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Solfrid Cristin TAC 2012 Team Sputnik | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 241 of 270 25 November 2012 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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TRANS SIBERIAN EXPRESS CHINA -Last 5 days of the trip
Total sensory overload. Noise, strange scents, movements, pollution, masses of people, heat. Coming into Beijing is an experience unlike anything I have ever had. I am from a small place. I am used to the sound of silence and to fresh air. And although I have been to London, New York, Paris, Havana, Berlin, Madrid and lots of other capitals, there was nothing to prepare me for China. And I had even been to Beijing before. In 11 years the place had changed, or maybe it was that it was winter when I was last there, or that I am older. In any event, I felt like my head would explode. Since we were leaving for Xian the same day we came to Beijing, we were taken to the railway station with just a short stop at a hotel. I needed to visit the bathroom, but got the surprise of my life when I opened the door, and saw two booths, one woman in each booth, both doors wide open, cheerful conversation, full -eh- activity, full sound effects. Oh. My. God. I left with lightening speed, and my sister asked me "What is wrong, you look like you have seen a ghost"? I turned to the guide and asked him if it was considered normal in China to sit with the toilet door open in public. "Yes" he answered happily, "people do it as home as well". Ok. No further questions ... At the train station I was more than a bit surprised that they checked not only our tickets but also our visa, and it looked like they took a copy of all documents. Everyone else also had to show their ID to get on the train. Then our luggage was scanned, just like at the airport, and we were let into a waiting room the size of half a football stadium. And guess how many blondes there were? Right. One. To say that I was stared at was the understatement of the century. My sister at least has brown hair which is turning grey, so she did not stick out quite as much. And the noise was absolutely deafening. At one point our guide smiled and said "Listen, they are speaking English on the loud speaker", and of course if they had stopped speaking Mandarin on the loud speaker at the same time, I might actually have heard something, but between the chatter of all the people who were there and the two loud speakers they might as well have spoken Swahili. Getting on the train was heavenly bliss, though. Soft pillows and duvets, golden curtains and covers, beds made. Heaven. They had fake flowers and music which I could have done without at that point, but I absolutely loved the slippers which were provided, the washing room, the clean toilet, the individual air condition and the can for hot water. The conductor's entire repertoire of English was tickets and thank you. And she can't have been more than 25 years old, and we found that almost nobody speaks English. After what we had been through at the trip, with so little sleep for such a long period, I slept like a log for 11 hours though, and woke up 8 minutes before we were supposed to reach the station. Fortunately the train had a one hour delay. In Xian the cacophony was if anything even greater. "Be very careful, because nobody follows the traffic rules", the guide said, and led us diagonally straight into a cross section with cars coming from three sides at the same time. My sister screamed blue murder, grabbed my arm and then we run across to the pavement on the other side, while the guide just looked surprised at us, and came after us as fast as he could. The hotel we were then taken to was absolutely lovely, though, one of the best I have ever stayed at. I assume our travel agency has enough experience to know that in a country where everything is so different, it is important to get a really nice, quiet hotel, and it was absolutely fantastic. We then went out on a guided tour. And let me just say this.The next clown which claims that grammar is more important than pronunciation should get sentenced to three years of listening to the guides we have listened to the last two weeks. The first one had a bad Russian accent, the second one a strong Mongolian one which made it almost incomprehensible at times and the Chinese guide has an accent so bad that I must sometimes translate for my sister. The 40% of what he says that I understand that is. Today he spoke of the Chinese dish " fried door", which turned out to be "fried dough", and he spoke about a fruit he insisted was called pussyman. For some reason I have my doubts... We talked about giving him extra money to take pronunciation classes, but then he revealed that he had lived several years in the US, and we figured that then there was no hope for him. We ended up loving him to bits though. He worked very hard, he went out of his way to help us, to answer 1000 question (when we had asked a question we knew the topic, and it was easier to guess what he was saying, than when he just started talking about something he felt we should know) and he could not have been nicer. The terracotta warriors, which were our reason to come to Xian were an impressive sight. We saw hundreds of them (they are believed to be 8000 in all, 7000 have been discovered so far, warriors, horses, archers, officers) and you could not but marvel at someone who is willing to let 700 000 men spend 10 years on creating an army that he could rule over, and which could protect him after his own death. Insane, but in its own way impressive. On our return to the city things started to turn nasty. We were driving towards a certain restaurant, but kept being redirected because of the demonstrations, and after having driven around for two hours the driver started worrying for our safety and took us to our hotel. At our arrival they would not let us in at first. The guide had to show the staff who had lined up in front of the hotel our rom key, before they would allow the car to