Czech It!

So, I am currently located in the North Pole, otherwise known as Prague.  It is approximately 20 degrees (F) during the day, and usually below 10 at night.  The entire city is covered by snow, and not always in a pretty way.

I arrived yesterday mid-afternoon, a little later than what was scheduled.  It snowed the whole way here, pretty heavily at times, the roads were covered, with no plows in sight, and a lot of traffic.  But, luckily, I managed to sleep for most of the bus ride.  When I got here, I really had no clue how I was going to get to my hotel.  I was hoping to get a cab, but there were no cabs at the bus station, so metro it was.  I found the stop I needed pretty easily, and my hotel is right next to the stop, so that wasn't so much of a problem.

After settling in, I figured I would go and wander around and maybe go to a museum.  Yeah, poor choice.  Not only was it freezing, but it was getting dark, and I had no clue how to get to the center of the city.  My map wasn't really helping, and neither were the signs.  I retreated like a turtle into a Tesco, bought some food, and went back to my hotel for the night, where I watched "A Christmas Story" and fell asleep by 7pm.  I was pretty bummed, and worried that I wouldn't ever be able to find my way.  It was nice to sleep in complete silence though.  Because even when my flat is quiet, you can still hear the hum of the tram next to my flat, and by hum, I mean banging.  So, at least if I never found my way, I could get some work done, and sleep in quiet.

One of the markets

But, I found my way!!!  After 13 hours of sleep and some breakfast, I was able to get to the center of the city.  The snow is covering the streets and sidewalks, and no one really seems to come by and plow it, or even care.  Since so much dirt has mixed in with it, it sort of has the texture of damp sand.  It's a little strange.  And, unlike Budapest, there are Christmas markets all over the place.  I ran into two smaller ones before I got to the main one in Old Town Square.  My toes were so cold by the time I got to the second one, that I had to buy wool socks (I hate wool socks) and put them on in the street.  Perhaps embarrassing, but necessary.  I'm not sure I liked the Christmas markets better here.  Budapest seems to have a lot more variety, but they still beat the States.  I also ran into the museum I wanted to go to, The Sex Machine Museum.  I shall spare you the details and you can ask me as you want, as there are perspective students reading this :-)

Observation: Even though there are crosswalks, there are no street lamps to tell you when to go.  This doesn't bother me in the least, since I rarely pay attention to them anyway, but something that most cities have.  The only other place I didn't see them was Venice, duh.

I'm now sitting in my room, warming up for a bit, and then maybe wandering out in an hour or so to do some more exploring.

After some warmth, I wandered out again and was just really too cold to want to explore any more of the city.  I mean, it obviously didn't help that I didn't really care for the city to begin with.

After waking up and checking my e-mail the next morning, I realized that my bus didn't leave until 5 in the evening.  Great. Two hours longer than I thought.  I had to check out of the hotel, so I tried wandering around again (hard to do when you have a few inches of snow and a suitcase) and ended up sitting in the bus station for 5 hours.  Not the most fun thing ever, but not horrible.  At about 11:30pm last night, I finally arrived back in Budapest, thank goodness.


Only two more weeks left here, which also means two more weeks left of the semester.  Good luck to all those reading this who are swamped with finals and such!