This past weekend was used for international trips. A group of eight of us from OSU and Kansas went to Vienna. It was pretty interesting. Five of us took a bus to get there, which left at quarter after midnight and got us there at 5:15 in the morning. We left the dormitory at ten to get to the bus station. The way there was pretty uneventful, but I ran into issues once we got there. I didn’t print out my confirmation email (because I don’t have a printer…), but I copied down my reservation number and took that with me [View Full Entry]

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We went to Karlovy Vary today. Karlovy Vary (also known as Carlsbad) is a spa town, and has various springs whose waters are reputed to have healing powers. It’s a gorgeous town, really, mostly nestled in a little valley. There’s a pretty large Russian population there (I think Vlasta said over half of the property is owned by Russians), so everything was written in Czech and Russian, as opposed to the Czech and English of Prague. I would have appreciated a little more time there, but I suppose I’ll get to that later. The first stop in Karlovy Vary was the [View Full Entry]

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We had our homestays this weekend. Heather and I stayed with Vaclav. We were originally supposed to stay with one of the girls (I honestly could not figure out who she was though), but she got sick. So we could have gone with either Vaclav or Martin, and Nick would have gone with the other. We flipped a coin and ended up with Vaclav. It was interesting to go with him because we ended up going to two (three if you count the train station) different villages because his parents are divorced and live in different places. I think I learned [View Full Entry]

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It’s been a while since I’ve updated, so I suppose I should start out by talking about the opera that I apparently forgot to write about. Last Tuesday a fair-sized group of us went to an opera in the city. I can’t remember the name of the theatre we went to (I’m not sure I ever knew it, to be honest), but tickets were only about 40 crowns. For a price like that, the seats weren’t ideal, but we could still hear. We saw “The Marriage of Figaro,” which was very entertaining, but I didn’t follow quite as well as I [View Full Entry]

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I am currently distraught. This has nothing to do with Prague, school, or really anything that should logically have any bearing on my life. But one of my favorite Penguins defensemen just signed with LA. I might have cried a little bit. Also, it really sucks to be on another continent when major things are happening in the NHL because I get this information at about two in the morning. Yesterday we went to a farm in Zihle, which I’m pretty sure is west of Prague but I could be wrong. On our way there we drove through a town named [View Full Entry]

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Today we went to Czech Paradise. I can’t remember the Czech name for it, but it was absolutely gorgeous. Well, first we went to Mlada Boleslav to the Skoda car plant. So I suppose I should probably put this entry in some form of chronological order. Mlada Boleslav is a small city of about 50,000 I think, and the car factory is the major industry there. I’m pretty sure Vlasta told us they employed about 25,000 people. It wasn’t a very pretty city. It was sort of depressing because a lot of the stuff wasn’t that well taken care of. [View Full Entry]

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Today some of us went on a trip to Konopište, which is a chateau a little ways outside of Prague that was a favorite property of Franz Ferdinand. It was an optional excursion, so it was probably only half of the students here at the summer school who went. We had to ride an actual train to get there, which was pretty cool. It’s interesting to see just how much public transport is utilized here (and in Europe in general) compared to the US. The ride there took us a while, I’d say maybe around an hour and a half. Some [View Full Entry]

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I had a chance to use some of the Czech we’ve been learning last night. I was sitting in the lobby of the dormitory working on last night’s blog entry and checking my email when a man walked toward my table and started asking me something in Czech. I kind of froze, but after a few seconds I resorted to “Promiňte, promiňte. Nemluvim česky!” He gave me a bit of a blank look, then asked if I spoke English. I replied that yes, I do in fact speak English and he sat down next to me. He asked me what [View Full Entry]

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Back to classes today. We had Czech language first thing in the morning. Like I said earlier, I really like this language. To the point that I’m thinking about seeing if there are Czech classes I can take at OSU. It seems like some people are really having trouble with it and don’t like it at all, but so far I haven’t found it that difficult. Then again, we’re only learning basic things like “What is your name?” (Jak se jmenuješ?), “Where are you from?” (Odkud jsi?), and “I don’t speak Czech” (nemluvim česky). [View Full Entry]

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Classes again today. We started out with Dr. Boučkova and economics. It was actually a lot more interesting than I originally thought it would be. I took more notes during her lecture than I did for all of yesterday’s combined. After economics, we had Peroutková and Czech language again. We learned some phrases and basic questions. It was fun. I really like Czech, even if it has some of the hardest words I’ve ever tried to pronounce. Following Czech was Voráček with Czech People and Land. He’s a very interesting lecturer. He’s pretty animated, so eve [View Full Entry]

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