No Cream, Prosim!!

Hello!!

I was pretty hesitant to start a blog before my European adventure began, because I didn't think I'd have enough to write about. But after about 20 minutes on this continent, I was ready to start a blog.

It all started when the clouds finally parted over Cologne on the flight into Frankfurt (a few hours after my first legal drink! courtesy of Lufthansa). Now I've never been to Europe before (excluding a 5-hour layover in Amsterdam). So I have always thought of Europe as a place I learned about in school, but not one that exists in the present reality. I noticed a few things when I finally got to see the land below... Nothing is straight here. I'm used to seeing identical houses from the air, on blocks with 90° angles, and neat square/circle farms. But I quickly saw that every house was different, the streets made no sense, and the land was sliced randomly and beautifully. I also was really surprised that the first thing that came to mind when I saw Germany from the air was... this is where the Holocaust happened. It hadn't been on my mind much during the flight over, but as soon as I looked down and saw some forests, it haunted me a bit.

Oh and before I forget, the Frankfurt Airport would not be worth mentioning had I not found this incredible post-Inauguration newspaper there.

Praha began with a bang, quite literally. Our plane kinda dropped on the ground suddenly, and I think that it was meant to tell me, "Wake up, YOU'RE IN PRAGUE!" Oh and if you ever fly into the Czech Republic, you may have to be worried about the landings, but you definitely do not have to worry about customs because... they don't check anything, they just wave you through.

My apartment here is crazy nice. My program furnished the whole thing with Ikea, so it has a really modern feel. I'm living in a double, and then there is a triple of girls on the other side of the living room, and all four of my roommates are pretty awesome. Unfortunately, in just the first four days our outlets stopped working, then our fridge stopped working, and then our water stopped running. But all of those things are back up, so all we need is wireless internet, which we've been stealing from a great café below us. All of the apartments in my program are spread out, ranging from 3 minutes from our center where classes are (my apartment) to a few subway stops away, so I really lucked out. This is a picture of the living room...

My favorite point in Prague thus far is at one end of Wenceslas Square (pictured), which is more of a huge avenue here that we live near. I was just standing with friends looking down the avenue toward the National Museum, and then looked around in a circle, and all I could see where cobblestone roads and beautiful buildings (not that these are rare here). Walking around has been my favorite part so far. The Old Town looks like a bunch of fake facades at an amusement park or something in Vegas, but it's all real!! Which really boggles my mind. There've also been some really strange walks, like exploring an area that was created in 1348 while hearing Alanis Morissette sing "Ironic" (every store/restaurant plays American pop music). Another incredible walk was the first day it rained, when the stone streets were wet and shiny, and everyone had their umbrella, and it just really looked like one of those impressionist paintings in Paris in the 1870s, I wish I'd taken a picture.

My program so far has been orientation and Czech language (we start classes next week). We've had general, academic, and city orientations, and the city has been by far the best. It was a day-long scavenger hunt around the city in teams of 9, and we won (it was kind of amazing race-like)! On the hunt, I developed a reputation as a planner (shocking, I know), so we'll see how many things I end up planning this semester. It was a lot of fun to find places both known and unknown, but I really wish Bohemia Bagel hadn't put bacon and egg on my pastrami sandwich. Which reminds me about the title of this post... everything here comes with "cream." No one really knows what it is, but I try to avoid having it with meat, since it's definitely dairy. But every time I try to order something without cream, I get really strange looks from waiters/waitresses, so I've stopped asking (Prosim means excuse me, or really anything else you want it to mean, it's utility phrase). The food service here is also often reaaaaaaally slow, I've had a couple 3+ hour dinners.

I'm sorry this post is so long, I promise the rest will be shorter because I won't have so many days to cover! But the near future should be really exciting. I'm probably going to Dresden, just across the border in Germany, for a day trip on Saturday with a bunch of people from my program. It'll be nice to go see somewhere else after touring Prague for a week and a half, although I'm really excited to start exploring less touristy parts of the city (although there are very few tourists here in January). And then for our first free weekend in February (my program has lots of planned activities on weekends), we might go to Milan and Venice!! But this remains to be seen, as my planned adventures can change pretty dramatically any minute.

Thanks for reading! I hope you're all doing well, and if you're anywhere but California, I hope you're managing with the super cold weather again!