czech republic

For anyone that knows me, they would know that during the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Vancouver, the Parade of Athletes is by far the best part. Further to this, seeing the clothing that they are wearing is great.

Words can’t describe my love for the Czech Olympic Team’s Trousers, which make me really happy.

Where and how can I get them? Please share, in the meantime I’ll drool at the current design above.

Waking up early to go to the airport is a pain in the ass, even if it’s only in Basel. But still it was so mentally tiring to get up after just having got home night before, and then leaving promptly out for Eastern Europe again. Of course the train to Basel was jam packed with people going to work in Mulhouse (what’s there anyways?), so I just napped until we got to Basel. As usual nobody checked passports, and I went out the door to the airport bus. This Spanish woman was so rude I wanted to tell her to get out of my face, but I put my luggage in the area and sat down after having bought my ticket. The damned machine only takes coins, and I was short on some Swiss Francs so I went and bought a sandwhich around the corner beforehand, turned out to be a lot more than I expected but hey it’s Swizterland!

Airport was clean, modern, and boring as hell. Waiting and waiting because there are no line-ups for anything. They didn’t even look at my passport when going through security, but I was on an EasyJet flight for the very first time. Lucky me to have chosen to be on the plane with a group of 40 Swiss-German teenagers about 17-18 years old who were obnoxious, loud, and just plain irritating. I avoided them like a plague whilst sitting in the London Heathrow area, clearly not wanting to go there. But we were called to line up and we stood, and stood, and stood, and stood and finally walked out to the runway about 40 minutes later. Loaded the plane, sat down and fell right asleep as we were taking off. I wasn’t going to be bothered by anyone; I swore on it.
Quick flight, and we landed in Prague, went through security and such and got my luggage. It took about 1.5 hours to wait for the luggage though, what’s up with that? Two other flights went through our conveyer-belt before ours came throught. It was probably those Swiss people smuggling drugs into the Czech Republic, usch! The sun was shining upon leaving the baggage claim area, and there were tons of people waiting and crowding around the door. I would have thought there was a superstar coming out, but I sat down for a couple hours because I had a feeling it was going to rain and going to the park in Praha 2 would be a horrible idea. Rightfully so, because as I woke up from my nap in the terminal the clouds were so dark I’d never had seen anything like it before.

I was bored until someone sat next to me, funny that eh? He was young, and had this huge bag with him and seemingly waiting. I read on the bag that he was part of the British National Modern Pentatholon team; and naïve me having no idea what that is eventually got curious. However before that a Czech man came up and begged the two of us for money, I played the I don’t speak English card, and he played the I don’t have any Czech money card. He was pushier than any other begger I’d ever seen, but eventually he left and buddy next to me and I had a good laugh. It turns out that he’s a really nice guy and coming from London, and waiting for the rest of his team which were coming from Bristol. Their flight had arrived about an hour before, and he’d been waiting since. We chatted about his sports and he was really quite pleasant. I learned that there was the world championships or something in Prague that weekend and that’s why he was there, and explained penthalon to me. It was nice to have met someone nd actually conversed with them whilst trying to kill time.

Eventually his team-mates came through and I wished him good luck, and they all ran off. I swear I am going to find out his name before I forget, because I met someone famous! At this moment though the clouds had gotten even darker and it was about time for me to head downtown to meet Matt again at his new office. It was more windy than I had ever seen, and the lightning was spectacular. I was surprised to see planes landing and taking off though in the weather, those crazy Czechs. I got on the bus, and it was fine and then transferred through the rain to the metro. I sat across from a sketchy looking bodybuilder who was hitting on me in Czech, so I moved spots and hoped to god that he wasn’t getting off at the same metro stop as I.

Matt had moved to a new building, over by the main museum so I found my way there and waited a few minutes for the clock to hit five. It had poared rain like I’ve never seen just while we were on the bus coming into Prague, so I was a bit worried that it would rain cats and dogs again. It was not to be, and Matt came out of his office all stressed out and we walked back to his flat. People again trying to get us to go to strip bars (at 17.00; wtf?) and I as usual played the I don’t speak English card. It’s really a good one to have; it takes a lot of skill!

