**general word of warning to this tale, I'm longwinded and this was a week of many adventures! That and the more I write, the more I can avoid laundry and repacking doing something productive. I DO IT ALL FOR YOU, MY UNFORTUNATELY AVID READERS. If there are any avid readers other than my mother. But maybe I assume too much. Perhaps my blogging ego is growing just as much as my ass is from all these pastries. Eh. Either way, this a is a long entry.**
Meeting the people in the country where part of genetic history comes from explains a lot about my grandmother's cooking.
Meat and potatoes and meat and potatoes and meat and potatoes and meat and potatoes.
Not great bathing-suit-season food.
Our bus for the Czech Trek left at 5:45pm on Sunday afternoon, we arrived at our castle at 8:30am the following morning.
All it took was two girls taller than 5foot 9inches sharing a charter bus seat for 12 hours and my first ever bought of seasickness brought on by horrific wind conditions, hunger, and no air flow throughout the entirety of the giant, European ferry to get there.
Luckily for my new DIS acquaintances and with a little help from my friends, I held in the nausea.
But my snoring and obnoxious giggling the rest of the bus ride still may have marred my new acquaintances first impression of me...
We pull up to our castle, a beautiful, old structure sitting above the small town of Hruba Skala.
Our room key could double as a weapon.
It's huge and I'm pretty sure the original from when the castle was built....way back in ye olde days.
After moving into our historic room that is seemingly heatless, we venture to our first Czech breakfast (the same breakfast that shall be repeated every morning but the one we sleep through).
It looks and tastes a lot like watered down orange juice, cold bread, and tiny, tiny hot dogs.
A breakfast of champions completed, our group of delirious students commences with the ice breakers.
A lot of blindfolded and silent activities with the occasional outburst of obnoxious behavior from Callie, Samantha, or I.
Typical.
After freezing during ice breakers
[I'm so accidentally punny] we are granted a thirty minute grace period before lunch to nap, during which time Elena, Callie, Samantha, and I fall asleep awkwardly laying about the double bed in our room.
Lunch is not a welcome interruption.
The unwelcome lunch is followed by a valiant attempt at archery.
Not a hidden talent of mine like I was hoping.
Although Callie surprises us with some skill, it is apparently routine to teach archery in West Virginia high schools.
[insert WV joke that I'm sure she's heard before here]
Archery attempts are followed by a glorious naptime followed by a scrumptious heavy dinner which is followed by an even better dessert.
Which is followed by a much-needed, and I mean MUCH-needed shower.
Before bed Samantha and I venture to the reception area where a desk and a language create a barrier between us and our need for extra blankets.
After the receptionist tells us that she'll "send the plumber" to our room and we just keep repeating "no plumber, just BLANKETS" our trekking guide appears in the darkness and helps us translate.
His interpreting leads the resident old-man-groudskeeper, Daddy, taking both Samantha and I by the arm in a firm grip and leading us to another part of the castle, speaking Czech to us the entire time.
Thanks to Callie's participation in a sex trafficking course this semester, my only thought was "Well, if this is how I'm gonna get trafficked, at least it's with Sam and at least the scenery is beautiful if they give me a window."
Luckily we are just given blankets of questionable cleanliness, rather than a price for our bodies.
The next morning (after the same breakfast that is eerily like a cheap meal at a baseball game) we begin our 10km hike through the forrest surrounding our humble lodgings.
The woods are beautiful and the fact that my out-of-shape ass manages to climb the many, many hills is just as beautiful.
[see uploaded pictures on my Facebook page for reference. if they're uploaded when you read this. if not, feel free to check again at a later date of stalk Callie or Samantha.]
Another Czech lunch, and then my abrupt realization that I am not as fearless of heights as I once thought I was.
I rappel down the side of a cliff, and realize halfway down that my arm strength gives me no confidence in lowering myself that far and I really just want to be back on the ground.
So I hurry down the mountain and only faceplant into the rock once.
This adventure is followed by zip-lining across a gorge-thing, which I find to be the most exhilarating experience, despite my girlish squeal when I leap off the cliff.
But my flying leap is followed by a return across the gorge-valley over a bridge where I am walking on one wire, and each of my arms has a wire to cling to, and it weebles and wobbles until you fall down.
I don't like it.
And neither does Samantha
[ask her about the boy that chased her across it].
But having survived this adventure we are granted another napping period.
But being the girlish, feminine women that we are, we choose to spend an hour and a half discussing poop.
That's right all you "girls poop roses" or "girls don't poop" fools.
Poop.
Shit.
Fecal matter.
Doo-doo.
The end of our delicate conversation is followed by the pouring of wine that is to be finished at dinner.
After the finishing of our wine at dinner, we open the rum to better enjoy the upcoming scavenger hunt around the castle, in the dark.
After successfully completing the scavenger hunt using only tiny candles for light and the requirement of memorizing every clue we find, we take the time to bond with our fellow adventurers.
All college students bond the same way, around the world, in case you were wondering.
