Madrid

Three weekends ago I went to Madrid with Kellie and Kendra (friends from school). Kendra has a friend from back home, Justin, who is teaching there for a year so we got to stay with him and he showed us around the city. This was the second trip where I went somewhere and had a local who knew the city and could show me around; this is definitely the way to travel. It takes all the uncertainty out of being somewhere you’ve never been and they know which sights to see and which to skip. We got in on Thursday afternoon; Justin met us at the airport, got us on the metro, and took us to his place. We showered and changed—me into shorts and a t-shirt because it was wonderfully warm—then went to Parque del Retiro. Retiro is the largest park in Madrid, and is a very popular local hangout. It’s beautiful, filled with tree lined avenues and grassy partitions where you can sit. There are tons of cool statues and monuments—Madrid is mad for horse statues, every statue is a person on a horse or on a chariot except the chariot which is pulled by lions and the one that’s a seashell pulled by seahorses—and even a man-made lake with rowboats. We found a nice patch of grass and sat around in the sun for an hour or two, it was such a wonderful break from the cool weather in Prague. We left and went to get food, kebabs which are similar to gyros and are delicious. They are pitas filled with shaved lamb, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and some fantastic cream dressing. I was a fan of the kebabs and found my way to a few more vendors before the trip was done. We went out that night to a British music club, it was kind of interesting not your typical club. They played lots of what I would call punk type music, Oasis and The Strokes were the only bands I knew. The next day we got up and Justin took us all over Madrid. We walked around for a bit, saw some famous squares and courtyards and then got lunch. Lunch was interesting; we ate at the Museum of Ham which is Madrid’s chain restaurant. It’s a two story affair with a deli-type lower level and a sit down restaurant above. As you may have guessed the have a lot of ham, whatever I ordered was much better than I expected, delicious even. The coolest part of a Museum of Ham is there are literally hundreds of ham hocks hanging from the walls. It’s hard to explain how many there actually are, on one small wall in the upstairs we counted around 120. Walking in and seeing that many pig legs dangling from the ceiling is a bit surprising, but the food is good so I’m all for it. After lunch we walked around the city a little bit, the financial district was fantastic. I think I could really trust a bank that looked like a palace, they aren’t going anywhere for a while. After walking through parks and down promenades we ended up at Museo del Prado which, according to aboutmadrid.com, “the Prado is considered one of the most important art galleries in the world.” It was a cool museum, they had a ton of Goya and other famous Spanish artists but my favorite part was on the first floor, tucked into a corner was a whole gallery of Roman statues. I love those old statues and they had a bunch of them. A close second was the information room which had the 9 muses in a giant semi-circle. I guess these particular statues were made around 100 AD, lost until the 1500s, dug up and some how the queen of Sweden end up with them. Her people put all the heads back on the statues but got all but one wrong—not sure how they messed that up—and then replaced one of the heads with a replica of the queens head. I thought that was pretty funny but I suppose that if I were a monarch with a bunch of awesome old statues I put my face on one of them too. It was back to Justin’s for naps and food before we went out again, this time to a more traditional dance club. The next morning, we got up and got right back to seeing the city, right after lunch. Three course lunch menus are a big deal in Spain so we had to try one out. It was very tasty but way more food than I could eat. The best part was the paella, a traditional Spanish rice dish. We saw the Egyptian temple, which is an authentic temple from some year BC that the Egyptian government gave to the Spanish government for helping them with some other temple, kind of convoluted I know. Anyway, it was disassembled, shipped to Spain, and reconstructed in Madrid on a ridge that overlooks a lot of the city. It was pretty neat and the view was fantastic. I’ll deviate from the story here to mention how massive Madrid is, it’s giant. Expansive in every direction. We took the metro from Justin’s place in the southeast of the city to the city center and it took at least a half hour each time, 45 minutes more often. And that was only crossing about a third of the width of the city. In Prague 45 minutes on the metro will get you across the whole city, easily. From every ridge and hill the city took up almost the entire view. It was great to visit but it made me appreciate manageable Prague where you can get from place to place without too much hassle. And we’re back, after the temple we saw the royal palace and its connected gardens and cathedral. The gardens were quite pretty and the cathedral was nice too, fairly new—1800’s—and didn’t have that old cathedral feel that I find so compelling but pretty none the less. The palace itself was fantastic, massive and opulent beyond almost anything I’ve ever seen. It was built during the 1600s and you can see the wealth of the Spanish empire and its New World colonies everywhere. My favorite part of the palace was the armory. They had on display a few hundred suits of armor and weapons and old guns, all interesting stuff. I have read a lot about the power of heavy cavalry and its battlefield dominance but until I saw up close and in person fully armored horse models I didn’t under stand how intimidating they really were. And I was just seeing the armor on a few individual, wooden horses. I can’t imagine standing in a field with hundreds of real armored horses charging at me, it was eye opening and very cool. We had dinner, and then met my friend Tierney Black, who I know from high school and is studying in Madrid this semester, and went out for sangria and dancing. The next morning we went to Mueso Reina Sofia, a modern art museum. I liked it a lot, more than Prado. They have a ton of Picasso and Salvador Dali. I really like Dali and it was cool to get to see his stuff in person. The top floor has so really modern “art” the kind of stuff that I don’t consider art. I say that, “if I can do it, it’s not art.” My favorite piece of non-art was a canvas on a frame with a slit down the middle. No paint, no drawing, just a cut in the middle of the canvas. If that’s museums quality art then I have a lot of printer paper from when I had Exacto Knives that they should look at. Still, it was a fun museum and I’d go back and spend more time there. We went back to Justin’s so I could pack up and get ready to leave and the girls could get ready to go to a bull fight. I had an easy flight back and caught the last metro of then night back to my apartment to end an awesome weekend. The trip to Spain was a lot different than the trip to Ireland. I was glad to stay in one city and not spend so much time on buses. I got to see a lot more of the city and got to do many more cultural activities. Also, adding travel within a weekend trip is too much. Finally, I love Lufthansa, we flew with them to Spain—SpainAir back through the Star Alliance—and just like on my flight over from the US, the Lufthansa crew spent the whole flight feeding us and giving us free drinks. Much better than anything I’ve ever flown in the US. They fed us on the 55 minute hop from Prague to Frankfurt, then again on the flight to Madrid but I fell asleep. I awoke after everyone was done eating and they went to the back to get me a meal anyway, it was great.

