The Week of Endless Snow

Another week in Prague, another batch of strange stories.

Tuesday - Another riveting bee lesson. Our professor showed us a video of himself shirtless as a young man engulfed from head to shoulders in a swarm of bees. “it is very warm inside there” he said with an elated grin. We also tried honey/butter sandwiches which are apparently very popular among Czech children.

Wednesday - we were assaulted (verbally and physically) by Nina’s “seamstress” in our efforts to record our body measurements. After which we received no instruction on what to do with the measurements or ourselves so most of us just cruised the internet. History was more of the same power-point hullabaloo.

Thursday - Field trip with Nina to the fabric store in East Jabib. I bought supplies to make pajama shorts for the sweltering hostel and Capri pants for Spain. Finally something real to do in studio! We were then assigned our Midsummer’s night dream characters to make a costume for, but given no due date or specifics for the project. . . .Me: “Nina when will this be due?” Nina: “Okay yah, you think about it for this week and maybe yah next week too then you pin it together and yah we‘ll do it.”….. In fashion illustration we drew our hands in different positions then took a field trip to a body exhibit in old town square.
Later that night I successfully led a group of us to Lucerna- an 80’s music bar/club that I found online and looked awesome. Unfortunately when we arrived the man at the told us “finish finish” and wouldn’t let us in, so we hoped around to a few different places after that but generally we discovered that Thirsty Thursday is just not a big custom in Prague. Oh well.

Friday - slept a lot. Went to studio for dinner, came home.
Friday night - sigh, I once again headed up a successful journey across town with an unsuccessful end. This time to U Fleku - Pragues oldest Brewery/bar. It has been around since the 1450’s and apparently so have its hours.. It closes at 11 and we arrived around 11:05. But we managed to salvage the evening by doing a bit of bar-hopping….a very small bit, we didn’t make it past the 2nd bar. But for good reasons. 1. It was cheap 2. They had a jukebox thing with American music on it (CCR!!) 3. They didn’t kick us out for dancing in the only 2 square feet of floor space there. 4. We met some very loud and friendly Czech friends named Jakub and Jakub’s friend with long hair. and 5. Our new friends bought us shots. (okay that one was actually a bad reason.) Also Terry taught me the Czech motto that one should be “loyal to one man, one woman, and one beer,” which is apparently why bar hopping is frowned upon. Fun night with an easy tram ride home.
Saturday- we woke up for the hostel breakfast at 9:30 and quickly went back to sleep. We re-awoke around 11:30 and went to Bohemia Bagel for lunch with the rest of the group. Gennie, Eleanor, Blakeley, Laura-nelle and I then went to the tower on top of the astrological clock in old town square to take pictures of the city. The view was soo Beautiful. We got some really great pictures and met some really cute British guys. After that we trekked out in the snow and slush and frigid winds to Vysehrad, which is a quaint and quiet little town a few metro stops over. It has a really pretty church/castle that we weren’t able to go inside because it wasn’t Sunday and this amazing graveyard. It was huge and snowy and nestled in lush green trees with little birds chirping-very mystical enchanted garden type feel. But anyway it has all these famous Czech peoples graves, and they all are very ornate and royal looking. A very cool place to see. We popped in a café there for some overpriced coffee then trekked home.

Saturday night - our trekking group went to my favorite place around the corner for dinner, where I once again had the French onion soup, and followed it this time with a dessert of fried strawberries and ice cream. yummmmmmmmm. My addiction to that place grows stronger with every visit. After a long day in the snow and a belly full of hot tasty things I was content to just stay in and vege in my room for a night, but the rest of the girls had made plans to go to Lucerna (the sweet 80’s place that rejected us on Thursday) so I postponed my vegging until later and went out. Possibly one of my best decisions yet on this trip. We had a glorious night of 80’s dancing in front of a large video screen playing the original music videos. There was also a large stage in front of the screen to dance on . . .and being like any other stage ever built this one naturally had a few stairs to allow people to well, access it. (duh) Well, after drinking only one beer (one!) and in a fit of elation at hearing the first chords of Madonna’s “Like a prayer” I grabbed Eleanor and made a bee line for the stage. She climbed the two (yes only two) stairs ahead of me, but apparently I could not be bothered with the second one, so my brain ignored it and continued zoombie-ing towards the bouncy beats of Madonna. My left shin had different ideas though, and alerted me to the stair’s presence…twice. My right foot was in on the reminder too. Bruised but not distracted I regained control of my limbs, and enjoyed fabulous 80’s videos and dancing till 3 in the morning. I awoke later that morning to achy bruises, wondering who had been kicking my shins and stepping on my feet all night. (only one beer I swear!)

Lauren