yes

i bet you can guess what the question was!

24

I’m turning the big 2-4 today!

Now is the perfect time to take a look at that list of goals I had for my 23rd year.

It should be no surprise that the things on the list that I didn’t complete were the physically demanding ones. Run 5 miles? I think that maybe I ran 5 miles total in the past year, so that kinda counts, right? No, I guess not. I didn’t get around to the film photography thing either. But that’s okay, now at least I have a good start for my 25 before 25 list. The glass is always half full!

As far as what I did manage to accomplish: I planted a garden, saw new towns in the Czech Republic, visited a new country and even made a photo book from the pictures. I made a few cakes and read some good books, made several dresses, and had a few dinner parties. I learned how to bake bread, and did a few other things on the list. I didn’t finish Sophie’s choice yet, but I did finally make it to one of Daniels soccer games. Just one. Maybe I can go to a few more and finish Sophie’s choice at the same time. I do love multitasking!

A couple of the ones crossed off are still a work in progress, such as #10 and #20. But progress was made so I’m giving myself a pat on the back and crossing them off the list anyway.

I’m also still working on #15. Daniel and I have been shopping around for a used piano for the past few weeks. So with some luck, I will be able to cross that one off before too long.

//Here are some pictures from my favorite moments in the past year//

hiking in switzerland

visiting a castle on Easter

zurich, switzerland

trebon, czech republic

skiing in the alps

oliver

italy

 hanging out with my dad and Hagrid

a fantastic week with my pals

p.s. The song I learned for #18 was “Imagine”. I wouldn’t say that I perfected playing it in any way, but I did give it an honest try!

101st

I realized it a little late, but that last post was my 100th post! It’s crazy to think I’ve been living in Prague for long enough to have 100 posts on my blog (which equals about a year and half). Thank you to everyone who has been reading along! I hope you enjoy my ramblings and attempts at telling stories from my life here. Here’s to 100 more!! (just kidding. that’s a lot of pressure. let’s take it one post at a time, okay?)

My Christmas in Prague was very relaxing and I spent most of the time eating and knitting. I kind of regret not taking any extra days off, but here in the Czech Republic you get three days off for Christmas automatically, so I can’t complain. It’s also wasn’t all that bad to be in the office all alone. I could eat my snacks without having to think about whether or not I’m chewing too loudly (being a chronically loud eater is my cross to bear).

{moose socks! this was one of the projects i did over christmas}

We managed to get out to the mountains for a day of skiing the weekend before christmas. No one tricked me by leading me to a black slope, like the last time we went skiing, so I’m happy to say there was no falling or crying from me. It was actually a completely pleasant time, expect for the few minutes were I thought the only way down one particular run was by going down a black slope and I panicked ever so slightly.

On Christmas Eve we met Daniel’s family at a pub near the castle for “christmas beer” – which is basically just drinking regular beer at noon. Please note how D’s grandmother is covering her mug out of fear that someone would sneak some more beer into it.

After some time talking at the pub (I heard some fabulous family stories during that time!) we all went on a walk around the castle and back to the center before heading back to Daniel’s parents’ house for dinner and gifts.

I have to admit that I skipped out on the carp this year. But I had plenty of řízek and potato salad to make up for it. On the 25th, we hosted lunch at our place.

For the lunch Babička made svíčková, which is always amazing, and I was wearing my new dress that daniel got me for christmas so I was a happy girl. Oliver, apparently, wasn’t so happy.

I honestly don’t know why Oliver looks so miserable. He is the most cuddly cat in the world and needs to be snuggled at least twice daily to keep him happy (he is actually taking a nap on my chest at this very moment, no lie), but when I try to capture it on camera he looks like he should have a thought bubble above his head with the text “FML” .

And here is one last picture just for the hell of it. Frankly, I just want to show off my fab new dress and what better way is there to do that than posting a few pictures of it on the internet. Isn’t that why blogs were created, anyway?

{thanks Katka, for the perfect holiday red nail polish!}

 

 

budapest with the besties

Two weeks before my dad’s visit, Jen and Shanelle came for a week-long stay.

We hit all the main attractions in Prague, but then we took off for Budapest for the weekend!

I wish I could express to you how obsessed we were with our hostel. Maybe it was because we had just gotten of an 8-hour train ride, but we were in love with this place from the moment we stepped into it, and we weren’t shy about letting the owner know. She probably they she was never going to get rid of us.

