This is the dawning of the rest of our lives... On Holiday!

Guten Abent avid readers. I apologize for the delay in posts, but I have been very busy. I also have multiple posts in the works for all of you to enjoy!

Today, Monday, June 1st marks a German Holiday to be celebrated by all. It is the first official day of summer vacation for K-13 students in Germany. Many German families take off onto the crowded autobahns and head south for a weekend of warm weather and relaxation. As a group of abroad students, we got Friday AND Monday off… Woo Hoo. The big debate was where to go. There were talks of Switzerland, Amsterdam, and Prague. We met a man from Chicago on our pub crawl in Berlin last weekend that gave us a great piece of advice. By the way, his name was Gary and he sold massive amounts of produce to the USA from Europe. He told us that Amsterdam is fun, but you can do that in a day. The place to go is Prague. We scheduled the hostel, booked the train, and as of Tuesday, we were set to go to Prague Friday Morning. But wait, are we going to waste a perfectly good Thursday night with no class on Friday? Absolutely not!! We arrived at the T.V. Club at 9 pm and got our dance on until the sun came up…Litterally. Due to our longitudinal position it gets dark around 10 and light around 4 am.
WAKE UP! The 7 am alarm wrecks the beauty of the REM cycle. It’s time to go to Prague. After a coincidental run in with our professor, who sensed our late night shenanigans we were off to Prague, and he was off to Berlin for a CNN interview.
We arrived, checked in and immediately took a quick 3 hour power nap. After which we headed to the bar located in the basement of the Hostel. We met some cool people, a few Canadians, a Chicagoin, and a couple Brits. We sifted through the pile of brochures that we had and picked a few cool looking things to do, as well as ruling out weird things such as the sex toy museum.
THE PLAN: 10:30 am a FREE walking tour of the city by a very nice girl from New York. While we were waiting to depart, a woman leading a different tour group stopped me and asked me where we were from, I replied with Dayton, OH. She recognized the logo on my hat, which a lot of you know, I never leave home without. She went to Wright State U, a school in downtown Dayton and grew up in the “Oakwood” bubble as she called it. She had graduated and left the US to live life a little. It is such a small world. Then we saw a huge crowd of photographers and journalists. This must be important, so we just watched as two men surrounded by people walked around us. A man standing next to me yelled at these men who turned immediately turned and came over to talk to him. They asked him where he was from and blah blah blah, I’m a politician, blah blah, all of this was going on while security pushed me back away from these two men, whom I have absolutely no idea who they are!! As soon as they’re out of sight a british girl standing next to me was freaking out. I asked her who they were, and she replied the conservative party leader of Great Britain, David Cameron. I chuckled and thought “Whoop di do bazzle!” –Austin Powers reference.

We met a few more brits, Paul and Tasha, and a few more Canadians on our tour. We learned a lot of the folklore and history of the buildings, which I thought was very cool. If you look at my pictures on facebook, I will try and explain them as best I can. I apologize for the quality of the pictures, my camera seems to be on its last leg. After taking hundreds of pictures of very cool buildings and sights in the very crappy weather, we were ready for another nap… But there’s no time! We are headed to the pub crawl that tours the great bars of the city. Spencer, the bar tender from the hostel’s bar, told us to find a man named Issac, he has the best pub crawl in town. We grabbed the brochure and headed for nothing but a spot on the map and a name.
As we were leaving the tram we heard someone yelling, OHIO!? Startled by this, we all turn around. It was Paul and Tasha, the people from London that we met on the walking tour. They were going to the pub crawl as well! Perfect! As we walking in a group of 17 people, we were heckled by a man in shadows.
“That pub crawl sucks, you’re wasting your money” he said.
“Where is the good one then?” someone replied.
“With me.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Issac, I lead the good pub crawl through town” he replied.
Our stars have aligned and we have been united with Issac. We tell him Spence sent us, we get a reduced rate and off we go. We went to what I would view as the 3 sketchiest bars in Prague and then to a techno dance club. I met a kid named Mike that attends Michigan State as well as a few Aussies, and Cubans. The dance club at the end of the crawl was straight out of a movie. The DJ had the headset with the LED lights, the strobes were going, the fog was rolling, it was fantastic; let’s dance. Once again, the stars have disappeared and the sun is rising. Oh what a night.
(I will post a video that I took at the Club at the bottom of this page. )
Sunday was filled with more sightseeing and mediocre food, but I will explain that in a later blog about food. Part of the group met a very nice girl named Sarah who had an internship in Vienna and was in Prague for the weekend alone. She hung out with us for the rest of the night! Sunday night, we are off to the haunted city tour. Sounds like a trap to me, but what else do I have to do on a Sunday night in Prague? We walk up to the tour guide, tell him we’re from A&O hostel get a reduced rate and off we go. But wait, who’s that? Is that our friend Tasha and Paul from the night before? It is! So they tag along for the scary tour as well. This was probably the biggest tourist trap I’ve ever been a part of. It was quite entertaining, but I was ready for a beer at the end of it. Along the way we saw bars that had live musicians playing guitar and singing American rock songs. This was killing me not to play, it’s been over 3 weeks since I’ve played my beloved telecaster and this was rubbing it in my face.
The tour ended and we headed to a small Irish pub called the Dubliner with our new British friends and Sarah. The little hand reached the 1 and some of the crew was ready to call it a night. On our way to the tram we were approached by a man promoting his club. Half of the group decided to put the turkey to bed, the other half decided to go check out his club. Once again the sun was seen peeking up over the horizon by the time we got to bed.
Monday consisted of killing some time before our train and then a 4 hour train ride home to Leipzig. As we were entering the train station, who do you think we run into? Paul and Tasha! After a quick exchange of the nights events after we parts ways, we said our goodbyes thinking the city is a very small place indeed. We arrived in Leipzig on time, and I’ve never been so happy to see the 7 story communist architecture building I call home.
The exchange rate in Prague is pretty good. They use currency called Crowns, it is about 20 crowns to 1 dollar, which is startling when you order a big mac and you see the number 60 for your total. If you’re looking for a cultural adventure, I would not recommend Prague. It is very tourist oriented and you have to work very hard to experience the local culture, which is far from glamorous to say the least. The city, however, is very beautiful due to the fact that it is one of the few cities that wasn’t devastated by WWII.