Day 5, Wandering Old Town and "Carmen"

---

Day 5
Wandering Old Town and "Carmen"

So I decided to stay in Prague for the weekend, to try to get my bearings. Most of the people in my program are traveling this weekend, a group in Barcelona, some in Vienna, Salzburg, Poland. I've decided I want to concentrate most of my outside Prague traveling in the Czech Rebublic, Poland, and maybe Budapest. I'm likely going to Poland two weekends from now, to Krakow and to seek out my grandmother's family's village (I am Polish).

So this weekend I rocked it Hans Solo style. Slept in late, then took the tram to Old Town, and wandered around taking pictures. I really wish I had a nice camera like everyone seems to have so I could really take some quality pictures, but I'll do my best. It was pretty cold and wet today, with the blue and grey skies seemingly battling for who would dominate each hour of the day, but it did make to add different emotional colors to the buildings (I am a film student and think this way).

There are surprisingly not as many musicians around the Old Town as I had hoped, so it looks like I'm going to have to try a little harder than I thought to find them, I'll likely see if I can find a music club tonight. Hmmm, one of my neighbors is listening to Jeff Buckley....lately I've been listening to Last.fm, the online radio station, and discovering Eastern European classical composers and modern artists, the Bulgarian Women's Choir is amazing!

Ran into a girl from Florida at the TI around 5 PM. Her name is Brook and she recently graduated from college in Florida, interior design. She worked a year in NY as a designer of stores for fashion designers, and now's she's taking a break, doing a 2 month trip around Europe, meeting up with friends from the states wherever she goes. We decided to search out where we could find cheap tickets for some sort of musical performance, ended up at the National Theater, getting tickets from a scalper for $10 for "Carmen," my second opera ever. The seats weren't very good, but there was an English translation screen (I did sneek down to almost ground floor during the second half 😉. There were 5 curtain calls because the audience was so impressed.

Afterwards we tried to find somewhere to eat, which was really difficult late at night, ended up finding a place but waited an hour to get served, plus they charge extra for "coutour" the use of napkins and utensils, plus a service charge. How bogus is that? Apparently, gyping tourists for every cent possible is very common in Prague (unlike the rest of the Czech Republic, which is roomered to be way less expensive). Learned a lot of info from Brook about hostel travel which come in handy soon. As the subway stops around 11 PM in Prague, we called a taxi (AAA taxi and city cab are the most reputable, program their numbers in your cell phone) and I got back to the dorm (and her to her hostel) real quick. The rest of the night I sat in my window ledge, enjoying the only cold weather I may get until next November in the states), finished a song I had been writing, channeling the city's ancient vibrations.

---

Photos

Tyn Church
with blue sky

Charles bridge
when it rains

Tyn Church
with rainy sky

"Carmen"
a scene from "Carmen"at the National Theater