We had an amazing time in Budapest – great sights, great food, blah blah blah. The real story from this trip was our journey home.

Let’s back up. About three weeks before our trip I got an email from the bus agency I had purchased our return bus tickets from. The email said something about the 4 pm bus from Budapest to Prague being canceled on September 18th. I thought, ‘Okay, no problem.’ Because our tickets were for 4 pm on September 30th. I deleted the email and forgot about it. Cut to September 30th, 3:50 pm. The three of us were racing to get to the bus station before 4. There was a scare on the metro when Shanelle and I realized that we had packed our passports in our luggage and didn’t have them handy for what I knew would be a mad dash to the bus after we got out at the metro station. Thankfully, we retrieved our passports in time, got off the metro and took off for the bus. We emerged from the metro station into a mass crowd of soccer fans. There were people everywhere, and I was frantically trying to spot the bus we were trying to catch. I didn’t see it anywhere, so I asked a police officer who helping to close off a section from the soccer fans. His only words to me were “closed”. I had a sudden flash of the email from three weeks ago.

Long story short – the email that I received had been poorly translated from Hungarian to English from the bus agency and what they meant to say was that the 4pm bus was canceled for everyday after September 18th… We were frantically trying to catch a bus that was cancelled three weeks ago. Thankfully, the girls didn’t try to kill me and we took some time to get our wits about us before heading to the train station to make a last minute booking for the next train to Prague. It was 4 hours later, but we were too late to be able to request seats. Once we got on the train, we managed to each have a seat for about half of the 8 hour trip, but from 1 am to 5 am I was standing in the tiny hallway with Shanelle sprawled out over her luggage next to me and Jen squished in a seat with strangers in the cabin behind us. The whole time I kept thinking about how the day had started – we spent the morning and early afternoon at a spa, relaxing in the thermal spring water and getting massages. Now my back was aching from standing for hours and there was a man snoring 10 inches away from me, who I finally got to stop snoring by “accidentally” hitting him with my purse.

The girls didn’t hold the disastrous trip back to Prague against me, and I hope that we will have many more travel adventures to come. But I think someone else will be double checking our reservations in the future.

october re-cap

I loved having visits from my two best friends and my dad this fall. Obviously I just loved being with people I miss so much, but it was also great to do all the ‘touristy’ things and see the parts of Prague that I can easily go months without seeing. The city is always beautiful to me, but sometimes it’s easy to be caught up in being annoyed with late buses or rude cashiers. So it was refreshing to see the city from a fresh perspective.

Here are a few pictures from my dad’s visit in October.

One day we took a trip to Karlštejn to see the castle. The colors of the leaves were unbelievable. I think I was actually more impressed by the surroundings than by the castle itself!

We also made a quick trip to Regensburg, Germany. I was stupid and forgot my camera, so I just have a couple pictures that I snapped on my phone. It’s a cute little town on the Danube with lots of character.

the holiday season, czech style

well hellooooo! the praguenosis is not dead (yet), my friends.

This year I am staying in Prague for Christmas, so today, I would like to share some czech chirstmas traditions….

the cookies

The first thing I did to kick of this holiday season was to participate in a vánoční cukroví baking day hosted by my friend, Petra. Vánoční cukroví are christmas cookies and other sweets, that are made by (typically) the women in the family toward the beginning of December and are something that is not to be messed with. It is typical to spend a couple days making easily two hundred cookies of various types. The cookies are not to be eaten for two weeks (no one has really provided an answer as to why you have to wait… other than ‘you just have to’), and then closer to christmas and even for a couple weeks after you are constantly being offered cookies from friends and family. I like every type of christmas cookie I have tried so far, so this isn’t a problem for me. 

I have to admit that none of the nice looking cookies in the pictures were made by me. I don’t know what happened, but mine shrunk while baking and came out looking all deformed. They were at least edible, but that’s about it. 

Another czech christmas tradition is Svařak (hot wine – or is it mulled wine, in english?). I’m not a huge fan of red wine, and for some reason I thought that all svařak was made with red wine. But for our baking party, Petra made hers with white wine, and it was amazing!  

 

the tree

I am a huge fan of artificial trees. That’s most likely because it’s what I grew up with, but to me, real trees just equal mess and waste. and to boot, they are hardly ever as symmetrical and as filled out as an artificial tree, which is obviously very important.

