Prague Weekend

This weekend, I ventured over to Prague, Czech Republic with 14 students from BSM. It was a great trip! The adventure started with a 6 AM bus ride to Prague, meaning leaving our apartment by around 4:45 AM! Yuck! One person overslept and missed the bus and did not end up coming to Prague, but other than that we were all accounted for (except for the 4 people not skipping Friday classes who would meet us later). Our bus was awesome- they served free coffee and hot chocolate, showed movies (only 1 out of 4 had English subtitles though), and got to Prague an hour early! Riding through the Czech republic was beautiful- it reminded me of highway 17 between San Jose and Santa Cruz. There were tons of trees and bodies of water (riding through Slovakia and Hungary were much less exciting...). After we arrived, we checked into the hostel and then had some typical Czech food for lunch. One guy ordered this appetizer that was beer cheese, salami, pickled onion, and a few other things which was disgusting and smelled like feet! We then ventured to Old Town Square, the main center of Prague. It is a really pretty and big square with a famous church and clock tower right off of it. We wandered for a little bit then headed back to the hostel to take advantage of the pool and sauna!

Dinner was at a place that only had a menu in Czech. This one guy at the restaurant was able to translate a few things but we basically looked for a familiar word and then ordered that item. Nicky and I shared this excellent chicken curry with pineapple and bananas and a creamy penne dish. Both were great! By this time, we were exhausted and just waited for the rest of our group to get in. They had had some problems and had almost been on the wrong train and only discovered this minutes before the train left. It also got in hours later then we expected (the bus took a couple hours less then the bus- not what we expected at all) and so finally around midnight they checked into the hostel and it was bedtime for us.

Saturday was a our big touristy day. While eating breakfast, it started pouring rain, which had us worried. The weather reports predicted rain for the whole weekend but after that downpour, we had sprinkles but nothing too bad. We went to the castle and inside a church with beautiful stained glass mosaic windows. We got stuck at a changing of the guard ceremony, which we found boring and pointless (these guards were seriously like practically turning in circles and doing all these traditional things we just didn't get). Lunch was at Bohemia Bagel, an awesome bagel place with great sandwiches. Nicky had been talking about it for weeks and it met up to its hype. It is actually a very American type place but they don't have anything like it in Budapest and we all greatly missed bagels so it was awesome. I got a tofu burger, which made me so happy. I miss being vegetarian!

Following lunch, we went up the clock tower, which offered a great view of the city. The buildings in Prague are very colorful, which provided an excellent contrast to Budapest's gray buildings. The stores also seemed more happy and colorful with lots of toy shops and touristy souvenirs. After the clock tower, we went to the Sex Machine Museum! It was just so different, we had to check it out! There were really old porn movies (which were hilarious), patents of recently developed sexual devices (the creativity was surprising in some cases), devices meant to stop sexual things (chastity belts, a device that would ring a bell in the parents' room if a boy got an erection, etc), and of course devices intended to pleasure. After a quick nap time, it was dinner time at a jazz club with 10 of us around a table definitely met for about 6 people! We had planned to go to this 4 story dance club with different types of music on each floor but most people were feeling tired or sick so we ended up going back to the hostel and played card games at the bar. We were there until the bar closed playing Uno, which was way more fun for a Saturday night then it sounds! So far, on the two travel weekends I've had, we've not wanted to go out Friday night in order to save energy for Saturday and then Saturday has worn us out so much that we haven't made it out to club!

Sunday morning, I walked around the Jewish quarter and saw a bunch of temples with very different architecture. It was really interesting. There were about 6 or 7 temples that looked completely different all within about a 5 block radius. One one block, there were 3 synagogues! After this, it was back to Bohemia Bagel for lunch again. We had to stock up before heading back to Budapest- several people bought a couple dozen bagels to bring back! We then headed back to the bus to return to Budapest.

It was really fun traveling in such a big group. Different groups went and did different things so everyone was able to fulfill their interests. Also, I got to talk to some people from my program who I had known from before this weekend but had never talked to all that much before this weekend and I really liked them. I really do generally like BSM students so it was great to get a chance to get a few more a little better. So we can call Prague another successful weekend!