Discovering My Bohemian/Czech Roots

Back on the train. Just got a good 4.5 hours of sleep on the beginning part of my train ride and I only have 2.5 hours left to go. That sleep definitely passed the time. Let’s go back to Friday night.

So after dinner Friday night we ended up going to a bar/club called ‘u sudu’ I think and there was an upstairs with a bunch of tables that people were hanging out at and then there was a downstairs where there were more bars and music playing. When we went downstairs I instantly started having a cough attack and couldn’t stop. I’ve had a stubborn cough lately that won’t go away and it usually will wake me up in the middle of the night for about an hour. But because there was so much smoke in the basement of this bar, I just couldn’t stop coughing. We only stayed down there for about ten minutes because I couldn’t handle it. As soon as we started walking the stairs back up, we could all tell a change in air quality. It was ridiculous how smoky it was in the basement. Our friends from Budapest, Nienke, Cecile, and Kay met up with us at that bar and then we all went to check out a club called Temple Club. It’s inside of what used to be a church and they turned it into a club. We walk in and there’s literally not one person in there except for a DJ. Hm, interesting. So then we take the elevator upstairs where we thought more people would be. No one. Not one person was in this club, but there was music, dancers, and lights ready for people to be there. It was a little embarrassing to say the least. We left quickly and then really had no idea where to go. Before stopping to get Mexican food at a 24 hour Mexican stand, we stopped by a bar called Books and Beer or something. It was a whole lot nicer than we expected. They brought us over bowls of bar food and then gave us menus. We looked at the prices for a drink and then everyone decided that they didn’t want to stay there, after we had nommed on the bar food. So they all ran out leaving me behind to explain to the waiter that the rest of the group didn’t want to stay and that we are really sorry for the inconvenience. I ran out of there and yelled at my friends for making a mad dash to the door without informing me. Haha

On Saturday, we woke up and had breakfast and then we headed out to see the Prague Castle and the area on the other side of the river. We had to walk up a pretty tall tree to see the castle, but once we were up there, we had a beautiful view of Prague. It was raining so everyone had umbrellas and ponchos. I thought I was done with the rain for a while, but turns out, I wasn’t. It was also a lot colder than we were expecting, too. We walked around the castle area for a while and also went into a church. We were taking pictures and then inside the church a  bachelor party comes up to us and the soon-to-be groom asks us all to sign his shirt. He was wearing a shirt that said he was about to get married and his friends were making him get 50 girls to sign it. He also had little slips of paper about different tasks that he had to complete over their time in Prague. One of them was to get six girls phone numbers, so why not – I gave him my USA number and he made a joke that he’d get rid of the numbers and never call us because it’s too expensive anyway. One of his slips was to collect something blue, something new, something old and something borrowed. We found a blue wristband to give to him and Sarah gave him an old sim card that she wasn’t going to use. I rummaged through my backpack but couldn’t find anything new or borrowed, so I couldn’t contribute to that task. It was funny because the guy getting married didn’t speak great English – he’s from Germany. So when we asked him if he was excited about getting married he didn’t really understand us and he said no. His friend tried to clarify for him, but he just said I’m not excited but I want to get married. Okay, bud, I think you need to learn the definition of excited and if you really aren’t excited then you probably shouldn’t be getting married. Haha

After that fun that happened inside a church, we headed over to Strahov brewery and had a late lunch, early dinner there. In eastern Europe, we’ve noticed that if anyone at the table orders an appetizer like soup, they’ll bring the appetizer and then even after the appetizer is finished, the entrees don’t come out for another 30 minutes or so, even if some people at the table didn’t get appetizers. Eastern Europeans, I guess, eat slower and take their time, but it’s frustrating because we don’t know if we are being rude by asking for the main course or if we should just wait until they want to bring it to us. Other tables that don’t get appetizers will get served their main meal, even if they come in after our appetizers are finished. It just doesn’t make much sense to me. So after having linner, we made our way back down a hill and on our way stopped to take pictures of Petrin Tower. It’s a lookout tower similar to the Eiffel tower, but it’s just smaller. I actually read that Petrin tower is smaller than the Eiffel Tower, but because Petrin is on top of a hill, the top of the tower is actually at a higher point than the Eiffel Tower – fun fact!

