Five Days in Praha
Tuesday, February 28th, 2006All right, everyone. I finally have the chance to update my blog!
This past 2 weeks had been very hectic, but in a good way. Last weekend I spent 5 days in Prague, Czech Republic for a 2 days company meeting, plus a long weekend to enjoy this beautiful city. I stayed at the AIESEC house in Andel, and met some of the nicest, fun and welcoming people, Jenny, Geri, Erik, Felix, Michaela and Rafael.
Praha, February 17-22, 2006
When I first arrived in Prague on Friday evening, I was surprised to see that the mall was still open at 8:30 pm! I know you must think: "Oh, what’s the big deal?" but this was a little luxury I haven’t been able to experience for the past 3 months…people in Belgium know what I am talking about here. I was excited just to see people on the street. Life indeed was more lively and lay back here than Western Europe.
On Saturday, I explored the city on my own and it was surprisingly relaxing. People were really nice and friendly there.
At some point, I thought was a bit too friendly when a souvernir shop owner wanted to take me out to dinner to a Czech restaurante and some kind of disco after. Good thing he asked me after giving me a good discount discount on the stuff I bought, so it wasn’t hard to come up with a couple of good excuses, paid and left politely.
In exchange, I had an excellent dinner with the Andel crew. We went to this really good and cheap Czech Restaurant, stolled down the old town for a bit and hung out at a Dutch pub afterwards.
On Sunday, one of my best friends, Elke visited me from Vienna. We met when we were both high school exchange students in Oregon 7.5 years ago. As you can see from the pictures, the weather in Prague that weekend was perfect, which makes the city even more beautiful. Ellie and I are both so different from each other that whenever I saw our pictures, I couldn’t help smiling and wondering how we ended up being friend. To start of, she’s about 180 cm when I am only 150. We lived in a total opposite side of the world, raised in a completely different culture, but we’ve proved that the value of friendship is far beyond cultural differences and distance.
Monday was another sight-seeing day, and after I dropped off Ellie at the bus station, I did an Asian supermarket hunt around Prague, desperately trying to find some Asian stuff so that I can fulfill my promise to make dinner for my Andel friends. When I found this Korean supermarket, no words could express how happy I was at that time.
I seriuosly felt like a little child in a candyland….until I realized they didn’t take bank card and I only had about 150 krone in cash, which is around €5. I felt soo0o poor as there were many stuff I wanted to get. At the end, I only got a curry paste and okonomiyaki powder to make my favorite Japanese pancake.
Tuesday was my company meeting day. After dinner that evening, I sneaked out to meet my friend Jason, DHL trainee from the US, to join the Andel crew at an Erasmus party called Nation to Nation. I haven’t been out for quite some time, and that was what I would call a GOOD party. People here really know how to have fun.
On Wednesday late afternoon, after my company meeting, I had to wave Prague goodbye to go back to Brussels. It was hard to leave, but this definately won’t be my last visit to what is now one of my favorite cities in Europe. And to all my new friends at the Andel house who hosted me for the weekend, Thank you for the good time! 
