Charles Bridge, Lennon Wall, Wenceslas square

Yo so I planned on settling in for a nice Sunday evening, posting a bit about what's been goin down during the week but I had forgotten that Sunday meant one thing: The Super Bowl. Of course like any good American I couldn't have possible missed this awesome event so I took a nap and headed out to our 10pm reservation at "Beer Factory" to go watch the game (which started at 12:30ish?). I am going to have to start stealing pictures from people, not because I haven't been taking my own but because I can always find myself scattered through other peoples albums. Anyways the "Beer Factory" is a sort of pub/music bar where each table has it's own personal 4 tap device in the middle, and as you enjoy a few drinks there is a wall that shows how many liters of beer each table has consumed. A horrible idea for college kids to be able to go to a place like this, but ingenious marketing in my opinion: people drink more because of the competition, and you sell more beer because it is so easily accessible. So I will admit, tired and needing to rest for my class on Monday, I only made it til like 3:30am. Lame, I know, most people were sleeping at their tables or in the middle of the room screaming and cheering.
Backtracking a little bit, last week we went out to a few different places including a huge club that one of our Czech buddies happened to be playing a "punk rock" show at with his band. For the record this consists of a bunch of bands that sound like Blink-182 from years ago, but it was fun nonetheless. By "I had fun" I mean that I was on the stage and crowd surfing during the final act. Sorry the picture is a bit dark, but I think it really captures the true essence of the night...

So back to the more "touristy" things, and conveniently located right next to Beer Factory, the National Museum which is at the top of Wenceslas Square is free the first Monday of each month so we checked it out last week. In all honesty the museum wasn't incredibly impressive, however the architecture and the old statues inside and out are something to marvel at. Also as I have mentioned this building sits right at the top of Wenceslas Square, and is quite a sight especially during the night time...



Wenceslas Square might be one of my most favorite places of all time despite being a bit touristy and quite expensive in general. There is an assortment of crazy bars and clubs, good eats (including Smažený sýr: seriously google this amazing fried sandwich), and it is simply beautiful both in the day and at night time.
Onto some new stuff, if you haven't heard of Charles IV yet, pay attention cuz this dude was seriously the man. Karel IV in Czech, he was King of Bohemia, Count of Luxembourg, and not to mention the Holy Roman Emperor, not bad. He also founded the famous Charles University in Prague where I am studying, but if you have any interest in this sort of history just wikipedia this dude and you will see what I'm talking about.

Right to the right is a nice picture of the man himself, this is right at the beginning of the east side of Charles Bridge.

I attempted to get pictures of each and every statue on Charles Bridge but this proved to be quite impossible due to two major factors: 1. the group of 10 girls I was with wanted to hurry to a bagel shop on the other side of the river due to the freezing weather, 2. unfortunately there is some major construction on the south side of the bridge that is actually blocking a few of the statues. Regardless of this inconvenience, I still snapped a few pics and I must say it is one of the coolest bridges because like many of the other historical buildings it has a ton of sweet and epic statues.

After crossing over the bridge and grabbing a quick bite at Bohemia Bagel (Bagels aren't from the Czech Rep. but this place is quite popular with several locations), we headed right down the street to the famous John Lennon peace wall. Once again I'm stealing pictures from my friends, but I must say I'm a fan of candid shots especially when I'm paying attention to something else...

This shot is the main "Imagine Peace" part of the wall, which apparently is the one part that won't ever get written over etc. There is plenty of cool graffiti all over the city, but this wall is mainly for the more positive messages if you catch my drift. From left to right is Zach, Joey, and myself, I was actually rescued by them when we got to Bohemia Bagel because they were splitting with their group and I gladly invited them to my group which consisted of about 10 girls and me. Hey I'm all for hangin out with the ladies, but 10:1 is a bit of a staggering ratio for a whole afternoon.


I forget if there is an actual name for this next attraction, only a few steps from the Lennon wall it is a bridge with hundreds of locks all along the fence which you might be able to see in the background of this shot of part of the crew. It also has some smaller graffiti mainly consisting of relationship-type writing (ie. Jack + Jill with a heart around it, if you will). This is located over a think a small offshoot of the Vlatava river, but don't quote me because I'm not totally positive on that one.


So what about school you ask? Well I arrived just on time to my first class this morning at 10:30am (amazing I know), and I have to say I know nothing about the history of the Czech Republic but I'm sure that will change. After my only class of the day I had signed up to volunteer at a local middle school having conversations in English with 14/15 year olds and I will tell you it was quite amusing. For the Dunlap girls, Claire specifically, I think this is your friend's sister JoLynn who is co-teacher with myself. Basically we just switched off talking to the two different groups of Czech students in English talking about basic things (name, age, what do you like to do etc.) and some of the students actually spoke fairly well. One group, the first one I had of course, was made of of 5 15 year old girls who spent most of the conversation giggling at me and telling me their favorite movie was the new twilight series...so not too far off what Kellie would be like I'm sure! The other group was mainly guys with a few girls, but 3 out of 5 guys had ponytails and loved rock and metal music, seriously awesome. All in all its a funny group but I hope they are enjoying it like I am, and it should be interesting considering me and JoLynn have to come up with our own lesson plans...Mom, Laurie, and Meg, shoot me some ideas if you are reading this!

Overall I'm settling in nicely, I am going to a Beatles Revival band concert on Wednesday, and I'm heading to Austria this weekend to chill in Vienna for a few days. Sorry I feel like I am writing a book here, but I figure if you're feelin lazy you can just scope the pictures or look at my facebook I suppose. Anyways I'm gonna go grab some dinner but I will try to hit up a post next week.
Na Schledanou! (Goodbye!)

This shot is Charles Bridge on the right heading up to Prague Castle, seriously this view never gets old. I would say that Prague Castle in the Czech Republic is like the equivalent of the Mountains for CO, no lie.