Part One: Setting Off
“The core of man’s spirit comes from new experiences.”
-Christopher McCandless, “Into the Wild”

A year ago, a 20-year-old American, halfway through college and working my fourth boring summer as an assistant locksmith, I discovered BlogAbroad.com and submitted an application during some down time from cutting keys. “I have a genuine desire to explore the world and learn as much from my study abroad experience as possible,” I wrote. I made the most of my summer and my time with my friends, but part of me wanted it to pass in a flash so I could get to the fresh journey ahead of me.

I sat on the plane in September and remember thinking that up until that point, everything had been mapped out, but from this point on, I had no idea what was to come. The first of a few gut-reaction scribbles from the notebook I carried with me at all times over the year reads: “I’ve always had this whole adventure laid completely out in my mind’s eye. The minute I got in my seat on the plane to London, all my ideas totally compressed and all I was able to focus on was the next step: landing in London. For once, my plan-oriented mind is on lockdown.” It was one of the most exciting feelings I’d ever had.

Ze trip.

The culture shock during my first month in the UK shot from nil to extreme and ping-ponged back and forth at random. It was surprisingly easy and normal for the first few days, then extremely hard and upsetting for a few days – I need look no further than the long rant in my notebook beginning with “THIS IS HARD” than to remember that. When the experience really started for me – when I began to truly believe my original hopes that this could be a life-changing, unbelievable opportunity - was the first few days in my student accommodation. As more and more international students arrived, I was beside myself to learn I would have 22 flatmates from around the world. In the course of a few days, I met friendly, exciting people from Argentina, Italy, Austria, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, France, Germany, Martinique, Ireland, Wales and England – and they were all in the same position as me: Students looking to have the experience of a lifetime in a new place.

Part Two: Living Abroad: Flat and Flatmates
“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”
-Tim Cahill

I quickly began to learn that the most profound way my world view was going to expand was by talking to the people I lived with. At all parts of the day, the kitchen was bustling with conversation. Cooking, playing cards, speaking and learning various languages, using slang, pioneering inside jokes – everything was an opportunity to learn more about the nature of each other’s cultures, countries, and lifestyles.

Dressed up for Eddi’s last night in Bangor before returning to Germany.

Seeing my old British friends from UMaine throughout the year was awesome, as well.

We made each other traditional dinners, celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving in huge ways, and commemorated everyone’s birthdays with huge, international parties with at least four languages audible within a few yards (meters!). We lived together, forged through the experience together, and traveled together, including big trips to Amsterdam, Cardiff, and all around north Wales in close-knit groups from the flat.

Internationality: Young Jun from Korea and Elena from Italy.

Our group trip to see Anglesey, the north most part of Wales.

Sparing every little story, joke, and life lesson contained from September to May – which is best as it was truly our own adventure and will never be able to fully translate to any of our friends or families – I can say that being with those people led to some of the best times of my life. And as Elena said after returning to Italy in the middle of the year (so many of my closest new friends only stayed for one semester…only to have their rooms filled by new, awesome international pals-to-be): “It’s so special to think about having so many friends somewhere in the world, it makes feel part of something great and good.” I concur; I feel a part of something big and brilliant. The mantra to all gloomy mates departing Bangor was that although the wonderful experience had come to a close for them, the memories would always remain, and the strongest friendships would continue to influence their lives.

Ladies in the kitchen. England, Argentina, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France represent.

Great group shot from the Bangor reunion in Austria.

Group trip to seaside Llandudno in beautiful north Wales. We just hung out at this high point above the town and watched the sheep and admired the landscape for a peaceful afternoon.

Part Three: Academics
“You must have learned a lifetime worth of info being over there.”
-AJ Harvey, friend and shreddin’ guitarist of Last Chance to Reason

The University of Wales, Bangor and the British education system was a huge difference from what I’d been familiarized with in two years at UMaine. Three classes per semester, seven or eight hours of class per week. Small seminar groups with a lot of class participation, intense analyzing, and a lot of independent work – to do or to neglect – outside of class. One or two essays per semester, maybe one test, usually some kind of presentation. I was able to take my first film classes, and I dove in with three. Studying Dickens in the UK was one of my favorite treats, academically speaking. I also wrote one of my best essays (and definitely longest) yet for college: a 4,200-worder about the Korean director Im Kwon-Taek for my East Asian Culture and Cinema course.

Main Arts, where I attended all of my lectures. Yes, I had class in a castle for a year.

Part Four: Travels
“The journey is my home.”
-Muriel Rukeyser

I left the year broke as a joke (“skint,” in Cockney speak), mostly due to my abundant travels (if you ignore the everything’s-twice-as-expensive-in-the-UK bit…). Traveling to the maximum was my goal, and that’s one thing I can never have regrets about the year which has passed. I feel I did about as much traveling as I possibly could have from September to May, and saw nearly everything I wanted to see. I fell in love with Europe and loved what the journeys I embarked on and the places they took me to. The rest, I’ll get to later, no hard feelings. The list I am most proud of among many in my notebook is the places I went over the year:

Haywards Heath/Brighton, England
London, England (six times over the year)
Bangor, Wales (lived here)
Conwy, Wales (twice over the year)
Llandudno, Wales
Beaumaris, Wales
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Wales (three times over the year)
Anglesey (various places around the island), Wales
Holyhead/Valley, Wales
Cardiff/Cardiff Bay, Wales
Rome, Italy
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Dolgellau, Wales
Chester, England
Hull, England
Caernarfon, Wales
Llanberis/Mount Snowdon, Wales
Nottingham, England
Birmingham, England
Liverpool, England
Paris, France
Versailles, France
Marseilles, France
Nice, France
Innsbruck, Austria
Budweis, Czech Republic
Hluboká, Czech Republic
Krumlov, Czech Republic
Dobčice and Holašovice villages, Czech Republic
Prague, Czech Republic
Reading, England
Dublin, Ireland

For space reasons, I will not post pictures from even close to all of these places. Here are some of my favorites. The first: The Pantheon in Rome, completely alone in the plaza around 1 a.m. on my final night. Check out the Bella Roma video montage here.

