21 in Paris

Ok so a little over a week ago I took my first trip outside of the Czech Republic. Maude and I packed our bags and hopped on a place to Paris on Thursday February 12. This meant that we would be spending both Valentines Day and my 21st birthday in Paris. Since we didn't get in till late on Thursday, we went straight to the hotel (my parents got me a hotel for my birthday so I wasn't in a hostel). After we got into the room we went to wander around a bit and find a late dinner.

We were staying right in Saint-Michel so there were lots of places really close by. Not too long after going out to look for somwhere to eat we came across this really cool street pictured above that had lots of small restaurants along it. We found a really good italian place, with an even better prix fix menu to eat at and we both really enjoyed our meals. Later on we also got a very good crepe breakfast in another little restaurant on this street. Sadly, I don't remember the name of the street.
Friday morning we woke up and the weather wasn't great, it actually misted pretty much all day, but we were determined not to let that stop us. We set off walking around to see some of the most famous things that Paris had to offer. Our first stops, both of which were right down the street from our hotel, were Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle. Notre Dame is an enormous gothic cathedral right in the heart of Paris and it actually sits on a sort of island along with Sainte Chapelle right in the middle of the Seine River.

Pictured here on the left is the front of Notre Dame and on the right is a portion of Saint-Chapelle. Both of these were incredible buildings and the inside of Notre Dame was enormous, it reminded me just a little bit of Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
After we saw these we continued to walk, crossing to the other side of the Seine and following the water until we made it to the Louvre. We thought that we wouldn't really have time to walk through the Louvre because its so big but we went to see the famous glass pyramid anyway. I know we will be back to Paris, perhaps even before I come home from study abroad, so on my next trip one of my goals will be to actually walk through the Louvre and see the incredibly underwhelming Mona Lisa.

Here is a picture of me looking awkward in front of the glass Pyramids of the Louvre. The pyramids were extremely controversial when they were designed by I.M Pei and placed here at the front of the Louvre. The larger pyramid is actually the entrance and you walk into the pyramid before descending down into the first part of the museum. Continuing on our way after this, we walked through the Tuileries Garden, which I imagine is much more beautiful in the spring and summer. It's probably also a lot more crowded though so it was a nice walk. It led us right to the Champ de Elysee which we followed all the way up to the Arc de Triomphe.


After all that walking we were getting hungry so we hopped on the metro right here and took it down to the Bastille stop. We got off the stop right at the traffic cirlce where the Bastille once stood. There wasn't anything there now but I guess we can say we stood where the Bastille once did. At this point we found a cafe, Cafe Bastille, and went inside for a late lunch. This busy day had made us pretty tired so we went back over to the hotel for a quick nap before dinner. Dinner friday night was my main birthday present from Maude. It was an unbelievable dinner cruise down the Seine river that started and finished right by the Eiffel Tower. The dinner cruise was one of the highlights of the trip I'd have to say, it was a really nice time and we had a great waiter who spoke perfect enlish and got really excited about how much he loved the US when we told him we lived near Washington, DC. Not really what you would expect from a french waiter.
Here is a photo of me and Maude on top of the boat while we were passing the Eiffel Tower. This photo was taken by another friendly French man, we didn't really run into an American hating French people like sterotyped, in fact French people were a lot nicer to foreigners than Czech people generally are. After finished up this great dinner we headed back over toward our hotel and found a street that my roommate Brandon had told me about, he was abroad in Paris all last semester. We went to a really cool bar with lots of French people where all of the bartenders and waitresses were wearing masquerade masks and almost every shot you could order was a flaming shot. The drinks however were insanely expensive, about 11euros for a mix drink and 6 euros for a shot. But the place was really cool and I was about to turn 21 so we stayed for awhile and had a few drinks. This was the bar that I turned 21 in, and not too long after midnight Maude got me some sort of flaming shot that tasted a lot like liqurice. Finally, we went back to the hotel and went to bed after a long, but really great day.
Saturday was birthday and Valentines Day and we didn't really plan or want to do anything special but go up on the Eiffel Tower at night. We spent most of the day just wandering around the city and actually came across some famous places accidentally. But really the best part of Saturday was after dinner, which was at a slow but very tasty fondue restaurant, when we went to the Eiffel Tower and went up to look out at Paris.


This is a picture of Maude and I up on the Eiffel Tower, you can't really see much of the city in the picture but really we had a great view and it was really great despite the fact that it got pretty windy and cold up there. The video is also of the view from the Eiffel Tower. I don't have a video of it unfortunately, but we were also fortunate enough to see the lights on the Eiffel Tower go off and flash, I think this happens every hour or so until a certain time at night.
Sunday morning we woke up after a great weekend and went to have our last brunch in Paris, we wandered around and bought some postcards that I will eventually be sending home. Finally, we got a ride back to Orly, hopped on the plane, and it was a short flight before we were back in Prauge. All in all it was an incredible weekend and a story I will be able to tell about my 21st birthday forever.

This weekend Maude, Melinda, Saadia and I will be travelling to Budapest in Hungary, a city that people who have gone say is amazing so keep posted and I will try to get a post up about that a little faster than I did about Paris...

