The 'Local's Tour'

There is a little joke between some friends of mine and me about the "local's tour". It basically centers around the idea of exploring Prague as in-depth as possible, finding the secret gems of the city (or maybe not-so-secret), and successfully being able to navigate oneself back to them at a later date. Extra points are awarded for efficiency. Extra points are awarded for authenticity.

Anyway, I have been the successful leader of a couple 'local's tours' and would like to take you on a small virtual one right now. Before I begin, I must cover my back and say that I am by no means the only guide for these tours, lest I face retribution upon my return to camp. The whole of our group have led many successful 'tours' and that is what makes it fun, we each find something unique one day and share it with the rest of the posse.

This is just a small collection of various photos taken at differing locations around Prague. While I by no means would seriously consider myself a local yet, I will say that I am able to quite easily navigate the city and am becoming increasingly more confident giving directions or answering questions about Prague. This being said, I will include a little caption describing each one, but it will be very general and I will save detailed explanations for later posts. Here's the little sampler...

The metro exit to Korunní street, where Mark
and I share a flat. It is extremely close to the gothic church
 Náměstí Míru, which will be included in a later blog
about the churches here

An automatic milk machine and a couple sweet old ladies trying to figure
out how it works. I've never seen one before, but you grab the size of
bottle you would like, insert coins, insert bottle, and fill 'er up!

Václavské Náměstí (Wenceslas Square). This famous statue of Wenceslas on his
horse has become one of the typical meeting points for groups, as it is a huge
site in the city, is central, and directly on the intersection of two metro lines

Climbing up Petřín to reach the tower at top. You can see the segway at the
bottom right of the photo. These have become a huge form of touring in
Prague, much to the dismay of many locals. They do get quite obnoxious as
they zoom around.

Strahov Monastery...also turns out to have quite
a nice IPA that they brew. 

There are so many secret passages and alleyways
connecting the streets of Prague. This is one up by
the Prague Castle

The Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square seen from the side.

An example of the different periods of
architecture found in Prague. There are
obviously also many ultra-modern buildings

Art at Národní Třida

The Infant of Prague. This church and the infant will
also be described in more detail in a future
post

Karlův Most (Charles Bridge) on an overcast afternoon

Where the tracks end...

The Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord, a
few blocks away from the flat in the opposite direction
of Náměstí Míru

Vyšehrad, a second castle in Prague. This
is one of my favorite places to spend time
and will certainly have its own entry
to come

View of the Vltava from Vyšehrad

Street art by the school

A view of St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague Castle from across the
way in the royal gardens/orangery 

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Jiřího z Poděbrad square at sunset

The spirit of Prague

A cool shot of an apartment building and its various doors

View of Prague from across the Vltava in Letna beer garden. The City of a Thousand Spires 

 Hope you enjoyed the local's tour and it gave you a little taste of the city. Expect the next entry to be about Christmas in Prague.

Pavlik v Praze

I am officially the first Pavlik living back in the Czech Republic! I have a home, have a job, have a bank account, have health care, have a visa good until April 1st, and have just received my trade license, which allows me to legally work here as my own business. It took three months to get everything together, though. A looooot of running around and scrambling to collect necessary documents and information!

As you may know, after Patrick Murphy went back to the U.S. to begin his career as a physical therapist, I continued with my TEFL course here in Prague. The Teaching English as a Foreign Language program went well and I received a high pass, guaranteeing me a job at the school, where I have been working since September 8th. 

The following photos are all taken during the month of the TEFL program as the rest of my classmates and I were first exploring the city and getting our bearings. During the program I stayed at "The TEFL House", a house owned by the school and reserved for students in their class to stay at during their month-long sentence. No, it was a blast, didn't feel like we were serving time at all! We had a community kitchen and living area where we would all gather and do homework or work on our various lesson plans and projects together. The 10 of us (full capacity for the house) would often undergo the 40-minute commute to the school together in the mornings. Looking back, the house was a fantastic entry into the Czech world and workplace, as it created a sense of community, built friendships, and provided a sort of 'easing-in'. 

The TEFL course consisted of teaching/educational courses every morning from 8.00 to 12.15. These courses ranged from theory to how to teach young learners to differing styles of grammar lessons. We had 3 instructors who shared these courses: Peter, an Englishman, Jarmila, a Czech, and Jiri, a Czech. After these courses we would have about an hour-long lunch and then would return to the school for teaching practice. Three groups of Czech students had volunteered to be 'taught' by us, and effectively functioned as out guinea pigs for the month. Each student had to give six 45-minute lessons during the course of the four weeks and one 90-minute lesson.

However, three-month-old news, while being new information, can hardly be called news! Hopefully this post offered a little insight into the whole TEFL program process, but expect another current one in the next two weeks! 

A couple walking beside on old building on the riverfront (river opposite)

Patrick made a quick excursion to Warsaw, Poland and then returned to
Prague for the weekend. This was a basketball tournament that was
happening. Needless to say, the performance was quite dismal when compared
to U.S. ball.

Doing the walking tour: at the summit of Petřín hill

St. Vitus cathedral in Prague Castle....easily
one of the most impressive cathedrals in
Europe. It is impossible to get a sense of how
absolutely gigantic it is until you walk inside.

The free access to the cathedral allows viewing
of roughly four of its magnificent window. There
must be closer to 10 in all.

This is the CLT (Communicative Language Teaching)
method that we learnt during the program. It is designed
to promote more student participation and discovery and
minimal teacher lecturing

Patrick throwing down some verses during our
last poetry session before he left for the U.S.

