Viennese Ball

So on Saturday I said goodbye to Pavla and family and hopped on a train to head to the Ball in Vienna Austria. Basically since I was accepted to SAIS Bologna last year I have been hearing about how amazing this ball is, so I was excited to see if it would live up to all the hype and anticipation! It did.

At 6:00 pm on Saturday we had our first event of the evening, a reception with the Mayor of Vienna in the City Hall building. There we had wine and caught up with what each other had been doing over break so far. City Hall was a cool place to start the night.

City Hall

Reception with the Mayor

Outside the Palace

Hofburg Palace, location of our Ball

Red Carpet Entrance on the grand staircase of the Hofburg Palace

After our City Hall reception we had some time so we leisurally made our way over the the Hofburg palace for the main event. The opening ceremony began around 9:00 pm and did not disappoint. The Ball was put on by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), but they did recognize that SAIS students were also there during the welcoming comments.

Ceremonies begin with the Flag Presentation

Welcoming by the IAEA

New Attorney General Yukiya Amano walks by us to give some opening remarks and do the first dance with his wife (we joked that since he became Attorney General in December he probably had to spend just as much time learning to Waltz as to deal with Iran)

Some members from the IAEA singing, you have to be brave and good to do that at a Ball in Vienna in front of 4,000 people!

Korean percussion and ribbon group gives a performance



Video of the traditional debutantes dance (sorry my camera ran out of memory so I missed the end of the dance)

After all of the opening performances were over the bands struck up the music and mass dancing ensued. Several of us gave the main dance floor a try right away but we soon found it extremely overcrowded and moved on. The main room and dance floor seemed to alternate between different styles but there were many other smaller rooms that all played different styles of music including Scottish, Classical, Popular, and Latin music rooms. There were many more but I spent the majority of my night alternating between the Latin and main ballroom.

People dancing in the Main Ballroom

The Scottish Room, this was the Official SAIS room

Latin Room

At 11:30 there was a midnight show. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I was so busy dancing away the evening in the Latin room that I missed it. I heard it was good, but not a huge deal if you missed it. I stayed at the Ball till around 3:00 am when I finally called it a night and left, but there were still many more people left at the ball until 5:00 am when it is officially closed down (so the staff can clean up and start preparations for the next ball!).

Leaving the Ball at 3:00 am

In total it was really a once in a lifetime experience. The Hofburg Palace as a location was as cool as any of the dancing and shows in and of itself! This coupled with a very important international organizations, foreign diplomats (and of course future ones!), and all being in Vienna proved to make an amazing experience!

If you would like to see additional pictures from the Ball or my other travels over break check them out on my Facebook photo album.

Ostrava & Bratislava

I finally will try and get my blog caught up with the second half of my inter-semester break. In doing so I am also going to abandon my traditional chronological style and have two posts, non-ball post & ball post, this will be the former.

After I moved on from Krakow I took a train down to Ostrava in the Czech Republic last Thursday in order to pay Pavla and her family a visit. Pavla and Pavel's daughter Ellen is now almost three years old and is getting quite big! She chatters away in Czech all the time and wonders why Uncle (me) does not speak Czech as well! Most of my visit was spent catching up with Pavla more than actually doing things and gave me some time to relax as well. I must admit I am guilty of forgetting to take pictures so I did not get any new pictures of Ellen (sorry!). On Saturday morning I took a train down to Vienna to attend the ball and engage in my final travels.

So now fast-forward through the rest of saturday and the wee hours of the morning on Sunday and you will get to my final expedition of my break Bratislava, Slovakia. As I have previously explored Vienna during my backpacking trip a year and a half ago I decided I did not want to spend more time in Vienna on Sunday so I looked for alternative day trips and decided on Bratislava.

Bratislava turned out to be a really neat capital with an excellent assortment of sights to see. The old town included many different old traditional buildings such as theaters, old government buildings, towers, gates, and many others. Also in old town is St. Martin's National Cathedral where many past kings and queens have been crowned. Most impressive though was Bratislava Castle sitting on a high hill looming over the city. Not too surprisingly the castle was my favorite part of the town. In all Bratislava proved to be an excellent and doable day trip from Vienna before I got on the Bus at 9:00 pm before the 10 hour overnight bus ride back to Vienna (not a pleasant way to spend the night...I am looking forward to a real bed tonight!). I will leave you with some of my pictures from my trip to Bratislava.

Gate into Old Town Bratislava

Square in Old Town

More Old Town Bratislava

St. Martin's Cathedral

Bratislava Castle on high overlooking Bratislava

Stay tuned as in the next day or so I should find the time to Blog about the Ball in Vienna which was easily the highlight of my entire trip!