Some Observations

So I know my next post was supposed to be the one about Paris, but I haven't gotten those pictures uploaded yet so I thought I would do one about some interesting differences I've noticed between Czech and American society. Also, just a few things that I think are interesting parts of Czech culture. First is the language. Odds are you have never heard anyone speaking Czech because only 10 million people in the world speak Czech and almost all of them are in the Czech Republic. Learning the language has been a slow process, and a pretty difficult one as well. The sounds required for some words simply don't exist in english, so figuring out how to say them is tough. Also, a word can have a 5 consonants before it has a vowel. For example, ice cream is zmrzlina and the number 14 is ctyrnact. No matter how hard you try to pronounce ctyrnact, there is no way you will be able to do it unless you have heard it a thousand times; even then you can only sort of get it right if your not a native czech speaker. One other interesting thing is that names actually change depending on how it is used; my name could be Nick, Nicku, Nicka, and probably a few other things based on how it is being used. Needless to say at this point, czech is completely different from english and is a pretty difficult language to learn.
Another interesting thing I noticed was while I was at Red Bull Crashed Ice. People here love being Czech and are proud of their czech identity, however, the national anthem doesn't seem to hold nearly as much significance as it does in the United States. When the Czech national anthem was being played people just kept going about their business and chatting with one another for the most part. I'm sure this isn't really strange for them, but coming from the US where talking during the national anthem is sort of taboo it seemed odd.
One other interesting little quirk I have noticed is related to public transportation. There are trams that run throughout the city here, which are awesome and take you everywhere, but I've noticed a few interesting things while riding them. First of all, if an older person, especially a woman, boards the tram, it is expected that you will stand and give them your seat. While this might be true in the US as well, not to the same extent. Some old people here will actually yell at you or poke/hit you with their canes if you do not relinquish your seat to them. Another thing is that there are always lots of people on the trams. On a Tuesday afternoon at 11:30am some of the trams will be packed, Prague has a relatively low unemployment rate, but it really seems as if nobody has a job and everyone just rides the trams all day. Finally, when approaching a tram stop that they want to get off, Czech people will push and shove their way to the doors. This is true even if everyone standing there is also waiting to get off. It is as though there is a prize for getting as close to the doors as possible and being the very first person off the tram as soon as it stops.
One final observation that I'm going to make is the clear lingering effect of Communism on the older generation. Old people here are everywhere and none of them are friendly. In fact most of them are extremely rude and often still dress as though they live in a Communist territory. If you go into Tesco (the equivalent to something like Wal-Mart), most of the people working behind the counters are older and instead of being helpful like you would expect in the US, they constantly seem annoyed and just want you to get the away from them as soon as possible. Although the concept of customer service doesn't really exist the same way here as it does in the United States, the older people are particularly unfriendly. In fact, much of the younger generation, especially the university students are much more western. My Czech flat mate speaks perfect english, has seen 3 times as many american movies as me and loves to go out to bars and party with us; plus he is always willing to help us out. I have found that many of the university students here have that same attitude, possibly because many have been to the United States, and are much more friendly and outgoing.
Two other quick notes that I thought I would throw in: 1) There are dogs everywhere and most not on leashes. However, they are never strays and are extremely well behaved and walk with their owners. Note: Mom it is not acceptable here to just go up to someone elses dog that is walking around and start talking to it and petting it so be prepared to restrain yourself. 2) For everyone interested in the drinking situation I thought I'd share the price of beer. Generally at a bar, the price of beer ranges from 23 crowns to 40 crowns. 40 crowns is a lot for a beer here, we rarely pay that much, and that is the equivalent of just under $2 US dollars; we usually pay somwhere between 1.35 and 1.50 US dollars for a beer. When I say a beer I also mean half a litre of real, good, czech beer not a small 12 ounce bottle of cheap, light, american beer. Beer here literally is cheaper than water at most restaurants.
Check back soon because I'll be writing on my trip to Paris within the next few days...

