Tourist Time

So I have officially been in Prague for a week! I'm completely exhausted, but I've been having a blast. So my flight left last Saturday and I got to Prague Sunday morning and I went with all the other CIEE people to this hotel. The hotel was really nice and we spent the next there nights there doing orientation and stuff.

One major thing I've noticed is that Americans are insanely loud compared to other people, especially Czechs. Whenever we are in a group of more than five people you would think there was a giant circus running around Prague. Czech people are really reserved and quiet. So walking down the street, the metro, tram or pretty much anywhere it's pretty quiet. So all of us Americans stand out a lot. There's also tons of dogs here! It seems like almost every person here owns a dog.  The crazy thing is a lot of the dogs aren't on leashes, but they are so well behaved and just casually walk alongside their owners and never bother people. There are dogs on the metro, in the grocery store, and pretty much everywhere. Also, Czechs aren't big on making eye contact and smiling to strangers. Whereas in America lots of the time you make eye contact and smile at strangers. So people think we're really weird here when we do that.

One think I have to get used to is smoke everywhere. In the restaurants, bars, just everywhere. My contacts and eyes are not to happy about that. There's this one bar called U Sudu and you walk in and go down a bunch of levels and there's little side rooms everywhere and it's like a maze and looks like a cave. It's a really cool place that I've been to a few times, but there's just a giant smokey haze in the entire place and because it's an underground maze its pretty much a fire hazard waiting to happen.

After orientation I moved into my apartment with my roommates. My apartment is really nice. It looks very Ikea like and it's very cozy but small compared to a lot of other peoples apartments in my program. My roommates are Niki from the University of Minnesota, Allison who is from Vermont and goes to Oberlin and Lucia who studies at Charles University here in Prague but is from Slovakia. 

Friday night I went to a Czech hockey game where they played against Slovakia. It was really fun some people were really getting into it, but it's not like American hockey where guys can beat each other up. And the Czech team won in over time so that was really cool.

My roommate Niki and I at the game

Friday night I went to this club called Lucerna for an 80/90's dance party. It was really fun and pretty much everyone in my program went there. I've met a lot of new people, but there's around 15 Wisconsin kids so it's still fun to get together with them. We've gone out other nights here to bars around my apartment and by Old Town Square. Public transportation here is really big, but it's hard to use after midnight. The metro doesn't run after midnight and the night tram runs every 30min so it's hard to make it home early here. Also bars don't close like back in the US so people stay out here a lot later, some times until the sun rises.

Laura, Jake, Erin and I showing some UW love

All of the buildings in Prague are gorgeous!

View from the Charles Bridge

We got a guided tour by some of the local Czech students we're living with and we walked around a lot of the city. It was really exhausting, but  cool to see everything. The next day we went alone with students but no Czech students to go to the same places to try and navigate the city on our own. It was a bit hectic and scary, but we were able to find our way to places eventually. This picture is of a little outdoor market where they had touristy things and then some fresh fruits and vegetables.

The group of girls I went exploring the city finished our little self-guided tour early so we went to this local place Cafe Louvre. It was really nice and we got this thing called hot wine. The white wine tastes like wine, apple juice and ginger/cinnamon and it's really good.

Julia, Roni and Kerly at Cafe Louvre

The Dancing House

Today my roommates and my friend Jake went to do some touristy site seeing. We walked across the Charles Bridge and got a gorgeous view of from the river and everything around it.

On the Charles Bridge

We went to this little island on the river that is this cute quaint area. Throughout Prague there's random statues everywhere and they're really fun to take pictures with. These particular statues are of three babies that have bar-codes as mouths. Very strange statues.

Me, Allison, Niki and Jake in front of the black baby statues

On the island we also went to the John Lennon wall. It's basically this wall that people used to paint on as an act against communism. It represents peace, love, freedom, etc. The wall is constantly changing by people painting over it. It was really cool to see all the different things people painted and wrote on it. My roommates and I want to go back in the spring and paint something there to leave our own mark in Prague.

My roommates - Allison, Lucia, Niki and me at Lennon Wall

It's only been one week so far, but tomorrow I start intensive Czech class (5 hours of Czech a today) so that should be interesting. But I'm sure I'll see plenty more by the next time I post!

Love,
Nina