About Prague (and more)

Ok, now a short account of my Czech weekend..and something more.

We leave for Prague on Thursday evening, worried because the forecast announced three days of rain and clouds, with the final day accompanied by a storm, nothing less! So my previous packing list is thrown away, and the new one sees me leave wearing long trousers and a shirt plus sweater, while in the luggage I have my jeans, one more shirt and a sweater; mum takes THREE sweaters, a pair of warm trousers, autumn shoes, and she wears a long-sleeve shirt with warm trousers.
We arrive some time after 10 pm, go straight to the hotel, and to bed; me, I am very nervous because I don’t know where we are exactly, and I hate being in a country where English is not the main language, so that I know that I will convert my real English to some sort of badly spoken English and I'll spend my time worrying that people will not understand me. Anyway.
The morning after we wake up and I open the window…to the sunniest day I have ever seen! We go out after breakfast and we get the tube to the Old Town, where we walk up and down the streets, on Charles’ bridge, in the Jewish districts, and we walk, we walk, we walk.
I should mention that at 10 we have booked a river cruise with complimentary drink, so the first walk of the morning after booking it is only to kill some time before we meet with our guide and go for the cruise. At 9.40 we rush to H&M in Na Prikope where I buy a pair of shorts to avoid death by suffocation…I spend the next three days wearing those same shorts, and although they are thigh-short, sometimes I even pull them upper…
So the first day passes without incidents, we walk a real lot and see most of what has to be seen, excluding the synagogues, which I would have liked to visit, but mum couldn’t be bothered. Never mind. At 9 pm we have reserved a whole hour at the hotel’s fitness centre, which is actually a small room with a treadmill and a stretching area, a sauna and..the Jacuzzi. While we walk back to the hotel, I see something on the sidewalk, which looks like the corner of a 100-crown note, so I pick it up. Mum starts saying “what are you doing, put it down!” (doesn't this sound like she's talking to a baby rather than to her 30-year old daughter...), but I say “it’s money!”, and she shuts up at once, and hides the bunch of notes in her bag. In the hotel we count them, a fountain of notes springing from the envelope: 4.300 crowns, about 200 euros! When we tell dad, once at home, he links this lucky incident to the fact that in the morning, like all the tourists on Charles’ Bridge, we touched and took a picture of the statue of Saint John, which must be touched to have good luck…and we did have good luck! Blimey, if I had thought of that I would have touched it every day for the rest of our weekend! And maybe wished for…
Anyway, the evening is spent in the Jacuzzi, to rest our poor tired feet and marvel at my luck. We don’t go out, we never do, because we are evening persons, we like to wake up early and make the most of the day.
So the morning after, while half the tourists in Prague are still sleeping, we are crossing Charles’ bridge heading for the Little Town, where we catch the bus for the Castle. And there we spend the next four and a half hours; I remembered it was a beautiful place, but not this beautiful. Must be because ten years ago it was cold and snowy and I was very tired because my classmates had partied all night in the hotel’s corridors... (I have always been a morning person, unfortunately for my teenage..).
In the afternoon we go shopping, or at least we try, because mum is craving for a pair of light summer shoes…but shoes in Prague are as expensive as in Italy, so we decide not to get any..after walking into five different shops!
We are back in the Jacuzzi at 5 pm, and after that we go back to the Old Town because we have the tickets for a puppet show, Mozart’s "Don Giovanni". I’d better not comment on that, but put it this way: Mozart was a fun man, so he would have liked it; and the show has been on for more than ten years, and the puppeteers were actually good.
On Sunday we have booked a trip to Karlstejn Castle, so off we go, and we spend about four hours altogether there, visiting the castle I had already visited ten years ago, which is actually beautiful. When we are back in town we go back to the Little Town, catch the funicular and go above the castle, to a tower made by the same Eiffel guy of the Paris tower, only a smaller version. We climb it, admire the marvellous landscape of Prague, we get down, we go to the mirror maze, which is something that has always fascinated me, and then back in town, where we walk and walk and walk.
Our night is concluded by yet another round of Jacuzzi, and the packing of luggage, and the planning of the last day, which is taken up by a trip to Hutna Kora, some 70 km east from Prague. We see the ossuary (unbelievable! I’ll try to put some pictures next time, the whole “chapel” is decorated by bones of more than 40.000 corpses! Macabre but ingenious, I’ll admit), walk around the lovely town, stop for a traditional lunch (soup, goulash, dessert, a pint and the final liqueur), and then we end with a visit to the cathedral. We are brought back in town, and we rush to the tube, then to the bus, then to our terminal, then to our check-in, and then we relax and spend the last crowns on a shirt for Brother Genius (who left for Valencia this morning, where a friend of his is getting married on Saturday), a horrible sandwich for me, and then coffee and muffin on the plane.

We get home and the temperature is..low! 17 degrees, and rain! And I am wearing my shorts and shirt, thinking that I would be back to another hot place like it was in Prague…

Today I spent the day in the most normal way, giving lessons, being tortured for two hours by the S&S guy, and looking at things to do for the summer, because I’ve been thinking that spending a couple of months working in the UK wouldn’t be a bad idea; so I found a few interesting posts where I’ll apply tomorrow, and at the same time I thought about getting the certification of TESOL, for teaching English to non-english speakers. And that is what I plan to do for the next hour, reading the files I’ve saved and think practically about this idea; I’ve got some money saved, so I can use it for something useful, right? And while I’m there to study I can find some part-time job, just to pay for the accommodation, nothing much.

I sent a message to the guy I’ve talked of in one of my last posts, saying that I was looking for a job in England for the summer, and he replied instantly saying that it was a good thing, so that then “they” could come and see me. I can’t wait to see him on Friday, and mostly on Saturday, when we have a concert and then a dinner with the band and our hosting band, and..well, these are the best occasions to start things, I believe. We’ll see what happens, ok?
Ok, now I have to work a little, then, so that tomorrow I’ll have clearer ideas on what to do.
Updates to come soon.