cold feet

picture of building in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic

WINE TASTING!!! We had red and white wine on the table, and then everyone sampled some other white wines. i...did not.

looking from the bottom of a canyon (?) at Punkev Cave. the hole i guess is 120 meters from a surface. After this picture was taken we went on a small boat ride on the underground river that flows through the cave.

picture from about 10 minutes before a massive snowball fight erupted in from of St. Barbora church. One of the snowballs hit the church door...I think someone put himself into the express lane

image from the entrance to the italian court

keeping up with a blog is incredibly difficult at times. half the time i want to blog, im just too tired to do it, or too much has happened that i need to digest a bit. it also does not help that blogger is a bastard for pictures. refer to the pictures above as i describe the weekend

but anyways..

last weekend i went on my first trip around the Czech Republic to Moravia. Moravia a region in the eastern part of the country. i think that about 46 international students went, and 2 officers in Czech Tech's ISC (international student club). we were on the bus for 2 hours, then arrived at Kutna Hora. i think it is a town. there, we visited the italian courtyard, which i believe was one of the first treasuries and mints in the country. of course this is about the point my camera died for the day because my extra batteries were underneath the bus in my bookbag...which is not where i was.

After that we got lunch and my friends and i wandered until we found an italian restaurant i got me some pizza. i have actually had a lot of pizza while in the Czech Republic....its quite delicious. And then a massive snowball fight erupted in front of St. Barbora's church. it went on for like 15 minutes. almost everyone got hit with a snowball. we looked at the church, where it was rediculously cold, and then proceeded to have a snowman making competition. i wish i had taken pictures, but i think the winner was the canadian people who made a hockey player, and somehow "happened" to have carrots on them.

After this, we headed to the Church of the Bones, which is the church decorated with bones because during the plague, the church ran out of room in the cemetary, and decided to put the bones to good use. It was a pretty eerie place, and really damp.

And then...we headed to Olomouc, and spent the night in their dorms. So we all dumped our stuff off and walked a few blocks to some restraunt and had dinner. it was chicken with ham on top and cheese or something...it was interesting. my friends and i sat with a girl from greece and a girl from france. After that we were supposed to go to a disco, but i went with the group that went to a bar first. There was much drinking and someone wound up dancing on a table. Then it was club time...which was a lot of dancing, drinking, and constant beat of something (i barely danced...and had stopped drinking by this point...good plan for me)

The next morning, we waited around for like 45 minutes for breakfast...because whatever we were supposed to have fell through...so one of the officers had to run to the grocery store. i had chocolate yogurt...or thats what i think it was. it was bizzare. then we took a shortened tour of the town of Olomouc.,,you know the town square, churches...crap like that. Somehow though, i struck up a conversation with a french guy...and we pretty much talked for the length of the tour. It was a good time...but of course because it had been snowing off and on for the past few days...i slipped and fell on some ice, and him and a bunch of other people saw me.

good times...i felt like a moron

After this i think we headed to a town close to Brno for our wine tasting thing. i wound up staying in a room with 10 other people. I think i was one of the least drunk people in there at the end of the night. Wine tasting was definitely an experience...thankfully i stopped drinking about halfway into the night...and learned that i think wine tastes like ass. I wound up sitting next to the same french guy i was talking to earlier in the day, and at one point he got on his knees and begged me to drink more wine. i declined...but was moved by the moment. There is a picture of it up on facebook. We wound up getting kicked out of the place at like midnight...and i was stuck with a group that got lost on the way back to where we were staying.

The next day we walked through Brno was were released for lunch. Me and some guys from k-state ate at mcdonalds, and talked about how much nicer the ones in the Czech Republic are than the US. These people looked to be working there..and there were flat-screen tvs. After lunch we took a tour of a 17th century prison. It was cold, and damp, but kinda cool at the same time. I tried to take pictures, but it was too dark and nothing was showing up in my pictures. After this, we all walked back to the bus and headed back to the dorms. But...on the bus...and for pretty much most of sunday...about 3/4 of the bus got sick. I blame the long walks in the snow we took for 2 days...and all the booze.

This week has been pretty relaxed except for wandering around for 2 hours trying to find a laundromat in the rain. and the one that was supposed to exist did not; i was PISSED..and soaked by the time i got back to my room. This week I payed for my internet, did FINALLY laundry (which costs about 15 dollars all together...its more expensive because its not very common to have dryers in the Czech Republic...and the laundromats probably jack up the prices for foreigners) It was one of the best laundromats I've been to; i thought that the washer i was using was too full, and the lady managed to shove more of my clothes in there. BUT...i wound up washing my phone. i did not realize this until ten minutes after the washing machine had started. I felt like a moron, but i wound up getting a new phone today. Somehow, the sim card in the phone survived!!

