Na Shledanou

So now I'm home. First off, last day of Dublin. The main sight we saw on the last day of Dublin was the Kilmainham Gaol, a old jail that held many famous political prisoners in Irish history. We also got to bed nice and early because of our early flight the next day. Unfortunately, we missed this flight. We were on time but due to Ryanair, who will be getting a very angry letter, we missed the flight and were forced to stay in Dublin until we could get on the 1 other flight out of the airport that day back to Prague.
Once we arrived in Prague we had to go all the way to Vysehrad to get our suitcases then take a cab to the hotel. By the time we got to the hotel we had about 4 hours to sleep before we had to get up for our flight home. This meant we did not get to spend our last day in Prague like we were supposed to, shopping and such. Now that I am finally home though its a good feeling. It is a bit sad to leave Prague because it was a great experience and a lot of fun, but its time to rejoin real life as I now start working back in DC in less than 1 week.

Last Day of London and Beginning of Dublin

I already forget exactly what I did on my last day in London but I'll give a quick outline of our last day in London. I was awoken by my phone at about 9:30 in the morning to a random number. Fortunately, it was my friend John that I worked with at ICCF. He is getting his masters at London School of Economic but still works for ICCF and will be back there this summer so Maude will work with him. I met up with him and his wife in Covent Garden at a Starbucks. Then I went back to the hotel and Maude was up and we went out to see a few things. We walked back to Covent Garden to wander around and to walk through the market there. Then we went over to Harrods, which is a ridiculously big department store. From there we walked to the natural history museum which was actually really cool. By this time we were getting pretty hungry and we really wanted to get some indian food before we left London. My guidebook had a place called Masala Zone in it so we decided to try that out and it turned out to be really good. Of course, the last thing we did in London was head to a pub and have a few ciders and beers before we went to bed.
Yesterday we arrived in Dublin and our hostel is in a great location right in Temple Bar. We didn't do that much yesterday but hang out with a bunch of people at our hostel. I actually met a fellow Hoya who is a year older and we have several friends in common back at Georgetown. Today we did another free walking tour of Dublin that took us to some good places around the city like city hall, a very famous church, and Trinity College. The other major thing we did today was go to the Guinness storehouse to see how Guinness was made and to have a taste. Like everyone says, it really was the best Guinness you have ever tasted. Tomorrow we are going to this prison that is supposed to be very cool and we might go to the Jameson Distillery as well. Thursday I will be back in Prague so hopefully I can get another post in before returning to the US of A. When I get back I will try to give some more details about this trip and tell a bit more about what I did.
Also, keep an eye out I may be starting up another blog when I get back to the US. I'll be posting again soon and be back to the US in just a few days.

London Day 2

Well its only 3 so day 2 isn't really finished but i'm at the computer right now so I thought I would just write a quick post. This morning we got up and went over to Hyde Park corner to do a free walking tour around part of London. The walking tour took us to Buckingham Palace, where we saw the changing of the guards. Then over to St. James palace where Prince Charles and his family live. From there we went to Trafalgar Square and eventually on to Westminister. At Westminister we saw Big Ben, Westminster Palace (Parliament), and Westminister Abbey. The tour ended and we walked over to look at the Thames River and the London Eye. Then Maude and I got some lunch are are using the internet. We still have some things to see and do so I will update again when I can.

Brussels, Amsterdam and a day in London

This post is going to be very short because I am sitting in an internet cafe in London and want to go eat. On the 16th, Maude and I left Prague to do a bit of traveling before coming home. First we flew to Brussels because the flight was insanely cheap. We spent two and a half days in Brussels and I was shocked at how much I like the city since I had heard some mixed reviews. We stayed in a really nice hostel that was more like a small hotel and was right on the Grand Place, the best place for someone visiting to stay. The square was beautiful and we visited the European Union buildings and some other sites in the city. We also ate almost nothing but frites (french fries), belgian waffles, and mussels, all of the specialties and drank a lot of beer since Belgium is known for its great beer. We met up with a friend of Maude's from NYU and her boyfriend also and went to a bar called Delirium with over 2000 beers, it holds the Guiness world record for most beers at a bar.
After Brussels we got on the train to Amsterdam. Our hostel in Amsterdam was also nice and it was in a cool area right on the edge of the Red Light District. Sadly, the dutch government is slowly getting rid of the red light district and in a few years it will be gone, so its a good thing we got to see it when we did. We went on a great free tour as well and checked out everything else Amsterdam had to offer, on the tour they showed us a coffee shop called Grey Area where Snoop Dogg likes to spend most of his time when he goes to Amsterdam. More details later...
But now we are in London and today we walked (really far) to go to portobello market and see hyde park and kensington palace. Tomorrow we are going to do another free tour, keep you posted hopefully....

