Joel in the CZ: 2008

As I expected I would, I had a great time during my first visit to Prague last weekend. Since I was more eager to see Prague than Matt was (he's been a couple of times before) I went by myself on Friday night and Matt met up with me on Saturday. On the train ride to Prague I shared a cabin with a young businessman who spoke very little English but was very friendly when I practiced my Czech with him. So far all I can really say is "what's your name?" "My name is..." "Where are you from?" "How are you?" etc etc. Even though we weren't able to communicate on a very deep level, it made the train ride much more enjoyable.

I was also quite proud of myself when I was able to tell the lady at the ticket counter in Vysoke Myto "hello, good day, return ticket to Prague please" in Czech. However I was quite disappointed when I later realized that a return ticket must be used within 24 hours and they wouldn't give me a partial refund once I arrived in Prague.

After this I took the metro and then a tram to my hostel, Sir Toby's. For dinner I went to a small pizza place down the street and was severely disappointed by my first experience with pizza in the Czech Republic. I ordered a prosciutto and mozzarella and instead of anything that resembled Italian ham and cheese, it tasted like bologna cold cuts over processed cheese. This surprised me quite a bit because the restaurant wasn't even close to the city center and it was packed with customers.

Upon returning to the hostel I met a couple with the girl from Australia and the guy (whose name was also Joel) from New Zealand. We went to a club nearby and at about 10:30 they were getting tired so we went back to the hostel. Back at Sir Toby's I went down to the pub in the basement where I met 2 other girls from Australia, 2 Americans, and two guys from England who were all about my same age. At about 11:30 we all went out to a club on Wenceslas Square called Duplex (its in one of my pictures). The club was way overpriced but fortunately the British guys were very generous and bought us all several rounds of drinks. Unfortunately, their drink of choice was absinthe.

Later that night I ended up losing the rest of the group and getting on a tram going in the opposite direction of my hostel. Luckily while I was on the tram I heard English being spoken a couple of seats up. It was a group of Italians speaking to a Czech girl and Slovak girl. Once the Italians got off, I started talking to them and they were very friendly and happy to speak English and brought me to another pub where we stayed until it closed a little after 5. At this point I was very lost and very far from my hostel but Danka and Petra came to my rescue. They called a cab for me and even negotiated the price in advance with the driver, who didn't speak English, before they sent me on my way.

I finally arrived back at my hostel at 5:30 and then woke up at 10:00 in time for check out. Later that morning, after eating the rest of my terrible pizza for breakfast, I took a long walk along the Vlatava River on my way to see the sights of Prague for the first time in daylight. After much walking and sightseeing, I met up with Matt at 2:30 and did more walking and sightseeing. We stayed at a nice hostel on the other side of town called Czech Inn and had a relatively uneventful night. The next day (Sunday) we saw Prague Castle among other things before returning to Vysoke Myto (the train ride takes about 2:15). After such a busy weekend I gained a new appreciation for our quiet town in the countryside of East Bohemia.