Basilica Madonna di San Luca

Yesterday proved to be another beautiful spring day here in Italy, with temperatures around 60 and mostly sunny conditions. While I did have class Saturday morning (not a fan of Saturday classes by the way), I wanted to take advantaged of the beautiful weather. I was not really interested in traveling somewhere since I went to Pisa weekend, and I am going to Sicily next weekend (stay posted for updates on that next week!). So instead a friend and I decided we would go and see one of the sights here in Bologna that had been neglected so far, Basilica Madonna di San Luca.

The Basilica Madonna di San Luca sits onto of a huge hill in the Southwest part of Bologna, and getting to it is not exactly a walk in the park. From School it was about a 5 km walk just to the base of the hill where the path starts to go up very rapidly. Once you get to the bottom of the hill you start going up a 3.5 km path covered by 666 arcades named the Portico di San Luca! While my total round trip hike was nothing compared to the 50 some kilometers my family members did skiing on this day it was still a nice little workout.

The view from inside the arcades going up and up and up....

Arial Photo of the all 666 arcades of the Portico di San Luca leading up to the Basilica Madonna di San Luca

Once we finally reached the top we could see the entire city of Bologna, the Dolomite mountains to the east, and the foothills of Tuscany to the west. In addition the Basilica was also very beautiful and well constructed. All in all it proved to be an excellent excursion.

Pisa

Well today I traveled to probably the most iconic image of Italy outside of Rome, the leaning tower of Pisa! I had planned on just doing a small day trip by myself to see the famous tower but ended up running into some friends from SAIS also headed to Pisa on the same train as me so naturally we did the trip together. It proved to be an excellent spring (yes I believe spring is just about upon us here in Italy) day for the trip day for the trip with temperatures in the mid 50s and and mostly sunny skies!

Pisa proved to be a very nice town, but of course it was overshadowed by the tower. In addition to the tower Pisa has a unique Battistero, Camposanto (cool old cemetery), Duomo, and three universities. After taking the mandatory "holding the tower up" photos (it was quite funny to watch all the tourists doing this!) my friends and I explored the rest of the sights in Pisa, enjoyed a leisurely lunch, wandered the city, and had drinks in a cafe before heading back to Bologna to face the mountains of homework and internship applications that are all ready accumulating just two weeks into the new semester!

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!