Catching Up

Ok so I haven't blogged in quite awhile so I'm just going to do a real fast run through of things I have done and places I have seen over the past few weeks. If you want a lot of detail on what I did you will have to ask me because this post is just going to touch on each place so people know what exactly I have been up to on the weekends.
First, several weeks ago my parents were in town and i met them in Berlin. Berlin, simply put, was a really new and modern city and I really like it. Since pretty much everything there was rebuilt after World War II its totally different than Prague, but I am a fan of the new, clean look of a city like Berlin. It was nice to travel with my family since we hadn't seen them in a few months and because it was nice to stay in a beautiful hotel. All in all Berlin was a really good trip and easy to make on the train. While we were there we saw things like the Brandenburg Tor, Humbolt University, the Parliament, Checkpoint Charlie, and the East Side Gallery.
The east side gallery is the longest remaining part of the wall and still stands in its original location. The gallery has a number of paintings done on the wall by famous artists and this above was one of them.
At the end of the weekend, Maude and I and my family all boarded the train back to Prague. My parents would spend the next or so days in Prague, seeing all the sites of Prague and making a day trip to Terezin. We took a 1 hour bus ride outside of Prague to the small town of Terezin, this town was once a fortress but during World War II served as a ghetto and prison. It was not actually a concentration camp, though many people did die here. It was more of a halfway house through which Jews were shipped to Auschwitz. The town as a whole, specifically the small fortress where Jews and political dissidents were housed, was still a pretty depressing site.
At the end of the week, right before my family left, Maude's mom and brother arrived to Prague. We all had dinner on old town one night but then shortly after my parents had to return to the states. The rest of that week we spent some time with Maude's family and seeing any sights we had missed until then. Right after they left I was scheduled to go on two day trips through my school CIEE. On saturday I travelled to Most and Osek, Czech towns on the border of the Czech Republic and Germany. Honestly, there wasn't much in these towns except in Most we saw a church that the Communists actually spent years moving before they destroyed the entire town to turn it into a coal mine. On the whole this trip really wasn't very exciting except for the lunch, which was free and quite tasty.
On Sunday I then travelled to Jachymov and Karlovy Vary. In Jachymov there was a camp for political prisoners of the Communist regime. We met and spoke with a man who was a political prisoner in this camp and we took a tour of the Uranium Mine that he was forced to work in while he was a prisoner.

This is the front of the Uranium mine we went in, the day before we came they actually had to ventilate the mine to make sure that the levels of radiation within the mine would be low and the mine would be safe for us to enter.
After we finished in Jachymov we got back on the bus and travelled to Karlovy Vary. Karlovy Vary is a hot spring town. There are natural hot springs running through the city which are funneled into like faucets where you can fill up a cup and drink it for its healing properties. However, it has a lot of iron in it and it tastes sort of like you are drinking blood. The town is most famous for a major film festival that is held there every summer and for its Grand Hotel Pupp where the James Bond film Casion Royale was filmed.

This is the Grand Hotel Pupp where Casino Royale was filmed.
Another weekend is approaching, though I am not going anywhere, I just plan to do some work and go pedal boating on the Vltava river in Prague. However, over the last weekend that passed I went to a small town in South Bohemia called Cesky Krumlov. Maude, Jena, and I made the 3 hour trip on Friday to stay 1 night there. We stayed at Hostel Skippy, which was a little far from the town square however it had a terrace that was sitting right about the Vltava river that flowed through the city. We saw all the sights, including the castle that is in the town, within a few hours of being there. So we got a few bottles of wine and relaxed on the terrace of our hostel where we met a cool Australian couple who were spending about 5 months just travelling through Europe. We hung out with them for awhile and got dinner with them. Then the next day we got lunch and had a little time to kill so we just went down along the river and read and slept because the weather was beautiful. Overall, the town is was really nice and the trip was relaxing.

So these are the last few trips I have taken in a nutshell. I have a lot of work to do in the next week and a half so I won't be doing too much that is interesting. However, after my school here is over Maude and I will take a trip for about 12 days. We are going to Brussels, Amsterdam, London, and Dublin before we return back to the US. I will try to put some brief updates on here about the trip as its happening but if not I will at least make sure I get a lot of pictures for after.

The Language

I know I posted before and mentioned words such as zmrzlina, five vowels in a row before a consonant. However I just thought I'd share this sentence in Czech. It basically means "stick your finger through your throat". Strč prst skrz krk. This is an entire sentence without vowels, further pointing out how ridiculous and hard to understand this language is. My czech teacher also told me that she thinks there is an entire fairy tale told without vowels but I haven't been able to find this yet.

Video Update

Well the next normal blog post will come shortly hopefully and will be about Berlin and my parents visit, I keep forgetting to get pictures off Maude's camera. Though I'm not sure who is going to care since I think my parents are the only ones who read this usually. But for this post I'm just going to throw a few short videos of some things on here. I have been doing a terrible job of taking video of things while here, I blame it partly on myself and partly on other people who always get mad when I try to film them. But here are a few of the videos that I have gotten.



Right here we have a video from the trip Maude and I took to Istanbul. We have no idea what they are saying but its a large procession of men chanting something, possibly in some sort of protest. Not really sure what it was about but I thought it would be good to catch on video



This one is a random street perform in Saint Michel in Paris. Look on top of his head, yes that is a very large glass bottle with live fish inside.



Not sure if I put this up before and don't feel like checking but here is a clip of the Superbowl, which you saw if you watched, and a little look around to all the other American students watching it there with me.



So Henry and I went to the SK Slavia Praha vs. Sparta Praha game on Monday. These are the two best teams in the Czech professional football league (soccer) and they are both based in Prague also so its a huge rivalry. The game we were at was probably the biggest non-playoff game of the year in the Czech Republic. We were rooting for Slavia and we were sitting next to the main Slavia fan section. This is a video of the crazy Slavia fans and the beginning of the game.



This is again the Slavia fans, I thought I'd include 2 because they are so intense and because the number of different cheers and things they do is incredible. You really need to be a fan (fanatic) to sit in this section.



This last video is a quick panorama of the view from the Eiffel Tower. Its a bit tough to see because its night time, but it looked great while we were up there.