drive into the courtyard. We then learned that Japanese cars had been set on fire right in front of the hotel, and that they were lined up outside the hotel to protect the life and property of the clients. I am happy that I am not Japanese. That must be incredibly uncomfortable in China right now. The guide asked us to stay at the hotel, and arranged for us to have dinner there, for safety's sake, and we had a lovely Chinese dinner. The next morning we did not know whether we would have a tour at all, since several sightseeing tours had been cancelled, but our guide and chauffeur decided to risk it. We only postponed the trip with an hour, to try and avoid the worst demonstrations. They told us that the military police had been attacked by rioters, and that they in turn had arrested several hundreds of them. No idea if this was right. We did however get to see the historical museum, the Moslem market and the Grand Mosque, which was actually still in use. It was curious though, to see a Mosque which was built in totally Chinese architecture, and with inscriptions in Chinese everywhere. The only inscription I found in the Arabic alphabet was of all places on the litter box. Service started while I was there, and I could hear that this was at least performed in Arabic. Linguistically, it is strange to be a place where you are practically deaf mute. Or at least mute. The noise here is as mentioned deafening. We understand nothing, apart from the few signs I had managed to learn, and we can speak to no one. Even here in a big city with lots of tourists, almost no one speaks English besides the guides and the people at the reception desk. And even they speak it badly. I guess I should not complain, as any Chinese could go to Europe and say "What a bunch of savages, not even the well educated ones speak any Mandarin" , but I must admit that I had thought that at least the younger ones would speak English. At least they have road signs in both Mandarin and English, and at the museums you find a lot of texts in English. I can not help but wonder if the reason why they speak little or no English is because someone wants it to be that way. Around the Mosque there was what was called the Moslem market. There were some Arabic sweets, and some women with head scarves, but a part from that, is seemed like a pretty average Chinese market. Have I mentioned that I hate to bargain? I find it demeaning, and I get claustrophobic when the sellers practically climb all over me. That doesn't mean I am not good at it when I have to do it. We wanted some scarves (supposedly 100% Cashmere) where the price started at 280 yuan per scarf. By the time I was through it was at 300. For 6 of them. I probably still payed more than double of what I should have, since the saleswoman wished us welcome back, and when we passed her stand later, she waived and called out "Good bye friend". Never mind. She probably needed the money more than I did. We also got to see a Buddhist temple, but that was actually excruciatingly painful to look at. Not because it was ugly, it was not, but because almost all the buildings were turned into shops. Heart wrenching. The next day we went to Beijing, where we reunited with the rest of the group. They had not seen any trouble at all, but we were really happy to be back with them and in relative safety. For our last day we had ordered a guide to take us to The Square of Heavenly Peace and to the Forbidden City. He refused to go into the square itself though, he said it was not safe, and that although it was quiet now it could explode in 5 minutes, since this was the day they were commemorating the Japanese occupation, and between that and the present day conflict, tension was high. And since we found that the Chinese in general had no concept of safety or security, we decided to listen to him, and not make a fuss. Norwegians are almost like Americans when it comes to safety. Bordering on hysteria. We had however in China seen women at the back of motorbikes with unprotected babies in their arms, and nothing to hold on to. Hair raising scary. On our way to the Forbidden city, we saw a huge court yard where soldiers and military vehicles were waiting, ready to be spilling into the Square of Heavenly Peace at a moment's notice, and were happy that we had avoided the place. As far as I know it did however remain totally calm. If anything happened, it did not reach the news. The Forbidden City was wonderful though. Amazing that one family could control such a wast area with hundreds of buildings. I was so mad at myself for not reading up on the history because - again, the guide was very difficult to understand. What shocked me was the density of people. When I was last there it was freezing cold, and we were practically alone there. Now there must have been many thousands of tourists there. It was like walking in a slow moving queue. The guide pointed out to us that what was most striking to him, was that there was not one Japanese tourist. Then he scowled, and said that had there been any, they would have been physically hurt today, and that the next time we saw him it might be on TV, before he made the movements and the sound effects as if he were killing people with a machine gun. Right. After that we were taken to a restaurant were we were the only foreigners, which I would normally have thought of as an entirely good thing. On that particular day, with people getting up from their table now and then and screaming something of the top of their lungs in Mandarin, after which people cheered and raised their fist, and where we had no idea whether they were yelling "Absolutely love your noodles" or "death to all foreigners" I was not entirely comfortable with it. The food was amazing though, as were all the meals we had in China. The last time I was in China I hated the food, so I was a bit sceptic to go here again, but this time I loved almost everything they served (although I got an overload of dumplings at a 24 course dumpling dinner we had.). I mean, man, 24 different portions of dumplings are a lot of dumplings. Another