Aug 28/29, 2013
The first flight out already affected my travel
plans, grr. My plane to Chicago was delayed for an hour because of a flight
attendant. She was supposed to be on a flight out of DC so they needed her to
fly out asap. Her flight to DC was coming in an hour late, so they switched
flights! They had my plane fly to DC then, and we had to wait for the hour late
plane in order to fly to Chicago. Bah. Luckily I still got my connecting flight
despite others missing theirs.
The rest wasn’t bad. I got sick with a cold right
before that left me nauseous and feverish during the flights. The Dramamine
conked me out. I slept through like all the flights! It was definitely easier
to fly like this while sick. At Frankfurt, the guy at passport control even
noticed how tired I was, haha.
After I arrived in Prague, I was worried that my
suitcases would have gotten lost somewhere along the way because of all the
layovers. But, they came! So heavy though: 45 and 42 pounds. I lugged them
behind through customs declarations and the officer ran over immediately
because I had two suitcases. >.< He just asked for my passport though and
whether I had anything to declare, and then I was off.
I then had to find the Airport Express bus to take
me to the downtown train station so I hit up an information booth that let me
know where it was. I had great timing and actually caught the bus earlier than
I thought I would. The bus was jammed packed for the 40ish minute drive. Got to
see a bit of Prague along the way! So I managed to buy my ticket to Plzen, the
lady understood me fine, yay! Only $5! I could have caught an earlier train,
but since the people I am staying with for a week, Lori and Marek, were
expecting me later, I just hung around. So weird being unable to understand anything!
All the signs are in Czech, and it sounds so odd. Reminds of Russian and
Ukrainian a bit.
Caught the train, which was mostly empty, and made
it to Plzen shortly before 10 pm. It was a rather small train station and I
made it all the way outside where I waited for about 20 minutes. Lori and Marek
had to go borrow a larger car from his parents.
It was great meeting then both. We headed back to
their apartment which is absolutely gorgeous! All nicely renovated and
decorated. They live on the third floor so Marek helped me drag my suitcases
all upstairs. They have two kitties, Pippa and Jack, that look pretty identical
and are very cute! We chitchatted a bit. They are very easy to talk to and I
enjoy the topics!
----
Aug 30, 2013
I managed to sleep seven hours through the first
night, whoop! That morning I had some delicious yogurt without chunks, and
strolled a bit around the neighborhood. It’s a nice area here with huge villas
that were mostly split up during the Communist era.
I then went grocery shopping with Lori at Kaufland
which was fun because a lot of the packages had German on it since it’s a
German store. It’s interesting to see the food and prices. The food is pretty
similar to European fare, with some Czech specialties. They still have bakeries
with broetchen and pretzels here too.
Lori and I talked some more. We have a lot of
things in common and it’s always great discussion. We went out for drinks at a
café in the evening downtown. She showed me a bit around the center. It’s very
interesting seeing which buildings were the Communist ones. So boring and ugly.
They were stuck in between these gorgeous ones. I got to drink my favorite,
bitter lemon, again! We took the street train there and back so it was very
quick as well.
----
Free wifi is so much easier to find here in Czech
than in other countries! It’s so nice! All over downtown there are restaurants
or bars that offer it. How nice!
The language seems so far out of my grasp, but I
have to remember I’ve only been here shortly! There are couple words I remember
when my friend tried to teach me a bit of Slovak. Like ahoi, dobry den, ano.
But even the simplest things like please and thank you sound so hard. I think
having a cold isn’t really helping with my pronunciation either.
