The Sun Shines In Prague.

Well I'm a bit late with these posts, it has just been a busy weekend! So I will backtrack to last Sunday when we got home from Budapest...

I slept in... really late =) Not getting much sleep for an entire weekend catches up to you! I went to church with Devon and Becca later in the afternoon and then we met everyone over at Becca and Kirby's apartment for our first family dinner!

I'm talking the WHOLE family: Kirby, Becca, Christine, Jake, Devon, Donnie and myself, it was quite the gathering. Becca, Kirby and I cooked for them a delicious taco salad kind of dish... We cooked up some seasoned ground beef, cut up lots of lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, cheese and then made this awesome fresco salsa; served with some wine and dinner was served =)The cooks =)

Crammed in on the couch.

Monday thru Thursday brought along the normal line of grocery shopping, laundry and classes. Nothing too exciting, except for our Prague Art & Architecture where we went to the Monastery of St. Agnes to look at the religious artwork and gothic architecture.Monastery of St. Agnes.

After classes finished up on Thursday I got a few things done at home before heading out with Christine to the Miller's house for a pizza party. I met Lisa and Bill (a professor at AAU) at church and every semester they have a huge pizza party for all of Bill's students and other Americans they have met. It was a great night! We met tons of other students for AAU and NYU (the Prague campus) and ate way too much pizza. In 3 hours, Bill made 21 home-made, absolutely delicious, custom-topped pizzas! Along with carrots and ranch dip and cookies and brownies, all of us American's gladly welcomed the "American-comfort" food =)

Friday I worked on some spring break plans and homework, did a little shopping with Christine and then met up with Irenka and Petra for the night. Irenka is originally from a city outside of Prague, but has been studying here for 2 years; I first met her at church and she is great! Petra is her good friend that was visiting for the weekend. The three of us went and saw Shutter Island!! It was really good, but super confusing...

Saturday was beautiful! I mean, the sun was shining, the snow is melting, the wind wasn't blowing, the dogs were barking; basically a perfect day. The guys and I decided to enjoy the weather and headed out for a walk. View down a street by our apartment.

We found this great park nearby our apartment and took a lovely stroll through it. There was a great view of the city of Prague as well.Donnie and I climbing a tree!

Then we wandered over to the Zizkov Tower (I call it the creepy baby tower). It was built between 1985-1992, originally thought to be used to block free radio and TV signals during communism. It is voted #2 on the world's ugliest buildings list, and rightly so.In 2000, Czech artist David Cerny added these creepy steel babies crawling up the side. They kind of scare me and I really don't like them.Right near the base of the Zizkov Tower is an extremely old Jewish cemetery. The graves were so close together...
Saturday night I headed out into the boonies to Prague 8. There are a bunch of girls in another small program that I had met in a different classes. We all got dressed up for a dinner and then a night on the town, but unfortunately we didn't get that far... We went to dinner at a restaurant that they really like, and usually have great service at... Well, we didn't get our food for over 2 hours and after we ate it most of us felt sick to our stomachs =( We just hung out at their apartment for awhile and then I came back home and crashed into bed!

I made it to church Sunday morning and then went out with Irenka and Petra for tea after. We stopped in some bookstores and I finally found an English section! After tea we stopped at her apartment for a few minutes, said goodbye to Petra and I came back to the apartment. I cooked a delicious dinner for myself (I'm liking this whole cooking thing) and then the guys and I met up with Kirby and Becca at The Beer Factory to watch the USA vs. Canada hockey game.

As I'm sure most of you watched it or at least know what happened, it was quite an intense night. The place was packed with Americans and some random Australians who were cheering for Canada, needless to say, not a good mix. Lots of screaming and yelling didn't do much good in the end =(

Today is Monday and another week is beginning... Kirby and Becca had to move out of their apartment earlier than they thought and had nowhere to go, so they are crashing at our place for a few days. My half of a room now house three girls =) At least the guy/girl ratio is evening out! I need to go grocery shopping and work on homework, something I just keep putting off...

BudaBudaBuda. PestPestPest.- "Are We In The Castle?"

I love Budapest.

To say the least, this weekend was a bit ridiculous, loads of fun, extremely cheap and a bit foggy.

Ridiculous in the sense that Kirby, Christine and I had NO plans. Just a city to explore and a day and a half to do so. Loads of fun because we lived on shady lane, had no HUF, ate out of a garbage can and searched for a castle that didn't exist. Extremely cheap since we met friends who bought us delicious Turkish food, ate bread and salami for lunch, got lots of free salty crackers and trashed picked our last breakfast. And most definitely foggy since the whole first day the city was covered in fog... we couldn't see anything!

So I'll start at the beginning...

