Food

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I had a looonng day of classes yesterday—seven and a half hours straight (from 9:00 am until 5:30 pm) with only a lunch break in between. I have all of my classes on Mondays; I don’t know how I will make it through the first day of each week. Thankfully, I have no class on Tuesdays, so I have today to recuperate. I did homework all morning and then went out with Jessie looking for a place to eat.

We were hoping to go to a specific Thai restaurant that the guidebook deemed the best Thai place in all of Prague. It’s only a block or two from our apartment, so we walked over there… only to discover that it was closed! (dun, dun, dun!!!) We looked at the hours posted and became rather confused. The sign said they should be open every day from 11:30 am until 11:00 pm, but the restaurant was legitimately, hardcore closed. There was even a gate thing (I’m not sure what to call it: it was kind of like what you see at the front of stores in indoor malls when they close up each store, those fence-like garage doors with locks that they pull down from the ceiling to the floor). So… Jessie and I just stand there looking utterly confused for a bit, and then a group of three girls comes over to the same restaurant. They read the hours, become confused, stand there stupidly, rinse and repeat. After a few minutes, a Thai lady pokes her head out of the restaurant door and starts speaking to us through the fence. She says, “We are closed.” Jess and I are disappointed, and just as we start to ask when they will be open again, the Thai lady adds, “forever.” Closed forever, huh? Guess we won’t be trying again next week. Oh well.

So, we took a little walk around the Namesti Miru area trying to find another place to eat. Nothing really sounded good to both of us, so we kept walking and ended up by this place called Radost, which happens to be the favorite restaurant of our vegetarian program director. There’s no menu outside (even though it is typical to have the menu posted outside here). We go in anyway, hoping it’s not overly expensive. We walk down a long hallway, find the door, and sit down at a tiny table in a dark, smoke-filled room. In the background, songs by the Jackson Five are playing, one after another. After a few minutes, a waitress hands us heavy menus that look like stone tablets. I felt like I was holding the Ten Commandments, except the words were about milkshakes instead of keeping the Sabbath. They had Mexican food, Thai food, milkshakes, etc… Most of my favorite types of food were represented and the best part was that everything was vegetarian. Sadly, it wasn’t all that cheap. I ordered a half-plate of nachos (185 crowns) and a tiny bottle of water (25 crowns), so tip and all, my stuff came out to 221 crowns. For only 30 crowns, I can go to a stand outside and buy a decent-sized fried cheese sandwich (which looks like the chicken sandwiches at Burger King, except underneath all that fried goodness is luscious cheese instead of chicken flesh). For another 10 crowns, I can get a 1.5 liter bottle of water at the grocery store. If I’m really hungry I can get two of those fried cheese sandwiches with my water, spending 70 crowns for a lot of food and water, compared to the 221 crowns for the nachos I didn’t finish. Basically, I am planning not to go back to Radost more than a few times. I should keep it as something for emergency situations, like when I just can’t stomach another a fried cheese sandwich or slice of olive pizza.

After lunch, Jess and I tried to take the metro back to the CET office to use their computer lab. It turns out that we got on the wrong metro line (There are three lines: A, B, and C. We should have listened better to the Jackson Five earlier; maybe then we wouldn’t have been so confused by the apparently “easy” A, B, C, 1, 2, 3 thing). So anyway, we had to double back when we realized we had gotten on the wrong metro line and then transfer to the right one (taking us to Mustek). Mustek is a huge transfer station with lots of exits. We went took the wrong one (surprise, surprise), so we had to take another little walk from wherever it was that we ended up to the CET building.

After checking my email at CET (a most wonderful experience, I might add), I went to Tesco and Albert alone. I bought a couple of things that I’ve wanted to have the in apartment (like Tupperware for my leftovers and a permanent marker, which has a surprising number of uses). At Albert, I bought a bunch of tomato soup with basil, along with all sorts of Czech chocolates. I’m eating one now. It’s pretty good, sort of like a wafer but covered in chocolate. Mmmm… Four crowns well spent!

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