A Very-Harry Potter Weekend in Edinburgh

Edinburgh Castle

This past weekend was cold, rainy, and exhausting -- but totally worth it.  On Friday night I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland, to meet up with my friend Matt who's studying in Aberdeen.  (Note: the city is pronounced eh-din-burr-ah.)  It might have been stupid, but it was truly shocking to see that these people really do drive on the left side of the street.  It took me all weekend to get accustomed to looking right when crossing a street, and I nearly could have died several times!  So right away, even on the bus ride into the city, my experience felt rather surreal.

Matt brought along his Scottish friend Michael, and together we walked from the bus stop in central Edinburgh to his sister Kathy's apartment.  Kathy lived in a nearby neighborhood in a fancy apartment with a great view of the city, and she could not have been more hospitable.  Right away when we arrived, which was fairly late at night, she had set everything up for us and asked, "Can I get ya a cup o' tea, there?" like any normal Scot would.  We spent the night watching some amazing British comedy shows -- I was so excited to be watching TV in English and understanding everything.

I got a great night's sleep, seeing as the two boys accompanying me were extremely lazy like all college guys are.  Even having showered and eaten breakfast, I had time to listen to my Deathly Hallows audiobook while drinking tea and admiring the city from the big kitchen window.  (Don't judge... how could you go to Scotland and not listen to Harry Potter?!)  We walked through town along Princes Street, the central boulevard dividing Old Town from New Town, where every other shop was blasting bagpipe music and selling kilts and various tartan-patterned items.  We crossed over a bridge to Old Town and turned on the Royal Mile (surprisingly, a mile-long road connecting two royal buildings...) until we reached the Scottish Parliament.  Our design professors in Versailles had raved about this brand-new building, so I thought I ought to see it.  It was pretty ugly on the outside (and every Scottish person I talked to just hated it) but the inside was laid out in an interesting way.  Matt, Michael and I then decided to brave the cold and climb the Salisbury Crags, the beautiful cliffs on Holyrood Hill.  It was more of a mountain than a hill, and after climbing at least 900 feet up the wet, muddy hillside, we finally reached King Arthur's Seat.  Arthur's Seat is the highest point in Edinburgh, and legend has it that King Arthur established his dominion over the Scottish territory from that very spot.  The view was phenomenal: we could see downtown Edinburgh, the Castle perched atop another hill, and the Firth of Forth (the North Sea jutting inward) with hazy islands in the distance.

Holyrood Hill

View of the Firth of Forth from King Arthur's Seat

By the mid-afternoon, it was time to climb down the hill (which took twice as long as coming up, and resulted in all of my clothes being completely drenched and muddy).  We grabbed some food and headed over to the Odeon Theatre, where I could not contain my excitement, since we were finally seeing Harry Potter!  No spoilers -- but the movie was awesome, much more serious and intense than the others.  Afterwards, we went to a pizza place for dinner, and then Michael showed us Edinburgh's pub scene.  We sat next to a bunch of really nice guys at the first pub, and throughout the night I got to try some really good beer and Scotch.  (I still can't stand whiskey... but it was definitely better than usual.)  Late that night, we met up with Kathy and her friends, who confirmed my notion that all Scottish people are extremely friendly.  Along with Michael, they explained why Scottish people can't stand English people, which was pretty funny.  We grabbed some haggis on the way home, and I could not believe how good it was!  It sounds disgusting -- sheep liver, heart, and lungs mashed up with oatmeal and boiled in sheep stomach, then fried -- but it was the perfect antidote to the cold, rainy weather.  We happily finished our haggis and drank some more tea while watching TV, and I passed out on Kathy's comfy couch before long.

On Sunday, I was determined to get up earlier and see the rest of the city.  Michael slept in, so Matt and I set out for the most exciting part of the entire trip: our search for the café where J. K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series.  Along the way there, I literally did a double-take and stopped in my tracks when I saw the entrance sign for the Balmoral Hotel.  I literally swerved around and dragged Matt inside as I realized, in awe, that this was the place where J. K. Rowling finished the second half of the series (once she had real money).  It was super fancy, of course, and I wish I could have seen the statue upstairs where she famously scribbled a note when she finished Deathly Hallows in 2007.