View from Bangor Mountain. This was a favorite spot in the my Welsh hometown.

One of my last afternoons in Bangor; the view from Bangor Meadows. Beautiful occurrences like this happens a lot in a place as cloudy as Wales.

Castle Cat: I became an avid castle collector. I saw my first in Wales, and a subsequent eight more across Wales, England, and Europe.

The gang on Mount Snowdon on my last day in Wales.

Czech flag flying over Prague.

A more comprehensive breakdown of the first semester and the travels involved – with many more pictures - can be found here. I will also post a comprehensive list of my albums on here for your perusal soon.

Seeing new places was always a peak of thrill and awe for me. I was rarely happier than when I was in a completely new city, country, or environment. As the year came to a close, I compiled another list; a handful of the little differences across Europe that I will miss in the US: different light switches, the taste of milk, various faucets and toilet flushes, greeting styles, hearing snatches of conversation on streets and trying to guess the language, being able to say goodnight to my flatmates in three or four different languages.

Part Five: Epilogue
“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”
-Pat Conroy

A couple days before I was set to leave the UK, a chica named Magda, my newest Spanish flatmate, told me: “I had two dreams in my life: to go to London and to go to New York.” It had been a long time since I’d thought about dreams, and Magda’s naked honesty and enthusiasm as she spoke of visiting London this semester shook me from the conclusion of my own lifelong dream. That finally began to hit me as I sat in Heathrow Airport and wrote down this epilogue and its underlying thought: I lived a dream this year.

Since age ten, when I spent two years watching back-to-back 17-year-olds from Czech Republic and Sweden live and learn under my family’s roof, finding my own parallel experience has been a dream. I may be too goal- and checklist-oriented to have been aware of that all along, but even through the dripping sentimentality of saying goodbye to the international friends I made in Wales, I began to see the nature of dreams clearly. From the moment George left the sight of my crying, 11-year-old eyes to return to the Czech Republic, I dreamed of seeing him one day in Budweis or Prague. When I missed out on a school trip to Ireland in 9th grade, I dreamed of visiting the Emerald Isle, waxing poetic about returning to the motherland of some of my ancestry (me mam’s maiden name’s O’Connor, aye). I think without digging too deep or fictionalizing too much, I could come up with a similar dream for nearly everywhere I went and everything I did in the last year.

A more recent dream, also dressed in the guise of a mere goal, was articulated repeatedly in my study abroad candidacy, my BlogAbroad application, and in answers to the curious and sometimes heated friends and family asking why I wanted to do this, or why for a full year?

“I want to immerse myself in a foreign culture for one year. I want to feel like I really lived there, not just visited. And I want a better understand of the world.”

That’s pretty much verbatim, and pretty much accomplished – well, wait, I’m ticking off checkboxes again. Let’s try that the right way: my dream came true.

Now I have new dreams: dreams of returning to Europe as soon as possible; dropping everything and buying a plane ticket if I haven’t gone within five years; seeing my new friends – my international family – at home in the US; at their homes, be they Reims, France; Alicante or Vigo, Spain; Padova or Udine, Italy; Bremen, Germany; Hong Kong or a dozen other places around the world. Or maybe we’ll reunite in entirely new places for each of us. I dream of quenching what feels like an insatiable thirst to travel by learning about and seeing more of the US – of my home – Tennessee, Nantucket, and Chicago ranking high on the list at the moment. I dream of actually being employed to travel and recount the adventures with words; of exciting others to explore, dream, discover, in the peerless words of Mr. Twain. As for the year which has somehow concluded in the blink of an eye…I dream of never forgetting.

Cheers and farewell, Wales, Europe, and friends. On to the next step of my life, with this experience always in my mind.

Thank you for reading. Pursue and enjoy your dreams and adventures.

Zach Dionne, May 20, 2008

Part One: Setting Off

“The core of man’s spirit comes from new experiences.”
-Christopher McCandless, “Into the Wild”

 

A year ago, a 20-year-old American, halfway through college and working my fourth boring summer as an assistant locksmith, I discovered BlogAbroad.com and submitted an application during some down time from cutting keys. “I have a genuine desire to explore the world and learn as much from my study abroad experience as possible,” I wrote. I made the most of my summer and my time with my friends, but part of me wanted it to pass in a flash so I could get to the fresh journey ahead of me.

 

I sat on the plane in September and remember thinking that up until that point, everything had been mapped out, but from this point on, I had no idea what was to come. The first of a few gut-reaction scribbles from the notebook I carried with me at all times over the year reads: “I’ve always had this whole adventure laid completely out in my mind’s eye. The minute I got in my seat on the plane to London, all my ideas totally compressed and all I was able to focus on was the next step: landing in London. For once, my plan-oriented mind is on lockdown.” It was one of the most exciting feelings I’d ever had.

The culture shock during my first month in the UK shot from nil to extreme and ping-ponged back and forth at random. It was surprisingly easy and normal for the first few days, then extremely hard and upsetting for a few days – I need look no further than the long rant in my notebook beginning with “THIS IS HARD” than to remember that. When the experience really started for me – when I began to truly believe my original hopes that this could be a life-changing, unbelievable opportunity - was the first few days in my student accommodation. As more and more international students arrived, I was beside myself to learn I would have 22 flatmates from around the world. In the course of a few days, I met friendly, exciting people from Argentina, Italy, Austria, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, France, Germany, Martinique, Ireland, Wales and England – and they were all in the same position as me: Students looking to have the experience of a lifetime in a new place.