Krakow

Tuesday morning I moved on from England and flew to Krakow, Poland. It has been fun to get back to traveling to new places, staying in hostels, and meeting new people.

On Tuesday I actually ran into two of my friends from SAIS here in Krakow! Graham and Tanya. We randomly ran into each other out in the city and agreed to meet up in the evening and have dinner and check out some of the local pubs.

As for the city itself I have liked it a lot. Krakow has so many well preserved buildings, churches, and a huge old Castle! Tuesday walked around the old Jewish quarter which was neat, although it is now quite small (there used to be a huge Jewish population here in Krakow) a stark reminder of the close proximity of Auschwitz.

Krakow Wawel

Today I spent a good deal of time up at the Castle going into the different buildings and exhibits. It is a good day to stay inside as it is quite cold and has snowed quite a bit as well today! After thoroughly exploring the Castle I moved to exploring the other parts of Old Town Krakow. Most notable was St. Mary's Cathedral. Started in the 13th Century and completed in the 15th century it is a really cool Gothic Cathedral.

St. Mary's Cathedral

Tomorrow I have the morning in Krakow before I get on a train and travel to Ostrava in the Czech Republic to visit Pavla, Ellen, and Pavel!

England

So it has been over a month since I have updated my blog, and I am sure while you have all been just on the edge of your seat to hear what I have been up to in Italy after I returned after Christmas I decided to spare you the details of my massive amounts of studying for final exams and term papers! Now that these trials and tribulations are over I have moved on to more enjoyable activities, such as traveling Europe!

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For the first part of my trip I have been visiting family friends, the Larkins, in England. The Larkins live just outside of Leicester. My first Day here, Thursday, Mary and I went for a bike ride around all the local towns, parks, and surrounding country side. We had lunch in a local park before visiting a cake shop to have hot drinks and cake!

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Tower Bridge in London

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Friday I went down to London with Mary and Shaun to see some of the sights and visit Ruth. We met Ruth for Lunch and then went our separate ways as she had to go to Class and we went to see some of the touristy stuff. We visited Trafalgar Square, Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge, and walked along a good portion of the Tames River. We spent most of our time inside of Tower Bridge and were able to see how it works (both past and present) and walk up the towers and across the skywalks in the bridge giving us excellent views of London. For dinner we went Ruth's flat where she served us dinner.

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Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon

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Saturday we went to Stratford-upon-Avon which is the birthplace of Shakespeare. There we went to go see the house in which Shakespeare was born, where he went to school, other old places frequented by him, and his final resting place. While Shakespeare had most of his performances at the Globe Theatre in London there are now several theatres that have shows in Stratford. Unfortunately none of them were showing any plays by Shakespeare, but we were still able to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Arabian Nights, which was of course very good!

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Today I visited some of the local friends of the Larkins (as well as my Mom from when she went to University here in England). We had an excellent meal and enjoyed each other’s company. Tomorrow I plan to hang low and spend a day relaxing before heading on the next parts of my inter-break travels!

Merry Christmas from SAIS

Well early tomorrow morning I head home for Christmas break, so it is only fitting that Dr. Plummer showed up for my last class before break dressed up as Santa. Dr. Plummer will leaving SAIS to work for the OECD (which is a really big deal!) after this semester. His gifts , Economic Journals, were probably the equivalent of coal to most people but at SAIS they are enthralling literature!

Waltz 101

It has been quite the busy couple of weeks leading up to Christmas break here in Bologna so I have not really had any time to do much traveling this month since going to Venice. Yet even amid all the readings, papers, economic problem sets, and presentations I managed to find some time for some fun tonight!

As you may remember in February I will be going to a Venetian Ball! Well if one is to attend such a ball one should be properly prepared! It really would be a tragedy if someone spent the time and money to go to a ball in a palace in Venice and did not even know how to Waltz! Lucky for me I have had some experience Waltzing in the past in high school shows and theater classes, but that was quite awhile ago. So tonight the ball committee here offered the first of two crash courses in Waltzing! So I of course attended to brush up my skills and learn some new moves! The teacher for the evening was actually a student here who used to do competitive dancing when he was younger, and he did a great job. We learned several different step types, including the Venetian Waltz (which is much faster and more difficult), as well as how to properly ask someone for a dance and escort them onto the ballroom floor (apparently you must do it properly), and how to properly thank them after a dance. All in all the event was a lot of fun and at least we can all say we have some idea of how to do things properly when the ball arrives in early February.

Here is a video of our teacher dancing with one the girls who attended. Enjoy!

Venice

Well just like last weekend, for better or worse I took Saturday off from Homework and took a day trip. This time with two other students to Venice! No doubt it will be my last side trip before I head home to Minnesota for Christmas break on the 17th as I have plenty to accomplish between now and then!

