Where Czechs go to play smart and Americans go to feel something special

Yesterday our Prague, Vienna, and Budapest (hereafter called PVB) took us to the Cafe Louvre. This cafe is famous as being the place where intellectuals would gather to discuss such heady subjects as Physics, Philosophy, and all that garbage. The two big names are Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein. The former as a student at Prague University, and the latter as a professor.

Well let me tell you... the place has changed. I'm sure Franz Kafka would refuse to pay 38kc for a Coke. To be honest, he probably snorted his coke and had no idea you could even drink it. Heres an example of the extent of this place's selloutatude: the placemats are in Czech, German, and English. Not only just in English, in perfect English. Thats not something you find very often.

The atmosphere was intriguing. I didn't feel as though I was in a hall of great minds. I felt as though I was in a hall of fakes imitating great minds. View picture below.
It was hard to capture a great image, but you get the point. So our PVB prof made reservations for our twentysomething group, but the hitch was that we couldn't stay unless we got lunch. The menu was interesting, but in a higher price range than any of us would have liked. Many people opted for some of the cheapest things on the menu, the soups. We'll come back to the soup in a bit. I ordered sweet dumplings. It was cheap and different. It took some time for the food to be delivered, so in meantime we discussed lofty subjects (travel, food, and 5 minutes of Franz Kafka).

At last. Food. The waiter brings Emma a bowl of vegetable balls. There was two or three on the bottom of her plate. He then proceeds to pour boiling vegetable broth from a small pitcher. Really? Is that necessary?

Later that same day... Our Art, Architecture and Memory (hereafter referred to as AAM) professor met us in Old Town Square to escort us to a monastery that holds the National Gallery.

Our prof is pretty awesome. On Tuesday he lectured about Romanesque and Gothic art, now on Thursday we were viewing the images that we had discussed in class. Very cool. Pictures weren't allowed in the Gallery and the old ladies are like hawks in there, so I have no evidence to submit. Take my word for it though, there was some awesome stuff.

Fastforward... At 7:25pm Kendra, Annika, and I head out to go to Hush (the expats bar thats 5 minutes away from us). Our friend Stefaan was hosting a quiz night and somehow I got suckered into a team. Petr was absent so Kendra joined me, Zuzana (Petr's friend), and another girl who was friends with Zuzana. They had reserved a table right next to the bar. Annika joined a team that was short people. Not literally short people, but they didn't have enough.

Stefaan read the rules and we proceeded to have 5 rounds of 9 questions. Our team was pretty confident.

Yeap. We won. View picture below for evidence.

The dude next to us is Paco Hush, the owner of the bar/lounge. The things in our hands are: Becherovka aprons, tshirts, placemats, huge empty glass bottles, metal wall hangings, and a bottle of Becherovka Lemon. The stuff tastes disgusting, but whatever, a prize is a prize. Becherovka for those who don't know is a liquor created in the Czech Republic. It has something like 13 herbs in it. It tastes disgusting. Back in the good ole days it was believed to cure stomach aches, etc. Some people still think so, I think it causes them.

The tshirt is awesome. See below picture. We went to play celebratory foosball a cool bar not too far from home.

So that was my Thursday. Today we are going to check up on train tickets to Dresden. We are going to do a day trip on Saturday. We have a free weekend this weekend so everyone pretty much peaced. People are making plans for nearly every weekend, but to tell the truth, I like Prague. I don't mind traveling a couple times, but like our program people said, I would like to get to know this city better. Even if the people are grumpy old fogies, the sky is never bright, its snowing as we speak, Prague is a pretty boss city.

Karma can be violent.

Last night Annika, Kendra, and I were just hanging out. We decided to lighten the mood with a few choice beverages. Visible from the entrance to our apartment is a Portraviny (I believe its spelled right), which is like a small store that sells bare necessities and beer and wine and liquor (which I suppose is a necessity for a Czech!). Imagine a Stewarts, but without the terrific ice cream, delicious bacon cheeseburgers, and no skeezy girl that graduated two years before me.

Most of these Portravinies are run by the local Vietmenese minority. I going to pretend like I know that this is a fact when really I have no idea, but the Vietmenese in Prague are the largest minority present.

Its funny because sometimes you go into these shops and you try and speak Czenglish (a few Czech words, a few English words) and they still don't understand you. Pointing gets it done most of the time.