Part Two: Living Abroad: Flat and Flatmates
“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”
-Tim Cahill

I quickly began to learn that the most profound way my world view was going to expand was by talking to the people I lived with. At all parts of the day, the kitchen was bustling with conversation. Cooking, playing cards, speaking and learning various languages, using slang, pioneering inside jokes – everything was an opportunity to learn more about the nature of each other’s cultures, countries, and lifestyles.

Dressed up for Eddi’s last night in Bangor before returning to Germany.

Seeing my old British friends from UMaine throughout the year was awesome as well.

We made each other traditional dinners, celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving in huge ways, and commemorated everyone’s birthdays with huge, international parties with at least four languages audible within a few yards (meters!). We lived together, forged through the experience together, and traveled together, including big trips to Amsterdam, Cardiff, and all around north Wales in close-knit groups from the flat.

Internationality: Young Jun from Korea and Elena from Italy.

Our group trip to see Anglesey, the north most part of Wales.

Sparing every little story, joke, and life lesson contained from September to May – which is best as it was truly our own adventure and will never be able to fully translate to any of our friends or families – I can say that being with those people led to some of the best times of my life. And as Elena said after returning to Italy in the middle of the year (so many of my closest new friends only stayed for one semester…only to have their rooms filled by new, awesome international pals-to-be): “It’s so special to think about having so many friends somewhere in the world, it makes feel part of something great and good.” I concur; I feel a part of something big and brilliant. The mantra to all gloomy mates departing Bangor was that although the wonderful experience had come to a close for them, the memories would always remain, and the strongest friendships would continue to influence their lives.

Ladies in the kitchen. England, Argentina, Italy, Annick, France represent.

Great group shot from the Bangor reunion in Austria.

Group trip to seaside Llandudno in beautiful north Wales. We just hung out at this high point above the town and watched the sheep and admired the landscape for a peaceful afternoon.

Part Three: Academics
“You must have learned a lifetime worth of info being over there.”

-AJ Harvey, friend and shreddin’ guitarist of Last Chance to Reason

 

The University of Wales, Bangor and the British education system was a huge difference from what I’d been familiarized with in two years at UMaine. Three classes per semester, seven or eight hours of class per week. Small seminar groups with a lot of class participation, intense analyzing, and a lot of independent work – to do or to neglect – outside of class. One or two essays per semester, maybe one test, usually some kind of presentation. I was able to take my first film classes, and I dove in with three. Studying Dickens in the UK was one of my favorite treats, academically speaking. I also wrote one of my best essays (and definitely longest) yet for college: a 4,200-worder about the Korean director Im Kwon-Taek for my East Asian Culture and Cinema course.

Main Arts, where I attended all of my classes. Yes, I had class in a castle for a year.

Part Four: Travels
“The journey is my home.”

-Muriel Rukeyser

 

I left the year broke as a joke (“skint,” in Cockney speak), mostly due to my abundant travels (if you ignore the everything’s-twice-as-expensive-in-the-UK bit…). Traveling to the maximum was my goal, and that’s one thing I can never have regrets about the year which has passed. I feel I did about as much traveling as I possibly could have from September to May, and saw nearly everything I wanted to see. I fell in love with Europe and loved what the journeys I embarked on and the places they took me to. The rest, I’ll get to later, no hard feelings. The list I am most proud of among many in my notebook is the places I went over the year:

 

Haywards Heath/Brighton, England
London, England (six times over the year)

Bangor, Wales (lived here)

Conwy, Wales (twice over the year)

Llandudno, Wales

Beaumaris, Wales

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Wales (three times over the year)

Anglesey (various places around the island), Wales

Holyhead/Valley, Wales

Cardiff/Cardiff Bay, Wales

Rome, Italy

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Dolgellau, Wales

Chester, England

Hull, England

Caernarfon, Wales

Llanberis/Mount Snowdon, Wales

Nottingham, England

Birmingham, England

Liverpool, England

Paris, France

Versailles, France

Marseilles, France

Nice, France

Innsbruck, Austria

Budweis, Czech Republic

Hluboká, Czech Republic

Krumlov, Czech Republic
Dobčice and Holašovice villages, Czech Republic
Prague, Czech Republic
Reading, England
Dublin, Ireland

For space reasons, I will not post pictures from even close to all of these places. Here are some of my favorites. The first: The Pantheon in Rome, completely alone in the plaza around 1 a.m. on my final night.

View from Bangor Mountain. This was a favorite spot in the my Welsh hometown.

One of my last evenings in Bangor; the view from Bangor Meadows. Beautiful occurrences like this happens a lot in a place as cloudy as Wales.

Castle Cat: I became an avid castle collector. I saw my first in Wales, and a subsequent eight more across Wales, England, and Europe.

The gang on Mount Snowdon on my last day in Wales.

Czech flag flying over Prague.

A more comprehensive breakdown of the first semester and the travels involved – with many more pictures - can be found here [http://www.blogabroad.com/season6/zach/?p=36]. I will also post a comprehensive list of my albums on here for your perusal soon.

 

Seeing new places was always a peak of thrill and awe for me. I was rarely happier than when I was in a completely new city, country, or environment. As the year came to a close, I compiled another list; a handful of the little differences across Europe that I will miss in the US: different light switches, the taste of milk, various faucets and toilet flushes, greeting styles, hearing snatches of conversation on streets and trying to guess the language, being able to say goodnight to my flatmates in three or four different languages.