Upon arriving at the flat and unloading our lives onto the floor, we got changed and decided that food was very necessary and went out the door. I needed cash, and so did Matt so we went to the cash machine around the corner. Something caught my eye though, as there were bunches of people taking photos of my sky. I looked up assuming to find someone about to jump off the roof in a suicide attempt, but really it was a couple of women sitting on chairs pinned to the wall, nd knitting. Interesting but confusing all the same time; who knows what it was for.

Dinner came and gone and we went back to the flat to get changed and go out to Valentino’s again. God I love Prague. He had a horrible day at work and a horrible week frankly so he was ancy to go out and dance and have a good time; I reckon he also wanted to pick up, funny him. We stopped in at a bar named Friends, and the atmosphere was really nice. He just wanted to show me how things were at different places, and I was quite pleased that I wasn’t grabbed at or molested the entire time whilst there. The night was a slight blur after I started to get a few drinks, I forgot that they were double shots, and well Matt had about six or seven huge beers, so he was pretty tipsy as well. Between frequent breaks to the sketchy bathrooms and drinking and somewhat dancing to the weird music we eventually left there around four in the morning. What was there on the way home? Well let’s just say that I was weeving in and out of the streets, and Matt was holding it together much more. We got home and I passed out even before stripping down.

Apparently when I woke up to the sound of the toilet flushing, Matt had gone down for a little bit of a puking session and then back to bed. So much for him taking alcohol better than I, but he did have significantly more than I. I was hung over like horribly, not sick just the headache and the body pains were so bad that I layed around all day. We both vowed that we wouldn’t go out becasue we were feel so ill, but we changed our minds after eating some non-tomatoe pizza at a local pizzaria. It was nice, and the sun was shining and we had milkshakes, but not before we went to Club Termix which is well lets say a bit scary at first. We couldn’t find where it was first; but he’d been there a few time. He eluded to this being the elite club for basically pornstars and amazingly goodlooking people, so I was a bit hesitant upon going. The locked door with deadbolts and a little peep hole didn’t do it for me either, but we descended and it turned out to be quite well lit and a nice place.

The atmosphere was friendly and it was fairly empty when we got there, but it’s just as well because I needed to loosen up a great deal. I didn’t notice until Matt pointed it out, but there is a novelty car hanging out from the wall. That made me laugh, and then I started to get tipsy. I rejected all non-alcoholic drinks and then found myself trying on Matt’s glasses, seeing that I looked quite good in them. You can tell my drunkeness from the massive smile and blurr in t
he photo. But after this we went to the dancefloor. Oh what a moment.

It had really filled up and there were no longer slutty guys dancing seductively so I went into the corner and we danced, and we danced, and I got really warm so without even thinking I started to undo my buttons and reveal my torso. I really wasn’t thinking, I was just really hot is all; honest! But then someone grabbed onto me, and I was like “hrmph get off me” and then I was like ok fine but only for a minute. So I danced with someone that was really quite short, and in no way goodlooking at all. I was falling over, being propped up and dancing and being felt up when Matt piped up to see if I needed help. At that moment was fine, and then I got some Czech pickup lines in my ear. I told him that I didn’t speak Czech and I wasn’t interested, but he kept saying stuff. I was confused and drunk, so I just danced some more slowly moving away. That didn’t go over well, and I got grabbed and grinded some more.

The whole time I was thinking to myself, why is it always the creeps? Anyways, luckily for me the jeans I was wearing were very tight, because ugly-buddy kept trying to put the hand down there. No go, thank God, and then after that rejection he grabbed my arm and tried to “persuade” me to go to the dark room with him. Like fucking hell I would, dumbass! I felt good rejecting him, and he fell on the floor like an oaf. Then Matt and I froliked some more being all camp, and I eventually started a laughing fit. As it turns out, Matt told me later but as I was being felt up, buddy creepster had stripped his pants down and was waving himself around at me obviously trying for me to take hold. I had no idea that any of this was happening because I was in my own little happy dancing world. I love my little world, it’s great!

So yeah, we departed and it was even later than it had been the previous night, and again I was swirving in and out in a fuss. I managed to grab some photos and a video to explain the maddness that was going on, so I share above. The real highlight of the night was the video below of us walking home, I was trippin’ all over the place as Matt points out. Oh golly.

