Friends in Europe, Part 2...

I still can't tell you how many friends I made while I was in Europe from various countries, including the United States. I made a ton.

But it's always nice to see old friends, especially when you've been cut off from them for almost a year.

I was lucky enough to see my father, brother, uncle, aunt, and cousins while I was over there. It meant the world to me then. But it was as amazing to see a couple of my old Charleston friends in Prague as well.

West Virginia State University, my alma mater, does a trip every year through the Communications Department to Prague. They do the usual stuff in Prague, but they were able to explore a good bit on their own. One of my best friends, Devon, came on that trip this year. I showed him what I knew of Prague, which (at this point) is a lot.

I took him to the usual spots: Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, Charles Square, and Kutna Hora. He saw the castle and the Jewish section on his own. I tried to take him to other places beyond the usual stuff. We went out to Holosevice, Vinohrady/Žižkov, and even Andĕl. I must have cut his food budget in half. Prague has plenty of good and affordable food, but you have to get out of the main crowds to find it.

During the time Devon was in Prague, a guy named Steve from Southern California made friends with us at the place I was staying. He ended up being a pretty good part of the group, just a random traveler making his way around the continent. I took them to Žižkov and Vyšehrad, which is the other (older) castle area in Prague. It's essentially a really beautiful park nowadays.

We walked back to town from Vyšehrad after seeing a topless woman eating a banana (I couldn't make that up if I tried, it's Europe) and while we were walking along the river, a Czech man got our attention and somehow got Steve to pick up his net. We watched Steve and this random guy catch a huge fish out of the Vltava (aka Moldau) River. It was borderline magical.

After that weekend, I stayed in Prague through Monday and picked up two other great friends from the airport. Devon joined me, since he was leaving a few days later and knew these two quite well. The ride to the airport through public transportation is not too difficult, but it's kind of out there. But it was totally worth it to see Meredith again.

I've been dating Meredith since New Years of 2002. It's been a fairly defining relationship, and we've been able to maintain it by having fully independent lives of one another while still being a close couple. My time in Europe was the biggest burden for our relationship, and it was anything but easy for both of us. Seeing her again after missing so much (anniversary, graduation, etc) was amazing.

To top this off, my good friend Chandler arrived after a week in Dublin. He's a really close friend, and we've been around a bit of the Eastern US together, as well as Costa Rica. It just isn't travel without Chandler. He was around for a little over a week, and she came home with me.

Chandler and Devon hung out with Steve in Prague, and Meredith and I headed back to Pisek (that was, in and of itself, an adventure worth writing about, but I don't feel like divulging in that right now). Chandler met us in Pisek the next day.

One of the nice things about Pisek was being able to walk across the street to get food or drink usually. The grocery store and the bus station were bigger excursions than anything else. Meredith and Chandler hung out at the apartment a good portion of the daytime while I was working on what I could work on with my film, and we were able to head out in the evening. There are several really good places to eat there, so I tried to give them a taste of Pisek. They seemed to really enjoy it.

Two of the Kiwi girls that hung out with Dad and me on our tour in January, Bex and Jessie, had made arrangements to come to Prague for a weekend. It just so happened to be the weekend when Chandler and Meredith were in. It also happened to be when Don Giovanni was playing at the Estates Theater, which is where Mozart himself debuted it. Things worked out quite well for that weekend.

I got opera tickets and an apartment in Mala Strana for all of us for the weekend. The opera tickets were about 250 Kc each, I believe, which is about $12.50. Splitting the apartment between the five of us made it out to about $20 or $30 a night, which was wonderful. The Kiwis live in London, so I think they were pretty surprised at how cost-effective Prague was.

We stopped by the John Lennon wall on our way out on Friday. I took them to a good diner near Narodni for dinner, and we had dessert at the Cafe Louvre, an old hangout of Kafka and Einstein. It has the best hot chocolate in the universe. We went over to the Chapeau Rouge, a three-floored bar and club with a strange but cool local band playing. The evening as a whole was pretty epic.

On Saturday, we went through Wenceslas Square, where they did a bit of shopping. We went to a matinee of the opera, which was quite spectacular. If the place looks familiar, it's probably because of the movie Amadeus, which was shot in Prague.

I took them to the Žižkov area that night. Fun was had by all.

On Sunday, we hit up the castle. Meredith decided to scare the crap out of me and re-enact the St. George slaying the dragon statue nearby.

Meredith and I went to the toy museum there, while the others explored the main grounds a good bit. We met up a few minutes later, and found a birds of prey exhibition going on. For a 100 Kc donation (about $5), you could hold a bird.

Chandler and the owl got along quite well.

The one who really liked it was Meredith. She held an owl and a falcon hybrid. I tried my luck with the falcon, which scared me to death.

I shouldn't go into falconry, that's for sure.

I took them to the singing fountain, where we got this amazing picture:

This was one of the best weekends I had over there. After the castle, we went around a few different places separately. Prague's such a fun place, it's hard to fit it all into one weekend. But we crammed into it what we could.

A few more blog entries left here before I'm done exploring the Czech Republic. And in what I'm hoping to be the next two weeks, the online premiere of A Dinner Party.