Day 1

Well, I'm officially in Prague! There was a group of about 10 Virginia Tech students that left Dulles at 7:00 p.m. and finally arrived in Prague at about 10:00 a.m. local time (GMT +1). Long day.

We got to the dorm about a half hour later. The ride over was pretty . We are staying at Praha 7 which is a bit out of the way from the big city. It is much more residential than I had anticipated. The picture to the right is a view from the balcony that is right next to our room. It's a very pretty view into the courtyard.

I went for a jog this afternoon just to check things out. I felt a bit out of place because there weren't any other joggers on the road. Important things first; I found the following items on my jog: pub to watch the world cup in, a backup pub in case that one is too crowded, local liquor store, quite a few nice restaurants and finally a grocery store where I purchased the following items:A genuine, Czech Budweiser and four apples (minus one that I already ate). Total cost: 72 Crowns = $3.75. Not too shabby. Budweiser Budvar Brewery was established in 1895, 19 years after Anheuser-Busch started calling their beer Budweiser. I'd like to think that makes American Budweiser the 'original.' Never mind the Bohemians.

After my jog, I came back to the room and met up with a few other VT students. We all walked to the park a ways down the street. The park was fairly pretty, but it did have a tram running down the middle. The highlight of the day, was when we found this county fair type area that looked like a deserted version of Kings Dominion. The rides were terrible, but another student and I convinced the others to go on a Haunted House type roller coaster. It was reallllllly stupid.

Now for the culture. People are generally not very nice. Some know English quite well and others don't know a lick. While I was jogging, I would nod my head at every person I passed, they would stare at me. The city is fairly clean except for the graffiti. There is graffiti on pretty much every wall in the area we are staying. To the left is a picture of a wall that is about a block down the street from the dorm rooms. I don't understand why they would want there city to have so much graffiti on it. Maybe it's not considered 'trashy' or 'dirty' like it is in 'merica? I don't know. We have a pizza and wine party in about 45 minutes so I will have to let you know how that goes. Classes start tomorrow. Should be fun. I'll be sure to keep you all posted on other things in the future. Don't get your hopes up, however. I'm expecting this to be my most detailed gay blog post.

Love, Luke

P.s. Czech Budweiser = $$$