Prague

Here comes an update from PRAGUE!

The city is wonderful. It is very different though than others cities I've been to in Europe. For one, it's in eastern europe. The rule of communism just ended about twenty years ago and an economic collapse followed it in the 90's. The city wasn't visisted much until the late 90's which was popularized by the late michael jackson. Who knew. The effects of communism are still so present that the difference between a western city is very noticeable. Our tour guide yesterday lived during the communist rule and had horrible stories to explain what life was like.

I'm fascinated to compare my life in America to the cirumstances given to those in other countries. We are so blessed to live freely that we don't understand hardship that exists around the world. A part of me worries that there is something in human nature that exists to prepare for crisis. So many generations throughout history have needed to endure some type of crisis that it their life was dedicated more to survival than living. To remove the need of such a dramatic purpose, I wonder if people back home are just waiting for something to activate their need to live. They need some type of crisis to realize who they are. Maybe its not in human nature, maybe its something that doesn't require a crisis, but maybe it is something that is the cause of apathy that a catastrophe is the only thing to wake people out such a slumber. I am not too clear about what exactly I'm trying to say but I feel something intensely when I think about what I have had to experience growing up and the millions of other people who have had to live in such dire circumstances.

The trip started three days ago after Leslie, Aaron and I flew into the city from Barcelona. The trip was great. It was a very smooth transition to get here. I was happy that I didn't get any discomfort from the pressure change. I think I might be better from the cause of the intense pain. Oh yeah, Andrea left us to go to Madrid to visit her uncle. So now its just the three of us.

Its nice to travel with two other people. Its a managable number of people to be with. And I like Leslie and Aaron. I met Aaron here. He knows Leslie through some Jewish connection back home. They are both educating me on both the social and religious aspects of the Jewish culture. Aaron just graduated from the business school and with a classics degree too which will come in handy when we visit Greece. He just got a job in the City so he wanted to travel with us before he settles down.

I'm starving and I realize I have a lot to say so I'm going to get food first.

ok, I ate some pizza, napped, gave the hostel my dirty clothes to do laundry (wonderful service), and talked to emma, jordan and emily. Good little break. I also met two guys staying in the room next to me.

The plan for tonight is to go the bar at 8ish, spend some time there, and i think there are two options for clubs. We can go to either the one went to last night or go to the largest club in prague, supposedly. The hostel is organizing a pub crawl tonight which I think ends at the club from last night. A few people that I went with last night want to check out a different club. We'll see which one I go to.

Overall, Prague has been great. This part of the trip is more about going out than Barcelona. I forgot how much I love to go out. I haven't gone out like this since freshamn year of high school. Thankfully, now I'm a little more mature so I can handle it much better. Its a lot of fun to meet such a diverse group of people. Although, last night, I was mostly with people from the US. Still though, its a lot of fun. People are more willing to open up than back home because we're all out of our comfort zone which makes it so easy to meet people. Barcelona was different. We didn't go out at all nor did we meet too many people. At the time though, it was fine. We were so busy that we didn't need to go out.

To sum up what I've been doing the past few days, I'll begin with the day we flew in. As I said, our flight was really smooth. I met a couple from Portugal on the line. Well, they weren't actually from Portugal, the girl from Czech and studied in Portugal and he was from Northern Portugal. They met at university in the south. They were interesting people. They both were very friendly and spoke impeccable english. They decided to meet in Barcelona for a weekend date because they went on a few dates in Portugal. Some life. He was just waiting on line for her to get checked in because he was on his way to China for two years to practice his fifth language. They both advised that I should travel before going to graduate school. They were shocked that I was twenty and wanted to go straight through. I guess its not typical to do that in Europe. People take a lot of time off to figure out what they want to before they go back. The more I think about, the more positive I am that I am going to take a break. I just have to figure out what I would do during that year off.