The next day was so lazy and relaxing. We went for sandwhiches and the same Tomáš that served me last time. I think he recognised me and he smiled when I was ordering in English; he was still as flirty as the last time. We got our stuff sat down at the window to do some people watching and I got cold because of the air-conditioning so we moved. Matt was being creepy and spotting goodlooking people that were far too young for even me, so we argued about who was better looking and such and then we were off. The day was lazy, and we basically did nothing but louge around, being hungover and tired. He had work the following day but would eventually call in to work from home; and then I went to the KFC for a large order for the both of us.

I got confused using the keys so it took awhile longer and they didn’t have half the stuff that we wanted but I eventually dragged it all up the stairs and we had dinner, leaving some for breakfast of course! I woke up well rested and packed my things up whilst Matt worked, I would take the subway and busses as last time to the airport. I got lost finding the right station though, naïve me thinking that I could do it, but nooo I ended up in the wrong place. All is well that ends well though, as it was Monday morning and I made it and there was no lineup. There were some annoying British people on the way back though, talking about their adventures that sounded oh so boring compared to mine. I snickered and pretended not to understand English.

The same Swiss people were on my flight, so i was bleh, but we got home and the bus on the way back to Basel was packed with Spanish musicians. I was molested several times by a woman who kept trying to get her guitar in the right position, and then finally I got on the train to go home. I arrived in Strasbourg in the rain, got my mail and then unpacked to repack again for my trip back to Sweden. God I’m a busy little bugger aren’t I?

After the long conversation that lasted until about 04.00 in the morning, we went to sleep and awoke to the birds chirping, the bees bumbling, and the sun shining oh so very brilliantly. This was quickly welcomed with computers turning on, showers running, and chatting and mail checking to our fullest. It’s amazing what you can do when you get a couple of computer nerds and/or people that know how to use computers and/or the internet to it’s fullest, together!

After having decided that we would get out of bed for the day, we headed over into town to see the awesome pendelum thing that was up on the hill. The days have all sort of blurred into a short time now that I’ve been writing exams, but I will try to relive as much as I can remember vividly. We more or less walked around for the day and saw more buildings and ate ice creame, and milkshakes and learned about Czech history and archetecture! It was nice to see skateboarders, and to have pictures of great views and for the amazingness to all just be continued. After watching more CSI episodes we ditched the idea for “disco-nap” and started to get ready to go out for dinner and then disco again. It took me longer than expected, as usual, but after choosing the right outfits and helping each other out with fashion advice (the blind leading the blind) we made it to the door and stopped by this quaint little bar-reteraunt that I spotted the previous night with our feeble attempt at KFC. The photo on the above right is the “astronomical clock” which pails in comparison to the one Strasbourg. Pick pocket heaven again! haha

This resteraunt was nice and quaint and I ordered a nice meat plate with dumplings and some rice. It turned out to be much more than I thought but it was still really good, and with good conversation and company it made the meal much better. Thankfully for my slow eating skills this passed a lot of time before we would head out to enjoy the night life. We aren’t going to lie, but we were quite tired (both yawning :zz: ) but I wasn’t going to keel over for a chance again at Valentinos.

I was greeted with the nice surprise to know that Matthew’s friend, Tomᚠwho was a laywer. He would join us later at the club, so we headed over to Praha 2 again went straight to our place to get some drinks. It was a lot more lievly than the previous night when we arrived, so we got some coke and such and started judging everyone around us to pass the time in good company and music. Music, faboulus to say the least again, as Matthew has made me a huge fan of house, funk, and dance music. The cartoons were playing again on the big screen so I watched that and then decided that it would be a good time for a real drink. At a price of 65:- who could possibly go wrong with a vodka-coke? When I bought it I almost thought that it was spiked with someone extra, but it turned out after my 2nd or 3rd one that there are double shots in each one. No wonder I could actually taste the vodka for the first time like ever!

Apparently drinking it through a straw makes you drunker, so “subconsciously” I grabbed a straw, it was mostly just nice to suck on something, no pun intended 🙄 . Tomᚠarrived and I met him, and he was really pleasant and had a good sense of humour which was nice, and I went on to my third or fourth drink, I really don’t remember. The point is I was really starting to feel it, and yet I wasn’t dizzy or anything. This would probably be becasue I had eaten a big meal, and it absorbed the alcohool better than the last time where I got very sick. Good going on my part.

