Well I made it home safe and sound. It's been raining here in Dresden the past two days (no surprise there), so I've just been catching up on sleep and homework. Oli said that I'm a Schlafmütze (sleepy hat) - my new favorite word!
We had gorgeous weather on Saturday and Sunday. It couldn't have been a better weekend for traveling. I hope we'll get the same in Berlin! On Saturday all 7 of us stayed together and wandered around the city. Prague is a much older city than Dresden since it was never bombed during WWII.
We were trying to save money so we didn't do any museums besides The Museum of Medieval Torture. I think I was the one most fascinated by it because everyone had to wait an extra 15 minutes for me to finish while I read all of the descriptions by the machines. I had to read the German for some of them because the English wasn't as detailed. Also many of the machines were invented in Germany or Austria (can I say "no surprise there" without sounding too racist?) Naturally we saw the Iron Maiden and that one that pulls the body apart, but I found a lot of new ones too. I always thought Water Torture was when you tied somebody down and just dripped water onto their forehead, but apparently it was when the victim was forced to drink a shitload of water and then lie with their back at a downward angle so the water pressed against their organs. Ouchie. The Hausdrache (house dragon) masks were also pretty cool because they had some really creative designs for what the dragons should look like. Although it doesn't seem fair that only insubordinate women had to wear them and not the men!
The whole group went to a Tea House too. It was prepared in the special monk style and we got to sit in a little corner on pillows on the floor. Lin and I shared a Lychee tea, although I didn't taste much Lychee in it. Then again, my sense of taste isn't that good as most of you know. There was some sort of 9/11 protest going on in the streets, but of course we couldn't tell exactly what it was about because none of us spoke a word of Czech. Some guys came out and rapped and one was wearing an Osama bin Laden mask, so I think they were probably protesting terrorism and the US Army's invasion into Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought about trying to ask one of the workers there what the protest was really for, but I wasn't too sure that I wanted them to know that I was an American!
We stopped by some other festivals too. One was a concert stage set up downtown. At first they only played old music videos from the 80's (which we loved) but then a real performer came out. There was also a 5K/10K race going on that evening, so we stopped by the registration site and I got a free VW balloon. :-) If I'd known about the race ahead of time I think I would have tried to take part, but I hadn't brought my running shoes with me anyways. Plus we saw the runners go past during dinner that night, and they had to do a staggered start and run on the streets or the sidewalks! I guess America just spoils us by blocking off all the streets for runners.
I know most of you visit my blog through the Facebook links, but if you're one of the three or so who don't, you can check out my pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2051081&id=1606470007&l=0537b7f225. That should be available to everyone. The picture above is the astrological clock on one of the churches downtown. We got to see it move at noon on Sunday. All of the bells chimed and then someone from the church tower played his horn.
On Saturday night most of the group was tired and went to bed early, but Anthony, Christine, Alex, and I wanted to stay up and make the most of our last night in Prague. We went out to a local sports bar with the two Swedish guys who lived next door. Us three girls really wanted to go out clubbing again, but the guys were being really iffy about whether they would come along or not. We would have felt safer with guys, but a group of three isn't that bad. So Christine, Alex, and I got dressed and ran to the metro so we could get on before it closed at 12 (I missed the 4 am stopping time in Dresden!) We went to the same 5 story club as the night before since we knew how to get there and how much it costed.
The music wasn't as good on Saturday night (the techno DJ at least.) He didn't play any popular songs and his beats were a little lighter. Alex wanted to dance to Spanish music so we spent quite a bit of time on the first floor as well. The place was a total sausagefest, so although we didn't have to pay for drinks the whole night, we were also being surrounded by guys pretty much every time we tried to dance. Some of them wouldn't even dance, they would just come and stand really close to us. Super sketchy. We met some Italian guys first because of course they were really forward, but they were all short and well, Italian, so I didn't have a good feeling about it. We followed two of the guys up to the 5th floor (the Chill Out Lounge) because they said they'd buy us drinks, but then when we got there we just sat down and they already started to get to business with us. Then some of their friends showed up, and they were like, "Hey, come over here! American girls!" Of course we were slightly offended by this, and pretty soon we had to pull the old "We're going to the bathroom" excuse while we ran down the stairs to a different floor. Definitely a benefit from being in a huge club!
We met some guys from München and Austria, and I felt good being able to speak German again. They lived so close that they were actually driving back home later that night. One of them must have been at least 7 feet tall. I tried asking him but of course he answered in meters and I couldn't convert that in my head. I mean I'm pretty tall for a girl, but I felt like I should have been wearing 6 inch heels to even hear what he said. He was nice, but the other guys were kinda scummy and all had girlfriends back home they were trying to cheat on. We didn't want to tarnish our golden perception of German men, so we left after a bit.
Christine went off to have her own fun, so Alex and I decided to get some food at KFC and wait for the metro to start running again at 5 instead of paying for a cab home. (We also couldn't remember the address of the hostel and it was too far from downtown to be on the map we had lol.) KFC was pretty much the same as in America, so that was a nice little slice of home. On our walk back to the metro station at 5, we ran into two Welsh guys trying to find their hostel too. They came up to us and said, "Excuse me, do you know what country we're in?" "Pretty sure this is Czech Republic," we answered. "Shit, we thought we were in Poland!" haha
One of them was quite the comedian, and we spent half the time giggling at their accents too. They did some American impressions for us, and we must have spent at least half an hour talking to them on the street. They were just so funny! By that time it was getting quite cold, and we decided that we might as well wait until the sun came up to go home so we wouldn't have to cross the creepy footbridge over the train tracks in the dark. We helped the Welsh guys find their hostel, and the comedian promised to make us some cheese and toast (if he had had cheese or bread lol.) We hung out with them, and there was a surprising number of people still awake in the hostel or coming back from the clubs. We went online and they showed us where Wales is (I only had some vague notion of it being a small country in the UK, which of course they pretended to be offended by.) Alex and I said that it would have been so nice to record them talking and then listen to it and giggle whenever we were having a bad day. UK accents are the best! lol My favorite was when they called wi-fi wee-fee.
We didn't do much on Sunday because we were running on only 6 hours of sleep for the whole weekend, but we did see a bit more of the city and the Royal Gardens (we had to walk all the way up a big hill to get to the entrance and then we changed our minds when we saw it costed 50 Krones.) We met up with the Swedish guys for a bit (they were leaving later that day too) and taught them how to play B.S. It was their "Travel Europe" card deck, so they were drawing on all of the face cards to represent each city they'd gone to. After they left, we napped in the park for a bit. Then we got on the 6 pm bus back to Dresden (luckily I got away with not having my passport again!) We were home before 8, with plenty of time to finish up all of our homework! Ick. But my postcard from Oli had arrived! Yay for mail! (*hint hint* for everyone else)
No class tomorrow because our teacher is going to a conference. In the evening we're going to the theater to see a medieval love story!
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