar, Catwalk at the Marriott in Berlin was gorgeous and had an excellent cocktail menu. We wound up there on our last night, because it was cold and raining and we had to get up at 7am to catch our respective flights back to Baltimore and the United Arab Emirates. After a week of traipsing around Eastern Europe, it was lovely to kick back in an up-scale bar twelve floors below our room and just enjoy cocktails and pretty scenery.

A grand "cheers" to end our week-long trip to Prague and Berlin for New Years, 2013. More adventures to come!

And so, I wrap up our holiday trip. Just in time to prep for heading out to New Mexico and Mexico in a couple of weeks when The Gentleman comes home for leave! Hooray vacation! 

Touristy Things - Prague

It's at first necessary to point out that both my boyfriend and I lean towards "excessively nerdy" when it comes to museums and exhibits. It's second necessary to point out that we are primarily obsessed with weird museums and exhibits. Let that be the disclaimer for this post. 

A particularly charming acquaintance of mine asked me about our visit to Prague, and exclaimed over all the fun she and her husband had scouring the art museums and soaking in the history. "Did you get to any of the museums?" she asked, excitedly.

"Yes..." I began, and then instantly wondered how I could possibly tell this woman what we did in Prague. And then I decided to just go for it. "We went to the Museum of Medieval Torture, the Sex Machines Museum, and the Museum of Communism."

"Oh," she blinked. "We didn't make it to those."

"We also went to the new Holocaust museum in Berlin!" I quickly followed up. As though that would sort of balance out the fact that we spent most of our time parading around Prague looking at smut and gore. And Communism. But that's history! And art! 

I'll be honest - I did not take a single picture of the Torture Museum. Mostly because I was making very concerted attempts to not become light-headed. But, if you wish, you can visit this site for some examples of the fun and enlightening things one can view on exhibit there.

At the advice of one of The Gentleman's coworkers, we also visited Petrin Hill with its observation tower that you can climb to see an incredible landscape of Prague. To get to the top of the hill, you could hoof it (if you have all day, are in marathon-shape, and/or perhaps haven't already started your day with three mimosas at breakfast) or you can wait in a line to take the funicular. Funiculars, apart from being a fun word to say, are these inclined trams popular in Europe where instead of blasting through the natural landscape, they build cities up and around it. This might also be because most European cities were birthed far before the invention of technology advanced enough to blow up mountains without causing permanent damage to landscape and/or citizens. I could just be on my high "I have traveled to Europe no less than 4 times, and everything is better there" horse. Don't you hate those people? Who spell things like colour? And flavour? ISN'T THAT SO MUCH CLASSIER?!

I digress.

So, much like the Prague Castle, you can buy your funicular tickets (and any public transportation ticket) in units of time. I think we opted for a 90-minute ticket, which is more than enough to take the short ride to the top, tour around for a bit, and then have the funicular drive us back down the hill (because we stopped for mulled wine at the top - duh - and we were sleepy.)

View from inside the funicular

The tracks basically just go...up.

View from semi-close to the top

The Observation Tower at the top of Petrin Hill (sort of a mini Eiffel, no?)

Now, you can go to the top of the Observation Tower. Which we did. But be warned - there's no elevator. This isn't some fancy schmancy Burj situation  with the world's fastest elevator. Oh no-ho-ho; you get to the top on your own two feet, friend, and, lemme tell you, while that thing may not LOOK daunting, IT IS. It's about fifteen solid minutes of climbing a very spiraled, one-person wide staircase to the top. And yes, there's only one staircase. But that's nice, because it means you get a little rest every time someone comes DOWN the stairs, as you press yourself pancake-thin against the walls to let them by.

But the view at the top is oh-so-rewarding for all of your hard work:

Probably don't look down. Or dangle your camera out of the window while looking down, thus giving your boyfriend a minor heart attack and causing a lecture about the acceleration of falling objects and how they can kill those below you - because apparently he had NO CONCERN WHATSOEVER for my ACTUAL CAMERA being shattered into a bazillion pieces if I were to drop it. Only about the stupid fools standing below us. THEY SHOULD HAVE COME ALL THE WAY UP THE TOWER, THEN THEY WOULDN'T GET EXPENSIVE CAMERAS DROPPED ON THEM. I digress. I didn't drop my camera. Thankfully.

And then you get a nice little view of the park around Petrin Hill on the funicular ride down. It's lovely.

Of all the truly touristy things we've done, The Gentleman and I, this one might have taken the cake: fish pedicures at a Thai massage parlor.

You pay about $30 a person (by far the most expensive thing we did the entire time we were in Prague), and you sit with your feet in a tank of warm water while a million little fish nibble away at your skin, supposedly cleansing it and ridding it of dead skin. The whole thing is probably monumentally unhygienic, but it was also a nice little rest from walking all day on cobblestones. And, I have to admit, my feet felt silky smooth at the end.

It feels like tiny electric shocks, and it's about the weirdest feeling in the world. I was surprised no one had to peel me off of the ceiling the first time one of those little assholes got itself in between my toes and had a nice nibble. Also, these photos are disconcerting, because only now do I realize how much the fish were flocking to my feet and not The Gentleman's. Probably because his smelled bad. Not because mine were a veritable gold mine of dry skin. Definitely not because of that.

One of the most fun things we did in Prague was the Communist Museum. While fairly unscathed by the World Wars (and highly unique in that respect for that area), the Czech Republic was under Communist rule for 41 years, starting in 1948. As a direct result, then-Czechoslovakia was further behind Europe in innovation and technology despite the fact that it wasn't bombed to bits in World War II. In 1989, Czechoslovakia became a democracy again through the relatively peaceful Velvet Revolution, before splitting again in 1993 to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia. And that is your history lesson for the day. I took pretty pictures of the museum!

I SO want this plate.

Sure you are. Suuuuuurrrrrrre you are.

PLEAS HURY TO THE INTEROGATION.

Pretty example of Communist storefront, or Urban Outfitters?

Did they play Woodstock?

Now, I fully realize that there are Sex Machine museums in about five different countries, and that they're probably total Ripley's Believe It Or Not-type tourist traps. BUT WHATEVER, IT WAS AWESOME. I won't post all of the pictures I took, mostly because I don't have any disclaimers anywhere about NSFW, nor do I want to get banned, but here are a few of the..."tamer"...pictures....

I was like, "Why are there weird robes- ooohhhhhh."

I also want their collection of vintage dancer lady portraits.

Because relationships are a two way seat.

Stay tuned for: touristing around Berlin!