And so the dancing begins, and so the fun begins also. In a huge crowd of people you get lost really easily and nobody pays attention to people; but the ones that are half-naked on the stage feeling themself up infront of a mirror tend to get some attention, and also the ones that are jumping around all strung out also. Go team them, or something! :crazy: The music was good so I couldn’t help but admire how amazing Matthew knew all the music and what a great dancer he is. The littlest moves are yet the most awesome, including this really trippy hand move that made me dizzy and I wans’t able to master yet (saving it for next time we meet) but it was cool. We fended off some creepy people that were trying to get at Matthew, because of his so obvious hawtness and sexyness :wave: and Tomᚠhelped with that too.

Between the three of us, we were making a pretty good team, including spotting out Dreamboat who wasn’t admiring himself in the mirror tonight, but was bussing drinks again. He came to pick up my empty glass, and yet was staring at the floor; however he still came over as I said he would! I went to the bathroom at some point and felt a little dizzy, managed to get in and out without being raped, and then back again to the bar where I awkwardly avoided getting visually molested with the dancers on the bar. Seriously now; it’s just creepy that some people outwardly stare at them!

Back to the dance floor where people contiously gave Matthew looks, I don’t blame them 😳 but it all sort of progressed from simple innocent dancing to hardcore let’s get it on groove-funking! Sandwhiches, front-on, back-on, you name it, we saw it or did it, with grinding like nobody has ever seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if people got off on seeing that, well cause you know how hot it is when I shake my hips, eh?! :lalala: Anyways it continues like this for awhile and Tomᚠgets more and more drunk, drunker than I thought he was, but it was probably because of my own drunkness, but sweaty dancing leads to filthy grinding and lots of full on body moving and shaking etc etc. All in all after a few hours we got tired and decided to head out.

Dreamboat apparently checked Matthew out upon leaving, which I teasingly deny; but how the hell would I have known? I was struggling to get up the stairs alright, and we said goodbye to Tomáš, which was great having him there as he was really nice and good to meet him, and we headed down the hilly way back to the loft. I really would like to see Tomᚠagain as he was fun to have around and his company was very positive! Prague again Prague again! Anyways, we arrived home and of course I was restless and all energized from dancing. The virility of youth, I suppose; and we wrestled a bit with my frivelous weakling attempts, and eventually I gave up. Tiredness, sleepyness, alcoholness, enough said. :no: We headed to bed and didn’t wake up until a reasonable hour in the early afternoon!

Since we are young, energetic individuals we saw that we needed to do something or go somewhere to not waste the nice weather. So we went to this huge hill in Praha 2 where there were tons of people laying around in the sun. We were there probably an hour looking at the nice view, and the cute Swedish families that were around. Some guy was video-taping something which looked to be hand-porn, so we joked about that for awhile and discussed the importance of dogs in Czech culture. They are everywhere, and so is rubbish on the ground, regardless the view was great and laying in the sun was nice. I hope I didn’t get too sunburnt either!

We totally went for Czech Sausages also that night which was a great binge for me, having been on a diet last few weeks and then more CSI and an early bed time because he had to be up for work the next day and I had my flight in the morning. All in all a nice connecting trip with a reasonable time for flying.

I made it to the airport with public transit again, and it was really simple with the Metro and bus, and such and did the ticket thing in the really nice airport terminal. I followed some Finnish students around and talked Swedish with them, they weren’t very nice obviously and then got on my very small flight back to Stuttgart. There were again probably 10 people there, and the landing was pretty rough, so rough that some glass broke in the overhead compartment for a very German tourist who was a university student. I’ve never heard so much German swearing before in my life; haha! I feel sorry for him though as they were nice vauses.

I rushed from the airport to Stuttgart with the S-Bahn only to find that my train was 2 hours delayed since some problem on the track in München, damned city! I waited, and then we moved tracks and I finally got on the train and nearly in Strasbourg when we had another delay cause of some crappy TER rail service going to Séléstat, slutty town. Finally we arrived in the station and I walked home a bit disorientated by the high amount of tourists in the city due to the holiday that I wasn’t aware of. I could have extended my vacation, but that wouldn’t have worked out for other people I think, but I didn’t want to leave Prague. I had such a good time and I enjoyed it immensely, probably too much because now I want to go live there! Waaa :'(

Back to reality, and exams!

