A Trip to Spinderův Mlyn

We are going to have to go way back here. Tuesday night. A bunch of us had signed up with CET to go to a local hockey game. A group of us had class until 5:30, and thats when the game was starting, so we all left together to go to the arena. On the way there Jack told me about his plans with David and Hilary to go skiing this weekend. He invited me out to go with them. At this point I was very undecided. I had plans on Thursday night already, but skiing...

So Wednesday rolls around. On Wednesdays I have Czech. Jack and Hilary are in my Czech class. Our teacher (I just can't use the word professor to describe her) always wants to know what our plans are for the weekend. So Jack says that him, Hilary, and maybe me are going skiing. Zdenka (our teach) latches on to this thing. For the rest of the class shes acting like I'm the one who said I'm going skiing and Jack is the maybe. They start talking about how nice the weekend is going to be, blah blah blah, I'm convinced.

Thursday afternoon. At 4pm, I had Art, Architecture, and Memory (AAM). Our professor, Otto Urban, told us to meet in Old Town Square and then we would hit up some old building with a gallery inside, or something like that. (Heres a picture of me waiting in OTS). Jack and Hilary are also in this class. We decide that we should boogie after class and head out. Jack and David had already arranged a car rental and hotel arrangements. So the three of us go to meet David at his flat because he has the car. It was interesting driving through Prague on our way out to Spinderuv Mlyn, which was about a 2 and half hour drive.

Here's our car.

So we get there and there is a ton of snow.

Heres a pictoral of our hotel.

We settle in for the night then decide to hit up the small town area (the Centrum). After having a late dinner, we proceed to go to a strange nightclub/bar thing. I say strange because of the fact that there was a stage, a girl dancing in a cage, and a bunch of 14 year olds and and bunch of 50 year olds. Heres a picture of the young'uns.


Overall, it was a good time at the strange bar/club thing. So we head out to go back to the hotel. I'm only saying that so I can go right into my next picture. Which is this:


We wake up the next morning and go to our breakfast. We paid for a three person room, but we were four people. Up till now we didn't have a problem at all. So we go down to breakfast. Its a real crappy buffet. Nothing terribly appetizing. We run back to the room to grab our stuff, and suddenly there is a knock on the door. Some lady from the front desk comes in and starts talking firmly with us. She says something to the effect of you paid for three people, why are there four in here. Hilary is swift on her feet and says that she came by this morning and is staying with other friends. So desk girl knows we are lying but decides not to pursue this route any further. Instead she latches on to breakfast. She says that had you told us there would be four at breakfast then it wouldn't be a big deal, but now you will have to pay for breakfast. And we are like okay no problem whatever, sorry... Desk girl says that breakfast was 1050 crowns, which is roughly like 52 bucks. Then David and I are like what are you talking about lady! We ask to see a menu and shes like oh we don't have one blah blah blah... Thats our price for breakfast... Like hell it is... The best part though was when desk girl says, "You think everything is free, you think you can just have breakfast and its free!?" Oh, America...

So we leave the room after we are all packed and go to the front desk. The room for the night was something like 2400 crowns. They charged us 2600 something crowns. As we are walking out of the hotel to the car we realize that desk girl meant to say 150 crowns, not 1050 crowns... So essentially we got in a whole hullabaloo over 7 bucks... Wow.

We get skis, poles, boots, and day lift passes... comes to 750 crowns... less than 40 bucks to ski for the day. There is no way you could find that in the states. And this was a real mountain, great skiing. But I'll get there.


Hilary had never skiied before. For David it was 5 years. Jack had skiied a lot, and knew what he was doing. I hadn't skiied since 6th grade, so like 9 years.

We put the skis on and attempt to get through the parking lot. It feels somewhat similar, but pretty distantly similar. Hilary begins the day of falling by falling through the parking lot. Heres a great shot of Jack taking a picture (he catalogued most of her falls, all in good fun).


He did eventually help her up.

We go up the mountain. The lift took longer than any mountain I've ever been on. Obviously Maple Ski Ridge could fit inside of this place's lodge. No comparison. We can't find any bunny hill or super easy trail, so we wind up with a medium trail. Its pretty difficult for me and David, but Hilary was having a rough time. I mean it was her first time ever on skis and here she is on a Medium trail. It took a while to get down that first time, but learning through doing was never truer in this case.

Lunch break, then we decide to hit the slopes again. We have until 4pm and it was about 2:45pm. Normally that would be a couple of runs, but we are moving pretty slow today. We were on the wrong side of the parking lot too, so we took a different lift all all all the way to the top of the mountain. Because the other trail put us on the wrong side, we had to take a harder route to get to where our car was parked. It was absolutely gorgeous on the mountain though. The sky was gray, huge snowflakes were falling constantly, the trees were coated white, and it was near silent. I didn't bring my camera up because I didn't want it to get wet, blah blah blah. Turns out I should have. I wound up not falling all day, so it probably would have been fine.

It took us about an hour and half to get down the harder part of this trail. David wound up falling more than Hilary, he also probably went faster though. As I finished this trail though I felt a lot of the movements come back to me. It was nice to get out there again. I think skiing is the type of thing you can do maybe once a year and enjoy it just that much. Maybe I'll start going every once and a while in the states.

After skiing we grabbed a nice dinner, which none of us wound up finishing. Here's a picture of Jack's leftovers...


As you can see, he didn't even take a bite out of his burger.

After dinner we headed back to Prague. We figured the roads would be terrible because it had been snowing all day, but apparently the plows and salt machines had been out because they were fine.

Additional Info: Some people in our program are planning trip and going on trips every single weekend. I don't understand the point. One, its really expensive not just for flights but because most of Europe in on the Euro. Two, all you can really see is the main highlights and an ability to put a city/country down on a list. I would rather do things like go to a Czech punk rock concert, go to a Neo-Nazi rally, and go skiing in the Czech countryside. Thats not to say I don't want to travel because I do. I just want to make sure that its worth it.

For curious mothers, this was my skiing outfit:
I wore sweatpants under my jeans. Dress socks with another pair of socks on top. T-shirt, longsleeve t-shirt, and flannel button-up. Gloves from Old Navy. Jacket. And surprising, I was warm enough. It helped that I didn't fall and get wet. Those gloves were definitely worth five dollars. You would think going skiing would prompt me to buy a hat, but I have yet to get one. I had icsicles for hair after skiing, but it wasn't that bad.