Ireland

I spent the past weekend in Ireland, seemed like a cool place to go and ryanair.com offered cheap tickets. I went with some friends from the program. Kellie from UW La Crosse, one of the girls she lives with, Kendra, and another girl named Meagan. We left on Thursday the 6^th at 11:30 and the rest of the group, my roommate Jack and some other guys flew in on Friday. We ended up not spending any time with them but that worked out just fine. We landed in Dublin around 1 PM but didn’t get out of the airport until 2 PM because the people ahead of us in the passport line must have been using fake passports. We all got through really quickly but some people took forever, oh well. We got into the city on an airport shuttle and it was filled with Welsh people in town for the 6 Nations rugby game between Ireland and Wales. They were so stereotypically Welsh, mustaches and everything. They were all in their 40s or 50s but they talked to us and answered some questions for us. We were talking about driving on the wrong side of the road because looking out the bus window I kept wondering why no one was driving the cars. We couldn’t decide if the clutch on British cars was on the left side like in America, turns out that it is. We got into the city center and got off the bus. We walked to our hostel and got settled in. The hostel was pretty solid, decent beds, clean bathrooms, and a really good continental breakfast. We decided to go to the Guinness factory first and that was a good choice, it was awesome. We got there at 5 and they close at 6 so we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the museum which was a shame. It is huge, 6 floors, and has a ton of cool displays. They had a whole floor with videos that explained the brewing process and I didn’t have time to watch them. I could have spent at least 2 or 3 hours there but alas. We then went up to the gravity bar on the 7^th floor to get our free Guinness. The gravity bar is a brilliant idea; it’s a 360° panoramic view of Dublin and the rest of the Guinness factory. The factory complex is massive, I’m pretty sure that I read that it’s 62,000 acres and I think that they brew 1,000,000,000 pints a day. In the gravity bar the bartender explained to me the proper way to pour Guinness and why it’s done the way it is. You’re supposed to pour ¾ of a glass and let it sit for two and a half minutes while the nitrogen sinks and the creamy head rises. After the beer settles the bartender tops off the beer by pushing the tap in the opposite direction so that beer but no nitrogen pours and behold, Guinness. We went back to the hostel and made some spaghetti with red sauce. Unfortunately with the dollar weak and the Euro strong and the high prices in Ireland food—and everything else—was pretty expensive so we cooked our own food. We ate our dinner and then went to meet some Americans who are studying abroad in Dublin who the girls had met in Prague. They took us to Dublin’s oldest pub and one other place for a beer. We made it an early night because we had to get up early in the morning to catch a bus to Cork. If any of you ever end up in Ireland, the bus is not the method of transport you want to take. It’s cheap, but that’s because it is excruciatingly slow and not very comfortable. We had to stop in every small town, traverse every round-about, and drive slowly the whole 5 hours. I was a bit disenchanted with the course the trip was taking at that time but it ended working out. My flight out left on Sunday morning at 6:50 my trip really ended on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t too happy about spending 10 hours of my trip on busses. We didn’t get into Cork until evening and then walked around the city until we found a place to eat. The reason we went to Cork was Meagan met an Irish guy, Eddie, in New York this summer where she live and he was working. Eddie agreed to pick us up and take us to his friend’s house so we could crash there. Eddie plays pro