Praha

"Never let schooling interfere with your education" - M. Twain

-School-

After another week of procrastination, on numerous fronts, not just my blogging, I am finally catching up with all the work that I have left undone. Perhaps unluckily for you all, my blogging responsibilities fall in the middle of my list of priorities rather than at the top. Luckily, for me, I have been taking Twain's quote more seriously than I often do. Since I have been rather frustrated with the schooling system here, I have been spending time exploring more of my interests.

I am finished with my old classes and have just started my new courses. In my opinion courses aren't the fun part of studying abroad, but the work they entail still has to be finished. This block starts now and finishes in the end of January. Since I am leaving early, I have to do the work for these courses in a more condensed period. I will also have to write one ten page and one 5 page paper over winter break ( or at some point before then).

-Prague- Praha-

I have gotten to do a bit of weekend travelling to Prague. After finishing our school work many of the Californians headed to Prague. I was on the same flight as the American boys (Paul, Alex, Dave and Ronald). Kristyne and Camille had travelled there earlier as they had fewer end of block obligations. It seems all the Californian students had been told by numerous sources that Prague was one city that we simply had to visit. I must say that we were curious to find out exactly why.

After getting a bit lost out of the train station. I found my hostel. This is a picture of the entry hallway. It reminded me a bit of the Berkeley Student Co-ops. The Hostel was upstairs in Praha 1. It was close enough to old town and once I found it the first time it was easy to find again.

That night, after flying in relatively late, several of us went out looking for dinner. While it was around 10:30 almost every place to eat dinner was closed. This seemed strange to me, since in many southern european countries, dinner doesn't start until 9. In the Czech capital though, they do not dine late. We ended up eating stand sausages and warm mulled wine. It was quite a hearty and nice meal for a rainy night.

The next morning I was determined to see what exactly made Prague so special. So, I got up early, had a pastry (that looked surprisingly like a doughnut filled with nuetella) and some tea. Below is what I saw walking around that day.

Main Square- Sculpture of a hertic

River and Saint Charles Bridge in the background.

That night I went to see a Prague speciality called black light theatre. I saw Faust by Goethe. The production did not have any dialogue and was about an hour in length. The way they represented the play was quite comical. Black light theatre means the use of black lights to obscure certain things and highlight others. Some of the costumes were very florescent and they could make it seem as though puppets were flying through space. I couldn't take pictures of the performance and it is rather difficult to describe so, here's a video of a different production. It should give you some idea of what I saw.

That night, after spending forever, trying to meet up with Kristyne we ended up eating a at a little cafe and I ran to my production.

Saturday morning we all headed out to check out the Lennon Wall. Here are some pictures from that excursion and what we found along the way.

After fooling around in the fall leaves and enjoying the relatively nice weather (we saw some blue sky) we decided to head up the hill overlooking the city.

Petřín Lookout Tower

On Sunday before our flight left, I spent some time in the old Jewish quarter of the city and visited the Franz Kafka museum. I don't have any exciting pictures to share from either of those places, but both were very interesting.