After our 7 hour bus ride through the countryside of Prague and Hungry we arrived in Budapest, only to be dropped off on a corner with a shady pub. So there we were, knowing three Hungarian words, with no HUF (currency), and no clue where we were going... We found the nearest metro station with no trouble, only to find that they didn't have an ATM and the ticket machines only took HUF. Unlike the other students on our bus who were quite loud and rude, we pulled out our map and started to attempt to find our way to our hostel. The lovely metro police men saw that we were in a predicament and came to our rescue! He showed us which stop we needed to go to and told us to get on the metro without having a ticket! We said "köszönöm" (thank you) and were on our way!

We made it to our hostel after only a few wrong turns. The Mandarin Hostel was quite nice, although it was in this really creepy, dark alley. We didn't sleep much on the bus so we were all exhausted and had a long day ahead of us.

Nine o'clock and we were up! After a lovely breakfast of bread and peanuts (we are cheap) we made our way over to The Castle Hill on the Buda side of the city. The city is split into two parts, Buda, west of the Danube River and Pest on the east. It was a really foggy day so it was hard to see much of anything. We crossed over the Danube on the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, barely able to see the other side of the river through the fog.

Kirby and I about to cross the bridge.

Up the hill we climbed to the deceitful Castle Hill. Budapest must have a great sense of humor, because there is NO castle on Castle Hill. And it was this non-existent castle that we searched for, for a good three hours.

We did find The Fisherman's Bastion, a beautiful terrace overlooking the Danube, giving you a great view of the whole city.

Fisherman's Bastion.

What we could see of the view.

(We didn't see this view thanks to the fog!) Next to the bastion was Matthias Church, a gigantic gothic structure that is the heart of Castle Hill. The Royal Palace stood at the end of the hill, a gigantic Baroque building that used to house the royalty of Budapest. Christine and Kirby went into the underground labyrinths, it was a bit too expensive for me!

Most of the afternoon was spent walking around the little streets, peeking our heads into antique shops and other small boutiques.

Random.

We also stumbled upon a memorial exhibit to Joseph Haydn, who happens to be my favorite composer! With a student discount, a dollar was all we needed to enter!

Crossing back over the bridge in the fog.

We left "Castle" Hill around 5 and set out for the baths!! Budapest is famous for their old, yet beautiful baths and we were sure not to miss them. The Széchenyi baths are known for drawing a younger crowd, but even on a Friday night there were people of all ages. Needless to say, I saw a few too many old men in speedos =) The three of us got changed, rented a towel (sheet) and ran out in the cold and into a nice hot bath. Basically it is a huge hot tub. It was so relaxing after a long day walking around.

We met two really nice Turkish guys, Koray and Sabri, and hung out and talked with them for awhile. They took us to one of the saunas in the bath complex. It was unlike any American sauna I have ever been in! You literally couldn't breath when you walked in, the heat was ridiculously intense. After two minutes, Kirby and I were running out! After a few hot hours in the baths, we went with the guys back to the Turkish restaurant they worked at for some food. We were all extremely grateful for a free meal of delicious kebabs and Turkish rice pudding (our new favorite food)! It was a getting late so we headed back to our hostel.

Our second form of free food. "Salty-crackers"... we got like 15 packs!

I wasn't feeling that good, by the time I was at the hostel I was shaking and everything was spinning :/ I was really dehydrated from lack of water and being in the baths so long. I chugged water in bed and Kirby and Christine went back out. They spent an interesting evening lost in the rain; getting back to the hostel around 5am, soaking wet and tired. Dehydration sounds better to me...

Saturday morning we packed up our things and checked out of our hostel. Not before our lovely free breakfast. While this may sound horribly unsanitary and disgusting, it was free. The people in our room that we had met threw away a bunch of their food! For those of us who are really cheap, this is unthinkable! So... we picked it out of the trash once they had left =) Three perfectly good bananas and half a bar of chocolate was the perfect breakfast for us.
We made it to The Great Market Hall and spent a few hours just walking around here. It was this huge building with two floors of open market stands inside. The first floor was all fresh produce and meat, fruits and vegetables lined every aisle! The second floor has tons of independent booths, each with traditional Hungarian things. We all bought some souvenirs, tried on lots of fur hats and then grabbed some brats for lunch.

Me in the Great Market Hall.

Our time was running out so we went to the Buda side of the Danube for an incredible view of Parliament building. It is huge, it is beautiful, it is really gothic, and I love it. A lighter stone, unusual for gothic structures, made it stand out from the whole city. Thankfully it wasn't foggy, so we had a great view of everything.

Kirby and I in front of the Parliament Building.

We hurried back to the Turkish restaurant to buy a bunch of rice pudding to take home with us, it was that good! We made it back to the hostel to grab our things and then on to the bus station. The whole weekend was so much fun, while it was a short time, we still saw so much and made so many memories =) I couldn't have spent it with better people either!

Kirby, Christine and I in front of Parliament.

