Last Group Excursion with a Side Dish of Extended Family

For our last group excursion we went on a week long trip to Berlin then Prague. I had been to Berlin the week before and made a few contacts that could possibly prove beneficial to a paid project LMU had put me on. Basically the idea was that Sam and I had to collect interviews on the street about the Berlin for its 20th year anniversary.

So when we arrived in Berlin Sam and I were allowed to deviate from the planned group events, and do our thing. We met with the bartender slash graffiti artist I had met in my previous trip. He took us to this little alleyway where he and five of his friends were working on a collective graffiti project. His friends were some well renowned artists in the graffiti world, among them being Poeta! We filmed their entire work, and I occasionally left and wandered gathering other interviews.

They were a great group of people and a lot of fun to work with. They came from all over the place some being from Berlin, others from Chile and Argentina. We spent the entire day with them, and even gathered more contacts, and another possible side project.

Later we met back up with the group. We checked out a few sites, like Checkpoint Charlie and the actual wall. We went to an amazing dinner then some of us went to catch a concert. That was an epic night. The concert went from being really tame to off the wall crazy the second BNR started playing. Somehow though we went from the very back of the crowd to right on the stage. We returned back to the hotel really late, and really sore, but it was an epic night.

The last night we all met up and went on top of the Rathus. After a few days we were to head out to Prague. Before that though we went on a few more tours and were allowed to do our own exploring. Sam and I did a little bit more work on our internship project as well as the other project I mentioned earlier.

We then checked out a studio in Berlin where they had just recently filmed "Inglorious Bastards" After that we were headed to the Czech Republic.

Oh Prague! After a long train ride we finally end up in Prague. We get there in the evening and we all go to this amazing restraunt together. We later explore the city as a group at night.

The next day I wake up to hear one of my friends say, "He look guys it's kinda snowing..." To which I immediatley wake up yell "It's Christmas!!!!" succesfully waking up everyone. Phil and I start dancing around and I open the windows and start taking pictures. Mind you it's snowing outside. I'm hanging out the window in nothing, but my boxers taking pictures talking about Christmas and Santa bringing toys. After a hour of this we go downstairs and start the day. We have a few planned activities and a walking tour. We stumble upon this little coffee shop and everyone gets hot chocolate (Prague was the first country I've been cold in)

The night begins and first it's off to the Opera. It was pretty cool for the most part, although it was in Czech. Afterwards we all headed to this little place called the Beer Factory. It was pretty sweet. Basically every table had a tap, and every beer you poured the bill and a tally would add up. The tally was sent to a big screen where every tables tab was kept. So basically you ended up trying to beat other tables or even challenging them. We won. Moreover, our entire group, well mainly the girls, decided to dance and once we hit the floor the place really picked up.

The following day we were on our own till midday. So we ventured around exploring the town. We found a Dali museum that was pretty cool and did some shopping. At midday we all went to a TV Studio. For some reason we were all acting silly and the tour guides were eating it up. They took us into this sound booth and started playing really random music to which we all instantly starting dancing too in whatever style it was.

They then took us onto some stages and gave us these muppets to play with. It was a really weird tour, but pretty sweet. With the coming of night we all went to one final restrauant together. Thee best sausage I have ever had. I called it the Obamasausage. It was that good. Our teachers were having a good time with us so we invited them out. They ended up coming with us to this 80's - 90's club. It was a pretty epic night.

The next day I departed from the group to a little town in Germany called Hof where my Step-mom has some family. It was a really relaxing weekend. They took me to this comedy club (Although I really only understood a few jokes about Obama), and then we went to a wall memorial where a piece of the wall actually went through a house. Later we met with more family and the daughter who was my age took me out with some of her friends. All in all an epic weekend!