2004-02-09
Absinth makes the heart grow fonder...and the head grow fuzzy

3:21 p.m.

First, a quick recap of culture night. It was great. Bavs did some Indian dancing (she is incredible, and afterwards, Will went around saying 'Yeah, this is MY girlfriend'; he was slightly proud and impressed), and Ollie and Doug attempted to teach everyone some simple Scottish dances and we all tried cog, a popular, hot, sweet, and v. potent Scottish alcoholic drink. It was great, but unfortunately, Chris, Nicole, Nick, Ruey, and I had to leave before we could try the traditional Scottish delicacy of batter-fried Mars bars because we had to catch the 1 AM bus to Prague.

After frantically packing, the five of us plus Nicole's friend, Maera (rhymes with Sarah), all met at the bus stop. Not exactly sure where it really was, we hung around and started to become worried about 1 AM when there was no sign of the bus. It finally showed up at 1:30, and everyone climbed on but me who, as it turned out, had a receipt and a return ticket but no entry ticket. Finally managed to sweet talk my way onto the bus, and after squeezing ourselves into the only six places left, we were off. I do have to say that I was quite excited about visiting Eastern Europe, something that would have been impossible not too long ago. And, I even got a stamp in my passport! (Two, actually, because I got another coming back into Germany. So, now I have three - one in my official passport coming into France for the first time, and now these two in my personal passport.)

Talk about a long night. Fortunately, four years of high school band taught me about sleeping on the bus, so armed with my beloved ear plugs, I manged to catch some sleep, despite the fact that I seemed to be sitting next to the only two people on the entire bus who insisted on staying up and talking - usually in a mix of Russian and French, which was quite interesting.

We arrived around 9 AM, and Nick had set up a great deal for us as far as accomodations go - he found an actual apartment - and the agency even took us to and from the apartment so that we didn't have to cart our stuff around all weekend. The whole thing, cab rides and apartment, came to a total of about 72 Euros.

We dropped our stuff off (our apartment was right next to a bar called Dog's Bollocks) and headed out to see the sights. We really had a great day. The weather was quite nice, and we hiked all over, past the Opera House, up to Prague Castle, into St. Nicholas' Cathedral, over the Charles Bridge, past the Astronomical Clock and St. Peter's Cathedral, and basically all around town. There was a cafe called Star Cafe which looked suspiciously like Starbucks. Hmm. They did make good hot chocolates and "Starpaccinos"!

One word about the money. 33 Crowns equaled about 1 Euro, so it was quite amusing to see prices like 59 or 70 and go, wow, that's really cheap. Things really were quite inexpensive in Prague, and the fact that they were participating in the mandatory six-week sales that is hitting France didn't hurt. I think that Nick was rather frustrated with the amount of shopping that went on, despite the fact that he participated and even initiated some of it. The first stop we made was to an army surplus store, where he bought several Soviet Union pins and such. Turns out that the salesman didn't speak any English, but did speak a fair bit of Russian, so I had the chance to practice my Russian and was able to translate for everyone. I was really quite pleased with myself, although it made me realize just how much practice I need to do before our trip to Russia, considering that I and Mike (one of our Austrians) are the only semi-Russian speakers going. In fact, my Russian came in quite handy, as there were several words that, although spelled out in Roman-ish looking letters, were Russian words. I was delighted to be able to tell everyone that we were now in "Star� Mesto" (Old Town) according to the signs until Nick pointed out that it was really not that difficult to tell due to the buildings themselves. Spoilsport.

We had dinner at a nice restaurant with live music. Nicole, Maera, Chris and I split a bottle of Czech red wine, which was very nice. The whole dinner, including our wine, Nick's martini, three desserts, and six full-meals, came to about 80 Euros total, gratuity included. Crazy. I had a traditional Czech dinner, which was sliced sirloin with a mushroom cream sauce and cranberries, and was really, really good and cost less than 6 Euros. Chris and Ruey had duck, and Nick had goulash.

After that, we walked around, stopping in a store called Baker Street and bought several bottles of Absinth to bring back to Strasbourg because it's not something that can be bought outside of the Czech Republic. Finally, we headed back to our apartment and literally crashed. We were all so, so tired.

Back to the Czech Republic and money. Their currency is the "Ceska Koruna", or Crown, but a few places accepted Euros; they officially become part of the European Union on June 14th. And the other thing is that credit cards are discouraged! I guess that the establishments are charged for credit card purchases, so many don't accept them, or if they do, they add on a surcharge. I remember the 'same as cash' slogans in the US, and now it makes sense.

Anyway, I've missed most of my French classes, so I'd better at least attempt to go to the one this evening. I'll finish up later.

Today, 1.27082 Euro to the US dollar. Grrr.

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