After leaving and getting turned around on several little side streets, we finally found the Elephant House Café in Old Town.  The café was named differently a few years ago, but it was nonetheless purely magical to be in the place where such a wonderful story began.  We sat and had lunch in the exact same room where, years ago, Jo Rowling created the early Harry Potter books day after day.  By far, the best part of my experience there was seeing the view onto which the café looked.  It could not have been more inspirational for a series like Harry Potter: her table looked out onto a beautiful graveyard, dotted with eerie headstones, and behind it loomed the gorgeous Edinburgh Castle atop a giant cliff.  I felt like a loyal Potter devotee on a pilgrimage... it was surreal to be in a place where, really, one woman changed the history of literature forever.

Inside the literary landmark... the very tables where Harry Potter was written

The view out of J. K. Rowling's table's window onto the graveyard and the castle

Matt and I met up with Michael again for a free tour of Edinburgh in the afternoon.  Our tour guide was an Australian living in Scotland, and he was full of great stories about Edinburgh's history.  I really got a feel for how spooky the city is -- it's full of eerie passages, haunted buildings, and has lots of ghost stories.  We saw a private boys' school that might have very well been the inspiration for Hogwarts.  After that, we finally ventured into the Greyfriars Kirkyard, the graveyard overlooked by J. K. Rowling's old café.  It was a creepy but beautiful place, and I was giddy when I saw some of the graves our guide pointed out.  There was the tomb haunted by a poltergeist (apparently ranked one of the "Scariest Places on Earth"), the tomb of a McGonagall, and coolest of all, a headstone with the names "Tom Riddell Sr." and "Tom Riddell Jr." marked upon it.  Clearly, J. K. Rowling got lots of inspiration when wandering that cemetery.

The George Hariot School in the distance, inspiration for Hogwarts

Inside the Greyfriars Kirkyard

Tombstone of the two Tom Riddles!

Our tour guide took us to some spots that gave us amazing views of the castle, which really is Hogwarts-esque in the way it's perched upon the hillside, even though it's not in the Gothic style.  Finally, after a great story about Scotland's Stone of Destiny and how it's traveled back and forth between Scotland and England, the tour was over and it was time to head home.  The three of us packed up at Kathy's, thanked her as much as possible, and left to catch a bus to the airport.  My shoes were soaked through and I was absolutely freezing, but nothing could stop me from feeling exultant.  The weekend as a whole was fascinating; Scotland was just as beautiful as I pictured it, and the entire time, I felt like I was living a fairy tale.  I can't believe that people actually live there.  Seeing the seventh Harry Potter movie was fun, but I will never forget how awesome it was to see the places where that amazing story was actually created from the start.  Overall, I can't wait to return to Scotland -- because the food, the drinks, the landscape, and the generous people -- everything was too good to be true.

Walking along Princes Street

One last view of the Castle

FALL SKETCH TRIP Part 4: Vienna, Austria

The beautiful streets of Vienna, Austria

The final part of our sketch trip was by far the most relaxing and the most enjoyable for me.  But when we first arrived in Vienna at 5:00 am on Saturday, we ran into a small problem: we had nowhere to stay.

It turned out that my friend Andrea had accidentally booked a hostel for Weimar, Germany, instead of Wien, Austria, so we were temporarily stranded in the middle of Vienna on a dark, cold morning without even a café to sit it.  Fortunately, everyone decided that it would make more sense to pay for a hotel room than to wait for the hostels to open.  A friendly employee at one nice hotel actually told us about a less expensive one down the street.  So we settled in at the Hotel Savoy, which was extremely nice on the inside but only about 40€ per person.  We actually got in TWO nights of sleep for the price of one, because the concierge kindly let us go up to our rooms right then and there.  So after a 4 or 5 hour nap, we got up and headed to a nearby market for breakfast.  This was the second good decision of the day, because we got some needed coffee to-go and then some pastries and chocolate strawberries from a food stand.  We walked north along the Mariahilfer Straße (pronounced strass, as in "street"), which had lots of cute shopping and restaurants.  After passing what seemed like 20 important, stately-looking buildings, we approached the gardens behind the Hofburg Palace.  Here we found a statue of Vienna's most beloved former resident, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose name we would soon be seeing literally everywhere in town.

