By Sustainability Research Fellow Katie Koenig
Our second academic excursion seemed to arrive faster than a single blink. One second, I was tallying up all my assignments for the three weeks before midterms, and the next I’m a full week past our travel break and it feels like I never had a break in the first place!
Firstly, to provide some basic context about the second excursion, it takes place the first weekend of travel break at the end of October. This semester, the second excursion took place in Prague—the city of colors and heights—from Friday morning on October 27th until Monday afternoon on October 30th, after which we were released like sheets to the wind until we had to stagger back to the castle on Sunday, November 5th, by 10pm.
Prague
Prague itself was beautiful; a city of brightly colored buildings, gorgeous views, more crystal and china shops than you can shake a stick at, and a plethora of Baroque style churches, buildings, and statues. I was particularly interested in that last point because I finally got to see some of the things I had studied for the Renaissance and Baroque art history class I’m taking this semester, and, honestly, pictures don’t do them justice. Saint Nicholas Church was awe inspiring, from the gentle red and teal marble walls to the ceiling fresco giving the illusion that you can see through the painted arches into the belfry from the front of the church.
If you have the chance to visit Prague in Europe, I definitely recommend checking out Saint Nicholas Church. Another easy suggestion to make is Prague Castle—the sight of the infamous defenestrations of Prague—but the lines there are almost as bad as at the Vatican, so unless you have a few hours to kill, there are just as many amazing things to see around the city with a much shorter line. For any music buffs, this city hosts a truly ridiculous number of concerts in many of the smaller churches and Baroque style buildings near the Old Town Square and beyond. I went to a Four Seasons themed concert in a place called the Mirror Chapel. It was aptly named for the use of oval mirrors inlaid into the walls and arches as decoration, although it’s hard to say why, beyond the aesthetic, they were added in the first place.
I’ve never thought I’d like staring at myself while listening to Vivaldi, but there’s a first time for everything, I guess.
After an incredibly hectic weekend of tours, hours of walking, and walking an average of twenty flights of stairs a day (according to my health app), a few friends and I stayed in Prague an extra night after the excursion to wait for our flight on Tuesday, October 31st to Milan.
Rome
Well, it’s a little more accurate to say we were waiting for our scheduled transportation (a flight to Milan, lunch, a train to Rome, then the metro) to Rome on Halloween for a tour of one of the many catacombs in the city. Unfortunately, we were in Rome, so even though there are a number of small, early BC Christian catacombs, they were basically all run by Catholic churches, and closed around five in the evening. I don’t think we missed out much on the Halloween bone tour going the next morning, honestly—plus, our tour at the St. Agnes Catacombs was rather educational on the history and context to that specific catacomb and the meaning behind the designs and art visible in certain tombs and walls.
Exhausted though we were already, we spent a day and a half touring Vatican city, (you definitely should stand at the marked points in St. Peter’s Square to see the illusion of the pillars disappearing), where we didn’t get to see the pope, and touring Palatine Hill (the House of Vesta was hands down my favorite). Then, we jetted off to Athens, where we immediately proceeded to leave in favor of a three hour bus ride to Delphi. The theme of our travels this week was ‘mythology tour,’ and we were going to achieve it if it killed us and we had to finish the trip as ghosts.
Greece
Delphi was definitely the most scenic place we saw the whole trip with sprawling views of the forests and valleys from up in the mountains. The Delphi museum was fascinating, and of course the history of the Oracle of Delphi was too, but I have to mention that if you walk twenty-ish minutes away from town you’ll find some Roman sarcophagi. I don’t know why, I don’t know when, but it was bizarrely fun to see a handful of ancient caskets in an open field in the relative middle of nowhere.
That night we finally managed to do laundry, at which point we had to deal with the strangest laundry machine (without a dryer) that I’ve ever used. It took three hours to finish one load, leaked like no tomorrow, and left all of our clothes smelling like mildew. The sink and the thankfully very strong hairdryer in our airBnB were our close friends that day.
Athens itself, which we actually explored the following day, was very cool. We spent most of our time walking through the city and especially the Acropolis, where our favorite monuments were the Temple of Nike (for me), the Theater of Dionysus (a friend), and the benches at the entrance (my exhausted roommate).
We nearly missed the train to the airport that afternoon because we got wrapped up in the Temple of Zeus near the Acropolis. This is ridiculous for a number of reasons. One: parts of the temple were under construction. There was basically nothing much to see. Two: we didn’t get tickets to enter the area (which were separate from our tickets into the Acropolis). We were goggling from beyond the gates for a while, like the tourists we were. Three: honestly, most of our dallying was because we were trying to get the best pictures of the Arch of Hadrian, right next to the temple. Four: I nearly got us lost by walking in the wrong direction at one point.
We still weren’t done with our trip, though, oh certainly not! Our flight out of Athens that afternoon was to Thessaloniki, since it was much cheaper to fly back to Dusseldorf from there than from Athens. We stayed overnight in Thessaloniki right next to the airport at the nicest hotel of the week, and the next morning flew into Dusseldorf, followed by a three hour train and bus trip back to the castle where we, by some miracle, made it back for dinner.
Sign Off
In hindsight, our only decent preparation for our inevitable exhaustion was treating ourselves to a nice dinner and hotel on our last night of travel, and making sure we stayed right next to the airport for our flight into Germany. We certainly knew we’d be tired, but there’s knowing that we were traveling to four distinct locations in six days, and then there’s Knowing that we traveled to four distinct locations in six days. I don’t regret it, but it was a mess of travel and running from place to place to catch all of our planned events and sightseeing spots.
Although unforgettable, I highly recommend for anyone traveling multiple places by plane in one trip to make sure there’s a one to two ratio of locations to days spent traveling. Don’t overestimate yourself, and give yourself a little more time than you think you might need to thoroughly explore where you’re staying.
What do you expect the continent to do, anyway? Grow legs and walk away? It’ll be there for a later trip.