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My apologies that I haven’t written in a long time. I have been just too lazy. This morning I got up and did about 56 million dishes and was listening to music and decided that I need to write. There is a lot that has happened since my last journal so let’s get started. OK… Prague! This was a really excellent trip. Prague is a city in the Czech Republic that is very, very old. Prague is called “Praha” by the Czechs. There are so many buildings that have so much history. It is really amazing. Several groups of us departed at staggered times by train to Prauge all through the day. When we arrived at the Hostel we were greeted (kind of) by a guy with a very fluent hold of English. He was somewhat cocky. He said that he was born in Mexico, but grew up in Texas. Later he moved to Prague. His disposition seemed to be like he might have an annoyance of America and Americans and he “just had to move to a more enlightened atmosphere”. Almost like a Johnny Depp! Regardless of his slightly rude tone, he still got us checked in properly and it all worked out. The Hostel was quite old and had cracks in the walls everywhere. Our room housed 10 beds and was connected with a door to another room of the same set-up. Most of us in these to rooms were from the school as most of the exchange students had come on the trip. So total there were 20 people of mixed sexes, and we all had to share one small bathroom with a toilet, a sink, and a shower. Very hard to do when all you want to do is get up, get ready, and go do some sight-seeing. The next morning after everyone got in and out of the bathroom between 7am and 10:30am, we went out to walk around the city. It was very beautiful with all of the old building structure and walkways. There is a very famous bridge that we walked across to get to the area with the castle. It is called the Charles Bridge. Google it if you like. It is quite fun to read about. On the bridge there are many musicians and character artists that are all very talented and waiting to have your money! Along with the trade artists there were also small stands with trinkets (usually Prague things) as well as many beggars. The beggars in Prague are much different than the beggars in the US or the other European cities I’ve been in so far as well. All of them are in a kneeling position with their heads down to the ground and hands placed in a cupping form in front of their head. I think the idea is to not show their face to the people. It seems to be a shameful type of begging, possibly tied in with religion somehow. So as one can imagine the Charles bridge is quite large. It took us about 15 to 20 minutes to walk all the way across it. We were walking quite slow, as people were stopping to watch musicians and the bridge was very crowded overall. The neat thing I found were the many different languages being spoken by each person I walked by. I heard Czech, Finnish, Spanish, Icelandic, German, Hungarian, Italian and English. Most of the English being spoken were by people from the UK. Prague is not a far flight from Great Britain so there were many British tourists everywhere we went. I will find a professional picture of the Charles Bridge and post it on the website along with the ones I took.
That morning we found two girls from Chicago wandering around the hostel. They were very nice and one was even a music major who played the saxophone. I talked with her for a long time about everything we could find music related because neither of us had been able to talk about nerdy things like saxophone concertos and key signatures. They were studying in Germany as exchange students and they were just visiting Prague like we were. We invited them to come along with us that day and to the five story dance club that night.
The food the whole trip was so good. Also very cheap! I really liked getting a full course gourmet-style meal for only 6 or 7 dollars. So that night we went to the Dance club and danced for hours. I got really really tired. Each story had different music. Somehow our group managed to stay on the dumbest floor that played stuff like MC Hammer all night. Oh well, it was fun anyways. Even if “Can’t Touch This” and “Playin’ with my Heart” were the highlights of the DJ’s music choices.
The next morning we got up and went shopping. The retail stores were pretty expensive that were not based out of the Czech Republic, but the individual shops were quite cheap. In the mall we saw a girl being dragged out by her arm by a security guard. He was yelling at her and being very rough. I assumed she stole something. When he got to the entrance he shoved her forcefully and then back-handed her across the face. Quite a culture shock for me! He would have lost his job if he did that in the US, or really, any other more-developed country. She came back to yell at him and was showing that she didn’t have anything in her purse. His eyes got really big and he started after her again, but she ran away too quickly. People watched, but no one acted as if it was out of the ordinary. The only people that were bothered by it were the exchange students! Most of us felt a natural obligation to yell at the security guard and tell his boss or something, but we were in a different country. The rules are different and us saying something would not have been good. Especially since the regular citizens didn’t even flinch at what he did. It was an interesting.
On a lighter note, I bought a few things for family and some killer Vagabond shoes. They are half dressy half street. I wanted to get them because Vagabond is European based and is not in the States at all. So when I get home I can wear them and say “Yeah, I got these in Praha. You wouldn’t know it cause it’s a only European retailer.” and then they would say “Praha?” and I would say, “Uh, yeah. Oh! (with a chuckle)…sorry, I mean Prague. It’s how they say Prague in Czech language. Sometimes I forget who I’m around. Anyways, these are really special shoes that pretty much no one has so… Theeenks!”. So basically that’s why I got them.
There were only three of us left (everyone else had already traveled home) and we were going to catch the 5:30pm train to Vienna. I was traveling with the American girl and on of the Finnish girls, Catlin and Nora. The problem was that we went to the wrong train station and missed it. The next train left at 1 am. We met two American guys at the train station from San Diego that had had the same problem. It ended up being really fun because we all went out together at night to see more of Prague and have dinner. When we walked across the bridge there was a guy playing wine glasses (probably 20 or 25 notes worth). He was really good and played famous concertos that I had played in wind ensemble, only he was playing them by himself! He even did all of the harmonies for each part on the glasses. I was very impressed. He knew he was good too, because there was a couple talking quietly to each other in the group while he was playing and he stopped and stared at them. Then when they felt awkward and stopped talking he said he informed them that he would continue now that he has regained the respect of his listeners. His looks resembled a taller, dirty Danny Divito. Watching him was like nothing I had seen before especially with Prague lit up in the background on each side of the water with castles dispersed amongst the other architecture. Very pretty. Not the guy, the scenery.
We finally got to the train station and took the 1am train back to our city. We arrived at 7am and Catlin had a class at 7:30. Just in time, but I’m sure she slept though it anyways. So, Prague ended up being a great trip filled with many fun experiences as well as peculiarity and strangeness.
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