Walking along the Mariahilfer Straße

One of many tributes to the composer Mozart

We played around and climbed some trees in the garden for a few minutes before walking eastward towards the Staatsoper, the famous Vienna State Opera, where we found lots of people dressed in 18th-century attire.  It turned out they were selling tickets, so we talked to one of them and got some cheap tickets for a show later that evening.  Then we walked north to the Stephansplatz, the central area of town,  where the Stephansdom church towered over everything else.  I grabbed some currywurst and a Zipfer beer for lunch, after which Hyein and I visited Mozart's old house.  It was a simple museum, but it was cool to imagine the prodigious Mozart inviting over the young Ludwig van Beethoven and telling him, right in that very sitting room, "Everyone better watch out, because you're going to make a name for yourself in this world."

The Stephansdom on the Stephansplatz

We all reconvened at the hotel and set out again to find dinner before the concert.  Unfortunately, we had taken a little too long to get ready, and we found ourselves with less than an hour before show-time and in an area without many restaurants.  Feeling ashamed, we went into a TGIF's and explained that we had to eat really fast.  It wasn't such a bad decision, though, because the restaurant was having a very festive Halloween party and we got free desserts at the end of our meal.  We rushed over to the Musikverein, another one of Vienna's many beautiful concert halls, and found our seats in the beautifully decorated hall.  The concert was a good one, with the orchestra performing Mozart and Strauss in traditional attire, and there were even some funny moments of audience participation.  (I think I would've preferred to hear some Beethoven piano concertos, but it was entertaining nonetheless.)

Inside the Musikverein concert hall

Afterwards, we walked north to the "Bermuda Triangle," a lively area with tons of bars lining 3 main streets.  We entered Die Brennerei Schnapsbar and found a table in the super-crowded, Halloween-decorated bar.  I ended up sitting near a girl and a guy from Germany who were very friendly, so they helped us order some beers and this one girly wine drink from the bartender.  It was a fun night, but we eventually decided to head home for a real night's sleep (the first one in three days).

The next day, I got up early to go see the Hofburg Palace after a really good breakfast at the hotel.  I absolutely loved the decorations at the enormous palace complex: everything from the furniture and tableware to the candelabras and royal outfits were all originals.  It felt like the closest thing to a "Beauty and the Beast" castle that I've seen so far, and it was interesting to learn about the Hapsburg dynasty.  After that, I went across town to the Haus der Musik, a really cool modern museum that dealt with both the scientific and the historical aspects of music.  It had a lot of really cool, trippy exhibits with strange noises coming from all around in dark rooms.  On the uppermost levels, it featured some awesome, dramatic exhibitions about Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Mahler, etc. etc., even showcasing some of their original manuscripts.  The best parts were (a) conducting a symphony with a hi-tech conductor's wand on a big-screen TV, and (b) even better, getting to play a piano for the first time in two months in the lobby afterwards!  It seems like I'm going to have to move to Vienna, not Paris, so I can be surrounded by people who appreciate music as much as I do.

Inside the fancy Hofburg Palace

In the afternoon, I ran into my friend Kara and we walked to see the Rathaus (city council) and some other landmarks on the western side of town.  All of us met up again an hour later for our last meal/snack in Vienna.  Having heard that Vienna is actually the "coffee capital of the world" -- and not quite believing it at first -- we went into the fancy Café Mozart to look at its coffee and dessert menu.  It was absolutely unreal how many different types of coffee and cakes they offered... I settled for a less expensive drink and a small piece of cake (some of the coffees were over 12€!!) but was extremely satisfied nevertheless.  We soon had to hop on a train to the airport to fly back to Paris, but I was sad to leave so soon.  (So many coffee flavors left untasted!)

View of the Rathaus from afar

Something about Vienna made it my favorite part of the entire sketch trip -- it was probably a combination of the relaxed atmosphere, the welcoming attitude of its inhabitants, and the proliferation of amazing coffee and chocolate products.  I would go back there in a heartbeat... Hopefully, by the next time I travel there, I'll be able to speak better German and will have some new piano compositions to perform!