Classes Round Two.

Tuesday is an easy day with only one class, Czech 101. I can now introduce myself, tell you where I live and how I am doing. AND I know how to order water without bubbles =)

After class, Devon, Kirby and I went to the Prague City Museum, the second part of our assignment for Prague Art and Architecture. It was a small exhibit showing the history of the four original Prague boroughs: Old Town, Hradcany, Lesser Town and New Town and continued on to the time when they were all combined. We saw the impact of Christianity, the arts, political and economic changes and the architectural transformation the city underwent over the years.
There was also this really neat exhibit, Langweil’s Model of Prague (1826). It was made over a period of around 10 years, and is a large-scale model of the city of Prague. The detail was impeccable, down to store fronts and windows. While much of the city has changed since then, the main buildings and historical landmarks have remained the same.
Wednesday brought around another long day of four classes. We met with all the other Czech classes and learned a few traditional Czech songs! In our Prague Art and Architecture class we had a short lecture and then went to the Prague Castle to see St. George’s Basilica. It is a beautiful structure, but the history behind it was really interesting as well.I rushed back with a few other girls and made it just in time to my Sociology and the Family class. More rude and obnoxious students made me quite glad to finish up early. I ran into Nick on my way to grab a bite to eat, so the two of us had dinner at the delicious Bohemia Bagel. I finished up the night with 20th Century Art, learning about the beginning of photography and the impact of the Japanese woodblock prints. I was glad to finish up by 9 and back to the apartment to crash I went…

Plane tickets for Spring Break to Italy and Greece with Mum are bought!! (thanks Mum!)

I got up early Thursday so get a bunch of stuff done before leaving for Budapest!!! I finally got more credit for my phone at the Vodafone store and the I headed over to the Prague Castle to finish up the tour that we had started the previous day.

The permanent exhibit, “The Story of Prague Castle” was first on my list. A really great exhibit starting with the pre-history of Prague and finishing with the 20th Century developments, it gave me a great look of the expansive history. Filled with remnants of jewelery, kitchenware, clothing and manuscripts; it was all quite fascinating.

I made it back to my last class of the week, Critical Approaches to Art and Visual Culture, with a few minutes to spare. This is probably one of my favorite classes; a great teacher, small class and conversational structure make it really great! We are focusing on the meaning of our identity and how art and society affect it. I am enjoying getting to know the teacher and my classmates as well, we are all very like-minded and its nice to talk with others of similar interests and beliefs.

I rushed back to the apartment, packed up my things and grabbed lunch, and then set out for the bus station! Budapest here we comeeeee =)

I’m actually writing this from the bus… I’m sitting here typing and I just looked out my window. I’m just going to add how much I am falling in love with this country. It is gorgeous. While I have mostly been in the city, amidst the bustling people and busy streets, getting out of the city is great. The country-side is quiet and peaceful. As I look out the window I see fields covered with fresh snow, trees scattered about. The sky is white, everything almost blends together, I feel like we are in a cloud.

Six more hours….

Vysehrad Fortress.

After sleeping in Monday, I started to put a small dent in my homework before heading out with Kirby.

One of our assignments for our Prague Art and Architecture class was to go visit the Vysehrad Fortress. A large fortress that was built before Prague Castle signifies the legend of Libuse and Premyslid, the first line of Bohemian Kings. Se up on a hill overlooking the Vltava River, the fortress is a beautiful town surrounded by stone walls. Beginning at the main gate, we walked past what used to be their homes, shops, their lives.
The Vysehrad cathedral stood before us; an absolutely incredible piece of architecture, with beautiful glass mosaics above the doors.

Next to the cathedral was a large cemetery holding the remains of important artists, musicians and cultural figures of the time.

After seeing the main parts of the fortress, we walked through the snow up to the top of the fortress walls, what we saw before us was amazing.
You had a view of the entire city, the river with all its bridges, and the Prague Castle off in the distance. As we stood and soaked in the beauty of a city, we though back to what it must have been like to live during those times. Was the life withing walls all they ever knew? I'm sure some people must have been born, raised and died inside the city walls. But part of me thinks that they were better off. They didn't have the corruption our world has today, they had their family, their faith and life was simple. Sometimes I think I was born in the wrong century...

It was getting late so we decided to head back and grab some dinner. Being the adventurous adventurers that the two of us are, we picked a random metro stop and got off! Pankrac was the winner. Low and behold there was a HUGE mall right off the metro stop. This is one reason I love Prague, you never know what you are going to find! Some delicious Lebanese food and a scoop of gelato and we were satisfied!

Kirbs came over to see the apartment and do homework for the night, but who are we kidding, no homework was done =)

Olomouc.

So I'm backtracking a bit, we (Kirby, Becca, Christine and I) went to Olomouc (olo-moats) on Saturday! Our bus left at 8:30am and we just made it!