After the very difficult wonderful dinner, CSI, and sleeping evening I thought that it would be really difficult to top. Well I am wrong as usual and I had another great day. The sun was shining, the birds were churping, the bees were fornicating; all a recepie for a lovey day! So after deciding that we were going to do the ‘classical’ sight-seeing things this day, ie the castle etc., we went to get milkshakes from McDonalds (greatest invention ever!). They are really cheap there too, so I was superduper happy. Strawberries *drools* anyways!

So we embarked on our walk over towards the castle region across the bridge which was crawling with tourists. It’s almost disgusting how many tourists where there, touching things that were dirty and just being annoying tourists. At least we didn’t look like tourists or act like them; rightfully so because then I’d feel like hating myself! So we played spot the tourist, with all the tour groups around and the like we tried to identify languages and just chit chatted about history and such whilst basking in the sun. I’m surprised that I didn’t get more burnt to be honest! We finally made it through the seas of toursits, and began the journey up to the castle, the way that wasn’t the normal one like the rest of the tourists (yes we hate them that much).

Stairs upon stairs upon stairs upon Russian tourists which smelt badly, we finally made it to the top with all the cobblestone roads not making it easy to walk. Despite wearing Birkenstocks, it was still a comfortable journey! Gotta love’em. We arrived just in time for the changing of the guard at Hradčanske Náměstí, and there were tons of Texan tourists. Couldn’t help but laugh there. The important part however was the interesting differences between Czech guards and British ones. These ones can look at whatever they want and aren’t statues. Sure they don’t move much but they are allowed to if they have an itch or need to blow their noses (seems less like a dictatorship to me! :)) But they still wear traditional uniforms and look like they are going to die in what they are wearing.

The building just behind was pretty nice, who knows what it was, because at this point Matthew just needed water. The closest water location had water at 99:-, and come on people it’s sad that tourists would actually pay that! It should be around 25:- at the most, but of course being a tourist area and having no choice they bought it. We held off knowing that we’d find better, and of course we did after keeping ourself famished for long enough. Torture equals goodness for all those who didn’t know!

We took the non touristy way around the back gardens which were lovely also because they were semi-secluded. The stones along the walls that you could lean on were very cold despite being in the sun, so of course we make jokes about hawtness and well yeah, use your imagination. Onward ever striving onward led us to more guards and an entrance way into towards the church; Katedrála Sv. Víta / Sv. Vaclav. Absolutely stunning archetecture with a mix between more modern classical and gothic status. Notice the gargoyles on the second photo which I assume keep away demons, but at the same time act as drain pipes for rain. What a clever invention those crazy Czechs! The small passages that we followed to avoid the baking sun were really nice, and included a good view of the city, as well as of what lies below in the quatiers. Further to that the steps going down were a lot steeper and slippier going down so I struggled down trying not to make a fool of myself (which I probably achieved in trying to avoid the weirdness). However, upon our decent to the older part of the city something caught our eyes, it might have been the flicker of us being blinded by the sun, but more likely the reflection upon water that we saw. A Quiet little courtyard hidden somewhere; so we went to find it!

The view is spectacular, and the little courtyard was difficult to find. We made a turn into one that we thought it would be, which turned out to be a smaller weak one; but our observantness was able to locate one through another door (locked) so we went through the metro station and there was tiny little enterance. The sign told us not to bring a lot in, amongst witch was guns (funny that). So we went in and there was this huge square pond with tons of huge fish (I assume carp) swimming about and a nice little fountain. The quietness and serenity was gruarded by the fact that it was a hidden place name Vrtbovská zahrada, which was a botanical garden. Hardly anyone there, and the ones that were there were nice and calm and quiet. It’s nice to be away from all the touristy things.

Upon walking through the gardens I saw a peakcock with no feathers that was grooming itself and which led to a sort of maze in the grass which was very nice. There was something that caught my from a distance, which was rather funny, and no it’s not because I’m a whore, just because it made me laugh and made me think of something. What could three naked men wrestling amongst themselves with a snake make me think of? Robb of course! So after telling Matt this we just had a laugh and I took a photo, Robb is the one on the bottom being dominated (Haha TBB!) and what makes it all so ironic is that he’s afraid of snakes. So perfect beyond words! Yonder still from the statues was this really funky wall called the “Grotto” which was a man-made wall to depict several things next to the aviary. It was pretty nifty, and so hidden it made me feel special for us to find it!

