Praha, Pivo, Prosim

First, I’ll mention that I am now TEFL certified. Woo hoo! This is a good thing. Bad thing is the job market is shitty and it’s not going to be as easy/quick to find a job here as I initially thought. New friends in Prague are confirming this so um, yeah, that pretty much sucks. I’m moving into a new place tomorrow but am now 100% officially unemployed. Damn.

On a good note, Chris threw us a party at his place last night (good ‘power move’ on his part) and there was far too much alcohol. He also cooked dinner which was super nice of him to do and I think we were all more than appreciative of his efforts. A party that was supposed to end at 10 ended much later and most of us have strange/humorous stories about our evenings. I went to Old Town with a few people but when I got on a tram to head back, I chose the wrong one and it took me across the river. Let’s just say that I needed to go east and well, the tram went west. The public transportation here in Prague is great. It is very reliable and easy to use. However, the regular tram schedule changes after midnight as do the tram numbers. The frequency of stops drops to about 1 every 30 minutes and often you need to get transfers to get to where you need to go. So I knew I was up a creek when the tram was headed across the Vltava. I had a series of expletives going through my internal dialogue as I knew it was going to be a pain in the ass to get back. I walked back across the river and got a tram at the Narodni Trida station. That took me to Namesti Miru where I got a second tram. Tram 3 was at Olsanske Hrbitovy. Hooray. My dumbass move cost me 90 minutes of my life. ACK!

Since today has been my first official day of freedom, I wanted to get out of the flat and check some things out. None of us have really seen much of Prague yet so I’m anxious to do what I can when possible.Initially, I wanted to go to Petrin hill and I thought that tram 22 would take me there. I was sure I had read that but alas, it did not. When I doubled back, I walked around the grounds of Prague Castle but being that it is a Saturday, it was very crowded so that was a short side trip. I headed down the hill and went by foot into Josefov and Old Town. There is some kind of regional European festival in Old Town this weekend so in Old Town Square there were food and beverage vendors set up. Good times. A Gambrinus was 40Kc (a bit overpriced but everything is in that area of town) and although it was a bit cold, beer is never a bad thing. I contemplated a visit to a Salvador Dali exhibit but canned that and ate lunch instead. Amos is just down the street from my new crib so I noshed there. I had some rather interesting pork ragout in pancakes and little potato croquettes that were basically Peanut M&M sized fried balls of doughy goodness.

There is an underground Albert super close to the new place and being one who likes markets and grocery stores, I browsed a bit. This Albert is a decent-sized store (bigger than the Lidl’s we’ve been going to) and its also 2 levels. Because it is multi-level and a grocery store, there is a moving sidewalk that is tilted at probably a 20 degree angle. Check that off my list as something I had never seen before.

After Albert I walked around Palladium because it’s awesome and so very close. Sorry, I keep going on about the amazing location of my new apartment but it seriously is the shit. On the food court level they were having some kind of presentation. And here’s one more thing I can check off my list….. what kind of presentation was it? Well, there were lights and a stage set up for a……Czech deaf teen fashion show. Yes, you read that right. The emcee was flanked by 2 women who were signing and then the ’show’ started with a girl coming out and signing to a Frank Sinatra song It reminded me of the Helping Hands kids from Napoleon Dynamite. The second bit was a funky R&B number with hip teens strutting their high fashion shit around the stage. Random side note…do you know how deaf people ‘clap?’ I did not until today. They put their hands in the air and essentially just wave them around. So, rather than give audible appreciation to the participants, there was just a sea of waving arms in front of me. *I saw a super cute baby at the show and snapped some pics.

I was finally able to get out with the ‘good’ camera so I snapped most of these today. They’re kind of random. The first pic was taken in this apartment building. I wanted to finally use the tripod that Omar bought me so…..