Na Shledanou Praha

I am officially back home in California after being awake for 48 hours and traveling for too much of that time.  It feels surreal that 4 months ago I was freaking out about leaving, wondering if it was too late just to go back to Cal Poly instead, I even was asking myself how studying abroad would even be fun. Basically I had no idea what to expect but forcing myself to get on the plane as a first time out-of-country traveler was the best decision I have ever made in my life.

The next four months I would visit six countries, make countless memories, and build friendships so strong it’s now hard for me to imagine my life without them. Our last weekend, my friends and I decided to attempt ice-skating. Well…it’s definitely not mine and Sunny’s thing as the wall became our best friend and we found a new way to entertain the rest of the fam, especially Ken. 

The next day we went to the Kozel brewery, which was probably what we drank the most of whilst being in Prague, including every family dinner. I’m pretty sure we were most excited for the gift shop, since all we could say was “beer socks”, and the Kozel mascot Olda – the most disgusting goat I have ever interacted with. 

Left: Erica doing her last touristy thing on her last day: the only cubist lampost in the world!
Right: At the beginning of the 2.5 hour long bus stop wait from the Kozel Brewery

After taking a tour of the brewery in Czech, since English was not an option, we got some lunch and thought our timing was perfect to make the earlier bus. Well, 2.5 hours later we thought wrong after finding out one bus was cancelled, taxis “were not possible” and our last resort was going to be Jan personally picking us up. We were too paranoid to go back to the restaurant in case the bus finally did show up so all we could do was huddle together for warmth and hope Rachel’s feet wouldn’t fall off. After being in the cold for 2.5 hours while Sunny, Jesse, and I were having flashbacks to the “World’s Loneliest Bus Stop” from the Hell Hike (May the odds be EVER in your favor.) the bus finally showed up.

Me, Erica, and Marisa with program directors Richard and Jan who make USAC the best program choice!

The next couple days would involve multiple farewell parties and too many goodbyes. On Sunday, after the Secret Santa Party, Marisa’s parents (two of the coolest people you will ever meet) generously treated us all to a couple beers at the Beer Museum on their last night visiting. Then, with a craving for a final fried cheese sandwich the family and I decided to detour to Winceslaus Square one last time.

Monday, being our last day, dragged on as it was filled with packing, last minute Christmas shopping, and getting it all done so we’d have enough time to have a last dinner at our pub that we went to at least once a week, and say our real final goodbyes at 3:30 am when group transportation was arriving to take a handful of us away. It’s amazing to think four months ago we all didn’t know each other and now saying goodbye felt like the hardest thing to do. I don’t really know what else to say, but thanks to everyone who followed my travels abroad and most of all the people that made Prague a home.

Things I’ll miss:

• Sitting around the kitchen table in apartment 5b
• Nights at our pub
• Impromptu snowball fights
• Jan’s adorable fatherly ways
• The beer opener hanging by a string on the door at the Potroviny down from R30
• Midnight adventures to random memorials or Charles Bridge
• Half a liter of beer for 10kc (50 cents)
• “Pristi Stanice I.P. Pavlova”
• Being 20 years old in Europe…6 more months
• Prague puns
• Family dinners
• The Family <3

Things I could live without:

• The anxiety I feel at the checkout counter of Billa
• Hang-drying clothes
• Never fully aware of what I’m buying at the grocery store
• Waking up to the sound of jackhammers every morning
• The freezing air from the metro escalators

 However, if I had to continue living with all those little annoyances and it meant I could be back in Prague with the same people that made this semester the best time of my life I would be there in a heartbeat…even if that means going through Frankfurt airport again.

I miss everyone already and I now get to look forward to reunions, facebook stalking to keep in touch, my friends back at Cal Poly, and this little cutie that surprised me when I got home! Meet Česnečka! 

English Translation: Garlic Soup

Wintery Fairyland

I went from having 4 months to 4 days left in this wondrous city of Prague and it pains me to think that this is probably my last blog post written from my home in K17 surrounded by some of the best people I could have hoped to meet. This isn’t my final post so I’m not going to get too sentimental yet so let’s change the subject and find out what I’ve been up to since Paris!