Basically our day went something like this... Three hour bus ride. Arrived safe and sound. Got the tram into town. Ate some Thai food at a place where the owner didn't speak any English, limited Czech, but more so German. Walked around the town square.
Got coffee. Took tons of pictures imitating all the statues.

Walked around some more. Found a beautiful park down by a small stream that we walked through, with lots of old buildings covered in graffiti.


More pictures. Dinner at Hanacka Hospada.
The restaurant we ate at for dinner. (Recommendation by Rick Steves)

Olomouc was great. There were NO tourists, the town was basically dead. With quaint little shops and really friendly people we had a great day just exploring the city. The outer region of Olomouc is called Hana!
It is the most fertile land in the Czech Republic =) AND there is a lot of Hana pride in the city, so we made sure to take pictures of anything Hana-related. The town square was alive with an outdoor skating rink and music, it was just great.

Some random pictures...
Dead pigeons.


In the town square.
Astronomical Clock.
We split some cheesecake. Tram back to the bus station. Three hour bus ride home.

Adventures of Girls.

Well this post is going to be kind of all inclusive. Starting Thursday with a lovely girls night and home cooked meal by our resident mother (Becca), continuing to Friday with our "movie premiere" and night out, skipping Saturday at Olomouc (it gets its own post) and finishing on Sunday with our Valentine's Day dinner =)

Thursday.
So classes finished up in the afternoon and I headed back to Kirby and Becca's apartment with Kirby. We grabbed a quick lunch of FRIED CHEESE. I guess it is a Czech specialty, more like a huge mozzarella stick in the shape of a burger. We made it to the apartment and just hung out for awhile (basically youtube videos and facebook creeping).

Mom (Becca) made a lovely dinner of spaghetti with this delicious tomato/onion topping and garlic bread. We offered to help, but she refused! So the night went on and we realized that we wanted dessert. And when I say dessert, I really mean nutella and things to dip in it =) So out we went to the asian minimarket across the street. We returned with... a bunch of bananas, a jar of nutella, a roll of cookies, milk and vodka (not to dip in nutella). Needless to say, the cookies and nutella were gone by the end of the night. We mixed up some screwdrivers and called it a good night =)

The beginning of dessert =)
Yum.
The end of dessert.

Friday.
Christine and I met Kirby and Becca at Tesco in the morning to do a little grocery and school shopping. Kirby and I successfully found the hidden art store and picked up a few sketch books for our art classes. While in Tesco we had this sudden urge to eat ice cream. Lets just say that all of us should never be together, its a bad combination that leads to unhealthiness =) So we bought ice cream, tiramisu to be exact, and went back to their apartment to enjoy it. And enjoy it we did...
After we demolished the ice cream, Christine and I headed back to our apartments and we all planned to meet up at 6:30 to buy our bus tickets for Saturday and then head over to Muzeum to meet up with our friend Elise.

After us all getting lost we finally found the bus station, successfully purchased some cheap tickets and made it to Muzeum. We had to wait for Elise for a few minutes so Becca and I stayed outside in the snow! It was so pretty =) While we were waiting we ran into our friend Nick, so he decided to join us for the evening. The six of us ventured out to find the theatre. We thought this was an hour long movie premiere of a movie made by a professor from our school. Well, it was 8 minutes long, called "Cold Rape," and just all around creepy and weird. It ended up being this animated (which was cool) clip about a snowman and a dog... we really had no clue what any of it meant. We headed over to the after party at this club called People. They had reserved the entire place out and it was really nice! There was free champagne and just a really nice atmosphere.
Elise, Becca, Myself, Kirby and Christine at People.

Kirby and I. Be jealoussss.

Sunday.
Well to most of the world it was Valentine's Day, to me it is really just another day spent loving the people in my life. And thankfully I got to spend it with some pretty saweet girls that I love very much!

Becca and I went to church in the morning at The International Church of Prague. It was really great! Everyone was so friendly and we met a lot of people who were so welcoming. It was nice to be somewhere that was English speaking and just overall encouraging =)

Homework in the afternoon :/

Dinner! I grabbed whatever was in my fridge/pantry and went over to Becca and Kirby's to cook dinner for our girls Valentine's Day dinner. Becca cut up some fruits and veggies for an appetizer and then cooked up some delicious steamed veggies for the main meal. Kirby made some lovely chicken. And I made a potato/pasta dish with tomatoes. Some toasted garlic bread and a bottle of Rosé from Elise and our dinner was served.
Kirby, Becca and I with our lovely home-cooked dinner =)

Christine made it a little late, but she brought dessert with her! Once again, it was ridiculously unhealthy, but we didn't eat all of it this time =) It was a great night just talking about life and love...
Dessert.
The whole group.

Happy Valentine's Day =)

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." - I Corinthians 13: 4-8