Part Five: Epilogue
“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”
-Pat Conroy

A couple days before I was set to leave the UK, a chica named Magda, my newest Spanish flatmate, told me: “I had two dreams in my life: to go to London and to go to New York.” It had been a long time since I’d thought about dreams, and Magda’s naked honesty and enthusiasm as she spoke of visiting London this semester shook me from the conclusion of my own lifelong dream. That finally began to hit me as I sat in Heathrow Airport and wrote down this epilogue and its underlying thought: I lived a dream this year.

 

Since age ten, when I spent two years watching back-to-back 17-year-olds from Czech Republic and Sweden live and learn under my family’s roof, finding my own parallel experience has been a dream. I may be too goal- and checklist-oriented to have been aware of that all along, but even through the dripping sentimentality of saying goodbye to the international friends I made in Wales, I began to see the nature of dreams clearly. From the moment George left the sight of my crying, 11-year-old eyes to return to the Czech Republic, I dreamed of seeing him one day in Budweis or Prague. When I missed out on a school trip to Ireland in 9th grade, I dreamed of visiting the Emerald Isle, waxing poetic about returning to the motherland of some of my ancestry (me mam’s maiden name’s O’Connor, aye). I think without digging too deep or fictionalizing too much, I could come up with a similar dream for nearly everywhere I went and everything I did in the last year.

 

A more recent dream, also dressed in the guise of a mere goal, was articulated repeatedly in my study abroad candidacy, my BlogAbroad application, and in answers to the curious and sometimes heated friends and family asking why I wanted to do this, or why for a full year?

 

“I want to immerse myself in a foreign culture for one year. I want to feel like I really lived there, not just visited. And I want a better understand of the world.”

 

That’s pretty much verbatim, and pretty much accomplished – well, wait, I’m ticking off checkboxes again. Let’s try that the right way: my dream came true.

 

Now I have new dreams: dreams of returning to Europe as soon as possible; dropping everything and buying a plane ticket if I haven’t gone within five years; seeing my new friends – my international family – at home in the US; at their homes, be they Reims, France; Alicante or Vigo, Spain; Padova or Udine, Italy; Bremen, Germany; Hong Kong or a dozen other places around the world. Or maybe we’ll reunite in entirely new places for each of us. I dream of quenching what feels like an insatiable thirst to travel by learning about and seeing more of the US – of my home – Tennessee, Nantucket, and Chicago ranking high on the list at the moment. I dream of actually being employed to travel and recount the adventures with words; of exciting others to explore, dream, discover, in the peerless words of Mr. Twain. As for the year which has somehow concluded in the blink of an eye…I dream of never forgetting.

Thank you and farewell, Wales, Europe, and friends. On to the next step of my life, with this experience always in my mind.

Thank you for reading. Pursue and enjoy your dreams and adventures.

 

Zach Dionne, May 19, 2008

As you may have read in the last blog, I have delightful visitors from Austria. I’ve also been finishing my essays and last classes (I’m done!) and getting ready for their arrival. I leave on Tuesday, but aim 100% to have completed my final retrospective blog on the experience by then. Keep an eye out for it!

Cheers, enjoy ze weekend,

Zach

“I should like to spend the whole of my life traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.”
-William Hazlitt

What a perfect quote that is. I got my first “have a nice life” the other day - from my barber. I saw the lovely lady I’ve been going to for haircuts this entire year (getting better trims and conversation than almost anywhere at home) for the last time, and it started to hit me how soon I’m leaving. May 6 is the date, ladies and gentlemen. May 6. Yikes.

Shortly after returning from my Easter travels, I figured out when my final classes were, when my essays were due, and if I have any final tests. The classes wrap up next week (my last real class will be on Wednesday, April 30) and I don’t have any finals. Although the essays are due May 9 and May 16, I’m now finished with my whopping 4,000-5,000 worder (the longest I’ve written yet in college), and making progress on the other assignments.

So I purchased my plane ticket, from Manchester Airport this time as it’s several hours closer than London and worth the bit of extra expense for the minimized hassle. I was rearing to go when I made the purchase; super excited for everything about home. Now that a couple weeks have passed and the countdown is at 13 days, the emotions are much more mixed and melancholy. The good news is that since nailing down my departure, I’ve made sure to do something fun or unusual with my flatmate pals every day. We’ve been playing a lot of guitar, going to the pub for a pint and some chat in the evening more frequently than usual, and we watched an excellent film called “L’Auberge Espagnole” (Francais for “The Spanish Inn”). It focuses on a French student who is clueless about what to do with his life, so he decides to do an ERASMUS program in Barcelona. ERASMUS is the European study abroad program that almost all my friends here are partaking in. The student moves into a flat with a hodgepodge of international students, they have to speak in French, English, Spanish, and more to communicate with each other, and adventures commence - just like OUR experience in Wales! It’s pretty funny and interesting to watch the movie as a student abroad, and I definitely recommend it to anyone. It sort of gives insight to what my year has been like.

With under two weeks left, I’m finishing my assignments, trying to enjoy every day with my friends as the weather gets nicer and balmier, and hopefully making it to Penrhyn Castle just outside Bangor, as well as another hike up Mt. Snowdon. Bastian and Anna (from Austria) are coming to visit from April 30 until the day I leave, so I’m psyched to see one of my best friends of the year one more time before leaving.

I don’t really have any new photos except for things like me cooking a pumpkin pie and Indian food for the first time, so I’ll include the links for the full albums from the Easter travels. Enjoy…there are a LOT of photos! I’ll be writing sometime next week, when there’s more to report. Possibly a new video or two, and certainly more pictures.
The British Museum and Kate’s arrival in London/Bangor

Tour de France: Paris
Tour de France: Versailles, Marseilles, and Nice

Austria and the Alps

Czech Republic: Southern Bohemia

Czech Republic: Prague 

Reading football match and London with Dad 

Dublin with Dad - coming soon!