Back to the story, so basically we get our beverages and check out. He charges us 30kr per bottle of milk, which is absolutely outrageous. They should have been probably half that. Still unsure in the city though, we take it. You live and learn. For example, never going back there again...

Anyways, so we are walking back to our apartment. We have to cross this four lane road, super busy. So as we are crossing the street I see in my periphs, movement. Then comes a huge crashing noise. The sign next to the Portaviny comes crashing down and explodes on the ground. By explodes I mean to say that glass and plastic shatter into pieces. No pyrotechnics (unfortunately).

We had been standing there perhaps 30 seconds before.

We all took is as a sign of god telling us that we shouldn't go back to that place again. I hope the ripperoffer took is as a sign that we can move objects with our minds. One can only hope...

The Dirty K

Sunday Morning

Alarm goes off at 7:30am. We get on the bus at 9:00am to go to Cesky Krumlov. A small town/village/city about 3 hours away. All the JS/CES students are on the same bus, theres only about 40 of us so no big deal.

I apologize for the following details, but they are necessary for understanding this journey.

So if you recall, I had Chinese food the night before. About 5 minutes into our bus ride, I proceeded to experience the second worst heart burn of my young adult life. It was so awful I thought I would have to stop the bus and run through the fields screaming in agony.

That didn't happen, but it was really awful.

Arrival in CK around 11:45am.

We go to our flats, I roomed with this guy Jack. We got two twin beds, some girls were not that lucky. A group of us grabbed some lunch at a random Czech restaurant. For some reason it took us a very long time to pick a restaurant. I'll be posting pictures shortly of the town so you get some sense of it. Its very historic, some might say backwater, but it was cute.

After racing through lunch with met up with the whole group (including the Film students). We went on a castle tour for about an hour and a half. The main draw of CK is the awesome castle.

We ended our tour in this sweet cafe. CET paid for one drink per person. The hot chocolate was just literally hot... chocolate. It was obviously delicious.

Following a super long lecture from our tour guide, Bryce, a group of us decided to grab a drink before dinner. We had to meet at 7pm and it was only 5pm.

Using the navigational skills of our Czech buddy Petr/Peter/Pedro, we found this weird cave bar/pub. We were put in a backroom where we each enjoyed a very expensive beer. We had some laughs though, and the time soon passed.

Around 6:45pm, we went out into the night. We took a wrong turn but ran into a group of lost film students. Together we found the brewery where CET would be feeding us. We were going to be eating in the beer hall. It was a huge spacious room with tons of tables. Very cool.

The food was great. The beer was interesting. I got the light, and it had an almost caramelly taste to it. Very sweet. But good. A gypsy band was in attendance for us to enjoy. As Jiri said, "merriment and dancing."

Once everyone finished dinner, by everyone I mean 60 some people, everyone went to get more drinks. This is just about when the nickname the Dirty K comes in...

When you see directors of your program dancing with students and drinking things tend to get a little funny. Needless to say, everyone had a great time. Some more than others, but I'm pretty sure we will all remember that night in the Dirty K.

I forgot to mention that it was snowing all day. It was the type of snow that was only snow in the air. Once it hit the ground it might as well have had been rain. So around 1am a group of us decided to walk home. Walking became much more like iceskating. No one slid off the bridge though. Thankfully.

The next morning a bunch of us met to wander the city. We had to be at the bus at 3pm, but had the rest of the day to ourselves. So around 11am we hit up the Fairytale House, which turned out to be nothing more than an attic full of creepy marinonettes.

Then our group split up. Petr and some girls went for a walk, while a bunch of us went to check out the church. The church was boring so we soon left. Some people wanted chocolate so we split up again. After the chocolate we wandering around for a short amount of time then decided to get lunch. It was about 12:30pm. Jiri gave us a coupon for 20% off any of 4 restaurants. So six of us went to one of the restaurants on the list, having no idea what we were in store for.

I ordered the Beef in cream sauce with bread dumplings and cranberry. It was a generous portion of beef with a pile of cranberry on top, then whipped cream on top of that. Along with 5 or 6 dumplings. It was, by far, the best meal I've had in my life. Or close to it. Or top 10. It was so amazing. Theres a picture somewhere that I'll dig up and post. Oh, and the cost, about $5.50...

So at 3 we left the Dirty K behind. It was a good trip. There was a lot of history there, a lot of pictures taken, and a couple of interesting memories.