We headed back to the apartments we were staying at and stopped to pick up some food for later on the way. Anna-Lena and I worked on our presentation we have to present Monday morning at 8am, while everyone else took an hour or so nap. Around 7:30 we started to make some food and we needed to leave by 8:30 to be at a pub to start the pub crawl at 8:45. That didn’t happen. Let’s just say there was a big accident that occurred while trying to make dinner. So, when we stopped to get food, some people picked up frozen pizzas, but we forgot we didn’t have an oven. Connected to the stove by hinges, though, was this glass thing that covered the stove. We thought maybe it goes down over the burners and then acts as a big hot plate to cook maybe pancakes or something on. Sarah turns the stove on and then puts down the glass thing and the pizza on top, hoping it would cook like that. Since I bought some soup to make, I just decided that the soup would warm up on the glass thing, too so I put my pot on the stove and reached above the stove for a glass to fill with water so I could pour it into my pot. As I was heading over to the sink where Sarah was standing, all of a sudden there was a huge ‘pop’ noise and glass shattered everywhere. Two burners were still on so we quickly, trying to avoid the shattered glass all over the floor with bare feet, had to turn the burners off so it wouldn’t catch the pizza on fire. I was a little in shock that it actually happened and then once the burners were off we just stared at what happened and were just perplexed. Brody and Caroline came in and were really confused, but made sure we were ok. If I had been standing right next to the stove, I would have probably been badly injured because glass flew everywhere. We had to clean up all the glass and we made sure everyone wore shoes from that point on. It was a mess. Lesson learned – you can’t cook on glass. Even if there is a random black piece of glass connected too the stove that looks like it could be used for cooking purposes. Help me out, people, does anyone know what that glass thing could be used for? A cutting board. We still don’t really know. After we cleaned up all the glass, we decided to change our pub crawl time to the later one at 9:45pm so we had more time to get ready. Alex and Anna-Lena came into our room ready to go at 8:40 and they saw all of us not even close to being ready and we explained our little set back in time. Anyway, so we made our way to the meeting place of the pub crawl – a bar called Prague Pub Crawl and we were supposed to get unlimited drinks until 10:30. What was nice about doing the later time, was that it was just our group and another couple. We saw that it was so empty, so we were like wow this is going to be lame. But the guy at the door explained that there were 200 other people on the pub crawl who just came at the earlier times and said at 10:30 we would meet up with the rest of everyone. We decided to stay and do the deal. So we got unlimited drinks for 45 minutes and then a guy named Nelson who worked for the pub crawl company took us over to the next bar. We got a free ‘welcome shot’ there and then went and danced with the rest of the pub crawlers. I forgot to mention we got some pretty sweet t-shirts for doing the pub crawl, too! After we danced for a little while, we all were ushered out and walked to the next bar where we got another free ‘welcome shot.’ If you haven’t heard of a pub crawl before, you’re probably reading this and learning that it really is all about drinking a lot and experiencing new pubs/bars/clubs in a new city. So, at this bar we sat down at a little corner and then some guy came over and started doing card magic tricks with Brody and I. This guy was good, real good. There was one time when I had a card in my hand and after Brody had picked a card and did a whole magic trick with him, the card in my hand turned out to be the card that Brody had chosen during his magic trick. I never once felt him change the card in my hand. Weird weird weird! So that was entertaining and fun! I also met a guy who was buying tequila shots all around, so I couldn’t resist that offer. After being at that bar for some time, our next and final stop was the five story club that’s pretty famous in Prague. We got there and got free access and VIP entrance (skip the line) into the club. On the first floor, there was oldies music playing, on the second and third floor there was more dancing music, and then I don’t think we made it to the 4^th and 5^th floor. But there was also a basement so I think that counted as one of the floors. It was so big that it was hard to keep track of which floor you were on! We stayed there for about an 1.5 hours I think and left around 2pm. We were expecting this club to be AMAZING but we felt it was just an average club. Brody, Caroline, Sarah and I met outside and we were waiting for Anna-Lena and Alex but we couldn’t find them anywhere. I told the others to stay outside and I went back in to find Alex and Anna-Lena but I couldn’t find them anywhere. I also had to use the restroom so part of my reasoning to go back in was to do that, but that’s when I got to see the basement floor which was pretty cool! I went back outside and met up with the other three and explained I couldn’t find Anna-Lena and Alex, so we just headed back to the apartments. We went to be around 3:30 and I had to get up at 6:30 to be out of the door at 6:50 to walk to the train station. I barely got any sleep. Waking up at 6:30am was rough, but I was already pretty packed up so I just washed my face, brushed my teeth, changed clothes and headed out. It was a beautiful morning and I stopped to take some pictures of a clock tower with the sun shining on it. I love sunny mornings. I walked about 20 minutes to the train station and as soon as I got on the train, I passed out. My cough is getting worse so I woke up every hour or so from coughing but other than that, I got a lot more sleep on the train than I thought I would! I arrive back in Budapest around 2:30, which gives me plenty of time today to finish school work, catch up on laundry, buy groceries, and try to plan transportation to Poland next weekend!