This was my second trip to Venice, but it was still a lot of fun. We spent our time wandering the streets, canals, shops, gelaterias, piazzas, and churches in this completely unique town....and of course we spent some time in the most time honored tradition in Venice, getting lost in the endless maze of streets, bridges, canals, and dead ends.

As I said this was my second trip to Venice and I noticed a few differences. First off the last time I was there was at the beginning of May and I must say that the number of tourists on Saturday was much more preferable! (something about cold December weather seems to keep them away...nothing for a Minnesotan though!). Another difference is that parts of the streets and main square was under water! I had heard about this phenomenon but it was not in affect that last time I visited.

I also saw some similarities, gondola rides are still out of my student prices rage and San Marco Basilica is probably one of my all time favorite religious sites along with the Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris! The combination of Golden Mosaics and Marble make for a very impressive aura inside the basilica.

If you want to see pictures from my day please checkout my facebook album.

Biking Italy & San Marino

Well today against my better judgment (or perhaps as a result of it) I decided to break my streak of mostly studying on the weekends and go somewhere. I decided I had been in Italy long enough and it was time for a break so I decided to go to the next closest country....San Marino!

I decided that I would like to bike to my destination once again in order to save some money. Although I decided biking the entire 120 km from Bologna to San Marino would be a bit much especially considering the last 15 km (more on those later!). So this morning at around 9:30 (thats right I set an alarm to go somewhere!), I hopped on the train to Rimini which would bring me within 25 km of San Marino.

As I got off the train it was wonderfully sunny in Rimini (it is after all a beach town), and I had glorious fantasies in my head about how I would bike at top speeds to this little country and take in all the grand vistas along the way that everyone talks about.

Well reality proved to be much harsher. Once I was about 5 km outside of town I was enclosed in a low cloud cover that blocked basically everything more than 150 meters away from view. Before going I had looked into the geography of such a ride and I notice that obviously it would be uphill, but I grossly underestimated how tough and long it would be. About 10 km in I reached the point where it began to climb and did not stop for 15 km. This also put me right into the clouds so I could not even see where I was going (not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing...could of been motivating or depressing!). Anyways after the long climb with several stops, cursing every time I got to a curve or out of the clouds only to find out that the road goes further up, and constantly wondering why I was still going up when I was sure there would be nothing to see at the end due to the clouds, I finally made it to San Marino.

Just as I expected I could see absolutely nothing, and I almost turned around right then and there and went back down. I told myself though that I might as well go have a look (if that was possible) at the historic city center, which was of course even further up, but this time I had to walk. I enjoyed walking around the shops and checking out city walls but honestly I was not overly impressed with the place, then something happened.....The clouds we were immersed in decended just enough for the city center and castle to be above the clouds and what a site it was!

I will not say much more (I will let my pictures do the talking) expect that I think this castle is probably one of my favorite three that I have visited along with Carcassonne and Warwick!

The clouds clearing

Love this picture, just eery

This is the main part of Castle (there were three parts including the watch tower)

Inside the main part of the castle

One of the many city walls

If you would like to see more pictures from my day go to the facebook album.

Blogger + Facebook > Blogger

So I have had some fun over the last few days trying to incorporate new elements into my blog. I learned that several elements of facebook could be placed also on my Blog. I now have photo album links to my past major trips and a world map that shows you where I have traveled to, where I have lived, and a few places which are still on the to do lists. I have included the map in the post but otherwise it is just at the very bottom of my blog. Other random parts I have added over the past months include a link to my linkedin profile and a google search option for searching my blog. Hope you enjoy the new parts.

Thanksgiving in Italy

Well yesterday we officially celebrated thanksgiving here in Italy. It was quite the event with around 130 students, faculty, staff, & family members in attendance. What also made it enjoyable was sharing the experience with many Europeans who had never experienced a thanksgiving before!

As such we had to introduce them to all the important traditions such as stuffing your face with Turkey, saying what you are thankful for, and most importantly covering the history of the Pilgrim's first Thanksgiving in a small skit (ironically put on by mostly Europeans!).

Thanksgiving in Italy was very different from being home with my friends and family (food was not quite as good as well!), but all in all it was a lot of fun. The evening had a non-traditional twist to it as after the big meal Dr. Plumber's band performed in the cafe. Dr. Plumber is a professor here at SAIS who will be going on a two year leave to lead the conclusion of the Doha round of development for the OECD, but he still has time to get a band together, in which he plays the drumbs, guitar, and also sang the lead on "You can't always get what you want". After the band finished many of us went out to a small street bar and then eventually clubbing. I can't say I ever had a evening quite like this one on Thanksgiving before, but it was a lot of fun.

Check out pictures for the evening here at my facebook albumn (you do not need a facebook account).
Italy Pictures