rugby for a local team and the guys we stayed with are on the team with him. There was Tamale (not sure on the spelling but sounds like the candy) who is from New Zeeland and a German guy who’s name I never quite figured out. They offered us couches and an extra mattress they have. Not luxury accommodations but free, so better than a hostel. They took us too a couple local pubs, the coolest one was called The Castle Inn. It was a total mom and pop place; the bartenders were actually an old couple in their 50s or 60s. The bar was mostly a hallway, with a bar in it and the whole place was jam-packed. It was really awesome to go to a local pub in Cork with the natives. It was also fun to try the local beers. I had Murphy’s Stout and Beamish and Bulmer’s, an amazing cider. We called it another early night, in order to get up and see the Blarney castle. It’s a really cool castle a lot more medieval than the other ones I’ve seen, I enjoyed it. I did kiss the Blarney stone, I’ve been told that people pee on it and that it’s not the real Blarney stone and all those things but I wasn’t going to go there and not kiss it. After the castle Eddie took us back to Cork to go watch the Ireland vs. Wales 6 Nations rugby game. This game was a huge deal; if Wales won they would win the whole tournament—the Triple Crown—and would have a chance to win the Grand Slam which is going undefeated for the whole tournament. I guess that the Grand Slam doesn’t happen very often. And if Ireland won then they would still have a chance to win the whole thing because then each of the 6 teams would have at least one win. I’m not totally sure about all that, the guy that was telling me about this had a thick Irish brogue, was talking fast, and may have made some assumptions about my prior knowledge of the tournament. But I think that I get the gist of what’s going on. Anyway, we went to a local rugby pub to watch the game. Apparently they don’t have maximum occupancy laws in Ireland because the place was so packed it was a battle to get into the pub and getting a beer was even harder. The whole place was overrun with Welshmen (and women), and when Wales ended up winning 13-12 in a really good game they all went nuts. They were changing and singing the whole time and it was cool to see them all rowdy when they got the away win to clinch the tournament. We had some lunch and then I had to get on a bus to head back to Dublin so that I could catch my flight out early Sunday morning. It was another long, unpleasant bus ride with a one exception. I talked to an interesting Irish girl for part of the ride. Her name was Niamh, which for some reason is pronounced Neev. When she introduced herself there was much confusion, at first I thought her name was Leaf, then she spelled it and I was more confused, then she explained that it’s a traditional and very common Irish name. She was interesting and was telling me about college in Ireland—she’s half way done with her freshman year—and was traveling to Dublin to visit some other colleges because she was going to transfer to switch tracks. She explained to me that when you start college you pick a track based on what job you want to have and train specifically for that job. It was cool to hear some things about Ireland and living in a small Irish town from someone who lived it. She, like all Irish people was very friendly and open. They are so willing to talk to anyone and are the friendliest people you can imagine. It was a great break from the downcast, non-engaging, cold demeanor of people in the Czech Republic. But it does get a bit over the top at times at times. The Irish not only don’t follow the urinal of separation rule, they talk to each other, and to total strangers, at the urinal. This is friendly taken to an extreme and violates American Man Law. I guess they do things differently over there. I had a great time in Ireland and would love to go back for an extended period of time but it’s nice to be back home.

