I know...I know...It has been too long.

I'm sorry to all my many thousands of faithful blog readers, yea ok...mom and dad plus a few. It has been almost a month. I promise it won't happen again. Also another note: I changed the setting so ANYONE can leave comments. So any questions or comments are greatly appreciated! Do not hesitate!

So.... (they say that a lot here in Germany)

So. This past weekend I went to the Czech Republic. It was a place I really wanted to go to. I've never been so far East. I was determined not to go to Prague, since that is where everyone goes. But I ended up there nevertheless. My journey started at midnight when I was picked up by my ride, arranged by a carpooling website. The trains were striking plus the guy on the train back from Italy screwed me over so that I only had 3 days of travel left on my Eurail pass. Yes it sounds a little strange hitching a ride with a complete stranger-but the arrangement worked out well and it is cheaper than a train and I was picked up at the house and dropped off in front of the hostel in Prague at 3:30 am. They told me the hostel was booked but I lucked out because someone never showed up. So I headed off to my room. In this full hostel there was one person sleeping in a room of eleven beds.

The next I headed off to the Museum of Communism. A place which I had heard about before I went and vowed to myself to go to if I ever went to Prague. In the afternoon I took a touristic bus with an audio guide to provide the history and details of the sights I was seeing. Then rest of the time was spent walking, shopping, and looking by myself.

I made it back to the hostel around 7 pm. In my room I met a girl from Slovakia,Lucia, her brother and her Spanish boyfriend. We joined the rest of the hostel crowd hanging out in the lobby. I love meeting people from everywhere. I talked a lot with a guy from Dartmouth U spending a semester in Rome and a German so I could use my German which is otherwise pretty useless in Prague. Around 9 I tagged along with Lucia to a club where she was meeting her cousin who is living in the city. That night was hip hop night, so I got to hear Slovakian rap. I enjoyed the night. I don't know about Czech people but the Slovakians I met were really chill. And 20 years ago they were one in the same, so they were practically locals. The Spanish was cool too and he said I pronounced "joder" good so I haven't lost all of the little Spanish I knew. I've been a lot of places now, but the Spanish culture and people have got to be on the top of my list :)


The next day I took the train to Cheb. I could take a train from there to Nuernberg at 7 so I went earlier so I could see something besides Prague. But unfortunately, like Germany, there isn't much to see on a Sunday since everything is closed. I arrived in Cheb around 2 and I was really hungry. I decided to go to a restaurant I saw in the train station. I wanted to try their dumplings and sauce that I saw was a popular food in the country. I pointed to what the guy in front of me ordered. If I based my opinion of Czech food solely on that dish, I would say that the country has the WORST food I have ever tasted! I won't though. However, if that is how their food normally tastes, then the Czechs are 100 percent justified in their heavy consumption of beer. The dumplings were weird and hard and I wish I was exaggerating when I say the sauce tasted like stomach acids. I would have killed for McDonalds after that. But as luck would have it there were absolutely zero fast food chains to be found in Cheb. I spent my time there looking around in a grocery store and a large amount of time reading in the train station, which actually turns out not to be such a strange place to hang out in that town; old men were in the corner playing cards, while young men were rolling joints. I took my train home without a hitch.

This was the first trip by myself, I'm pretty sure in my entire life. Part of me does not like to do such a thing alone. But I was determined to do it anyway and I'm glad I did. I think its healthy.

So that was my weekend in the Czech Republic.

Wednesday was a school holiday for the kids and Rolf and Sonja were away at some seminar thing for 3 days. I only had to clean the upstairs and then in the afternoon we went to the waterpark with the grandparents. The kids spent a lot more time in front of the TV when the parents were away for these days. Thursday and Friday I went to Ruths. Friday I went to youth group and then went with Katarina, her sister Julia, and the 2 youth leaders to a pub in Ingolstadt. We sat with a group from the Baptist church. Most of the time I was bored because I don't know what is going on. However, these people from the Baptist church were at times entertaining...strange...in a good/funny way strange, but nevertheless strange. Friday night ended up being just about the most interesting thing from the weekend. Saturday I was terribly bored. I did a few things with the girls-we went for a bike ride, played UNO for like 10 min. until the girls decided they would rather watch tv. In the afternoon, 2 of Mirjam's friends were over. She wanted me to bake chocolate chip cookies with them and while they were baking we played trivial pursuit. In the evening I felt irritated since I wasted a Saturday. If I'm not busy I want to work so I can have an extra weekday off. I didn't work. On top of that, the kids were being fussy with each other. The annoyance carried into today slightly. But I did talk to Danica on the phone, to plan our trip before Christmas which I am super excited about. So that was a positive point along with a few others so the weekend didn't leave me completly insane.