Amanda, Ben, Anthony, Henrik, and I are going to Krakow, Poland and then taking a one hour bus ride to Auschwitz concentration camp. There is a bus back to Budapest on Sunday afternoon, but there is only a Wednesday or Saturday bus to Krakow, so we are still trying to figure out transportation. We thought about renting a car, but it’s going to be way too expensive. I think there is a night train that brings us in Saturday morning at 6:30am, but we will be able to sleep on the train. It could be cool to experience a night train! And that way we wouldn’t have to pay for a hostel for Friday night. When I get back to Budapest, I’ll be at the train station that provides information on all the international train travel, so I will just talk to the ticket office there about cost and times for the train to Krakow!

I have only 1.5 hours left to go on this train ride. Gonna sit back and enjoy a new book I’m reading that Sarah gave me. It’s called ‘Gone Girl.’ It’s kind of a mystery book – a girl disappears and it’s a story about her husband trying to find her. I started it on the way to Prague and I like how it’s written. There are chapters from the girls point of view written over time about meeting her husband and the last 5 years they’ve been together. Then it will switch to the chapters written from the guys point of view and its about the day the girl disappeared. So reading it, I get the background history from the chapters that the girl writes and I get the current mystery story from the chapters that the guy writes. It’s pretty interesting.

Tomorrow starts my 30 day countdown. I’m still deciding what I want to do for it, but I think each day I’m going to take a picture and blog about it – I’m going to try something new in Budapest every day for the last 30 days I’m here. That way I’m making the most out of my time here and really trying to do all the things I still haven’t done or seen yet! Should be an exciting last 30 days! And I can’t believe that’s all the time I have left here. I keep saying it, but the time went by so quickly!!

Prague was amazing. One of my favorite cities so far that I’ve seen! I think tied with the Netherlands;  my Dutch and Czech roots wouldn’t allow me to like another city better! Haha

xx

Now that I'm home and posting what I wrote while I was on the train:

Turns out after shutting my laptop, the next stop of the train lasts 1.5 because of some delay. Everything over the speaker was in Hungarian, so I have no idea why we were delayed but the train just sat at the station for a good hour and a half. We were so close to Budapest! So instead of getting back at 2:30, I got back around 4:15. I got off the train at one point when it was stopped and started talking to a guy, and we were both confused as to what was going on because we couldn't understand Hungarian. Oh well... 

I also felt really bad for the Hungarian lady sitting next to me on the train... I coughed the entire time. She felt bad though.. she couldn't speak English but at one point she offered me a peppermint that actually stopped my coughing for a little while. I hate being sick... meh.