A Quick Update

Just a few things, a more in depth account of Ireland to come.

I'm having a great time, keeping
busy and doing lots of cool new stuff. I just spent the weekend in
Ireland with some friends. We were in Dublin briefly then went to
Cork where a friend of mine has a friend. It was pretty cool to hang
out with some authentic Irish guys and go out with them. Ireland is
full of the nicest people I've ever met, it's was a pleasant change
from the Czech Republic where no one even makes eye contact. I have
been so busy with trips and excursions around Prague that my time here
is flying by. I can't believe that I'm already more than a quarter
done with my trip. I was very fortunate in my apartment assignment.
I am with 3 other guys and there is an apartment of 4 girls in my
program next door. It's a great group for the most part. The guy
that I share a room with is a tool and doesn't fit in, or do dishes.
That's ok though because he isn't around all that much and the rest of
the people are great. We live in the George apartment (not sure why
they're called that) so we have George family dinners and George
family outings. They are really fun. A couple of the others are
really good cooks so we have dinner and dessert and sit around and
drink lots of wine. We even have a candle. I am going to Madrid next
weekend and then I'll be in the Czech Republic for a while. Doing
some trips around CR I hope and playing rugby. I am really excited
for this upcoming rugby season, I have been enjoying practice and have
been renewing my interest in rugby. The weather here is starting to
warm up a bit and I'm hoping that trend continues.

Home Life and More

I’ve now been in Prague for 3 weeks and I consider myself officially settled in. I’m sleeping well, my classes have gotten geared up, and I have to do laundry. I find that there is so much going on here and so many things to try that I sleep a lot less than when I am at La Crosse. It’s like when I was in high school and had sports and homework and still had to be up at 6:30, I just make due with less. I live in the George Apartments and we’ve—my roommates: Jack, Lucas, and Eric, and the girls next door: Callie, Maggie, Lois, and Caitlin—have become pretty close. We hang out a lot and we have a lot of outings together. We also go out to eat a few times a week but I missed both times this week, once for practice and I forget why I missed the other one. It’s really nice that I live with such a solid group; I never have to do anything alone if I don’t want to. Grocery shopping here is pretty different, things are sold in smaller quantities and the small fridge and lack of zip-lock bags mean grocery shopping has to happen a few times a week. I can always find at least one of the other 7 to go with me though. We’ve also started making family dinners and all eating together a couple times a week. That is a lot of fun. We did chicken parmesan on Thursday and last night was fajitas. If anyone has any easy recipies—my cooking skills are not well honed—you should send them to me, I want to make something and right now the best I can think of is tuna melts. We also do outings together. The first weekend we went on a boat tour of the river, this week we went to the Museum of Torture Devices and St. Norbert’s Monastery. The Torture Museum was interesting if a bit morbid, they had some crazy stuff. The chopping block with axe groves and hack marks was interesting in that I stood next a block that actually was used in beheadings. We salvaged the afternoon by going to a coffee shop for dessert. On Saturday some of us went to the monastery, it was a really cool place. It was very beautiful inside and was so clean and fresh and peaceful we were all blown away. I don’t know why, it may be a hidden jewel of Prague, but we were pretty much the only people there. The only place we saw anyone else was the art gallery upstairs and it was still only a few people. Then we went to the restaurant and tried the beer. The monks are famous for their home brewed beer, understandably as it is very good. In addition to our trips to places we sometimes just go for adventure walks and see what we can find. The night life is really impressive here, tons of clubs, pubs, and hidden local bars. Each part to city—in the areas I’ve been to—is a bit different. There are very touristy places, ex-patriot places, and local places all of which have a different vibe. The Czech’s don’t like Americans very much, we’ve had some really rude service and some people have been flat turned down but if you find the right places people don’t mind at all. The clubs are a whole different animal, they can be pretty intense. I’m not really a big club fan but I will say that here they are way better than back home. Mostly I’m not all about the clubs because I’m not a big dancer but here it makes no difference. They play such intense, bass heavy music that as long as you can move with the beat you’re fine. I don’t really get Techno, but the house beats are pretty cool at some places. It’s also funny to see people on their own, just rocking out and dancing with themselves. We also play cards occasionally, Eric taught us Pinochle. I can’t believe how quickly this trip is going, it already seems like I don’t have enough time left. I’m buying a ticket to Dublin soon and I have to try to get to Madrid to visit a friend from school. There’s another friend in France who invited me to visit and I still want to ski. Plus I have the CEA trips to Krakow and Budapest and I’ll start to have my rugby games in March or April. And I want to travel around the Czech Republic some more, see some other towns. And there’s no way I’ve seen all of Prague, I’ve barely been to any one bar, restaurant, club, or coffee shop more than once. I’m having a great time and I’m sure I’ll have some more cool adventures soon.