thing that made me uncomfortable was that the first evening in Beijing, our guide went on and on about how bad it was that there were so many foreigners in Beijing, and that they were treated way too good. I tried to point out to him that London, Paris, New York and Berlin were not exactly without foreigners either, and that even in little Oslo you have entire schools without a single Norwegian child, but he claimed that there were more foreigners in Beijing. I felt it would be rude of me to insist, so I suggested that at least it had its positive sides, in that it was good for Chinese economy, but he said they could do without. I could not find a way to continue on that topic without it getting ugly, so I started asking him about the meaning of the different Chinese signs instead, as I felt this was a safer topic. I could have hit myself for not learning some Mandarin before I got there. I had planned to, but all I had time to do was a few signs (less than 20) and that really does not get you very far. We we were quite happy to go home the next day. I loved the trip, but it was a tad more eventful than I had expected. I am very satisfied that I got to see Mongolia though, since that has been my wish for so long. I am still not quite sure how I feel about China. The culture is extremely different from what I am used to, and because of the language barrier and possibly because the average Chinese is sceptical of foreigners I did not get the personal connection with anyone which makes me love a people. I would like to learn Mandarin some day though, so I may come back, and I assume that it will be a very different experience once I speak some of the language. I know people from so many different countries and political systems that I consider my friends and almost family, but I am not quite there yet with China. On the plane back I saw an article by Dai Bin, president of China Tourism Academy who said there is plenty of room for the US to improve its services for Chinese tourists, such as having its websites, TV programs and restaurants provide more Chinese language services. Considering China's economical importance I am sure he is right, but somehow I do not see menus in Mandarin to be common in the US within the next few years. But then again, who knows. Things my change quickly. So when people ask me how my trip on the Trans Siberian Express was, I answer the following: " It was everything you have heard about it. The beds were the worst ever, the food was awful, and the hygiene horrific, but it has still been one of the most interesting experiences of my life. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat, but next time I would go to Vladivostok to get the full Russian experience, and I would stop two- three times along the way to see some of the larger Russian cities. I loved Siberia, and I would like to see more of it. It is a journey I will never forget, and a journey I will never regret having taken. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 242 of 270 27 November 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time to face my successes and my failures. So I have listed the goals I set at the beginning of the year, and will see what it is feasible to do over the next few weeks. A language that I have not started will obviously not get done before Christmas :-)
FOCUS LANGUAGES (RUSSIAN, German AND GREEK) RUSSIAN GOALS A high A2, possibly reaching into B1. I want to have finished Pimsleur 2 and 3 and Michel Thomas all levels. HAVE I REACHED MY GOALS? Yes. I was recently tested for my oral skills, and I was told that I was a solid A2, sniffing on B1. Since my written Russian skills are moving between nonexistent and A1, I guess I would say I have reached the high A2 I aimed for, though I need to learn how to write Russian. My goal is in principle just to learn how to speak Russian, but whenever you are tested you usually need to do it in writing. IF NOT, WHAT CAN I GET DONE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? I have finished Pimsleur and I have been through all three levels of Michel Thomas once, but I am working my way through the last level of Michel Thomas a second time to actually learn it. This will be covered by the 6 week challenge though, so I feel confident that I’ll get there before the year is over. GERMAN My goal would be to reach a firm B2 level –possibly a low C1 , and to feel comfortable speaking German. I want to have read 20 German books by the end of the year. I also intend to do some German classes, and I’ll set the language to German in at least 10 films/ episodes of series during the year. HAVE I REACHED MY GOALS? No, I have not quite reached my goal. I still do not feel comfortable speaking German, I have not read all that much, even though I did get some done with the Tadoku challenge, and I have only done a few German classes. I have however seen quite a lot of episodes of Hawaii 5-0 in German, so I have seen some improvement in my listening skills. IF NOT, WHAT CAN I GET DONE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? I’ll settle with what I have done. GREEK I would like to reach A1 – possibly A2. HAVE I REACHED MY GOALS? Nope. I have done next to nothing. IF NOT, WHAT CAN I GET DONE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? I am afraid this one is a lost cause. UPKEEP LANGUAGES (ITALIAN, FRENCH, Spanish) ITALIAN I guess my level would be around B1 and my goal would be to get back to the B2 level that I once had. I’ll read at least 10 books during the year. I’ll set the language to Italian on at least 5 DVDs. HAVE I REACHED MY GOALS? No, I have done very little with my Italian. If anything I have slipped from a high B1 to a low B1. IF NOT, WHAT CAN I GET DONE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? Nothing. I think I’ll focus on next year instead. My Italian is slipping, and in serious need of a revival. FRENCH My level at speaking, listening and reading would probably be a low C1. My goal would be to get back to the C2 listening, reading and speaking and B2 writing where I once was. I’ll limit