A tribute to Leslie Nielsen

The man who is in my opinion the funniest actor ever is no longer among us.
Yesterday, Leslie Nielsen died at the age of 84. Let's take a minute to enjoy his best moments one more time.



R.I.P., Mr. Nielsen. You were not just a master in your genre. You actually WERE a genre yourself. We will miss you.

Day trip to Kutná Hora

Winter is rapidly approaching here in Czech Republic. That's why I decided I'd better go on another trip before it gets too cold to do that. The destination this time was Kutná Hora: a small town around 60 kilometers away from Prague. I got up early this morning so I could arrive there before noon. It had been snowing a bit the night before, which was promising for the quality of my pictures.

Kutná Hora must be a very touristic place in the summer, considering the fact that even at this time of year there were quite a few Americans (recognizable by their incredibly American accent while trying to pronounce Czech words) and Asians wandering around. And I must say, it is quite a nice place. The cathedral is amazing, although it's hard to capture it in all its glory on a photo taken from the ground. This is my sad attempt:



Also the square in the center is very beautiful:



This is the square where I had lunch in a pizzeria that was recommended to me by a friend who had been to the exact same place a few years ago. The pizza was quite ok, a bit too little tomato sauce for my taste, but the ingredients were very fresh. The hair that I found stuck in the cheese ruined it a bit though.

So early in the afternoon I had seen pretty much all I wanted to see, so I just started walking around a bit through the less poetic places of Kutná Hora. After concluding this was a bit boring, I remembered the so-called "bone church" one of my colleagues had told me about one day earlier. I was able to find it without much trouble and went inside. The entrance was already very unusual:



It turns out that the area around this church was very popular to be buried in a few centuries ago. The cemetary was over 3000m2. However, the town decided they needed more ground and removed most of the graves of the cemetary. They found it a bit irrespectful to just throw away all those bones, so therefore they hired an artist to make art with the bones. And the following two pictures show how creative you can be with old skeletons:




So after having walked some more through the suburbs of Kutná Hora, where I accidentally stumbled on a big Christmas market, it was time to go home. There was no direct connection for two hours though, so I just went on a train in the right direction and got off in Kolín. Instead of waiting 30 minutes at a boring train station, I went to explore this town. I found out that Kolín is not so special, but it has a nice shopping mall that is large enough to make one forget the time and miss the train to Prague. Luckily the connection between Kolín and Prague is, for Czech standards, excellent, so I got home safely in the end, after yet another great trip within Czech Republic. :)

Weekend in Olomouc!

I had been looking forward to my first real trip within Czech Republic for weeks already. This weekend the moment was finally there. The initial plan for the first day was to meet some guy from Couchsurfing on Saturday afternoon and to visit the city together and go out together afterwards. However, plans can change.

Friday late in the afternoon I received a message from him that unfortunately he could not host me this weekend and that he also had little time to show me around, because his floor was under water. That was kinda last minute. But as a Couchsurfer you need to be flexible. And so I was. I immediately went searching for other people I could meet on Saturday, and eventually I got in touch with a girl named Nela, who invited me to meet her in the city and I could also spend the night at her place. The only "problem" was that there were already two Polish Couchsurfers staying at her place as well. So on Saturday I went into the city with Nela, Anna and Tomek (the two Polish people) and we had a good time, visiting all places in the dark and drinking beer at something that was neither a restaurant nor a bar. And we spent the evening at home talking, making crazy pictures and eating Polish candy. :)

On Sunday I met my penpal Mája. She was a really nice and talkative girl and she showed me all the poetic and romantic places Olomouc had to offer. We went to visit the cathedral, the park, a tower with a marvellous view on the city and the surrounding countryside and we also ate in a cute traditional Moravian restaurant, where the menu was written in the local dialect. The food there was very good, and in fact was able to order my meal in Czech! Or at least I was able to say the number, name of the meal and "prosím" (please) after it. And we saw the magnificient fluteman too! He really exists! Anyway, as you can read I really had a great time on Sunday and at the end of the day I already started to feel at home in Olomouc and was a bit sad I had to go home to Prague again.

After a long travel of over 3 hours I finally got home, but I was still full of energy after such an amazing weekend. I really want to thank all the people who made my weekend so good, you guys are awesome!

So here are some photos of my trip:









The full selection of the pictures of weekend can be found on Facebook.

Coming back to Holland

Hi guys!