Slavia RFC

This Tuesday I had my first rugby practice with the team I’ll be playing with here. I joined the Slavia Rugby Football Club, they are connected to the Slavia soccer team that I saw play Tottenham. It’s really cool, I get to practice at Eden, the Slavia complex and everything has the star logo. The first practice was tough for several reasons, I’m out of rugby shape, my rugby skills are rusty, and the whole practice is conducted in Czech. I had fun, it was good to be playing again and the captain, Jan, is a really nice guy. He’s huge, with a nose that’s been broken many times and he looks like a barbarian but he speaks English with a British accent and says, “cheers” a lot. He is always asking me if I’m enjoying myself and having fun, he’s a good guy. We had a tournament yesterday and it was awesome. We had a glorious spring day—first of the year—sunny and 60s. There were 5 teams, Slavia A and Slavia B, Sparta (Slavia’s rivals, they are the other Prague sports complex and have the other Pro soccer team), and 3 other area teams. I was on the Slavia B team which was a bit harsh, we didn’t win any games. We lacked knowledgeable players, team discipline, and chemistry. Despite all that I had a great time and really re-realized what I like about playing rugby. I was rusty and didn’t play great, but by the last game I was getting back into form again and I had a great game. I played well and was involved a lot and I scored 2 tries back-to-back! Try is the rugby word for a touchdown. The first one I was out toward the sideline and got a pass from a teammate who was about to get hit and I just cut against the flow of the play and blew though the defense to score untouched. Then a few minutes later we had gotten the ball back and were attacking. The ball got swung out wide and Diego, who’s from Argentina, had the ball and passed it off to me at the last second before he got hit. He timed his pass perfectly but it went a little high and behind me. I then made one of the best athletic plays I have ever made and shot my arm up and caught the ball one handed as I cut back against the defensive flow again. The two defenders I split each almost brushed me with a hand but they were off balance and moving the wrong way and I went in to score again. The coolest part was the crowd reaction; all these Czech fans got up and yelled! I got one of the bigger cheers of the day, it did help I was playing for Slavia and we were at their stadium so they were all fans of my team. It was a great day but it really took it out of me, I went to be around 8:30 that night and slept more than 12 hours. I am excited to keep playing. I’m going to officially join the team and I get to play in 5 regular season game and I get a personalized Slavia jersey with my name and number. The jerseys are awesome, with real sponsors and everything, they are totally legit.

