Spring is here! The birds are chirping! The flowers are blooming! … And we’re in school. La primavera a Roma is almost too beautiful and distracting to get any work done, but somehow we must ignore the sunny cobblestoned streets and tempting gelato beckoning us, and buckle down for the next few weeks. Luckily, our week of spring break came at the opportune time for us to blow off some steam and relax.
Five of my friends (Cynthia Baker, Jeremy Handrup, Dan Rosen, and Erin Ferro-Murray, all BFA ’13) and I started off the week right in Berlin, staying in the beautiful neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg.
Dan Rosen (BFA '13), Cynthia Baker (BFA '13), and her brother Brian Baker pose outside our Berlin apartment. Photo by Jeremy Handrup.
During our stay there, we visited the Holocaust Memorial, the two major contemporary art museums: Kunstwerk and Hamburger-Banhof, the Reichstag, the Kathe Kollwitz Museum, and Museum Island, just to name a few. We were joined by Charlotte Krause (Princeton, BARCH), now in her natural German habitat, and were miraculously admitted to famed European nightclub Berghain (Four floors of muscley German men, dry ice, strobe lights, and thumping bass. If you go, don’t say I didn’t warn you). In the Mitte and Alexanderplatz areas, we gallery-hopped and shopped. In Kreuzberg, we ate lots of Turkish food (think falafel and halumi pita sandwiches, smothered in garlic and yogurt sauce, topped off with shredded lettuce and cabbage and tomatoes. My mouth is watering again) and Vietnamese food (huge steaming bowls of pho! With tofu!! And spring rolls!!!).
Cynthia at Hamburger Banhof, in the Ryoji Ikeda installation. Photo by Jeremy Handrup.
On Sunday, we hung out in the famous Mauer Park flea market, conveniently located around the corner from our rented apartment. Porta Portese had some things to learn from this flea market, let me tell you! Stretching out the length of the park, it was chock full of street food stands, clothing vendors, knick knack tables, homemade jarred goods, handmade jewelry, tables of cameras (be still my heart. I did eventually give in, and bought a gently used Minolta 35-mm), and other such necessary items. It was so lovely to wander around without agenda, experiencing both street and nightlife as well as cultural institutions. On our last night in Berlin, Anne Wu and Michael Picos (also BFA ’13) joined us from their stay in Vienna, and we shared a delicious dinner at White Trash Fast Food (think gourmet-but-simple artisan burgers and tofu burgers, melty spicy crunchy nachos, traditional schniztel and brats, and a generous selection of German beers on tap, in a multi-tiered restaurant connected to a tattoo shop, with live music nearly every night. Seriously recommended, but make a reservation!) located on Schonhauser Allee in the Mitte area.
A colorful bit of the East Side Gallery, a painted section of the Berlin Wall. Photo by Jeremy Handrup.
Wednesday morning, we all split up to fly to our next destinations. For Dan, it was back to Rome where his mother was visiting; for Erin, Jeremy, and Cynthia, it was to Paris, where they stayed with friends from Cornell and in an apartment in Montmartre, respectively; and for me, it was to Prague. I took a train from Berlin to Prague (with old compartments, just like Harry Potter!), stopping through Dresden and passing some wonderful scenery along the way. Prague was unlike any city I’ve visited before; eastern Europe really is different from Rome, Paris, or London. It seemed to be a true example of a city as palimpsest, with its rich history of governmental, military, and cultural upheavals. On my first day in Prague, I got hopelessly lost for a few hours when I decided it would be a good idea to walk the 3 kilometers from the suburb of Holosevice (Praha 7) to Stare Mesto (Old Town in Praha 1, the historic center) instead of taking the tram, without a map or a working cell phone, and apparently across a highway that sprung up out of nowhere. After a little while of running back and forth like a chicken without its head, I breathlessly reached Old Town and rewarded myself by stuffing my face with street food of the traditional Czech variation: since I belong to a clan of herbivorous dinosaurs, I skipped the sausage and went instead for the fried smoked gouda cheese on hearty rye bread, and finished with a doughy, spiral pastry covered in cinammon, sugar, and almonds (I later figured out that the consonant heavy, nearly vowel-less sign “Trdlenik” on the pastry stand meant “turtleneck,” because of the cynlindrical shape of the pastries. I also then high-fived myself). During my stay, I visited the Alphonse Mucha Museum, walked around the historic center and across the Charles Bridge, and all the way up a narrow street on a hill, passing green orchards and a convent, and reaching a great brewery at the top of the city with an incredible view.
Old Town Square in Prague's Stare Mesto, or Old Town. The monument in the middle is dedicated to Jan Masaryk, the Czech Foreign Minister from 1940 to 1948.
It was with a 50% heavy and 50% relieved heart that I returned to Rome the following Sunday, sad to leave my travels behind but exhausted and happy to be back in a familiar city where, at this point, I can communicate effectively. Everyone has been eager to share their spring break stories this week. Other locales visited by students include: Athens, Mykonos, Marrakesh, Morocco, London, Ireland, Scotland, Norway, Sevilla, Barcelona, Vienna, Munich, and the Swiss Alps for a lil’ skiing. If other students wish to share their experiences in these places or others, feel free to leave a comment with your stories (and pictures)!