FALL SKETCH TRIP Part 3: Auschwitz and Krakow, Poland

Friday was certainly the most highly anticipated day of the week, for better or for worse: it was our visit to Auschwitz and then Krakow.  I really don't know what to say about this part of my trip...  all I know is that (a) every single human being should visit Auschwitz or some other concentration camp at least once during their lifetime, and (b) I will probably never go back to one ever again.  It was eerie, uncomfortable, and so up-close-and-personal that it didn't even feel real.  I only took about 5 photos, none of which I am going to put up, but you can imagine what remains in that horrible location.  All I can say is that it felt very surreal to be taking a tour on a lovely autumn day, well-fed and quite warm, at what had once been the most dreaded place on the entire planet.

We were glad to get the heck out of that creepy town, so we found the train station and headed towards Krakow.  Normally, this should have been an hour-long train ride; but the rickety old train took 3 hours to get us there.  I guess it's not Poland's fault that it's so behind in the times... but we were glad to arrive in Krakow, which was much nicer than I was expecting.  We wandered over to the city's central square, a huge area filled with medieval architecture and bustling with young people.  I ordered a delicious meal at the restaurant we went to: a flaky pancake sort of sandwich and some hot spiced wine.  But that was it for our brief venture into Poland, because shortly after dinner we headed back to the bus station for the very last leg of our journey: Vienna.

Krakow's central plaza

FALL SKETCH TRIP Part 2: Prague, Czech Republic

View of the Prague Castle from the Charles Bridge

On the Morning of Tuesday October 26th, all eight of us got up early for the 5 hour train ride from Berlin to Prague.  I'm glad I managed to stay awake, because it was without a doubt one of the most beautiful trips I have ever made in my life.  As our train wound its way through valleys in the mountainous Saxony region of Germany, the views couldn't have been more picturesque: colorful autumn forests were reflected in wide, winding rivers, and perched atop hills were occasional medieval castle ruins.  We arrived at Prague's main station and wandered through the city to find our hostel.

The Dancing House

Capital of the Czech Republic, which has a long and shaky history, Prague is undeservingly overlooked by many American tourists.  It is certainly THE MOST BEAUTIFUL city that I have yet seen in Europe; it is calm, quiet, colorful, and filled to the brim with fairy-tale sights.  After settling into our hostel, the Mosaic House -- which, by the way, is the fanciest and cheapest hostel you will ever see -- we decided to explore the city by foot for a while.  We walked along the river and admired the Prague Castle from afar, along with the pretty buildings lining the streets and Frank Gehry's bizarre Dancing House.

That night was my friend Allie's 21st birthday, so we took her out to a good vegetarian restaurant and then this famous 5-story dance club right in the center of town.  Luckily, another group of 7 of our friends happened to be in Prague that night too, so we all got to meet up and dominate the dance floors.  (The Czech kids were astonished that we actually understood the words to all the American songs being played!)  Having exhausted ALL of our energy by the end of that night, we slept in until it was time for the free tour the next day.  The tour was fun and informative (we went with the same company) and we got to see main sights like the Old Town Square, the Charles Bridge, and the Jewish Quarter with some Franz Kafka memorials.  We wanted to get a good view of the city after that, so we began our trek up Prague's giant hill/mountain.  After a long time climbing up some beautiful streets, and then an even longer time trying to take "shortcuts" off the path on the treacherous hillside, we finally got up to the Petrin Tower.  It looks like a mini Eiffel Tower, and when we climbed up we got a fantastic view of the city, the river, and the castle below us.  We split up during the late afternoon to sketch, so I went back to the Old Town Square to do one of my required analytical studies.

Tyn Cathedral on the Old Town Square

Hussite Church on the Old Town Square

View onto an ascending street from the Charles Bridge

View from the Spree River running throughout Prague

One of my sketches: a Prague map, a plan of the Old Town Square, and an axonometric view

We went to a great Thai dinner that evening and then spent the night relaxing at the hostel.  Thursday, our last day, was jam-packed with everything we hadn't yet seen: we watched the Astronomical Clock chime, we saw a Baroque church with a human arm hanging from the ceiling (funny story to that one...),  we enjoyed some pastries from the central market, and finally, we visited the unmissable castle.  The evening was spent watching a hilarious old man scaring people on the street for fun -- a highlight of the trip, for sure -- followed by a traditional heavy Czech meal with some traditional Czech beer.  We stayed up late at the hotel, reminiscing about Prague's great sights and watching "Wedding Crashers" while waiting for our bus to arrive.  By 2:00 am, it was time to say goodbye to Prague and hello to the sketchiest part of the entire trip: our overnight bus ride from Prague to Auschwitz.