Bohemia

This past weekend we went to Bohemia, which is in the northern part of the Czech Republic. It was an interesting trip; it was the first time that I really saw the whole group together. I found that I like most of the people that I’m with but of course there are exceptions. There is one group who seems to know each other, only hang out together, and is extremely obnoxious. They were extremely loud, drunk, and explain why so many foreigners hate Americans. That was too bad, but other than that and the cold weather, the trip was good. We were told that we were starting at a castle, but it really turned out to be a château not a very interesting one at that. But the second half of the tour was wine tasting in the cellar; that was awesome. The cellar had huge arched ceilings, giant casks of wine that you could live in, and a giant griffin. We got to hang out and taste six different Czech wines; it was a lot of fun. We then ate in the small town the chateau was in and got to meet some more people in the group. We drove to the hotel we were staying in and then went out on the town, which was not much of an experience, it was a small town. The next day we toured a glass blowing factory which was pretty cool, not at all what I expected. The Czech’s are way more laid back about work place safety. These guys are all just hanging out in sandals and shorts with no safety goggles or hard hats next to liquid glass and 2500 degree furnaces. It was pretty awesome; one of them even had a beer at his work station. We then went to the store where they sell the glass, that was cool too. After lunch we hiked a mountain type thing that was interesting but not everything I had hoped. On Sunday we stopped at one more castle, it was way better than the first one, it was huge and had an unbelievable interior. The carved wood moldings on the ceilings were incredible. One interesting difference between the castles was that the first one was returned to the original family after the fall of communism and the second was still owned by the state. The family that owned the second castle joined the Nazis when they annexed Czechoslovakia and by doing so they renounced their Czech citizenship. Opps, picked the wrong side it seems

SK Slavia vs. Tottenham Hotspurs

Last night I went to see my first pro soccer game, it was an experience. SK Slavia is the local team and because they are the best Czech team the qualified for the Champions league which is the best few teams from each league. They did well enough in the Champions league to qualify for the EUFA Cup which is why they were playing Tottenham, a team from the English Premiership. Tottenham is the better team by a fair amount and won 2-1. I can now understand why people are into pro soccer, I never did before this experience. I have always thought that soccer was too slow and that not enough ever happened. Tottenham already had a 2-0 lead at half time and was in total control of the match but Slavia came back after half time totally fired up and they were the better looking team in the second half. They scored their goal to bring themselves within 1 in about the 65 minute—soccer games are 90 minutes. The next 25 minutes were very tense; I was really getting into it and every time Slavia got close to scoring was intense. Slavia had some great opportunities but couldn’t quite finish. I am glad that I now understand the draw to soccer and won’t make fun of it anymore, well not as much anyway. The Slavia stadium was torn down recently and they are building a new one so they played in the crappiest stadium I’ve ever seen. It was small and rusty and just screamed Cold War construction. I saw some concept art on the internet of the new stadium and it looks like it will be amazing, I guess I’ll have to come back eventually to see a game there. The fans are a large part of what made the game exciting, they are hugely dedicated to the game and did a lot of yelling and chants. The chants are awesome, the whole stadium—minus the visitors section—chanting in unison. It was also interesting to learn that they don’t boo, they whistle to jeer the other team and mostly the ref. At first we went to the upper deck, where our tickets were for, but we left after half time because it was very obvious that we were not wanted there. In the second half we learned it was because we got confused and sat with the season ticket holders, that explains the stares, glares, and the guy who said a bunch of stuff to me in Czech that I didn’t understand. We were going to leave early, it was cold and we wanted to beat the rush, plus the team was losing 2-0. Once Slavia scored and the game got intense we decided to stay until the end, I’m glad we did it was very fun and exciting. As the game wound down the announcer asked the Tottenham fans not to leave their seats until instructed to do so and as we walked out we saw about 100 cops all in full riot gear on just our side of the stadium. They are serious about game security, there guys looked they were about to invade and didn’t look like they’d hesitate to use their clubs. Soccer fans are so rabid they won’t even let them leave the stadium at the same time, wow. I guess that’s part of what make the game great. Also, I got a Slavia jersey earlier in the day (thank you Grandma and Grandpa), it’s really cool and I’m going to wear it this weekend when CEA takes us all to Liberec, a Czech city.