This weekend, I went to Prague, which is so far my favorite city I’ve been to. Although the trip was amazing, getting there was a different story. Our train was at 7 am on Friday morning, and I was already exhausted from staying up the night before. On the Deutsche Bahn trains here, you have the option to pay extra to reserve a specific seat. I haven’t done this for my other trips, because usually you can just find an empty seat, and everyone I’ve talked to said its not necessary to reserve a seat. So we got on the train to Prague and found an empty seat that wasn’t reserved. There’s a screen above each seat that tells you if it’s reserved or not. The train was by far the most crowded one I’ve been on yet, and the aisles were full of people standing or sitting on the floor. I was glad we had found open seats, and everything was fine until the train got to Dresden, which is about halfway to Prague. When new people got on the train, a couple came to our seats and told us they had them reserved, so we had to get up and were stuck in the aisle with the rest of the people. The train sat at the station for a lot longer than it should have, until one of the workers on the train announced that everyone without a seat reservation had to get off the train, which was at least 100 people. Everyone was confused because we all paid for a ticket so it didn’t make sense that they could overbook it that much and just kick us off. A lot of people were refusing to get off, so they eventually called the police and forced everyone to get off. So now, we were stuck in Dresden and nobody we asked for help was helpful at all. We were on our own to figure out a new train, and luckily we were able to get on the next train, only having to pay a small amount. Unfortunately, the train was a few hours later, so we ended up getting to Prague several hours after we were supposed to and we missed a walking tour we had scheduled.

Luckily we were able to do the tour the next day, so we spent Friday just walking around Prague and exploring the city. On Saturday, we went to see Prague Castle, and on the way we stopped at a small farmers market that was in the middle of the city. We did our walking tour after seeing the castle and met a bunch of new friends that we ended up getting dinner and drinks with after. Three of them were from Canada, one was from Oregon, and one was from New York but had been living in Paris. They had all been traveling all over Europe for the last few months, so it was really interesting to hear about everyone’s experiences. We went to a local Czech restaurant that our tour guide recommended and the food was amazing. At night, we went on a boat ride on the Vltava river. On Sunday, we walked around the rest of the city that we hadn’t seen yet and had lunch outside. Luckily, our train ride back to Berlin went a lot smoother than the one there.

At my internship, I haven’t done much since I finished the AI project. I’ve been compiling a glossary of terms that are used in Vencon’s compensation reports. I’m not really sure what it is for, but I’m hoping to be done with it soon. I would say my leadership style is pretty reserved, and I’m typically shy when it comes to speaking out to a lot of people. I’m generally not afraid at all to share my opinion and I’m very up front, but I am shy when it comes to a large group or public speaking. I think my internship is helping with this, because I am around so many people every day, and I’ve already had to present in front of people. I think this will help me become a better leader because I will become more comfortable in front of people and get used to voicing my opinions in an environment where I don’t have any authority. Although I am not doing as much I had expected to do in my internship, I am hoping that the internship teaches me other skills having to do with leadership and communication.