Typically awesome nighttime view of the Prague Castle

FALL SKETCH TRIP Part 1: Berlin, Germany

Berlin's TV Tower, the tallest structure in Germany

The week before last was a whirlwind of traveling and exploring in which I didn't get much sleep and certainly didn't do much homework.  Now that I'm beginning to recuperate, I can recount some memories from my adventures throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

The fall sketch trip was a week-long break during which we were able to split into groups and travel wherever we wanted and do whatever we wanted, given that we turn in a thorough sketching assignment afterwards.  I joined up with my friends Allie, Natalie, Shachi, Kara, Andrea, Hyein, and Sam to plan an epic voyage into the east.  (Planning the trip was exhausting and frustrating, but fortunately, I now feel very comfortable taking care of my own travel arrangements and finding cheap deals.)  So after class on Friday, October 22, I hastily packed my bags and cleaned up the apartment before heading off with my 7 girlfriends to Berlin, Germany.

Even with the strikes occurring in Paris, we wound our way over to the Paris Nord (North) train station from Versailles.  Those of us who opted to take the train there (Bus ride? Heck no.) settled into our seats for a 3-hour ride to Mannheim.  We hung out there for an hour or so before transferring onto the overnight train that would take us to Berlin.  After a cozy 5 or 6 hours on the sleeper train -- we didn't even have beds, but the seats looked like the reclining pods from Wall-E -- a new day had begun and we suddenly found ourselves in Berlin's ultra-modern Hauptbahnhof station.

It was too early to function properly, so like any good Americans, we camped out at the station's fancy McDonald's for almost 2 hours while eating breakfast and waiting for the day to really begin.  When we finally ventured out into the cold, all we could see was a vast park and river sprawled out before us, dotted with some modern buildings here and there.  Walking towards a tower in the distance seemed like a good idea, so we wandered that way for a bit until we were able to orient ourselves.  After getting some better directions, we learned that we were standing right in front of the Reichstag, the center of Germany's government, from which we were able to walk a block over to the famous Brandenburger Tor.  Admiring the grandeur of Berlin's classical-looking architecture, we strolled down one of its main avenues, Unter den Linden.  We soon came across the Museum Island and the beautiful Berliner Dom church.  Since we were waiting for our friends from the bus to arrive, we sat and sketched the church for a while.

The Brandenburg Gate

The Berliner Dom church and the TV Tower

To find our hostel, we had to wander quite a ways into East Berlin; it was a long but pretty hike.  Some of the surrounding buildings seemed rather cold, and I felt like I could sense the recent presence of Communism in the area, but the neighborhood was filled with gorgeous parks.  We soon found The Generator, a huge hostel that was full of young international people, and put our things away before heading out to lunch.

Having heard that the Alexanderplatz was a popular place in town, we took the train there to see what it was all about.  Situated right beneath Berlin's giant TV spire, the Alexanderplatz was full of shopping centers and little food stands.  We headed over to the outdoor Heineken restaurant where I couldn't help but get some currywurst and a radler of beer again... how I missed Munich!  After that, I was in full-fledged German culture mode for the next 3 days and loved every second of every meal I ate there.

One of the first things we wanted to do in Berlin was take the New Europe free tour so we could see the whole city, learn a lot about it, and then choose where to return later.  I'd had a good experience with the company elsewhere, so I had high hopes for the Berlin tour: and I was not let down.  Our tour guide was Gareth, a nice British guy, and he could not have been any better at bringing Berlin's rich history to life.  Unlike other European cities, Berlin's twentieth-century history gave the tour a dimension of seriousness and gravity that you just don't get anywhere else.  I came away understanding just how important this city was in shaping world events over the past 100 years.  The tour wasn't about looking at pretty architecture or pointing out medieval ruins: what we saw were places where Nazis and Communists once reigned, places filled with modern architecture because almost nothing survived all the wars.  Memories of the horrors that took place here still pervaded the air -- but at the same time, the city felt energetic with a new will to overcome its past.