Daniel grew up with a real tree every year. We spent a good two weeks trying to convence each other that our way was the way to go. In the end, I caved and we got a live tree (i know, i am so nice). This was mostly due to the fact that the selection of artificial trees is pretty poor from what I saw in the stores. I think the imperfections of our natural tree is starting to grow on me, but I got unreasonably jealous when my friend, Jen, was talking about her pre-lit Martha Stewart tree. And I hate the tree with a deep passion every time I am sweeping up pine needles. Which happens to be about every 20 minutes because sweet little Oliver loves to sit underneath the tree has to hit every single branch as he circles around the base of the tree for the perfect resting position.

Even thought I caved on the type of tree, I was not going to budge on the fact that it needed to be purchased and decorated before our Sváty Mikuláš (St. Nicholas) party. Everyone who came to the party was so shocked that the tree was up so early. I laughed at this, because it was December 8th and if I could have, I would have had it up the day after Thanksgiving like the rest of America! Everyone kept saying that their family puts the tree up on Christmas Eve. This appalled me. A tree for one day?? What a travesty! What a waste! Daniel later explained to me that it’s usual for families to put up the christmas tree on Christmas Eve, and leave it up until the beginning of February. So this means that if we want to blend our cultures’ traditions, I can have a tree up from December 1st to February. Which also means it is necessary to have an artificial tree. Double win!

sváty mikuláš

I wrote a post on the Svaty Mikuláš tradition last year. Last week we had a St. Nicholas / belated housewarming party. For the party, I attempted to make svařak (with red wine), and nearly ruined it with an excess of cloves. I did not know that cloves are so potent and that 3 or 4 is plenty, but thankfully some of my guests let me know after they saw me dump in half a bag. I quickly scooped them out and we had some yummy svařak. At least no one told me if it wasn’t yummy…

the markets

I think my favorite thing about Christmas in Prague is the markets that go up the first week of December. There is one on the square that my office is on, so I can spend a few minutes of my lunch break perusing the different stands and eating Trdelnik (a warm, cinnamon and sugar, doughy amazing treat).

 

the fish

For Christmas Eve dinner, a traditional meal of carp and potato salad is served. The carp markets on the streets open up usually the week before christmas. You can go the day before or morning of christmas eve to get your carp, but families with small children often buy live fish from the market and keep them in the bathtub at home for a day or two. Daniel said that when he was little, they would always get two fish from the market and put both in the bathtub. One was for dinner, the other “lucky” one was set free in the river. Daniel acknowledges that the “lucky” fish probably did not live long in the frigid river. Sweet christmas memories of childhood!

 

As you can see, the Czechs have many lovely christmas traditions and I am so happy that I can spend another Christmas here and be part of it all. But of course, I will be missing home terribly and wishing I could be with my friends and family in Ohio. I wish everyone a very happy holiday season! 

 

ps. Katka, if you read this post and I have said anything that is not correct, please let me know  

Italy – part VII: mount vesuvius and pompeii

And now for the final installment of my “italy series”! This is actually a two-in-one deal:

Pompeii was one of our day trips from Naples – and we went a little underprepared. We didn’t have a guidebook, (it was at the hostel) and it wasn’t until we were actually into the ruins area that we realized it’s kind of necessary to have one or pay for a guided tour. It also wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. When you Google “Pompeii”, you see images of people buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius – I didn’t see any of that. Just the remains of the city of Pompeii itself, which is huge! We walked through it for hours and didn’t even see it all. After we returned to Prague, I found out that the buried people are in a museum that we just didn’t see. So if I could re-do any part of our trip, it would be that. With a guidebook.

We ended up just hearing little bits and pieces of info about different structures from the tour groups we passed (bad, I know! but it’s not like we lingered!). In the end we were making up our own history about some of the houses. We may not have had a very educational experience at Pompeii, but we had fun, even with rainy weather.

On our way back to Naples from Sorrento for our flight home, we went to the top of Mount Vesuvius – the volcano that erupted and covered the city of Pompeii. I was expecting it to be terrifying to be at the edge of the crater, but it was really just a big hole filled with rock and dirt. Not so terrifying. What was terrifying was a group of like a hundred unsupervised American 6th graders that were at the top with us. And by the way, since when do 6th graders get trips to Italy?? I thought I was a big-shot going to Washington, D.C…