Anyway, so she was very helpful. She was actually reading a book that I bought for my friend on the plane called Captivating. Its a Christian book that I don't think was too popular. I thought it was pretty random. She was also sitting my seat accidently. It was weird. She gave us her email to advise us on good places to visit. She also recommended a taxi service that saved us a lot of time and headaches that took us directly from the airport to our hostel. Czech is so different that its fairly difficult to figure your way around. However, thanks to globalization, everyone and everything is spoken/written in english. At every restaraunt we went to, the menu was italicized in english and the waitress spoke english well. Also to our advantage, the alphabet is no longer in scyrllic, the alphabet Russian uses, I think, so we can at least attempt to read the words. It makes it easier to remember where to go even though we don't know what we're saying.

We got to the hostel around 7 pm. Its a very nice hostel. Its contemporary and has a more urban feel to it than the other hostels. It also has a free computer lab with about ten computers in it which is so helpful. It allows me to take hours on the computer to write this entry. Our room is at the very top. All three of us are sharing a room. We have a nice balcony. The set up of our room is interesting because its a converted apartment. So, rather than having our own room in a hallway, we have a bedroom of an apartment. About ten people sleep in the living room. We have a little kitchen and a nice bathroom that we share. Thankfuilly, there is an elevator so we don't have to hike six flights of stairs everytime we need to leave or come home.

Another nice amenity that is new to our adventure is the bar located in the basement. Its a nice bar, decently sized with cheap drinks. A nice sized beer is twenty crowns, which is about 80 cents. Its a great way to meet people. I mentioned before that past two nights that I went out began at the bar where I just met people there. Its open til 12:30 so what we've done previously is go out after it closes. Tonight will be different because the hostel is organizing the post-bar activity so they will take us to the club. I guess we're getting a discount. And if its pub crawl, I guess we will venture to other bars.

The first night we were here, Leslie and I ate dinner at a nice restaraunt up the road that a worker recommended. It was delicious and so cheap! After Paris, anything is dirt cheap. We paid six euros for a full dinner. And it was better than most of the meals I had in Paris. I tried garlic soup, rabbit and sometime of potato dish. Everything was great. The rabbit tasted like chicken. The potatoes were made with egg so the texture was really cool. It felt like al dente pasta. I really liked it. After dinner and a nice conversation with Leslie, we went to check the bar out. Aaron met up with after he found a Kosher restaraunt to eat at. There were quite a few people there when we walked in. I felt like I was a high school party at first. The climatic walk down the stairs, the loud music, the awkward initial looks, the crowd forming at the bar. But after a few minutes, I realized it was nothing like it. People were very friendly and were curious to meet each other. I met some swedish guys, two guys from colorado, and another guy from LA. I talked to the kid from Colorado who did architecture for most of the night. We spent about two hours there before a really drunk Australian kid rounded everyone up to go a bar downtown. About fifteen us left to go take the tram there. We get to the tram, and the ticket station is locked inside the tabac so to get on the tram would be a 700 crown risk that I wasn't willing to take if we were caught without tickets. About half the group jumped on the tram, the other half stayed off. I especially didn't want to get on the tram with the really drunk kid because of how much attention he would draw. So seven of us walked into town following three guys who did the same walk a few nights before. It was fun to hang out with everyone, but it took a little longer than I liked to get to the first bar. Well, actually, the first bar we went to was closed so we had to improvise to find a second. It took about an hour before we found one. Along the way, some guy petitioned us to go to a strip club to get sucky sucky and licky licky. I was shocked when one of the guys considered it but thankfully, he looked at me, saw my disapproval, and changed his mind. We got to the first bar, got a beer, stayed for maybe ten minutes. They were playing really crappy 80s music. We went to a much nicer bar across the street. We bumped into two guys from the states within a few minutes of walking in and hung out with them for the remainder of the night. The one guy didn't believe I was from Jersey. All he kept of saying was, 'look at your hair, your not from jersey, look at your hair!' I was offended but decided to still talk to him. He went to John Hopkins for Med school. Him and his friend, who was much trashier, were in Prague for about five days. I love hearing the stories of why people are in Prague. More often than not, the people are traveling so its cool to hear where they are coming from and going to. I'm pretty sure that the trashy guy picked up a prostitute that night. He left saying, I hope my girlfriend won't find out. Dirtbag. So we left at about 315 once we had our fair share of listening to crappy 2000s pop, which for the life of me I cannot understand why they listen to it so much. I heard that the popular music from about five years ago becomes popular here. So they were listening to britney spears, missy elliot, fifty cent and the pussy cat dolls. It was deplorable.

