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So, I'm writing this entry at about 9:30 a.m. after a night out on the town, while the rest of the NYU in Prague world gets their twelve hours of sleep. For me, there is something about Prague that makes me want to jump out of bed and go do something after only about six hours of sleep, but maybe that will change eventually. Last night, we went out to dinner with our RA's - mine is named Honsa, and he is from a small spa town in Western Bohemia. He seems like a really nice guy, and it has been cool to be able to talk to a real Czech person about things like converting to the Euro, joining the EU, why the Czechs hate us so much, where to find cheap food, and why the Czechs are all atheists (by the way, I think this may be my senior thesis topic... we'll see). Although I've tried hard to not describe every meal I've eaten in great detail, last night's dinner was particularly good, so bear with me: duck breast in an orange cranberry almond sauce with potato pancakes and we all split a baked cheese-stuffed potato pancake/croquette-ish thing. It's all overly indulgent.

We then moved on to a local dive called "Sport Bar," where we are getting to meet the locals. It's all pretty trashy to be honest: smoke-filled rooms, cheap cheap cheap beers, and a small female bartender who isn't afraid to sleep in the booths when no one is ordering at the bar. After that we went to Akropolis, my first club in Europe. I was very pleasantly surprised. No pounding techno beats or sweaty dancefloors, just music, a bar, and some weird underground tunnels. The fact that I knew about fifty NYU students who also happened to be there made mingling a lot easier, and I would definitely not mind going back. I have created a good rule, and I intend to follow it while I'm here and maybe for the rest of my life: you will love yourself a lot more in the morning if you sip a few gin and tonics the whole night instead of pounding shots. It has worked for me, and that is why I am the only person smiling and saying, "Oh my God! Look at that church! Look at that river! Look at that bridge!" in the morning while everyone else is saying, "Ow! My head hurts! I'm hungover! I need to go back to sleep!"

I guess now is as good a time as ever to talk about the Czech national liquors. One is called Slivovice. It is a plum brandy that is thick and clear and served cold. It's horrible! I sipped one with French food the other night, and it tasted like some disgusting medicine. Don't let the plum in the ingredients fool you... not good. Now the other national drink, Becherovka, is freaking amazing. It is some kind of liqeur flavored with anise, cinnamon, sugar, and bitter herbs, and according to everyone here, "it tastes like Christmas in a glass." No one can stop raving over it, and no matter where you go, you can hear someone at another table saying "Christmas in a glass" because it's so blatantly Christmasy. Look for it in the states... it's good.

So back to the bar. It is located in a neighborhood called Zizkov under a HUGE Communist television transmitter tower thing that is both an eyesore and a Prague landmark. The building has got to be one of the most ominous and spooky things I have ever seen. It looms over the horizon, backlit with red and blue lights, and has been converted into an enormous piece of contemporary art: giant ceramic babies have been attached to the side of the tower. I don't know if that sounds as freaky and scary as it is, but trust me, it makes you die inside a little each time you see it. To add to the feeling of creepiness, we passed a mannequin store on the way home from the club. I did not even know such a thing existed, but after seeing babies crawling up a Communist television tower, a warehouse full of random arms, heads, legs, and torsos made me want to just get to bed as soon as possible.

In general, I am loving my time here. The one problem I am encountering consistently is the language barrier. Whoever said that all Czechs know English lied to me, but trying to convey what I want or need in broken Czech and sign language has made for some funny stories at least. I wanted a napkin at the bar. OK... you know maybe thirty words in Czech, none of which involve napkins, towels, tissues, wiping, or anything like that. What do you do? I took my hands, folded them over, pretended to wipe my face, and said "papir" which means paper in Czech. I ended up leaving napkinless. The next day, I was a little more successful. I needed twenty koruny coins to do my laundry, and all I had was a two hundred koruny note. I went to the local store and bought some waters, and then when I handed the cashier the bill, I made a circle with my fingers, pointed to me, and said "dvacet koruny?" which means "twenty crowns?" I don't know how in the hell that worked thinking back on it now, but it did. Oh well, I'm learning... maybe I'll be the first person you know who is fluent in Czech by the time I get back.

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