Above was this really nice statue for the Czech Republic commorating occupation during the Second World War, and the latter picture was the Opera House that I correctly identified the first time at complete random. It looks like one doesn’t it?

In other news, we had these really awesome little ice-creame things that were a mix between strawberry and banana, simply delicious and popular too, in helping with the heat that was killing me. Lots of walking does that to you I suppose, and then we headed home to take a little break before going out for dinner. Something that I forgot to mention was that one of Matt’s Czech friends, Vojta, stopped by to burn DVD for his brothers birthday (how nice of him). He’s really sarcastic, but nice, short-lived visit never-the-less. There was an incident with a large bee-like bug that got into the flat, and Matt being allergic had a little freak attack whilst we trapped it in a mug and took it outside. It was really funny; we gave it a name, which I don’t recall. I hope that it’s still alive and terrorising other people and bringing them such happy moments!

We were getting ready to go out, because he was taking me to Valentino’s after dinner, a nice club that I was very scared of in Praha 2. We had issues finding places that didn’t have tomatoes in the menu so we folded and went to KFC, which I haven’t had in forever so it was great! There were annoying British guys there playing eye-spy (?) and being loud and obnoxious. So we played the game to figure out where their accents were from. I failed miserably, but felt self conscious cause they kept looking our way; anyways!

So we head off to the club, which wasn’t too far of a walk. Amongst the streets there were people trying to pull us into their strip bars and such, and my experience in France with ignoring people actually helped. Just don’t even acknolwledge their existance and all is good. Interestingly the beggers actually get on their knees and beg here, much better than the lazy-ass sitters on the streets of Strasbourg. We went in and I was hella-awkward, but we went to get a coke because I was under the impression that I didn’t want to drink that night; I’d rather feel around and not worry about anything. The people that worked at the bars were nothing short of goregous, but a little self-absorbed, made me laugh of course.

We went down to the lower level as there weren’t that many people there, and sat down whilst talking we spotted serveral interesting characters. One of which we referr to as “Dreamboat” for obvious reasons to which I won’t go into extreme detail. Let’s just say that any artistic sculpture by any famous artist would be put to shame by this specimen of human. Enough said. So we stalked him for the evening, to pass the time whilst semi-dancing and observing what was going on. There was a funny video going on above the beer bar that interested me, but mostly the self-absorbed half naked people dancing on the stage whilst strung out made me laugh the most.

We left a bit early as we were tired and saving our energy for the following night; so we trekked the way back and then talked for many hours and finally went to bed. It was just nice evening filled with good memories and funny things going on all around!

For all those who had no idea that I was embarking on a journey, surprise. For all those who already had known; sorry for the redundant nature of my writing but I’m writing about it anyways! I had been talking to Matt for awhile, and decided that it would be cool to go and visit him as he moved to Prague, Czech Republic back in January / February with his company from the UK. I was going to go the weekend before, but he was ill and had other company over, so it worked out better this last weekend. I found great flight deal, thanks Lufthansa, despite being sort of worried about not having any linguistic background. I tend to get nervous in those situations; paranoid really but that’s just a character trait already.

My flight left at a reasonable hour from Stuttgart, so I had all morning to get there without having to worry about sleeping in the airport (for the 6th time). I left on the 07.00 train to get there for 09.00 leaving me a few hours at the airport to eat, relax, and go through security. Turned out to be perfect timing since checking in / security lasts about 10 minutes, the rest was just reading the news that I collected on the way. The train to Stuttgart, bound for München was oddly filled especially after Karshrue stop, not surprising as it’s always a huge stop for some reason. All the businessmen got off at Stuttgart though, so I felt like one of them, despite being dressed a great deal less nice than them.

Hopped off the train, wandered down to get a bagel and then went to the S-Bahn to get to the airport, of which was empty and quiet during the morning hours (in other words, it was great). Automatic check-ins are my friend, just now I need to have a larger credit on my card so I can actually buy tickets with my own credit-card. In the waiting area, I shared the normal Zürich area, and a flight going to Romania so there were tons of really different looking nationalities. None of the people going on my flight to Czech Republic were actually Czech, kinda funny!

