As always my journey to Prague was full of adventures. Just to sum it up quickly lets say that I managed to break two bags, get a mustard stain on my brand new shirt, nearly faint in an airplane bathroom, but, finally, somehow, I managed to get all of my things to our wonderful apartment. Right now I am living with Ana and Rachel, but there is one more girl who has yet to arrive and she will be our fourth roommate. The apartments are very large and spacious. They have great full kitchens with nice, flat stove tops, microwave, big sink, good pots and pans, mini-fridge, etc. Some grad students in Geography at Charles University, where our classes will be, met a big group of us at the airport and helped us navigate public transportation.
Our neighborhood, Zizkov, is a little rough. It isn’t anywhere many tourists ever go, so it seems really authentic. Right down the street is a bank and a supermarket, which Ana, Rachel, and I hit up as soon as we got our stuff unpacked. Oh, and I forgot to mention, there are only two big double beds in each apartment, so we have to share…..But anyway, we went to the super market and tried to navigate our way around Czech groceries. A lot of things are the same, they have cheerios and Yoplait, and Twix, etc. The most perplexing thing was trying to figure out what was milk. There definitely wasn’t any skim, but we couldn’t tell what was milk and what was yogurt, so we’ll have to see what we ended up buying. We also learned, after we went to the check out, that you have to weigh your own produce….oops.
We sat our on our balcony that over looks a parking lot and a shady apartment building and ate some bread and chesse. Someone described our neighborhood as kind of like Queens, if that helps at all. Professor Magilligan took us all out for our first Czech meal just down the street from our apartments. I had both potato and bread dumplings (which are essentially just slices of potatoes and bread), red and yellow? Cabbage, sausage, pork, and ham. My neighbors got potato pancakes, so I had some of those too.
So despite the crazy day of travel, it has turned out to be a great first day in Prague. Tomorrow, if the rain holds off, we are going to explore the more touristy parts of the city.
BYE!
AnnyDoug