So as everyone is very well aware, this is the most wonderful time of the year! And what better way to spend the Christmas season than in Prague who is the best at two things: beer and Christmas cheer. Besides watching Christmas movies since November, the real festivities began on Wednesday, December 5 also known as St. Nicholas Day. It marks the start of Christmas for Czechs and in Old Town people dress up as three figures: St. Nicholas, an Angel, and a Devil.  So when I was buying some decorations for the Holiday party Marisa, Erica, Kat, and I threw later that night it was amusing to see devil horns next to Santa hats. Our Holiday party was a great success since it was a combination of dessert night, sweaters, holiday cheer, singing, and everyone in our program!

The rest of the weekend was filled with more Christmas celebrations and markets. On Friday we took a day trip to Nuremberg, Germany for one of the oldest Christmas markets in Europe and later that weekend the family and I decided to venture to the Charles Bridge and see the Christmas markets set up in Old Town Square. Prague is already the set of a fairytale but during Christmas it is even more magical. When stepping out of our apartment Sunday for an outing to the beautiful National Theater to see the Nutcracker we were surprised with a downpour of snow, making this city feel even more like a wintery fairyland. Prague is the first city outside of Russia that was allowed to put on the Nutcracker ballet and I was really curious to see how they would tell the story since the Nutcracker was such a huge part of my childhood. It was very…interesting. Instead of the rat king it was a terrifying devil and instead of rats they were characters out of some scary Pirates of the Caribbean nightmare. Other than that, it was enjoyable but all the dancers were adults with the exception of 10 little girls who I guess were supposed to be the marshmallows. I still prefer the Drosselmeyer I grew up with and it made me miss ballet more than I thought I did.

After the show we all went to dinner at our pub for some fried cheese in between two snowball fights that took place. None of us even cared that we were in our dress clothes still, we still let out our inner Elf by throwing snowballs, making snow angels, and played with several puppies that wanted to be our friends, including the pup we named Marcus. Yet again, this will be one of my favorite days in Prague when looking back at these 4 months spent with my favorite people here. I don’t even want to think about not being surrounded by them in less than a week.

As family back home knows, my childhood friend Erin has also been studying here and even though we didn’t see nearly as much of each other as we thought we would, it’s comforting to know that we’ll have each other in Modesto when going through Prague withdrawals. It’s crazy that we’ve been friends since the age of 3 and studied in the same city this past semester 17 years later. We had a mini touristy day going to Old Town Square, across the river to see the swans, and ended the day getting lost while on the verge of frostbite trying to find a flea market. So glad I got to see her one last time in the city we both fell in love with!

This is study-abroad so I should probably mention the first time we have all had to study way more than we were used to this whole semester – finals week. It included hours of bottomless coffee, staring at computer screens, blank word documents, and multiple tabs open on the internet with far too many having little to do with the papers that needed to be written. I think it’s safe to say everyone here has attention spans even smaller than they were when we arrived as my newsfeed blew up with pictures of puppies, comments, and tumblr links so I think we all agree that next semester is going to be dreadful.

Awesome picture of Charles Bridge in the snow! Photo credit: David Stokes

What these next 4 days are going to entail:

• Dog-piling Erica after our Farewell party tonight
• Tears
• Beer
• Fried Cheese from our pub
• Kebabs off of I.P. Pavlova
• Christmas markets
• All my favorite places with all my favorite people

See you in San Francisco Mom and Dad! 

Bonjour Bonjour Bonjour OH MY GOD

This past weekend Marisa, Erica, Rachel and I headed to Paris for our last big trip of the semester! For all of us it was the first time having to go to the Prague airport for a trip. Which means I have finally found where all the happy Czechs are and I will now be rating airport experiences on a scale from Frankfurt to Prague. While Frankfurt was associated with stress, running, overwhelming confusion and security, Prague didn’t even make you take your shoes off and gave me back my passport with a smile and the man saying how he hopes to visit California one day.