My new world. The school has an entire
library of teaching resources, many of
which are a little outdated

The school I now teach at...Caledonian is
the biggest school in Prague and well-known
for their business English in-company courses.
Which means that I get to travel all over
Prague to various companies to teach...

....so this becomes routine, searching a route
to your next course and how one can go
about making it there using public transport

Introducing Mark, one of my TEFL course classmates and
my current roommate

Early morning Prague

Helping Mark move some luggage...yes,
we took this bad boy on the public bus...then
the tram...then walked with it. At one point
a man asked "What do you have in there, a
body?" Mark's response: "Two."

My first care package from my sweet mother! Always
happily accepting letters!  Even more happily
accepting Reese's ;)

Went to a Bohemian BBQ and Bluegrass festival
that we spotted in town. Needless to say, it
was delicious and the music was great

Eyes on the East

WOW! Things have been amazingly busy since my last post (I am aware that it was close to a month ago)! I am currently almost halfway through a 4-week intensive TEFL course in Prague, Czech Republic. I have been doing about 18-hour days that are chalk full of courses, lesson planning, grammar assignments, and teaching practices in front of students. However, all that is for another post! Right now I would like to tell you a little bit about my trip with Patrick...

First of all, it is important to know that Patrick, my best friend, has just graduated from physical therapy school at the University of New Mexico, this being one of the big reasons for his excursion to Europe. Congrats for that! Anyway, to the trip. Patrick and I met in Munich on July 27 and proceeded to tour Vienna, Budapest, Croatia, and Prague over the following two weeks. We loosely labeled it an 'eastern' European trip. It was quite the trip and was an absolute blast! Things were kept high paced, as we had a maximum of 2 days at any given destination; sometimes we only had a single day or a part day and overnight. Needless to say, this made for quite a significant amount of time in transit, as much of the traveling was done internationally. I will shamelessly compliment ourselves on our not missing a single bus (which accounted for the majority of transport) or train the entire trip.

As there are a TON of photos from these two weeks, I will just write a short blurb before transitioning into each location, but will primarily stick to captions.

Munich, Germany

Munich was great. We stayed with a man named Wolfgang and his family via the home sharing website called Air BnB. We had a ton of fun checking out the various palaces and gardens within the city and we decided that we wouldn't at all mind having our own personal gardens for meditation, writing, and just enjoyment. We also visited Dachau during our time in the area.

Pat enjoying his first German beer

Nymphenburg Palace

In the back of the Nymphenburg Palace walking around in the royal gardens

The gardens were huge, as you can see from the distance to the palace
in this photo. They had countless trails winding through them and there
were four small palaces within it.

Inside the palace....not poorly decorated

A bulldog keeping watch over the street. Made
me think of my sister and her Gonzaga
mascot

Jewels and loot of the Rreidenz's treasury

BMW museum

Olympic park

Vienna, Austria

Next on the city of Vienna! Patrick and I decided that the city was not a city that we would like to live in, but that it was an extremely interesting city to visit. It seemed very eclectic and more free-spirited than Salzburg, which is the only other Austrian city that I have been to. Salzburg seemed quite western European and we agreed that Vienna began to look much more similar to something we would expect to find in eastern Europe. We thought that Vienna maybe represented a defining point between the cultures of the east and west. 

The parliament building

St. Charles Church

Hanging out along the Danube

Hundertwasser Haus (Hundred Water House) 

Pat deep in thought about his next move

We decided to take the lift....us and our two bags each

Budapest, Hungary

We both really enjoyed Budapest and wished that we had more time there. We think that we saw the main sites, but there was just so much there to see that we had to miss a lot. One of the amazing things which I do not have photos of here is the thermal baths. We actually went to two in the two days we were there. The first and main one was Rudas, which was a gorgeous old stone building with multiple temperatures of baths as well as various saunas and steam rooms. This baths had a special night session that began at 10 p.m. and ended at 4 a.m.We ended up staying until roughly 2 in the morning before walking to the house. 

View from the citadel

Buda Palace

Interesting sculpture near the town center

Dome of St. Stephan's cathedral

View from the top of St. Stephan's 

Scary window ad for some...cabbage?

Sibenik + Krka National Park and Plitvice Lakes, Croatia

Our final destination before Prague was Croatia. In the end, we realized that we easily could have spent the whole 2 weeks in Croatia and not grown bored. Croatia is an absolutely amazing country, and not just for the reasons we usually think. Most people think of the beaches and islands when they think of the country, but we realized that it is so much more. On the bus ride from Zagreb to Sibenik we saw farmland, huge mountains, and lowlands. We also saw a National Geographic display in Sibenik that had roughly 30-40 photos with descriptions from all over Croatia; they mentioned a ton of cool places and landscapes that would have been a lot of fun to visit. It turns out that Croatia has quite a spread of national parks and natural attractions. 

First beer close to our pension in Sibenik

Krka National Park was just a 30 min. shuttle out of Sibenik and, as you can see,
was an extremely popular tourist destination

The Patagonia boys

A gated alleyway in Sibenik

Sibenik has a fortress in its old town that is now used for concerts and
other cultural events

Panorama from the fortress wall

Croatia produces a lot of wine, another unexpected thing for me

We had the MOST DELICIOUS mussel
meal in Sibenik at our pension. They
were called in from the supplier right
after we ordered them

Boardwalk at Plitvice Lakes National
Park

Catching some zzz's after a long day of
walking

Our last destination was Prague. This city, my new home, will be the subject of my next post.