What Next?

“Freedom is not overcoming what you think stands in your way. It is understanding that what is in your way is part of the way.” ~Guy Finley

March 10, 2013

For the past few days, even before the trip to Kutna Hora, I’d been considering going to church. I’ve been in Prague for five weeks and while I can honestly say I’ve never felt closer to God, it feels like it is about time to go do some formal worship.

I had done some research and found a church that was both Protestant and English speaking. As a bonus, they have a light tea and lunch following their Sunday service. After the adventure to Kutna Hora, I was exhausted. When I went to bed last night, I decided that if I woke up in time for  the service—which was at 11am—I would go, but if I didn’t get up naturally, I wasn’t going to set an alarm per se.

As it turned out, I woke up at 10am. Knowing that I had about a 35-40 minute trip across the city to get to this church (which is over by the Dancing House) I started to get out of bed. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I opened my laptop up and checked email. Reading through a few notes, I had several reminders that day light savings time started today. Crap! I’d known that, and yet I’d been so tired from Kutna Hora that I’d forgotten to set my clock forward before I went to bed.

Adjusting my alarm clock and resetting my watch, I went back to bed. Waking up about an hour later, I noticed that when I turned on the DST setting on my watch, it hadn’t changed the time. Rebooting my laptop, I noticed that clock on the internet hadn’t changed either. I was very confused.

I was also very sore. My back still felt all pinched up and my legs just felt wobbly from walking so much. I considered staying in bed a bit longer, but since it was almost either 11 or 12 o’clock, I decided I should get up.

I was a bit hungry too and looked briefly through my travel books to see if there was a recommended restaurant nearby. Aside from the Italian one across the street and the little bar down the block, I hadn’t really explored this part of Prague much. After just a few minutes of thumbing through the book, I felt ridiculous. I’d trekked all the over the city by myself; I’d found restaurants in other cities by myself; there was no reason I couldn’t find a restaurant in my own neighborhood, by myself.

The only thing still confusing me was the clock situation. I went online and Googled “Day Light Savings Time Europe.” The first page I clicked on said that the EU countries did observe day light savings time. This added to my confusion until I read that they re-set their clocks in 2013 on March 31.

I got dressed and headed outside for a walk. Even though I felt stiff, walking actually felt great. The sun was out (although the air was still a bit chilly) and it felt nice just to get a little exercise. I guess I should say “deliberate exercise” since my walking has increased exponentially since I got to Prague.

I passed a number of little shops. Many of the cafés I came to only served drinks and pastries so I kept walking. I tried to avoid signs that said “We speak English” or “We serve Coke.” This resulted in me walking a lot further than I’d planned, and pretty soon found myself down by the Biscupcova tram stop.

Across the street was one of the restaurants that Leo had pointed out last night. It was called Polo and he had mentioned that it served cheap Czech food. I went ahead and went in there.

The darkness of the room was hard to adjust to as I left the sunny streets outside. The air was a bit smoky and the walls were decorated with different 1960 albums. The woman behind the bar had short auburn hair. She was cleaning a glass as I entered.

“Dobry den,” she said. (Good day.)

“Hi,” I smiled, still not real confident in my conversational Czech skills. “Is one okay for lunch?”

She shrugged and went back to cleaning the glass.

I walked over to a large booth by the window and sat down. Across from my seat was a display of The Beatles St. Pepper’s album. The radio was playing Whitney Houston’s “Moment in Time.” No one else was sitting in this end of the restaurant so the smoke was a little more tolerable.

One of the benefits of greeting the waitress in English was she brought me an English menu. I ordered Mirinda to drink. For my main dish, I ordered svíčková. Svíčková was the dish I had my first night in Prague. It’s the roast beef in cream and gravy with bread dumplings.

It tasted great! Like most Czech dishes, it was very heavy and very filling. That said, walking after eating svíčková is not the easiest thing to do. Like Thanksgiving turkey, it really makes you want to undo your top button and sleep for about two hours. But I couldn’t waste the beautiful sunshine. So I decided I would walk back to the dorm.