The massive Holocaust Memorial

One of the first things we saw on the tour was the Holocaust Memorial.  This was definitely the best memorial I've ever seen -- it was a series of gray blocks leading deeper and deeper into a maze-like area that sprawled over a vast space.  We walked through and it was pretty disorienting; it really served as a place for quiet reflection.  Almost too fittingly, we then crossed the street and stood upon the spot where Adolf Hitler's last bunker once existed.  It was very eerie to learn about his last days and his suicide right where it all occurred... that was certainly no boring history book lesson.  Gareth gave us some rather shocking information when he told us about the pristine Nazi bunker that had just been discovered nearby by a construction crew in 2006.  He explained that Germany's Nazi history is still such a touchy subject that they couldn't decide what to do with the bunker full of memorabilia: make it a museum or destroy it completely?  They were so uncertain that they actually sealed the bunker off and postponed the decision for 50 years.  We also saw two of the last remaining examples of Nazi architecture: a train station with bullet-holes still seen all over the facade; and the Luftwaffe headquarters building, which was later used as the Communists' headquarters.  Around the back was the building where the Nazis organized all of their propaganda and controlled the media.  Here's a "fun fact" we learned, if you can call anything about World War Two "fun": when the Nazis were busy sending Jewish people off to concentration camps from that train station, they drank a whole lot of Coca Cola.  But Coke didn't want to get a bad reputation by being too closely associated with them, so it created a brand new drink just for the Nazis: Fanta.  An even worse fact: the Nazis had to purchase a ticket for every single person they were sending off to camps... so they actually tried to take advantage of the fact that children rode for free.  Yeah.

Remnants of the Berlin Wall

A few blocks away was the unavoidable Berlin Wall.  It wasn't very tall or even very thick, but Gareth painted a pretty good picture of how scary it would have been to come within even 200 yards of the wall during the Cold War.  We then walked down to Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing point between East and West Berlin, which was considered to be one of the most tense places in the world at the time.  After seeing a few other sites and hearing Gareth's dramatic retelling of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we grabbed a traditional meal at the Kartoffelhaus (a potato restaurant).  It was a long day, full of heavy food and emotionally heavy stories, so I fell asleep pretty early that night.

On Sunday morning we paid to go on a more specific tour that focused solely on the Third Reich's history in Berlin, which gave us even more interesting information on World War II history.  What interested me most were Hitler's plans to rebuild Berlin as a new Rome, hoping to become the next Julius Caesar and laying out plans for some monumental architecture (he was going to build a triumphal arch 3 times bigger than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris!).  Later in the day, after doing a lot of walking around, we all got different dinners in the Hackeshermarkt area.  It had ton of lively outdoor restaurants, so Sam and I got some sausages, wine, and sauerkraut at the Weihenstephaner.  We topped off the night by visiting the old Princess' Palace, which featured the most amazing dessert café I've ever seen.  I scarfed down some cheesecake and coffee, even managing to talk to the waitress in German!

Hackeschermarkt at night

A standard German meal... about 10 times better than it looks!

On Monday, our last day in the city, we knew we had to get to work and start some sketches.  We stood in line outside the Reichstag for at least an hour and a half -- it's Berlin's top tourist attraction -- and after security made our way up to Norman Foster's glass dome sitting atop it.  This was a really cool piece of architecture, both structurally and symbolically.  Foster's idea was to allow the common people to look down into Germany's government assembly, representing the new steps forward Germany has recently taken to make its government completely transparent.  The dome itself was very cool, featuring a double helix ramp about an upturned cone at the center.

The Reichstag 

After sketching for a while, we split up for the afternoon.  I went alone to wander in West Berlin near the Zoologischer Garten, which had lots of cool shopping and restaurants.  We explored one more museum that afternoon and then found one last German meal at an authentic little place near the Hackeschermarkt again.  We returned to The Generator for some fun karaoke and drinks at its bar, which was full of high school and college kids, where we ran into some of our friends who had just arrived in Berlin.  I couldn't last for long though, and I crashed in the comfy bunk bed for one last time.