Věci jsem se naučil tento týden

(Hoping this title is proper Czech…)

I went to Prague this weekend for first time in my life and it was awesome! It’s such a beautiful, historic, and international city. I stayed at the Mosaic House, which is in "Prague 2", one of the central-ish districts of the city. It was probably the nicest hostel that I have every stayed in. The rooms are super modern and relatively spacious. Sure, you still might have to share it with a Slovakian couple, but that’s no problem at all. More great people to meet! It’s an easy walk or tram ride from the hostel to any of Prague’s main tourist attractions. Next time I go (cuz there will be), I will try couchsurfing. Now that I’ve got a lot of the big touristy things out of the way, I’d like to get a more local perspective. If you have the chance to go, go.

What to say about Dresden? It’s still really great. Many of the Germans that I meet think Dresden is awesome because it has a great young person/student vibe and because people are free to be themselves and act accordingly.

• I’m fairly certain that my English is getting worse. I’m starting to sound like this.
• Budgeting: omgwtfnoiwont. So, send me money for Christmas. Naw, I’m fine. Maybe.
• Computation is hard to model in symbols and I guess that’s why you need to use every fucking glyph imaginable: braces with dots over them, boxy and curvy "less/greater/thanorequalto", angle brackets, equals signs with all manner of shit on top of them, blah, blah, blah. Pretty much this.
• Anonymous confessions of erasmus students studying in Germany: “I want to confess…At first it was fun, having different girls every week, but at some point you have enough with the drinking and the random sex, remember, it’s not real life, it’s just 6 months in heaven, or in hell!”
• A German friend told me that the Neustadt district of Dresden is where the most number of new families live out of any other city district in Germany. Like, super Noe Valley. I believe it. You can see TONS of little children playing at this park, which is also a cool spot to chill out.
• I have a class at 7:30am on Wednesday and I want to kill myself.
• I was introduced to the Prolog programming language this week. It’s going to take some getting used to.
• I notice many people turn off their engines when stopped at a stop light or in traffic. Efficiency, I guess.
• In Prague, you can buy Absinthe that has “Thujon” or "Thujone" in it, which is supposed to give you some sort of added "high". I tried this absinthe and I would say that I did feel a bit different, maybe a little more relaxed (in a way that was noticeably different from just alcohol). Maybe it was just my psychology reacting to being told that the absinthe I had contained this chemical.
• The man that drove me to Prague said that he went there every 2 weeks from Dresden to "film girls". I later found out that one of the things he was filming was beautiful, busty, *clothed *Czech women smoking cigarettes. Apparently, this is very popular in the U.S. Really guys?
• You can watch naked women perform a Requiem-for-a-Dream-style, double-sided dildo insertion at a strip club in Prague.
• Karlovy Lázně (“the biggest club in central europe”) blows. I’d like to try Cross Club the next time I go.
• The polizei vehicle pulls in front of you when they want you to pull over. The idea is that the police car is leading you to where you should pull over. My ride share driver was pulled over after crossing the border back in to Germany. The police probably saw the full car and wondered what was going on. It might be a little suspicious when you have a Czech, a Russian, and a US American in your car. In the end, everything was cool and we were allowed to continue without problems.
• There is a wifi network called “eurodam” (education roaming), which allows you to connect to virtually any European educational institution’s network. This was super handy in Prague where I had no cell data service.