The flight was quick, up-down-1-hour, and I was in the nations capitol with a backpack and a bunch of Czech Krona and didn’t know where to wait. I had to wait until around 17.00 until Matt got off of work, and I would meet him downtown somewhere which was unarranged. I could have stayed in the luggage pick up area but I didn’t want to get arrsested by the guards, plus there was more going on in the arrivals area. In other words I saw a group of Canadians who were traveling for footie, a bunch of Danish missionaries collecting their people from Danish flight; and even some Finns who were arriving from Helsinki. There was also this group of Asians (from I think Cambodia) who were dodgy and hanging out there nearly as long as I did.

I tried to sleep, listen to music, but it was really boring and I had a lot of time to kill. About five hours in any case, but it’s all good (better than wandering a city alone). I was originally going to take a shuttle bus, but since I was bored I embarked on a public-transport journey, so a bus to metro then metro to downtown. At only 20:- it was a great deal, that means that it was about 0.80€ (love it). The bus was crowded with Czech people who were staring at me, cause obviously I am not as amazingly attractive as the Eastern Europeans, plus they were probably just curious. The metro was packed, so I was paranoid about being mugged or raped or something, but all went well. I followed some guy who seemed to know where he was going, so when he got off, luckily it was the same place. I didn’t speak any Czech so I had no idea how to say “excuse me”, turns out to be simplier than I had originally thought!

Got to Můstek station, the apparently largest one in the city, and then wandered to the street where I could be “spotted” and called Matt. I stayed put since I thought it was the best idea, and then gave semi-helpful descriptions as to where I was. And arrived he came after a few minutes, dressed up in his smart work uniform where he’s not seen, but must look best due to “company image.” Sounds pretty funny to me, but I would like it, I love dressing up in nice clothes as it makes me feel a lot better about myself. Plus I look hawt in a tie, anways.

So we headed to his flat, which had a front door entrance with those old fashioned keys (awesome) and then six flights of stairs which really is about ten flights of stairs due to high ceilings. His loft is amazingly nice and wooden, with skylights; in other words I was highly impressed. The hot weather had us pooped so we relaxed for a few minutes before deciding that we would go for some snacky-foods at a bar. As most people can gather from my social retardedness, bars are sort of weird for me, but it was okay cause we got nachos and just chatted. I think I’m just a little more put off by bars and pubs because they are usually fulled but at the hour of 19.00 it was quite nicely emptied.

We walked around for awhile after that just to orientate me with the general area, but lack of structure or direction worries Matt. I go with the flow, so turning down random streets doesn’t bother me at all. As a side note I nearly stalked someone who walked by; I can’t help it if some people are attractive. But since I’m not a stalker, I restrained of course (I’m awesome). I saw gypsies but I didn’t realise they were them, so I was confused but oh well! We floated some more and then decided to go to a very Czech place for dinner, it was quite late but amazing. It’s a nice resteraunt, a lot nicer than I had expected but we had to wait whilst the waiter fixed some problem and then we got a nice little window seat in a room that was nearly empty apart from a little business meeting in the corner.

Our food was amazing, I had milled carp, a very Czech dish with patotoes and bacon on the side. There was a weird sause on the fish which I thought might have tomatoes in it, so there was a bit of a scare; and all ended well after it turned out to have none in them. Maybe a raddish sause Matt thought? I wouldn’t know, I’m bad with tastes, but the result is that I didn’t die, which we were both really happy about. If we had to call an ambulance I and he would have no idea what to say. Chances are they wouldn’t have spoken English! I was flattered and felt guilty after leaving, even after a nice evening of calm conversation and followed by C.S.I. episode watching.

I felt like I had been there for a lot longer than I was, but I guess that’s just how great I seem to get along with some / most people. The social bufferfly wings had spread! And after some that episode, and falling asleep serveral times during V for Vendetta (his favourite film) we went to bed. The film was really good, but I seemed to have missed some parts after dozing off. I denied all such things at first, but apparently it’s true, I know that I closed my eyes for some time, just unknowing the duration of such naps. Again I felt bad, but it’s okay and understandable as I was quite tired after the few hours of traveling and then five hours waiting around in a airport!

First impressions of Prague, were great; very touristy, very nice, friendly people, and lots of nice archetecture. And as a side note, there is nothing wrong with having a SmartCar as a dream car. We passed this building that I claimed looking like a opera house, we laughed, but days later it turns out to actually had been one. Go me! I’ve got a good eye for types of buildings!