Walking along refreshed a number of thoughts I’d been meaning to share on the blog.

I’ve made a number of observations about dogs in Prague. Many people seem to have them here, and they are all very well behaved. I don’t think I’ve heard a single dog bark or show any sign of aggression since I’ve been here. At the same time, they all look as though they are border-line starved. Most of them time, you can see their ribs and their hair is falling out in chunks. Picking up after pets is also not a requirement or a priority. This stains the shoes of un-expecting tourists on a pretty regular basis.

I’ve also been observing traffic quite a bit. Ivana and the other Czech students insist that the cars have to stop for pedestrians. It has been my experience that about 90% of the time you step off the curb, cars will stop for you. I’ve also seen that they get quite irritated when you wait at the crosswalk to make sure they stop. Maybe it’s the American with me, but I can’t quite get used to jay walking the way people do here.

When I got back to the dorm, I continued blogging about Kutna Hora. I also had some homework for my Czech class and practiced a few of the exercises in the workbook. I was finding that, like Spanish, I could understand it when it was spoken to me, much easier than I could speak it back.

I’d planned to Skype with my friend Bryan, and when he got on we talked for about an hour. He finally had to go eat Breakfast, so we hung up.

After we did, I felt a little disgruntled. In my head, I had had this vision of traveling Europe with each weekend a more exciting adventure than the last. Now, with my time ticking, I was quickly getting sucked into a rut of homework, laundry, and day trips. Sleeping till noon felt good (and some days, necessary) but it wasn’t the adventure I had in mind.

At the same time, I felt stuck. I didn’t want to travel alone. While I know that I’ve come a long way, and I feel so much more confident than I did on that flight to London, I don’t know enough about where I am going to help myself if I got into trouble. The trips organized by the school seem to only visit breweries and the stories of the partying that goes on make the film Project X look like child’s play. The group I’d been traveling with didn’t drink, but we had different class schedules and such that made it hard to make plans.

As I was stewing, a crazy idea popped into my head. A few weeks back, I’d emailed a travel agent. His name was Andy Steves (son of travel guru Rick Steves) and he ran a travel agency exclusively for students 18-26. I’d wanted to go to Rome for Easter, and saw on his website that he worked with exchange students to go to big cultural events around Europe. My initial inquiry about rather or not he could help me get into the Holy City for Easter had been a bust. He replied that I should have contacted him sooner, but that if I wanted to go to Barcelona that weekend, he had a connection he could help me with.

For whatever reason, I went back and looked at that email. His offer was for 200 euros (about $266 USD) and included 3 nights in a hostel, a local guide, and admission into all of the museums and attractions on the tour. I’d be sharing a room in the hostile with other exchange students, and as a group, we’d meet up with our guide who actually lived in Barcelona full time. I’d be in a group, I’d be in a different city, and my only other expenses would be airfare and food.

I Skyped with my Mom for a few hours that night since we hadn’t had much time to talk the past few times I’d called home. After we hung up, I did some more research on airfare and expenses in Barcelona. I sent my Mom a quick email with what I was thinking. On a high end estimate, it looked like the trip could cost $800 USD, low end was $500 USD.

She replied, saying “You won’t be able to go to Spain for that amount if you wait to come back to the US. You might as well take advantage of it while you’re there.”

She was right. (She usually is!)

I went back on Steves’ website, and booked the trip. Going onto Skyscanner.com, I found the cheapest airfare I could, and booked it. While I mistyped my checking account number (and subsequently froze my account for 24 hours) I used my credit card and purchased the ticket.

Within 15 minutes, I’d gone from being undecided to being the proud owner of a non-refundable Easter trip to Barcelona!

It was so not the behavior of the Zach I know…but I was ecstatic! It was spontaneous! It was exciting! It was just the type of adventure I’d hoped for!