Of the last two months in Clausthal, I think I only spent about 3 weekends there. The weekend after my trip to Austria, I decided to visit Hamburg because I have not seen any of northern Germany and I heard they are a little strange up there. So, I thought I would have a see for myself. However, it was about a 5 or 6 hour journey to Hamburg by train so we did not arrive until quite late but we did get to see an awesome train station that had some very strange architecture as you can see in the picture on the right, which was right in the middle of the station.
When we arrived in Hamburg it was dark (damn winter!) but it did mean that we got an awesome walk through the lit up city, which was quite beautiful.The most important thing that we found in Hamburg, however, was the first glimpse of Christmas. When we reached the center of the city, next to the Rathaus or city hall, there stood a small group of wooden houses that all had Christmas lights and decorations. This was my first taste of the famous Christmas markets of Germany. This also made me very happy because
it meant that Christmas was very close and it is, by far, my favourite time of year, as my friends in physical chemistry will tell you. This signaled that start of singing Christmas songs and, even better, it signaled that start of playing Christmas songs on my soundtrack T-shirt!The next day, we were able to get a guided tour of Hamburg in the light of day, including a boat tour around the harbour, which was awesome. However, after all the fun of discovering the city, we had to take the train back and sitting down for several hours is very tiring.
The following weekend I planned to go to Prague with a few friends however last time I tried, I was not too successful because apparently they do not allow German cars in eastern Europe! So I tried again and this time we succeeded! One thing I did not realise was that Prague is a more laid-back version of Amsterdam. Where in Amsterdam, cannabis is legal, in Prague everything is legal!!! So this was definitely going to be an interesting weekend. One thing is for certain, that Prague is a very beautiful city with a lot of history as can be seen in the pictures.
There are a lot of old Gothic churches within the city which is by far my favourite type of architecture but something that was very interesting was the castle on the hill within the city. I think someone said that this castle took the longest time to build, which can clearly be seen because as you look across the castle, the buildings change quite dramatically. However, the best was the cathedral within the castle, that is majoritarily in a Gothic style but decided that the tip of the last spire should take the form of the style of that time and so is a complete contrast to the rest of the building. This can be seen in the picture to the right, where all three spires are from the same building.
Apparently, Prague is also the birthplace of the astrological clock which can be seen to the left. I heard that they owners were so scared of other people stealing this idea that they tried to cut the tongue and eyes out of the engineer that designed it. He did not like this idea, so instead decided to jump into the gearing! This makes me glad to be a physicist because I can hide in the background and let engineers die for me.
We decided to take a tour of the city and saw some really cool things. However, the most awesome thing was the money, where being a student, I never really have very much but when I went to Prague, I had lots of monies!!! I think the exchange rate was about 25 krone to 1 euro, so we were walking around with a couple of thousand krone! It reminded me of when I was a kid, where I used to go on holiday with a little pocket money which transformed into millions of pocket money! 
On the first real night, we decided not to go out partying because we had been walking all day around the city so instead we went to a pub that had about 50 different beers, which we naturally sampled nearly all of them. This added to our running total of beers from the trip to Belgium. Strangely, this pub also happened to have English football hooligans in, that randomly started singing football songs, and a group of English students. It is a small world!
Finally, on the last day, we discovered a bit more of the city but most importantly, we finished our quest in search of "true" Absinthe. We found a small shop, called the Absinary or something similar, which sold about 30 different types of real Absinthe. So now I have added two bottles to my collection of alcohol from around Europe.Ok, I am bored of writing now and I should probably go to bed. Hopefully, when I have time, I will update you on my journeys to Amsterdam with the physical chemistry lot and the awesomeness of snow in Clausthal.
Until then, have fun!!