While coming in on the metro in Paris we got a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower lit up as we headed to our apartment that went beyond our expectations. It was so…French and the perfect location between the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumphe. Even though the hallway with the long red carpet and elevator shaft at the end was a bit “shiningesque” as Marisa so wonderfully put, it was still adorable. It was so nice we were coming back to this Parisian home every night to relax, watch movies, and be…well girls vacationing in Paris without having to deal with hostels! So naturally what is first on the list when you’re in a beautiful foreign city? Chipotle of course! We had no problem finishing our burritos and it was definitely the most expensive thing I bought on this trip.

We’ve agreed that our parents would be very proud of us because we were nonstop tourists waking up early, taking advantage of free tours and seeing as much as we could for the next 2.5 days.

Alex Jones was pretty much our own personal local for the whole day Friday. He was the tour guide for the first free tour we did where we saw a lot of the main sights like the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, St. Michel, Seine River, and the Louvre. We then walked down the Champs des Lysee towards our apartment so we could check out the Christmas markets, which are NOTHING compared to Prague’s, and see the Arc de Triumphe. We then did the night tour with him of Montmarte, which ended up being my favorite neighborhood we got to explore. We saw the Moulin Rouge, Van Gogh’s apartment (while Alex described the artist’s depressing life to us), street art, Sacré Cœur, Picasso’s apartment, and then finished the tour with a glass of wine at Café des Deux Moulins – the café that was used in the filming of Amelie! Even though the tour was over Alex took the four of us to his favorite place for crêpes where I had the best nutella crêpe of my life. We ended the night with a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower’s lightshow minutes away from our apartment.

Happy outside the Louvre

One thing that kept growing was the list of movies we wanted to watch because of our time in Paris: Moulin Rouge, Midnight in Paris, Amelie, Ratatouille (inspired by the mouse we saw on the metro), Passport to Paris (again) and Elf (just because we’re always in the mood for Elf).

Bored inside the Louvre

Our second full day we decided to grab baguettes and act French in front of the Eiffel Tower before our day of museums. We first went to the Musee d’Orsay the impressionist museum so we got to see Monet, Van Gogh, and Edgar Degas (so many flashbacks to 3^rd grade), and then headed to the Louvre just so we can now say we’ve seen the Mona Lisa. Overall though, the Louvre is chaotic, overwhelming and nearly impossible to find the way out once you want to leave. Alex had told us how the Louvre is where you will find some of the most bored looking people he has ever seen: we definitely fell under that category. Luckily with our student visas our entrances to these museums were free so we don’t feel guilty about not looking at all the paintings that start blending together after awhile. Our plan was to go to the Christmas market for some food but it was way too crazy for us to deal with. Unlike Prague where it truly feels like you’re in a fairytale, Paris Christmas markets just felt tacky. With my love for Christmas I was disappointed with the markets but everything else about Paris I adored. We did a boat tour on the river that evening, had one last crepe, one last look at the Eiffel Tower by night, put on Moulin Rouge and called it a night!

Our last day we saw Notre Dame, got our final crepe in the Latin quarter after getting a stamped postcard at Shakespeare & company and headed to the airport. Paris with my girls was definitely a great last trip. I did not have very high expectations because I feel like a lot of people I talk to have negative experiences so I was pleasantly surprised with just how much I loved this city. Three midnights in Paris was definitely not enough time to see all that this city has to offer, even though my wallet would say otherwise.

When in Paris:

NOTRE DOG

• A chipotle burrito and entrance to the Louvre are the same price: choose the burrito
• The hardest decision you have to make is which type of crepe you want next: Sweet or savory?
• Make sure you watch where you’re walking when looking up at the Eiffel Tower. I now have a huge bruise and skinned leg from running into a block of concrete.
• Don’t take Metro 13 during rush hour or you will be yelled at by an old, stuck-up French woman for being polite
• Just because the men selling cheesy souvenirs on the streets keep yelling “Shakira” and “Lady Gaga” at you does NOT mean you look like Shakira or Lady Gaga
• If looking for some free entertainment watch Marisa try to take pictures with the dog that hangs out at Shakespeare & co.