Puccini's Tosca and Red Bull Crashed Ice

So another weekend has come and gone and I did a few interesting things this weekend so I thought it was time for another blog post. A good weekend started when we finished our last day of intensive Czech lessons on Friday. I am finally done with having 5 hours of Czech per day and as of today I actually started my normal classes. Friday night everyone in the CIEE program was given a ticket to attend Tosca, one of Puccini's operas being performed at the biggest opera house in Prague. I wasn't especially looking forward to the opera, mainly because it was an opera. But in the end the experience ended up being a pretty good one. The opera was entertaining, at least the second and third acts were, and the performers were good at what they were doing. Not only were the performers very good, the theatre we were in was beautiful.
This picture really doesn't do it any justice at all, but I forgot my camera and this one was on a friends facebook so it was easy to grab and put on here. The chandelier that is on top fit perfectly with the rest of the theatre, which was big and beautifully designed and decorated. The good performance and beautiful theatre combined with the fact that its always fun to dress up and go out with your friends made the opera a pretty good experience, despite the fact that I initially wasn't looking forward to it. We finished off the night after the opera by wandering around for awhile and then going to a really cool Czech bar called U Sudu, the only bar I have been to more than once since I've been in Prague. When you walk in it looks like a small restuarant but then you walk down a set of small steps and continue to walk underground until you reach a few big underground rooms that serve as a bar all night.
After a long night Friday night I was able to sleep in on Saturday as I had nothing planned for the morning. After laying around and relaxing for the morning and afternoon, at about 5pm I headed to the Red Bull Crashed Ice event that was conveniently taking place about 30 seconds from my school. I had never heard of Red Bull Crashed Ice until I saw advertisements about this event, but apparently it has been going on since 2005 in several locations all around the world. Essentially it is a downhill ice skating race on a track that is constructed just for this event and includes big hills, lots of turns and a few jumps. The competitors are dressed in hockey gear because inevitably there is some bumping and pushing and some crashing into the walls and ice. I had a great view of the part of the track I was near and was also very close to the big screen where I could watch the parts of the race I couldn't see. To give you an idea of exactly what I'm talking about I have included a video of one of the races (unfortunately I don't have any good crashes on camera).

This event was an cool experience and it was actually packed full of Czech people drinking red bull and jager so it was a fun time. As I was getting done with the crashed ice racing, Maude was returning from her overnight trip to Karlovy Vary, another town in the Czech Republic. To finish off Saturday night, we met up for dinner then went out to a club called Radost. Now Prague has very few minorities, but it was a rap/soultrain night at this club so I think that every black person in Prague was at the club tonight and combining this with the normal crowd and a large group of asian tourists made for an interesting mix of people. It was pretty fun though and apparently the upstairs of the club was a restaurant with a really good brunch.

Though you can't see a lot of the club, this is Maude and I in Radost.
This weekend is my 21st birthday and Valentine's Day, on Thursday Maude and I will be flying to Paris from Prague and spending the weekend there so look for an update next week on our trip to Paris.

Kutna Hora and the Superbowl

So this past Saturday my program forced everyone to meet down the street at the lovely hour of 9am, a time nobody wants to be up on Saturday morning. But we were all meeting to go to an important town in the Czech Republic about an hour outside of Prague called Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is important and is a major tourist destination for a number of reasons. It was once a seat of power for Bohemia, part of the Czech Republic, and King Wenceslas was elected there. Wenceslas was probably the most famous Czech King and one of the largest squares in Prague is named after him. However, Kutna Hora is most famous as a silver mining town. Once silver was discovered, a number of mines were opened there and silver was mined and made into coins. This brought great wealth to the city, part of the reason it has been so important in Czech history. During the summer you can actually venture down into these mines to see exactly what it was like to work in one of them. But they are shut down during the winter so we didn't go into the silver mines.
Instead, we visited two main destinations: First, we went to the Church of Saint Barbara a massive gothic church that was built in the 14th century and is now under control of an order of jesuit priests. A jesuit college is actualy located right next door to this church.
After we finished walking through this church we made our way to lunch and then finally moved on to the main attraction. The thing we all really wanted to see was the Sedlec Ossuary aka "the bone church". This is a small roman catholic church, with a basement like nothing you have ever seen. The basement contains somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 bones all arranged artistically throughout the basement chapel. Though this may sound a bit disgusting, all of the bones are incredibly well maintained and the artwork is simply unbelievable. This made waking up in the morning worthwhile.

On the top you can see an extremely ornate chandelier that is an amazing work of art and is created from nothing but bones. When you look at it, it is hard to image that someone could have pictured something so intricate made entirely out of bones before it was actually completed; much of this chapel gives this same impression. On the bottom you can see Saadia, Melinda, Natalie, and myself (all of us here in Prague from Georgetown) in front of several towers adorned with skulls. Suprisingly, they aren't too creepy and when you walk around this basement you can't helped but be amazed at it, despite the fact that everything is made of bones. Or I guess you are amazed because its so artistic and everything is made of bone. All in all, seeing this church made the long day worthwhile and it is a must see for anyone in Prague that has time to make a pretty short trip outside of the city (Maude will be going to see it in a few weeks on an NYU trip).
To finish up this post I'm going to talk just a little bit about the superbowl last night. I went to Jama, the same bar that I watched the inauguration at, with about 20 other CIEE students. The game didn't actually start until 12:30am here so I only stayed for about half the game but it was still a good experience. There was a good mix of Steelers fans and not steelers fans. I don't say Cardinals fans because nobody really cared about Arizona, a lot of people just didn't want Pittsburgh to win. It was unfortunate that we had czech class at 9am the next morning so I couldn't watch the entire game but it was fun to be able to watch part of the game, despite being so far away from home; and to be able to enjoy some good beer and some good american burgers and wings. Below is a little video of the opening play of the game and a quick view of all the people that were there watching the game from CIEE.

At about half time I knew I had to go since I had to get up early the next morning. The public transportation in Prague is great, so I walked down the street, got the night tram, and rode home to the tram stop right in front of my flat. It was a good night even though I missed a pretty dramatic ending to the game and suprisingly wasn't too tired the next morning.