I also wound up going to a salsa party yesterday, and the french guy that i had mentioned before spent ten mintues trying to teach me to salsa. He told me to try, just for him...so i did. I don't know why, but I just couldn't do it. He gave up on me and told me it was kinda sad that i couldnt dance, but was kinda nice about it.

today I went to the Museum of Communism in Prague. it was incredibly interesting. its main focus was on the soviet regime in Czechoslovakia from 1948-89. And then my friend and i walked around for a while because it was raining earlier, but it cleared up and was gorgeous outside.

and then this weekend...im going to south bohemia to go to a castle and check out the legit budweiser brewery...and i think some other stuff too. I'm really looking forward to it

well...this is entirely too long now

dobry den!

busy busy

the metro stop in the old town square. a lot of them have this same design...but different color schemes

St. Vitus cathedral...i went to a gothic church! i still can't believe that im pretty sure i went to a church that i studied in school.

front of St. Vitus Cathedral

View from balcony of the integration party that most of the international students went to (omg...im an international student) there were three bands that played..and i believe that his band in particular played jazz music...AND...they might have played some blues brothers. but im not 100 percent...i had had quite a few by this point.

View of prague from outside the castle looking down a hill...or something like that

so I have been in Prague for about 5 days now...and it has not set in yet that I am 4 thousand miles away from home. Ive been so busy going from place to place and trying to settled and meet people and such that the reality train has yet to stop at me (i know that was lame...but it sounded like a nice analogy at the time)

From what I have seen so far, Prague is a beautiful city, full of incredibly nice people. This place has a rich architectural and political history. and it is uber clean. i guess i should be going through culture shock, but it does not seem to be all that different from chicago. Their metro makes a lot more sense (they have 3 subway lines and a tram line, and various bus routes), and the trains are usually full and whatnot.

I think so far the only way that i know that i am in a different country is the fact that most of the people hear speak czech, but a vast majority of them know atleast a little english. I feel like I am trapped on a Devon avenue the size of city (but i swear i smell sausage half the time...which isnt a bad thing)

About half of my trip so far has been spend walking around trying to find various buildings on campus, and siteseeing, and eating food. Ive heard several people talking, and either they love czech food or they hate it. I for one think its really good. they have delicious goulash...and ive had czech pizza twice now...and its delicious. i don't think that i have had anything yet that i don't like.

Well...i take that back. i tried this drink called kofola. Its like the Czech version of a coke. only it tastes like rootbeer and licorice. it was definitely different. today at dinner i had juice instead. today at dinner i also had a soup that had salami and beans in it. it was delicious. it tasted kind of like baked beans

yesterday, two of my friends and this guy that we met yesterday at an integration party that they international student club hosted went to an italian restaurant right outside of campus. i had a pepperoni pizza with bacon, red, and green peppers on it. it was amazing! i think i will wind up eating my way through europe. and no joke on that

yesterday i visited a mall called the palladium. it apparently has 200+ shops and is on like 4 floors. we were looking for boots (well i wasnt...but i pretty much decided that im not going to leave prague without a new pair of pumas. its pretty much inevitable.) and sketchbooks. we wound up going to this mall across the street instead and found a store that had notebooks and other such random shit (i guess it was kinda like a walgreens...but no drugs)...and they seriously had a counter full of pens! but most of them were on a wall behind the counter so even i wanted to see one of them i would not have been able to ask for it. yesterday i also signed up for some trips around the czech republic through the international student club. On friday I am going to moravia (which i think is eastern czech republic. and next friday i am going to bohemia...which i think is to the west. one trip involves a trip to a winery...and the other one to the budvar brewery. and other stuff of course. the two trips are about 200 USD (minus booze and such) and include some food and accomodation. thats a pretty good deal.



today...we went on a walking tour of prague.

it was like 20 degrees

and windy

it would have been a lot more interesting in like may. we probably walked about 5 miles and saw a lot, but i stopped taking pictures after a while because it got to be too cold

after that we hung out in the bars that are in the basement in of my dorm. they are very relaxed atmospheres. and the beer is pretty inexpensive.

so far i think i have tried 3 czech beers...pilsner urquell, budvar, and gambrinus beer. i think that the budvar is the best...its not as bitter and a lot smoother than the other ones. BTW...budvar here is known as budweiser...but is nothing like the budweiser in the US. the one in the czech republic is real beer...whereas Bud is brewed with rice.

so there

oh what else...

there is just so much that is new and different than what im used to

oh man...im coming up being here for almost a week!

OMG I am in Prague

Well...I made it to Prague in one piece

and I didn't lose any of my luggage

and I have not slept since 7 in the AM on Friday (its now 9.30 in the PM on Saturday)

It has been a long day...but exciting

I met with my Czech buddy, checked into my dorm, went with my buddy, 2 of my friends and their buddy for a stroll around prague and we had a legit czech cuisine lunch. We had various kinds of goulash (but they spell it differently) and amazingly good bread dumplings.

then we walked some more...went and got some water and stuff so we dont die, (did you know that they sell RC in Prague...who knew?) got sim cards for the phones we have to get...then went to the czech equivalent of Walmart to get stuff (like a hairdryer)...and im pretty sure we got yelled at. and then we got hamburgers from a street vendor

they had saurkraut on them...they werent too bad

and now i should be unpacking...but am unsure of where to throw half of my stuff...so i quit unpacking.

prague is definitely different from k-state...or chicago for that matter.

i wish i knew more czech...so i didnt feel like such a moron when traveling around...but hopefully i will pick up more soon

the price of free wifi is that its in the lobby...which is like 50 degrees...not cool