Subsequently, the following morning, we miss breakfast.
And as it would seem, my evening seems to be carrying over into morning.
This carry-over
leads to some delightfully obnoxious behavior
[imagine 12 year old boys, given caffeine and being told to run around in the woods for twenty minutes] while we wait to begin our caving exploration.
The caving itself is more of an adventure course where we climb, we cave, we jump, we crawl, and at one point I manage to kick our poor DIS-employee-coordinator-guide-man square in the balls as he helped me up a rock.
But he told me it's okay, cuz he has two of them.
And then I, in general, come to the general conclusion that in a real-life woodland survival situation, I am unbelievably screwed.
That and if I am left to sit in a cave without moving towards an opening, I become increasingly claustrophobic.
[thanks, Dad!]
Lunch is served at a local pub, more of the same traditional Czech food.
And I manage to hit my head hard enough on the cement ceiling that leads down to where we eat that I hear my brain rattle around in my giant skull and Callie has a look of genuine concern.
Good thing my large head has a thick skull.
After lunch we climb up a hill that is both beautiful and increasingly reminding me of how out of shape I am.
After walking and walking and then climbing an awkwardly steep ladder, we arrive at our next adventure.
Rock climbing at a variety of difficulties, and rappelling down a very, very large cliff.
I make my way to the middle of the easiest rock climb, ask the kindly-but-strange Czech man who is assisting me if I can come down now.
He, and everyone paying attention to me tells me no.
With every amount of little upper body strength I have, I make my way to the top.
I'M ON TOP OF THE
WORLD EASIEST CLIMB BITCHES!
And if only you could have seen Samantha being told to stick her butt out more to come down the climbing wall.
The poor Czech-climbing-assistant just kept repeating "act like you're sitting! like you're sitting! like you're sitting!" while the rest of us yelled things comparable to "stick dat booty out girl!"
She did eventually 'stick dat booty out' and make it down the rock.
And then comes the rappelling.
After hemming and hawing for three hours, and almost peeing my pants whilst waiting in line, I find that I am muttering to myself, facing a cliff, and lowering myself down it with rope.
Halfway down I spin in a circle and get to see the most beautiful view of a Czechoslovakian countryside, and no longer am afraid that I will suddenly be responsible for a puddle of urine at the bottom of the cliff.
This is a huge point of pride for me.
Exhausted and hungry we make our way back to the castle where we eat dinner before showering, my sympathies to those who sat at our dinner table.
A long, pseudo-warm shower later, I am sound asleep.
And then suddenly my damn alarm is going off, I'm eating more hot dogs, and back on the bus headed to Prague.
Prague is old and beautiful and cold and rainy.
The first stop is a market stand selling dough, rolled around a big rolling pin, baked and re-rolled in sugar.
Uhhhh why didn't we have these for breakfast at the castle?
AND THEY'RE SO CHEAP compared to Danish prices.
Then a bit of cheap[er than Copenhagen] shopping and an Italian lunch.
We spend the rest of the afternoon on a walking tour damp and freezing.
We cross the Charles Bridge where everyone desperately clutches their belongings because of the high pick-pocketing rate.
We see the bridge where people in love leave a lock to represent eternity, and then our tour guide points out the 50% divorce rate in the Czech Republic.
We write our names on the wall where people would leave messages during the Communist times.
And we take many, many pictures.
And in a majority of them I look increasingly like a turtle- something about the eyes and the chubby cheeks, I think.
Callie stands under a waterfall outside of a church to earn a free beer from Jonas, not at all sacrilegious.
And at some point Jonas makes a notable comment of Callie being "the fat Asian in the airport going home."
I'm pretty sure this derived from our conversation about pastry-related weight-gain and her always being assumed as an Asian, even by Asians. No offense was taken by her and many laughs were had by the rest of us.
The church was adjacent to the castle at the highest point in Prague where we mimicked statues and debated whether or not the guards were wearing make-up because "no one is that golden."
At this point I feel like someone has wrapped me in a cold gnocchi because my down jacket is so wet that both of my shirts underneath are damp as well.
We dry off and get our WiFi fix in Starbucks and then head to Pilsner factory/original restaurant where we are charged for the pretzels on the table and the beer is cheap.
Snacks are purchased from the Asian-owned market up the street and then Samantha and I find ourselves folding into the same bus seat for a multitude of hours and then lay on the floor of the ferry as we cross back to Denmark.
You would think this is where my journey would end, but oh no, not I!
Holidays and construction make my commute two hours long....rawr.
But it's okay, now I'm home with an empty fridge about to create a pasta concoction that, God-Buddha-Allah help me, tastes good and keeps me from eating an entire bag of popcorn and/or an entire sleeve of Pringles for dinner.
Ladies and gentleman, this has been your travel break blog update for week one.
Expect reports of warm weather, tapas, and swarthy Spanish men in the following update after BARCELONA AND LISBON!
12:35pm USA
6:35pm Denmark
