when the day breaks, after nightfall

Gosh. Well where to begin.. the problem with not having time to update the blog regularly is that by the time I DO have time to write, there’s so much to say that it’s really a fairly daunting endeavor. And the past week merits more than just a bulleted highlights list, so it looks like I’m in for the long haul. 23:32. We can do this.

Monday I had my Fulbright internship, and it was great, as always. I made a handout with instructions for how to write a Fulbright/university recommendation. Not how to ask for one, but a sheet for professors with basic information about writing recommendation letters. It’s not common practice in the Czech Republic to write recommendations, so an outline was needed at the Fulbright center. Not sure that I was entirely qualified to tell professors how to write recs, but with the assistance of Dr. Joe Schall from Penn State University (who has written an entire book on the subject…?) and other sources, which I of course cited, I think I gave some pretty solid advice. The next thing I did, and continued doing this week, was start to create a database of past Fulbright students, teaching assistants, and administrators who have come to the Czech Republic. They all have files, but the files aren’t computerized. Enter: me. It's not really as dry as it sounds, and as I've mentioned before, it's always nice to feel useful in Prague. 

Monday, Katie was in Prague for a few days, so I had dinner with her and her friends at Ferdinanda then wandered around Prague with them. Tuesday, Renee and I took a quality mid-afternoon coffee break when our regionalism class was unexpectedly cancelled. Well. Unexpected for us. Lisa said he told us last week (when Renee was gone), but I was apparently too absorbed in drawing beach scenes on my notes to hear him.. hah. On Tuesday night, a bunch of us went to Lemon Leaf for dinner.  Always a major win. Tuesday night, Kyra and I headed over to our Budapest trip reunion at Popo’s bar, but, get this, it WASN’T the one beside our apartment. Who knew? Popo’s is a chain, so we went to one over in Old Town, and Jude wasn’t our bartender, and they knew how to make mixed drinks.. weird. But we had a great time, and a lot of people showed. After Popo’s we headed over to Radost to catch the some of the Germany vs. Austria presentation battle. Fun times.

Wednesday was.. wait for it.. wait for it.. WTCD! Made even more awesome than usual because we took a one car train to some nature, went hiking up a very steep hill and through some fields, and ended the class with beers (courtesy of Ondrej) in the grass outside a pub that was “under construction” (picture justifies the quotations). Made slightly less awesome because Pavel and his endless supply of knowledge were gone at a conference. The guys on the trip wasted no time in converting the ping pong table on the grass into a pong table. Really pretty impressive. I don’t even know where they found the plastic cups..

Thursday, I was in class pretty much the whole day, but that was all good because Lisa and I got to catch each other up on all the international club gossip at our 17:00-20:00 class. Also, I actually like that class a lot, so it's never a drag to attend. Czech politics are interesting, man. I came home and packed for Austria, since we were taking the night bus (which meant meeting up at 23:30). Kyra and I were super tired and dragging our feet so much that we were very nearly very late. Luckily, we got ourselves out the door in time to catch a couple key late night metros, and the bus was late, too, so it didn’t really matter that much. The bus ride up was fine, although I don’t think either of us slept much, and at 6:30, bright and early, we dropped our stuff off at the hostel and started the day. I think I can safely say that I did more before lunch in Salzburg than I have the entire time I’ve been in Prague. This is mostly owing to the fact that, with the exception of 8:15 Czech on Tuesdays, My day never starts until around 10. Terrible habit, but I can’t say I’ve minded too much.  Anyway, in the morning, we stopped by the grocery store and coffee shop for breakfast, went to some gardens, saw gnome statues and a sweet playground, ran around a human chess board, toured Festung Hohensalzburg, took a high-speed train thing back down the mountain from the fortress, and then got some lunch. By lunchtime, I was extremely ready to lay in the grass by the river, and that’s exactly what we did. After lunch, we went back to the hostel, and I showered and totally meant to nap but didn’t. Story of my life. In the afternoon, a few of us went back to the same park from that morning, and I wandered off on my own for a while, mostly following the river a little farther downstream from where we’d been in the morning. At around 18:00, we went to get groceries because Saturday was a national holiday (so NOTHING would be open), and Sunday was Sunday, and shops close on Sunday, at least in this part of Austria. Slightly inconvenient, but it was fun trying to pick out like 4 meals worth of food. We came back to the hostel and got some dinner there, then hung out with people and hit up an Irish bar downtown. I think someone stole my umbrella at the pub, which means that the first time I was stolen from this whole trip was during a rainstorm at a pub in Austria. Can’t say I blame whoever took my umbrella, though, because it was pouring outside. On the one hand, it was really refreshing, and on the other hand, I didn’t exactly have access to a dryer or an endless supply of clothes. Turns out, though, that you CAN dry a jacket with a hair dryer if you have enough patience.

Saturday, we left Salzburg for Hallstatt. I’m sort of hesitant to start talking about how beautiful, etc. etc. it was, because it’s just going to sound trite. I’ll post some pictures, instead. In the morning, we walked to the town and had lunch by the lake, then took another high-speed rail car up a mountain to visit a salt mine. I didn’t even know that salt mines were places you could visit until coming to Europe, but this was my second one. We had to put on these ridiculous pants and shirts to go into the mine. I’m still not sure exactly why, but I think it’s because there are two slides you have to take down to get from one level to another. The salt mine tour was pretty cool. And this mine is actually still active, so that set it apart from the salt mine in Krakow. We spent the afternoon wandering around Hallstatt, where we found another human sized chessboard and saw some painted skulls.

We walked most of the way back from Hallstatt to our hostel in some light rain, but then our awesome bus driver came and picked us up so we wouldn’t have to walk the last bit. We went to dinner at an Italian place where the smallest wine size one could order was ¼ of a liter.  After dinner, there was some debate about jumping in the lake. After about 10 seconds of debate, I jumped in with Michael and Mark. If figured that it’s not every day that one gets the opportunity to jump in an Alpine lake. I’d do it again.

Sunday, we went to Bad Aussee, another breathtaking town, in which we spent the entire day doing awesome outdoorsy things that have rendered me almost unable to move today (if it weren’t for my internship or the package waiting for me at CERGE, I guarantee you I wouldn’t have moved all day). In the morning, we hiked in the Alps for a while, then made the steepest descent down that I’ve made while hiking. Like. We weren’t kidding around. The Blue Ridge Mountains are beautiful, but in terms of scaling them, they’re no Alps. After risking our lives to get down the mountain, we rented bikes for a couple hours. We got some ice cream, and then, after lots of uphill biking, found another beautiful lake and some beautiful Fanta. At about 16:30, we were completely done in, so we napped in the grass by the park. Well, I split my time between napping and getting an Angels and Airwaves fix (since we have already established that I am the world’s worst napper. The only reason I slept at all was that by this point in the weekend I was legitimately sleep deprived). After napping/AVA, Michael and I walked around what little of the town we hadn’t seen already, and everyone got back on the bus and we came back to Prague.

Today, I caught up on sleep a little on sleep then headed into the Fulbright office for my internship, over to CERGE to pick up a package, then back to the apartment to chill. I did some laundry because the majority of my clothes were wet from either the rain or the lake, and Rhee-Soo came over to chill at like 21:30.  Ok. 1:10. Not too shabby. Tomorrow, there’s no 8:15 Czech class because we’re getting breakfast at 10:30 instead. Ah, Prague.