Czech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself!

That post title came as an awful suggestion from a fellow Hosteler FYI. So I'm still in the Czech Republic but I anticipate going somewhere else soon. It's been some good and some uneventful days, but I've had a few restful ones and I'm thankful for that. Let me recount what's happened so far.

After I wrote that last post, I was supposed to go out Dancing with Beth. Well, that didn't really happen. The hostel had a free BBQ night so me and the guys and gals filled up on sausage, some raw veggies, and beer from a keg. Good times. After dinner I went to the Cross club bar with Caroline and Jowen to have a couple beers. We met up with the two mustachioed Australian guys, Lachlan and John. and sat around with them until 2 am when a strangely energetic English girl ran into us and I went off with her to some other bar at 3. She was a bit odd but I hung out with her until 6 am when I went home.

The next day, I slept in very late of course, and then hung out most of the day at the hostel since Jowen and the others went off to visit a castle before I got up. They got to bed at a reasonable hour so I don't blame them. I went to the flea market for some cheap Asian food, and read a bit. Later in the afternoon I cooked some dinner and then headed into town to meet up with that English girl, Claire, again along with some of her friends. I went a bit too early so I got to wander around downtown Prague at night for a bit. It was really very scenic.

I met up with them at an Indian restaurant and then went to a couple bars. I think that her most interesting friend was an Arab guy named Sammy that used to live in New York and works for a branch of Monster.com here in Prague. It's the perfect situation because he's getting paid an American salary while living in a super cheap country. I really need to engineer a situation like that. It's comparable to living in California but being paid 250k per year... although cars aren't any cheaper here. Sammy doesn't need one though. The metro/tram system is great. I had fun, but I'm not going to see Claire again. She didn't know where in the world San Francisco is and I have no business associating with people like that.

I caught up with Jowen the next morning before he and some other went out for the day. I hadn't eaten any breakfast but I chased them out the door to whatever the plan included. We took the metro to the other side of town and visited a historical cemetery built up next to a church. It was clearly a posh cemetery as the grave stones were very artistic and often abstract but not so interesting anyways. We also walked by a children's fair and Jowen showed off his juggling skills. Finally, we finished up the day with several hours of Kings Cup and bed. That was a short day.

Jowen and I took a tip from a trusted source back home (Nikki) and went out to the Strahov Monastery Library. It's an old place and obviously a very old library with some of the tomes over 800 years old and printed on velum. Tragically, the best room of the library was under renovations and we felt pretty ripped off that we had to pay full price just to find that out afterwards. Still, the smaller room was pretty cool. After that Jowen and I wandered around downtown some met up with some friends from the hostel, went to the Cross club again, and called it a night. We had plans for the next day and we eager to get them in motion. Another short day.

Ok, so finally we left town on a bus to get to scenic Cesky Krumlov in the South of the country. It's a very old city and has avoided obvious development, especially in the downtown area. It basically looks the same as it did in 1800 more or less. It was raining when we got there and pretty damn cold. It's been cold for the last 2 weeks so I guess that's not surprising. Jowen got the traditional pork products for supper and I tried the beef tartar. It was basically a bowl of raw ground beef that I got to mix with my choice of mustard, ketchup, and onion. I put scoops of the mix on fried bread and I have to say it was pretty good. I think it would make a better appetizer than an entrée however. We also ran into the mustache twins at the hostel.

The next morning most of the people that were here checked out and a huge bus load of Australians checked in. The place is totally at capacity and is generally pretty crowded but I guess that I have plenty of people to talk to. I went out for a walk around town with Jowen and Charlotte to see some of the sights. There's a castle overlooking the town that is from the 13th century but it looks more like a palace than a defensive structure. It's a beautiful building even if some of the walls have the stone brick motif just painted on. On the plus side, the views from the tower are very fine.

From there we walked to the castle gardens that featured a set of fountains that we couldn't help but take comical pictures in front of. There was also a nearby duck pond and we spent a long time debating the merits of ducks and swans but ended up deciding that they're all delicious. The rest of the town is equally charming. There's the town square featuring a so called 'plague column' that I suppose is some kind of preventative measure. I don't really know how well it worked.

It was a really cold day and we didn't do a whole lot else for the rest of the day. The folks in the hostel just drank a lot of beer, watched episodes of True Blood on DVD, and chatted it up all afternoon. Good times. I've been hanging out with so many different people in the last week that I wasn't really feeling like socializing all that much so instead I kept to myself for most of the evening. Of course, I did have to come down from the attic to make use of the free keg of beer that the hostel provided that night. I broke down and hung out with some people, but mostly it was a quiet evening.

After all that peace and quiet-ish I was ready for a bit more of that. I spent the better part of the morning hanging out in the kitchen and playing music with another guy from LA. He was studying in London for a while and had a couple months of summer to travel around enjoying Europe. Unfortunately for him he's returning home in a couple days. Oh well. Anyways he's good with a guitar and inspired me to practice some more.

That night we all (6 of us) watched the movie 'hostel' in our hostel. Not a great idea as it's a horror movie about the dangers of staying in hostels. Anyways, it's significant that several of the scenes were filmed here in Cesky Krumlov and we all recognized them right away. I guess that makes it sort of a good idea to watch it, but I still regret it.

Ok, I actually did something interesting on the next day. An Aussie girl named Tarly, Jowen, and I rented bikes and went off into the hills to find a monastery. It was a rainy day (had a lot of those lately) but we braved it long enough for it to clear up after riding for a while. The woods were super green, the air was good, and we made a couple stops for beer.

On the ride back I saw some great views of town and then we went out to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner. It's good to have something not made of pork for a change. Tomorrow I'm signed up to do a rafting trip down the local river. Apparently it's pretty flat and easy, but made more challenging by the dozen or so waterside bars that we're sure to stop at along the way.