Finally, I’m having my first photo exhibition on Monday 6th. It is a one-day event only, starting at 5 p.m. and runs until around 8 or 9. This is very cool given getting a real gallery to exhibit your photos is not something you can do by flicking the fingers. In the last exhibition, I visited, I learned that you have to pay to showcase your photos in the form of renting a spot at the gallery. If you are part of a school, then they will arrange an exhibition for you.
I’m telling you. It’s all connection and timing. I happened to randomly pick a teacher who knows the owner of the gallery.
“You should come to Vienna to see Chris. It’s only 2 hours by train from Bratislava,” said Rick after hearing about my plan to visit Kosice, Slovakia and from there taking a train to Bratislava. It was not a bad idea even though I had literally no time to add another destination to my trip. On the other hand, this was my first trip to Europe, and I wanted to see ‘everything’ and believe that I could see ‘everything,’ I squeezed in Vienna on my last day before taking an early morning flight out from Bratislava to London.
I left Velania guest-house, bought two bananas and an apple at a neighborhood store and walked down to the city center through small area pathways. At the main intersection, not knowing which direction to proceed and not bother to look at the map, I grabbed a man and asked for Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa. “Bill Clinton is there, and Mother Teresa is this way.” He pointed to two different directions. “Is it far?” “Bill Clinton is further down that direction. Mother Teresa is right here. Where do you want to go?” “I want Mother Teresa.” “Come with me.” He said and directed me to cross the street.
I woke up at 10, had a quick wash and quietly walked downstairs. The friend was sleeping on the couch next to table-fill of beer bottles and cigarette butts. I circled the flat for a brief five minutes and came near him whispering ‘hello, hello.’ He didn’t hear and sat down on the chair on the other side of the table, waiting for him to wake up. I took out my guidebook and tried to read, if not it would look awkward when he opened his eyes and saw a stranger staring at his face praying for him to wake up. It wasn’t my fixation that rattled him up.
Through IAESTE, a large international group who sends student overseas on technical internship, I spent the summer of 2004 working in a software start-up in Gliwice, a small city in Silesia, Poland. I lived in a student dormitory with 30 other trainees mostly from Europe. We almost always visited other places in Poland during the weekend: former royal city of Krakow, Austwick Nazi concentration camp, Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto and the reconstructed Old Town, Zakopane, Gdansk…
Visit the museums is a must when you are in London. Most of them including the major ones are for FREE. The collections and paintings in some museums I visited are of absolute quality, worthwhile of your time. The only minor problem is that there are many museums worth seeing and scattered around in the city in addition to the size of each one.
Some open very late (until 10 or 11 p.m. on particular days); you might want to note down the hours to check them out after sight-seeing the city.
Somewhere while sauntering at the colorful vintage and antique Portobello Market and lazing on a comfortable couch in a basement teashop at Camden Stable Market, I came to a conclusion. To enjoy an unfamiliar place you are going to visit, you need to lower your expectation and stop looking at images of the destination.
Prior to the London trip, I’d been brooded for two months mainly because of my secret vow to never return to the same country, let alone the same city, before completing my Euromega–seeing every official country in Europe. I was in London six years ago during my first trip to Europe and didn’t like it at all (long story). The idea of returning to a city that bore no impression on me didn’t resonate with me. On top of that, people’s telling me how big and expensive the city was added to my woe. But I wanted to see an old friend who flew all the way from the US and picked something from her.
The first European country I visited is coincidentally where I live now. The year before at a summer camp in California, I met Danny, a Czech guy from Prague, who ‘marketed’ his city. Some guidebook even commented that “Prague is the Paris of the Eastern Europe.”I had an internship in Poland in summer 2004, exactly one year after I met Danny and remembered all the nice things he said about the city. Seeing that Poland was neighboring the Czech Republic, I booked a flight ticket from London to Prague for a quick sightseeing trip before taking a train to Poland.
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