Part One

“The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.”
-Russell Baker

My father and I both arrived in London on Friday, March 28. He came from Portland, Maine, I came from Prague, Czech Republic. Escalating hijinks caused us to forfeit almost a full first day, not reuniting until almost 10 p.m. rather than 11 a.m. But with that behind us, we set off to nearby Reading, England for our inaugural English Premiership football match. The setting: Madejski Stadium. The teams (sides, in this vernacular): Reading Royals vs. Blackburn Rovers.

Pops with the Reading mascot. Note the beautiful British weather.

Guys at the game.

Incidentally, dad and I are now Reading supporters by default; we had to buy membership cards to see the match. The pre-match excitement was high, and I now had a greater understanding of my British friends teasing me at UMaine that if I didn’t own an expensive hockey jersey, I wasn’t a real fan. Nearly everyone was wearing the “kit” of their side. When we went into the hotel annexed with the stadium, where the Reading team’s bar and lounge is, dad and I had to have a laugh at how serious the situation gets: the doormen at the hotel warned a young woman to cover up her Blackburn colors if she planned on coming inside. Crazy.

Panoramic of Madejski Stadium.

Kickoff!

The match was a nil-nil draw, but, hey, that’s footie for ya, mate. It was still exciting and definitely a worthy experience to add to my year abroad in Britain, to attend an authentic Premiership match. An interesting note was that both goalkeepers, Marcus Hahnemann and Brad Friedel, were American. After particularly good saves, the stadium was blasting with an enthusiastic “USA” chant. Dad and I were blown away. Totally unexpected. I also took a video of what may have been the most thrilling minute-and-a-half of the game.

Before and after the match, we breezed through the town of Reading, which is a typical, nice English mini-city.

A street in Reading.

Day two was my first official tour of London. Dad and I got the hop-on/hop-off bus tour (the Original Sightseeing Tour, if you’re wondering – there are two major ones in London) and spent the majority of the day cruising around the city, hopping off at spots of interest. The day was a mixture of new sights and showing dad some of my favorites in the city. The staples included Buckingham Palace and the neighboring St. James’s Park, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, Big Ben and the House of Parliament, Covent Garden, the list goes on. Of course, I learned tons of great information and fascinating anecdotes about everything we passed from the recording and live tour guides.

This is Westminster Cathedral. I foolishly thought Big Ben was attached last time I saw it and posted a picture. Big Ben is attached to the House of Parliament. This is Westminster. I promise.

View up the impressive tower of the House of Parliament.

Dad and Buckingham Palace. Sorry, dad. I had to post this. I was contractually obligated. Something.

We didn’t see the changing of the guard, but we got to see this cool nutcracker-looking dude marching and swinging his arm super hard.

View of Buckingham Palace from St. James’s Park.

St. Paul’s cathedral. Tremendous.

Big Ben.

Examples of knowledge acquired on this expedition: the British system of driving on the left-hand side of the road came from the need to do battle while riding in carriages. Most people were right-handed, meaning they’d be better off to swing swords and such with their right hands, justifying driving on the left-hand side and having your enemy accessible on the right. The French did the opposite of this system solely because Napoleon was left-handed, and the US adopted the French way in the midst of becoming a free nation simply to reject the British way. I also learned that the “Tower” of London is actually a big castle. I’d always envisioned it as an actual tower, but in reality it stems from the White Tower in the center of the castle, which was then fortified and built around over and over through the centuries.

These two buildings were done by the same architect. They are both clearly awesome. The one on the right is called “The Gherkin” by the Brits. Gherkin as in pickle.

The Tower Bridge, which the tour repeatedly and adamantly states is “the most famous bridge in the world.” Dad was – and maybe you will be, too – stunned that this isn’t the London Bridge, and that the London Bridge is far less iconic.

The London Eye. Add this to the Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral on the list of London sights I wasn’t able to make it to this year. Someday…

Panoramic of the Tower of London.

One of the last bits of the day was a river cruise on the Thames, complimentary with the bus tour. The guide was brilliant and the sights were solid. Dad and I agreed that this was one of the most fun and interesting parts of the day. Overall, the tour was extremely worth it – we saw just about every major sight in the city and learned a lot. For me, it was the perfect culmination of a handful of trips to London over the year.

Big Ben and the House of Parliament from the river cruise, toward the end of the day. Cheers, London.

We took the train to Bangor from London the following day and I gave Dad the quick, comprehensive tour of my nook of north Wales. Later that afternoon we went to Holyhead (on Anglesey, the north tip of Wales) - Dad got the abbreviated experience of passing through the town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (the town with the long name, if that wasn’t evident) on train - and boarded the ferry to Dublin, Ireland.

Part Two
“A good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub.”
-Irish author James Joyce in “Ulysses”

We had difficulties getting to the hotel in Dublin. Fortunately my Dubliner flatmate Lorraine was also heading home that day and was there to help us out. By the time we were sorted with the room, we just had time to dine at an excellent pub (The Bank on College Green) and stroll through Temple Bar, a popular section of pedestrianized, cobblestone side streets full of pubs, shops, and street performers. It was certainly atmospheric and I was already beginning to be a big fan of the city. Enjoy the video of the terrific street performers we saw here. Keep your eye on the violinist in the first segment, he’s unbelievable. As you’ll see in the video, Temple Bar is a hotspot for tourist groups doing pub crawls.

Guinness and Guinness beef stew? Yup, we’re in Ireland.

Gogartys, a two-floor Temple Bar pub with traditional Irish music.

On our only full day in the city, we pulled a repeat of London with another hop-on/hop-off bus tour. This company featured completely live guides on every bus, with varying degrees of Irish accents. The information, history, wit, and, on one bus, singing, was superb. Favorite spots were Trinity College – which I fantasized about attending as we walked the gorgeous campus, the massive park that is over twice the size of New York’s Central Park, full of free-roaming deer, the Irish President’s house, and the third largest obelisk monument in the world.