We left there and got home at a ridiculous 515 am. I was so pissed. Well more annoyed than pissed because I knew that I had to go on a tour at 930am. It wasn't too bad. I thought I was going to feel like crap the next day but thankfully, I woke up. I tried to bail though when I first woke up but Leslie wisely talked me into going. It was well worth it.

The tour was a six hour walking tour of the city. We saw everything. Our tour guide was great. By 2pm, I felt it; I was tired. I really liked how the tour guide went into depth about the history of the city. I couldn't believe how horrific the conditions were just twenty years ago. It explained too why there was such ugly architecture. I have to admit it, I am underwhelmed by the architecture in the city. The way that most people built it up, I came here expecting a lot, but after seeing Paris, London, Barcelona, and Rome, it just doesn't come close to any of them, in my opinion. And I don't think its Prague's fault, because a lot of the historic buildings were left in dispair during the communist rule, and many unfortunate buildings were built during that time as well. They were so ugly. Overall, it felt dirtier and poorer than other cities. Its logical though, I mean the whole city was under such strict censorship that there wasn't any exploration for good architecture. The ugliest buildings the tour guide pointed out to us were built for the president of the communist government in the 70s. They looked like bad ambrosian studio projects.

We took a boat tour, walked a good bit, and got lunch. It felt like a typical day in Paris minus the drawing. The people who were on the tour were very nice. We met people from all over the world. I particularly liked two couples I sat next to at lunch who where from Belgium and Norway. They also spoke english very well. They had fun opinions about the city and food. They didn't like the food. We had decent beef goulash for lunch. Well the beef was good, the dumplings were crap. We left there to go to possibly the most beautiful Cathedral I've ever seen. I thought of Lacey because the play of light that the church had was amazing. It effected the space well. I want to post pictures of it. I took about hundred pictures. The cathedral was in the center of a castle. The whole area was really beautiful. Leslie and I hung out in the gardens for about two hours after our tour ended. The cafe overlooked the city and we had perfect seats to watch a storm come into the city. We also had a great view of the Fred and Ginger building by Gehry. I actually liked it a lot. From afar at least. We did some quick shopping afterwards. I finally bought some shoes. I'll break them in tonight.

I had no desire to go out last night because I was tired, however, I was persuade by a girl from Middlebury to go while I was sitting downstairs in the bar with Leslie. I'm so happy I went. We went to a 80s 90s club. We left with a group of 15. I only knew one kid so I was little leery to go. Leslie and Aaron were too tired to come out so I was by myself. Within a few minutes though, I befriended a girl from Louisiana who was also alone who was really sweet. I ended up with two guys from LA, the girl who convinced me to go and her friend, a guy from Silver Spring who's now living offshore in Norway, and a brother and sister from Denmark. The other group stayed in a different part of the club. We danced for the whole night. We had so much fun. The group was really nice. Everyone let go and enjoyed it. I honestly haven't had that much in a long time. One of the best nights ever. I was happy I came out to say the least. We got home by 3, not as late as the night before.

Today is my least eventful day of my trip. I stayed in and really enjoyed relaxing. The weather made it easier to do so because it dropped from 80 degrees to 50. And its raining. I'm about to go the grocery story so I have to wrap this up because there are two guys waiting for me. Tonight I'm pretty sure will be fun. I'm excited. I just wish emma was here with me.