myself at reading 10-15 books, listen to the French language radio now and then, and watch 12 films in French. HAVE I REACHED MY GOALS? Yes. When Richard released the little video of us speaking in 7 languages, I did to my surprise get extremely possible feedback on my French, some said I sounded native, which of course pleased me no end. The Advanced Super Challenge, which caused me to watch unbearable masses of 90210, helped me a lot. I think I can say I am back to C2 in listening, reading and speaking, even though it may be in the lower end (I sound better than I am). I am not sure where I am in writing though, as I have not really done any of that. IF NOT, WHAT CAN I GET DONE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? I plan to read some more French before Christmas. SPANISH My goal is to keep up my C2 level. My goal is 20 books and 12 Spanish language films during the year. HAVE I REACHED MY GOALS? Firmly. I am still at C2 level between all the Spanish I have been able to speak and the ton of Gossip Girl episodes and other Spanish films I have watched. IF NOT, WHAT CAN I GET DONE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS? I’m good :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 243 of 270 29 November 2012 at 7:14am | IP Logged | ||
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A WEEKEND IN PRAGUE
You know how when you have a baby, you suddenly see strollers absolutely everywhere, even though you never noticed them before? Well that is how it is with me and Russian. I have lived my entire life without hearing Russian, and now that I am trying to learn it, Russian speaking people seem to pop up everywhere I go. Now of course, when you are in Eastern Europe you can expect to meet some Russian speakers, but lately I have spoken a bit of Russian everywhere I have been, except in China and Sweden. In Prague, where I have spent the weekend, I have "spoken" Russian twice, and I have heard it all around me due to the masses of Russian tourists. I had a short conversation with the taxi driver on my way inn, and on Friday we were at the craziest restaurant ever (I'll get back to that) and we were put next to a Cheque couple who spoke a bit of Russian and a bit of English, so we spoke a little of both. I had been to Prague twice before. The first time was quite literally a life changing experience. My purse got stolen, I had great difficulties reporting it to the police due to the language barrier, decided to learn an Eastern European languages, started at a Polish course, met my husband to be and the rest is history. We have now been married for more than 18 years and have two beautiful girls together. I loved Prague then (with the exception of the whole purse-getting-stolen-thing), and visited the Prague castle, the Karl's bridge, the Jewish quarters and the old town together with my sister. Neither of us were party animals, so it was a quiet trip. The second time was 17 years ago when I was pregnant with my first daughter, and between it being a business trip and suffering from nausea I did not really get much out of it. This time I was only going to spend 4 days there, and I was going with friends, so the experience would be a bit different. Two of them are in their early 70 ies, and there is another 50- year old and me, but the two 70- year olds are hyper active, so I knew I would get little rest. I only had one problem: My back was starting to give me trouble on the morning I left, but I bought pain killers and left anyway. Unfortunately when we landed, we had such a hard landing that it felt like my spine had been broken in two, and the rest of the trip was marred with pain. I must say that the most drastic change from when I was here last time, was that almost everyone spoke English. Good English. 20 years ago I was happy when I met someone whose English was easy to understand, and had to use German part of the time - Russian would have been extremely useful, but was not an option for me at the time. Now I did not meet a single person who did not speak English. My friends went on a bus trip without me, and said they had encountered several bus drivers who did not speak English, but in the centre where all the tourists stayed, it was great. Another thing that had changed was that there seemed to be 80 000 souvenir shops. I might have had that impression because my friends insisted we visit most of them, but I do not recall a single city I have been to which has been so tourist oriented. Personally I had decided not to buy anything, apart from calendar gifts to the kids so I would have been happy going to less than a dozen. November's nightmare is buying calendar gifts. In Norway a good mother is supposed to give her children a small gift every morning from the 1st to the 24th of December - known as a Christmas calendar . Since that totals 48 gifts, you don't want to spend more than about a dollar and a half on most of the gifts, and finding something nice that the girls would actually appreciate for a dollar and a half is difficult, to put it mildly. I managed to get a few though, so I have only about 30 gifts left to find... Fortunately my youngest daughter one year got the brilliant idea of making me a Christmas calendar too, so every morning before Christmas I get to open a note where it says "Today you get 10 hugs", " today I make your bed" or "today I'll make dinner". Love it. Anyhow, I have seen more souvenirs, amber and crystal than I need for the next 24 month period, but I guess that is part of the experience. I must say that just walking around Prague is a delight, though. I felt like taking a picture of half of the buildings as they are so beautiful. I have said this before, but every time I go to an Eastern European country I am struck by the fact that they have a history and a culture which are a thousand times richer than Norway in every possible sense of those words. I feel like a little poor peasant girl coming in from an underdeveloped village with mud streets into a big city when I see the opera buildings, the castles, the churches and the elegant mansions