Our main “hop-off” of the tour was the Guinness Storehouse. We spent a whopping three hours taking in the amazing Guinness Experience. Some rapid-fire facts for you: Guinness operates on 55 acres in the city of Dublin, employees receive two bottles per day to take home, and a bottle of Guinness is offered as a traditional way to recoup after donating blood.

Guinness guys.

Tons of great old advertisements like this.

The experience takes you through the making of Guinness (just four simple ingredients: barley, hops, malt, and water), the history of the brewery, the charming advertising campaigns, and every other imaginable facet of Guinness. It all wraps up with the perfect pint at the circular, glass-walled bar at the top, where you can peacefully sip your Guinness and take in the most elevated view of Dublin.

Pints at the circular bar at the top of the Guinness Storehouse.

The rest of the bus tour was equally enlightening as the London tour, taking us by all the major sights and allowing us to get a game plan of what we wanted to see more in depth later. Included in the later sights we saw on foot later in the afternoon and in our half-day that followed were the oldest pub in Dublin, a castle and piece of the old city wall, O’Connell Street (Dublin’s main “turroughfare” in Dublinese – as in thoroughfare, as in major street), and various churches, gardens, and monuments.

The city of Dublin was once poorly lit and very smoky. Thus, various colored doors so residents could find their homes more easily.

I now have been to England and Ireland’s oldest pubs. Woohoo!

The Millennium Spire, also known by locals as the Pole in the Hole, the Stiletto in the Ghetto, and simply The Spike. It begins at 15 meters wide and rises 120 meters (390 feet) high.

One of a handful of bullet holes in a monument at the beginning of O’Connell Street. The marks came from the revolution in Dublin in the early 1900s.

O’Connell Street is full of monuments and history.

Another cool monument in a beautiful garden at the end of O’Connell Street.

Dad and I spent a considerable amount of time in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on our final day. Jonathan Swift, the author of “Gulliver’s Travels,” was a dean here for most of his life. The cathedral is full of Irish history, and we got to learn just who the heck this St. Patrick fellow is that we celebrate every March. St. Patrick’s Cathedral was also the spot that Handel’s “Messiah” had its inaugural performance in 1742.

A handwritten, centuries-old copy of Handel’s “Messiah,” flipped to the “Hallelujah Chorus” section.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

I really, really liked Dublin. I can’t say the stay felt too short, as we were able to see and experience quite a lot. I’d been traveling for three weeks straight - closer to four-to-five weeks nonstop, including the time with Kate - and I was pleased to head home for Bangor. I did indeed love Dublin and anxiously await the day I can see more of Ireland’s famous green countryside and possibly return to Dublin for a pint of Guinness.

Onward and homeward!

The final route: London to Bangor to Holyhead to Dublin.

So Easter break triumphantly concluded. It was an unbelievable three weeks of travel with old friends, family, and new places, and easily takes a top spot as one of the best times of my study abroad experience.

“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

Pozdravy (welcome) to the Česká Republika. Echoing the just-passed travels in Austria, my Czech trip was more of a personal visit than traditional tourism – the occasion, a six-day reunion with the exchange student, George, who lived in my home for a full school year almost a decade ago – when he was 17 and I was 11. George hails from Budweis, in the south (where we visited first), and now runs a business in Prague, the nation’s splendid capital.

George’s name is a translation. His Czech name is Jiří, but that little guy over the “r” is a sound we don’t have in English and renders it ϋber-tough to say. Fortunately George (and Jorge, when we’re joking around) is acceptable – it’s what my family and I knew him as from the start – and I was pleased to actually learn a handful of the Czech language during my visit. The nature of the trip, with lots of catching up and spending time with George and his family, led to an experience that doesn’t exactly conform to my usual storytelling blog style. Without much more reason, I present you a top ten list of my experiences in the Czech Republic. Okay, I’m a list maniac. There’s one more reason.

10) Trdelnik

I had the fresh, warm, cylindrical pastry called trdelnik on my first day out in Czech and fell in love. This, like the bread and crêpes in France, the stroopwafels of Amsterdam, the gelato in Italy, will tastily haunt my dreams until I one day return. The customary treat is made before your eyes, a simple, soft, piping delight with a cinnamon or almond accent, and was the perfect thing for the chilly weather.

Yum!

9) Prague Dance Clubs

We went to two, and they had three and four completely individual dance floors, respectively. This was one of my few tastes of real international nightlife outside Wales and I soaked it up like maple syrup with French toast. Although I saw more tourists and Americans than usual in Europe (Easter break, remember), everyone was friendly and sociable – each of our nights out was a blast. A funny note, the first club night was preceded by bowling, which is seeing a surge in popularity in Prague. Although the alley we went to was in a shopping mall and only had four lanes since it’s relatively new, it was a fun taste of home mixed with being in a foreign country. And yes, bowling shoes are ugly in Czech, too.

9) Prague Dance Clubs

We went to two, and they had three and four completely individual dance floors, respectively. This was one of my few tastes of real international nightlife outside Wales and I soaked it up like maple syrup with French toast. Although I saw more tourists and Americans than usual in Europe (Easter break, remember), everyone was friendly and sociable – each of our nights out was a blast. A funny note, the first club night was preceded by bowling, which is seeing a surge in popularity in Prague. Although the alley we went to was in a shopping mall and only had four lanes since it’s relatively new, it was a fun taste of home mixed with being in a foreign country. And yes, bowling shoes are ugly in Czech, too.

