Oh what a weekend! This weekend was our four day weekend and it was AMAZING! I am in love with Prague and would love to have any excuse to go back! Any takers?!
Thursday was the beginning of our weekend but we had class from 9-12. In our pairs, we presented our projects to the others and that was fun. Michelle and I presented gender in sport and what I thought would be a short presentation turned into a 20 minute discussion. After we presented and in between others Michelle loves to point out that I signed up and paid for my bus ticket (the one that was supposed to get me to Prague) was for the wrong date. Apparently when my computer was having a hard time registering for the bus ticket I got clicker happy and clicked the wrong date and didn’t care to double check it. Needless to say I began to freak out. I ran to Viktoria and had her call the bus place to see if they could change my ticket or if there were any openings. Of course the bus was fully booked. AWESOME. We then looked up alternative routes and found train or plane for 130 Euro. Not too bad but I wanted to be with the group! Then…we came up with the best idea yet…to sneak me on! I know it sounds insane but I though hey if it doesn’t work I can always go back and buy a plane ticket right? So after class, we came back to shower, pack, and give Callie her birthday gift (since she would be turning 21 while in Prague). Once we were all packed up and ready to go, 12 of the 15 of us saddled up and headed to Cologne to grab some dinner and shop around before catching our bus at 8- mind you I am still FREAKING out because I still don’t know whether I am even leaving for Prague at this point or not. We grabbed dinner at this place called Farmers and had some amazing steak. It felt good to eat some American food.
THEN…we make it to the bus stop. Of course 30 minutes early to give me even more time to sweat and think about the sticky situation. I think someone snagged a pretty good picture of my stressed face. Then one bus comes- fake out not ours. Then another- wrong bus again. I think by this point my IBS had kicked into full throttle. Then we finally see the one that says Prague. YAY, right?! Well I was freaking out and decided to hide behind the brick wall by the bus stop so that way the bus driver couldn’t see me as he pulled up to recognize me. I then proceed to walk behind the wall and hop over the railing to get by the back unloading door of the bus. Everyone else is showing their boarding pass to the bus driver and the people who were getting off at the stop were exiting through the back door. The bus driver then sends Kyle to the back door and he blocks me while the rest of the people exit. Note I am pushed up against the bus so that the bus driver can’t see me BUT as soon as I got the chance I darted on the bus and got a seat. It was a miracle, I had made it on! The stressing didn’t stop there because we had about 4 stops between Cologne and Prague to let people get on and off. I tried to sleep but at each stop I slept with one eye open to make sure everything turned out okay. Luckily they never head counted us or anything but we did have a plan to shove me between the seats and throw a blanket over me in case they had. But God had Angels watching over me because I made it all the way there at 6 in the morning without one problem! This was the beginning to the best weekend so far!
Once we got there we headed to our Apartment that we had rented for the weekend. Caitlin had booked it for us and we actually didn’t even end up staying in our original place. The people had only booked us for 6 not 12 so they had to upgrade us to their nicer apartments which were double in price but of course not for us! They were closer to Old Town Square (which is the middle of Prague basically) and they were super nice! A picture of the inside and rooms are below. We decided to crash and take a nap and shower since it was so early and quite frankly nothing was open except maybe McDonald's!
Friday started with us wandering the streets of Prague and eating kolaches until we made our way to Old Town Square. The streets are lined with tall old buildings with stores on the base floor (not the first floor: they don’t count the base floor as a floor) and then on top of the shops are apartments, hostiles, and hotels. Once we made it to the square God was just leading us from one great thing to another. He led us right to a guy with a bright yellow umbrella. What was it? I free two hour tour guide of the city! We were sold- all we had to do was tip him! He gave us an historical over view of the city and also helped show us the places we needed to go and eat and such. He was such a big help right out of the state of New Mexico! He has lived all over the world and can speak 5 different languages.
Fun facts I learned about Prague: Prague means threshold in English and has a population of 1.2 million. Charles University in Prague is the second oldest university in Europe. The city is modeled after most German cities and in the 1800s more there were more people speaking German instead of Czech. In 1989, capitalism arose and communism was non-violently diminished. They have only been a Capitalist country for 22 years. We also learned all of the history of communism and Hitler’s reign. Prague was Hitler’s favorite town in Europe and wanted to turn into the New York of America which is why it was only bombed by two bombs total during the war which in returned preserved a lot of the buildings! The clock (picture below) is 601 years old and that is basically the most overrated attraction of Europe! We also learned that if you see a bride it is good luck. The whole weekend I saw 5! Whoop! Prague is also the biggest atheist country in Europe. I also found out that Michael Jackson is the most liked music artist and actually had a statue in Prague. Also, due to recent communist reign many people still don’t speak to each other on the streets because they weren’t allowed to when the communist ruled the country.
So after the first hour of the tour, the guide took us to this bar for free water and bathroom break which is unknown in Europe. Conveniently the bar informed us of this event called the Pub Crawl. BEST INVENTION EVER. Basically you pay 20 Euro a person and you get a t-shirt, a beer right then when you sign up, you meet at that bar and have unlimited drinks from 8-9 and head to four other bars after. At each bar as you walk in you get a free shot and then the rest of the night all you have to buy your drinks. Oh and you are VIP the entire night. Obviously, it was right up all of our allies since it was Callie’s 21st birthday. So of course we all signed up! We finished the other hour of our tour and decided that we were hungry and headed straight for the Hooters of Prague! At Hooters, the food kind of sucked- what else did we expect right? But we did get to meet one of the owners of that branch so that was kind of cool! After lunch, we went back to let the other people shower and all get ready for our fun filled night! We had to break up the showers because we had 12 people to 3 bathrooms- and 11 of the 12 were girls! Then the night began! We grabbed dinner on the go and headed to the first bar. I don’t want to give vivid details of the night but unlimited beer and shots started the night. Then we went to the 2nd bar where Caitlin, Molly, and I made best friends with the Asians. Of which the proceeded to lie across us! (Picture below) The 3rd bar is where things got wild. It was more of a club and there was quite a lot of dancing going on! I think this is when Callie put on her big girl party pants! We then went to our 4th club which was even bigger than the last and had more dancing and fog lights. There was some drama that went on and I had to buck up to a few drunken European dudes but it was nothing to big. The 5th club came next which is what Prague is known for. It is a 5 story music club where each story has a different type of music. By this time it was so late and so many drinks had been consumed that we called it quits after 5 minutes. I think in total we started at 8 and finally made it home around 2!
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