that you find in any Eastern European country. They have every reason to be extremely proud of their heritage, but actually I think they take it for granted. In the evening my friends had reserved a table at one of the craziest restaurants I have ever visited. They had a medieval theme, and as we descended to the third basement, which smelled of mould, and where there was so little light that we could hardly see the stairs, let alone the menus, I had the distinct feeling of sitting in a dungeon. The food was very good, and the show was - one of a kind. The waiters were dressed in what was supposed to be medieval style clothes, and suddenly two of them started a sword fight, in the very confined space we were in. Then a belly dancer came in, and was joined by a guy playing on a bag pipe. I was a bit confused, because I associate bag pipes with Scotland, and belly dancers with Arabic countries, but when I asked the waiter whether this was something which would actually have been seen in Prague in medieval times, he shrugged and said that the bag pipe gave a medieval feeling, and they danced belly dances all over Europe. Right. Sure they did ... Anyhow, they played and danced well, so I decided to ignore the question of authenticity, and after a while they started juggling and playing with fire. Literally. With my safety-and-security-thinking, I was a bit uneasy, because that joint would have been a death trap if anything had gone wrong, but I decided to trust that they knew what they were doing. And the show was truly spectacular. The belly dancer danced with 8 points of fire, a guy was juggling torches, and then he swallowed some sort of liquid and turned himself into a human blow torch. Seriously scary. Later one of the waiters brought us cards, and insisted that we gamble for the right to whip each other. He was a bit put out that we only wanted to play for one symbolical hit of the whip, but there is a difference between a gang of 10 drunk 20-year old Czechs and 4 middle aged to old fairly sober Norwegians. Apparently the guests usually enjoyed being taken pictures of while being whipped. Well, to each his own. We had good fun with the card playing though. We also made friends with the couple sitting next to us. They were locals, and very friendly, and between our English and Russian we understood each other perfectly. Before the evening was over we had exchanged addresses, and there were hugs and kisses all around before we stumbled home. The next day we went to the Town Hall square, where they had a little Christmas market with hot wine and local specialities. We got a pancake with freshly grated apples and cinnamon, which was a new experience for me. After that some more shopping and a nice dinner at a local restaurant. The next day we had ordered a trip to Carlsbad to look at glass production, so we wanted an early night. Unfortunately, the next day my back hurt so much that 4 hours bus rides were out of the question. My friends had a blast though, and showed me the pictures and a little film showing the production of crystal glasses. The last day we went on a guided bus trip around Prague. Between my own and everybody else's pain killers I was finally pain free, with a side effect of total happiness, so I really enjoyed myself and took lots of pictures. It was a bit hazy, but that actually gave a nice effect to some of the pictures. Another lovely lunch, and I was on my way home. My friends stayed for a full week, but since I have travelled so much this year, I was only able to take the two days off in addition to the week end. My boss appreciates me actually being at work from time to time. Linguistically the week end gave me a little Slovak studying on the plain down, lots of English practise, a little Russian studying when my friend were in Carlsbad, a little Russian conversation and lots of Russian studying at the airport an in the plain home. Not bad for a weekend abroad! By the way, am I writing texts that are so long and boring that nobody can bear to read them? I have not had any feed back here for some time, so I am starting to worry :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 244 of 270 29 November 2012 at 9:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I read them, but I haven't got much to add to some of it. But people don't respond to
many of my log posts eithrer. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4868 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 245 of 270 29 November 2012 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Is it bad? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 246 of 270 29 November 2012 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, one of the main points of participating in the TAC is to get encouragement, comments and good advice. I am happy to receive either :-)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5954 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 247 of 270 29 November 2012 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read them! They may be long, but rest assured that they are not boring. It's very interesting to read about your travels!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4656 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 248 of 270 29 November 2012 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
If you think the National Theatre (Národní divadlo) looks great from outside, you should see it from whithin, especially the Emperor's box and rooms (which may only be used by the Czech president now). It's absolutely unbelievable! Everything is in gold and silver -- an ineffable splendour! That being said, I have enjoyed all your travel logs very much as well. There's simply not much to add. But I share your fascination of Eastern European cities, especially Prague and Cracow. I simply loved it there! I think Budapest and Saint Petersburg might be similarly interesting, but I haven't been there yet. Edited by Josquin on 29 November 2012 at 4:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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