8) Budweis’s Black Tower and Town Square

Budweis: George’s home city and birthplace to the original Budweiser beer, before it was purchased and dumbed down to tasteless alcoholic water by Anheiser-Busch. My favorite aspects of the city itself were the large, so-not-black clock tower known as the Black Tower, which gave a great view of the city and one of its charming old square. The Black Tower was constructed in 1553.

The Black Tower by night.

One of the huge bells in the tower. If you look close, you can see that it’s sponsored by Budweiser Budvar - the beer. Apparently the US isn’t the only place Budweiser can dominate advertising.

Budweis’s square from the Black Tower.

The square and fountain. Very old and attractive.

7) Czech Beer

The nation with the fastest-strengthening currency also happens to have the most beer consumption per capita (source: George, who usually knows his stuff). Home to the original Budweiser, the pilsener style of brew was also founded in Czech, in the city of Plzeň. As a result, Pilsener Urquell is a ubiquitous presence throughout the country. Think of Pepsi’s presence in the US – on every ramshackle old country corner store, every high school scoreboard, etc, and you have the idea. Although pilseners and lighter-colored beers aren’t usually my bag, I appreciated both the Budweiser Budvar (which had a luscious dark variant, as well) and Pilsener Urquell.

Pivo is beer in Czech. “Jedno pivo, prosím” for “one beer, please.” The culmination of Czech beer enjoyment came in the Pivovarský Dům, a small brewery-slash-restaurant in the city, where their brew is served in giant chimney-style devices called giraffes. We had light and dark beer, swashed together in a delicious mix. This was also my introduction to the Czech “beer food” specialties. Our selections were bread – dark, rye-style bread is prevalent, as in Austria – and the “drowned man,” a sausage that has been soaked in vinegar for…a long time…and served with sauerkraut and onions. It’s tasty, but I just had to trust George and the menu that the drowned man is somehow a beneficial item to eat while drinking.

A computerized tap for self-service. I deemed it the robotap.

Pilsner Urquell dominates, but Budweiser Budvar is established enough. This is atop a building on one of Prague’s biggest streets.

The “giraffe” at Pivovarsky Dum.

Not that beer is the only alcoholic beverage in Czech. I kept a running tally of George’s Schnapps Solutions during the trip. They included one shot to cure seasickness, a shot before bed to get to sleep (“schlaffdrunk,” taken from German), and a shot a day for digestion or to feel less full after a meal. The Czech Republic is also one of the only places you can sample the moonshine-esque absinthe (dipping up into the 70-ish percentages of alcohol content), so we sampled – note, sampled, not indulged, we didn’t have death wishes – the fabled green liquor once. It’s hard stuff.

6) Hluboká and Krumlov

On my first full day in Czech, we took a day trip in the south to see the stunning white castle of Hluboká. It was, well, completely white and unlike any castles I’d previously seen.

The hulking ivory castle.

The white tower and white, sculpted deer heads to mount antlers.

In Krumlov, an intriguing, small town where the schlock movie “Hostel” was filmed a few years ago, we mostly strolled around and took in the sights, stopping shortly to eat a pork knee medieval style. We moved on to town’s castle – the second of the day - which features a beautifully painted tower and great views over Krumlov. As in Austria, I couldn’t escape the feeling of how authentic and old everything was. It’s sensational to be surrounded by such well-maintained relics of the past.

View of Krumlov Castle while entering the town.

View of the town from the castle.

Krumlov’s square. Colored buildings are popular in Czech. I am a fan.

5) Southern Bohemian Villages

One of my favorite things about traveling to other countries is when I’m able to enjoy more than just the capital city. George’s area in Budweis and around is part of Southern Bohemia. His father escapes from the hustle and bustle of working just outside Prague by spending half his week in an old-fashioned village called Dobčice. The buildings are all super old and have a colorful villa style, known as “South Bohemian folk baroque.” There is a small pond and quaint church in the center of the circular village. And just 48 people live there.

Dobcice’s pond and church. One word: peaceful.

The UNESCO-sponsored (meaning it’s been deemed a world heritage site) village of Holašovice is nearby – there’s a whole colony of these little villages constructed in the south – so that was a mandatory stop after how taken I was with Dobčice. Holašovice is home to 100 or so people, and has water pumps for every home. Other than that, the setup is similar: pond, church, gorgeous houses, utter, simple calmness.

This guy guards the lake at Holasovice.

George was so excited to pump this water.

4) Eating Homemade, Traditional Czech Meals

My visit to Czech began over Easter weekend. This meant that holiday cooking was in full swing, and I was 100 percent game. The moment I sat at a table after arriving in Dobčice, I was blessed with nádivka, an Easter stuffing, and rajská omáčka, consisting of homemade dumplings, delicious meat and lovingly topped with a wondrous tomato-broth-style sauce. I was able to have both George’s mom’s and dad’s variations of nádivka, and the rajská on two separate occasions. Dobrý (good in Czech) doesn’t quite say it; it was all outstanding. Some of the most comforting home-cooked food I’ve had in ages.

George is psyched to eat rajska omacka for a good reason - it’s awesome!

Dumplings and beef goulash with onions. Not homemade, but cooked at a very cozy, authentic restaurant.

3) Prague Castle

Prague Castle, like the Palace of Versailles, is an estate. A fortress. It’s enormous, and contains so much inside that you forget you’re technically inside a castle. The main draw for me was the St. Vitus Cathedral. Reminiscent of a different flavor Notre Dame, right down to the staggeringly high, arched ceiling and the gargoyles guarding its exterior, it had to be one of the most impressive cathedrals I’ve ever seen.

The gigantic cathedral. Told you it’s like Notre Dame.

Some of the most dazzling stained glass I’ve ever seen, and a completely unique style from anything I can recall seeing.

Gargoyles never get tiresome.

My self-guided tour through the castle – which couldn’t cover everything if I didn’t want to stay for days – took me to another church, the Bazilika sv. Jiří, or St. George’s Basilica. This was all humble stone, with a monastery feel, but still interesting even after the larger-than-life St. Vitus Cathedral. Abbreviating the tour of Prague Castle, I’ll say that the last stop was the Zlatá Ulička, or Golden Lane, named so for the castle’s goldsmiths and artisans who formerly resided there. This was full of shops and a neat museum area full of old Czech armor and weapons.

Guns with huge axes on the ends. That’s handy.

2) Ambiente Restaurante Brasileiro

Certainly not a traditional sight of Prague, this has to be one of the city’s coolest places to eat. Hands-down one of my Great European Meals, a three-hour affair where I ate more meat, seafood and poultry than I’ve ever seen in one place in my entire life. The Brazilian restaurant starts you off with a cold buffet; sushi, oysters, pepper salad, olive oil-doused olives, tomatoes and mozzarella slices. The main event begins when the waiters start gliding around with everything imaginable shish-kebabbed on swords. If you want something, they cut it off with another glistening sword, directly in front of you. You never leave the table, you pay a fixed price, you eat until you’d normally want to die, but in this case, every bite of everything is so absolutely heavenly that you run the risk of forgetting your stomach ever had a limit. I had salmon, lamb, Japanese beef, Brazilian beef, spicy beef, chicken, chicken hearts, chicken wings, at least two types of pork, more steak, more sizable tiger shrimp than I can recall and a fried banana, which was marvelous. The dessert was grilled pineapple. The meal was one of the best times I’ve had in Europe; George and I were laughing and reminiscing the entire time, making wild jokes, and in total bliss with the meal. If you come to Prague, seek out Ambiente Restaurante Brasileiro.

The contenders, unaware of the glory that lies ahead. Except for George … he’d been here before.

Grilled pineapple, hot off the sword. I wish I could’ve gotten the dreadlocked, ultra-Brazilian waiter in the shot, too.

1) Prague’s Old City

The old city square is reason enough for Prague to have its “City of a Hundred Spires” nickname. Featuring the gothic Týn Church, the Old Town Hall, and the Church of St. Nicholas (one of two in the city, and the other is magnificent), the square has an unmistakably gothic prowess. The astronomical clock on the side of the Old Town Hall is one of Prague’s famous tourist attractions. You tread on cobblestones throughout, as in much of Prague. It was here that it began to snow on my first day of city-seeing, and here that I saw my first Salvador Dalí exhibit. Each day in Prague took me through this area, and its magical draw is obvious. Enjoy the photos.

The Old Town Hall. A little more grandiose than its name implies, eh?

The astronomical clock.

The Tyn Church. Like Disney World, but much more sinister.

Cool buildings aren’t sparse in Prague, particularly in the old city.

Cobble mania.

Having almost a full week in the Czech Republic, getting to see two different parts of the country, and seeing it all with my old brother-from-another-mother, George, was an amazing experience. I say this with almost every trip, but this was one of my favorite expeditions during my year so far in Europe. I saw so much of this spectacular country, this hefty entry doesn’t even cover it all. I’ll leave you with a few more pictures and a teaser that the next entry will be about the week of UK adventures my dad and I just finished – London, Bangor, and Dublin, Ireland. See you next week!

The Tanecnice, or dancing woman, by American architect Frank Gary. Extremely cool.

The TV Tower Prague, with a viewing area at 93 meters. Those are weird, alien baby statues climbing up the stairs.

A vertical panoramic of the stunning St. Nicholas Cathedral, which I didn’t get to in this entry.

The Czech flag flying over the city.

The entire journey. Innsbruck, Austria to Linz, Austria, where George and I met, to Budweis, Czech Republic, to Hluboka and Krumlov, to the Southern Bohemian villages, to Prague.

Hi all!

Just offering a quick update. I had a blast in the Czech Republic, met up with my Dad and had a blast again in London, Bangor, and Dublin. I really loved Dublin, and my six or so days in Czech was excellent. The blog is finished, but is super long and won’t be up until Monday. Feel free to take it in a couple sittings when you see it - it’s divided in a way that should make doing so easy. I hope everyone enjoyed reading about the Austrian adventure, because the Czech one is just as great! The blog on the trip with Dad in the UK will be up late next week.

Cheers, thanks, as always, for reading

Zach

“I wanna hang a map of the world in my house and put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down.”
-American stand-up comedian, Mitch Hedberg, RIP

Guten tag, eager readers and vicarious travelers. To avoid stagnation after those lengthy French adventures, I cooked up a non-chronological breakdown of my trip to Austria. But first, there were a couple more London events with Kate that need tending to. We went to the “Lord of the Rings” musical show in the West End. It was ultra cool, with some Hobbit-licious songs, big time special effects, and a wild 18-piece stage that spun, lifted, and rose in segments. On Sunday we took a Jack the Ripper walking tour, which was superb, thanks largely to the knowledgable, friendly guide, who studies the subject academically. The relentless rain held off long enough for us to finish the three-hour tour in one dry piece and learn a lot about history’s most infamous serial killer.

Pictures aren’t allowed in the theater at the “Lord of the Rings,” which is a shame as it was fully transformed to look like a viney forest. Check out this one I lifted from Google, it’s a scene with the Orcs.

What We Did and Saw in Austria

My three-week Easter break began with a short flight (it seems they’re all short in Europe, eh?) from London to Innsbruck, Austria. The small airport’s runways lie directly at the feet of some towering mountains - I was immediately wowed. In my near-week in Austria, being totally surrounded by the snowy Alps never lost a smidge of majesty.

The five-day stay in Innsbruck was part tourism, part Uni