This time I have news for you. Not about me finding a new room (I'm still searching for the ideal place to live in, there is no real reason for me to move to a place that is not significantly better than where I live now), but about the fact that I will be coming back to Holland in December! My favourite band, Scouting For Girls, is coming to play in Utrecht on the 14th of December, and the chances of those three wonderful guys ever performing a similar concert in Czech Republic are very slim, so I have to be there!! So I will be arriving back in Holland at Friday the 10th December, and will fly back 5 days later. I expect to be quite busy during my days in Holland, but if anyone that I haven't made agreements with yet is really missing me a lot they can always send me a message and maybe we can meet some time. :)

I'm sorry for my followers that I don't write a lot any more on this page about my experiences here any more. Everything here has just become normal a bit for me. :) Maybe some time I will write a blog about the differences between Czech Republic and Holland. At the moment I just don't feel so inspired to write a lot of things here. Since I have regular internet access now, it's easier for me to tell my experiences directly to my friends via msn or e-mail. However, I will try to write one blog post at least every 2 weeks. Don't expect anything from me next weekend though, since I will be going to visit a friend in Olomouc that weekend. And if you don't know where that is, just google it. :)

Take care!

A new update!

Hi all!

It’s been quite some time since I wrote my last update on how things are going here. I guess that’s a good sign. I’ve just been too busy to think about what I should write here. And besides that, not every activity I do is worth writing a blog about. But since I know some people really want to know what I am up to here in Prague, I wrote a new update for you guys again today. :)

Some things have changed since the last update. For example, now I have internet at home. Still, it’s not wireless, but that problem will be solved soon. Besides that, I went to visit my potential new home near metro station IP Pavlova, but I’m still undecided about whether I want to live there. The room costs more than twice as much as my current room, but the room itself is not much better than the one I currently have. Only the location is perfect (15 minutes by foot to city center and 15 minutes by metro to work) and the kitchen is a bit larger than my current one. But moving there would have to mean that I would have to leave my current flatmates and replace them by some Erasmus-students and non-AIESEC’ers. Tough decision. I’ll let you guys know what my final decision will be.

Also, to write something about activities too, I’ve just came back from playing soccer again. After choosing teams, I ended up as the goalkeeper of a team with only Czech-speaking players. Communicating was quite hard, I only understood the words dobry (after I made a good save) and golman (when they were talking to me). But it was quite a good game, and I had a good time.

So tonight it will be burrito-time for me. Finally I will use the burrito-kit I have had laying around for a few weeks now. I hope they will taste just as good as the burritos I am used to at home, when my mom makes them. And I hope they will provide a good foundation for a great night out afterwards with my awesome friends Carlito and Paulito! :)

Okay, that’s it for now. Take care and see you next time!

L.

My first AIESEC Conference

During the past weekend I experienced my first AIESEC conference ever. And I must say, it was quite good. The conference was held in Seč, a small village around 100kms from Prague. I followed the special trainees program: while the other AIESEC-ers spent their days mostly listening to presentations, our schedule was a nice mixture of games (first time in months I played soccer again, so great!) and the some interesting presentation sessions.

So we arrived Friday evening. After a short introduction there was a party, with free beer, but the “installation” didn’t work, so there was no beer that night. As a compensation there was some free wine, but the wine was so bad that drinking too much it would guarantee a massive headache the next day. So I stayed sober that night.
The next day started with a game (during which I discovered that I have an unexpected talent for rope-skipping) and later we had some discussions. The day program was nice, unlike our lunch, which was like a traditional Czech meal I guess. Dinner was better, although I had to finish my meal all alone in that large dining room, because I arrived late. Luckily my lazy roommate was even later, so we could eat together. :)
In the evening there was a party, which was great. I watched the beer drinking-battle and talked to some very nice Czech (and Slovak, there are lots of Slovaks in AIESEC Prague) people. I really enjoyed myself at that party, even though I usually didn’t participate in all the special AIESEC-dances. That’s a really crazy thing about AIESEC. Every time we met in the conference room, we had to do a crazy dance altogether before the session started. But I think I have to get used to that. :)

On Sunday, well, what can I say.. Everybody was tired, so we didn’t really do that much. We had some nice quiet talks with all the trainees and visited the lake that was nearby, where we could lay down in the unexpected October-sun. After that we had the closing session and then it was time to go home.

So now I’m in Prague again, home sweet home. The conference is behind me, but at least I took with me some “veri” good memories!

Getting lost in Prague

By daytime it’s very hard to get lost in Prague. You just walk for at most 15 minutes, find a metro station, get on the metro, and suddenly you’re not lost any more. At night it’s a lot easier to get lost though.

It all started in a bar. I was out with some other trainees and Czech AIESEC-members, but the music was terrible, so at around 2:15 I decided it was time for me to go home. I would have to take the tram, since the first metro would leave at 5 in the morning. So I went outside to search for a tram that would take me to Lehovec, the nearest stop to my flat. This was not too hard, just follow the tram tracks and eventually you will find a stop where the right tram line will stop.

So after 45 minutes of semi-sleeping in the tram I arrived at Lehovec. I asked somebody for Rajská Zahrada and the guy just pointed in one direction and told me I needed to “go around”. I had no idea what he meant, so I just walked in the direction he had told me to and randomly turned left somewhere. I asked some more people for the way and eventually I ended up at a gas station, where the woman behind the counter did not speak English or German, but was willing to help. She had nothing else to do anyway. So she opened the door for me, showed me the map of Prague, but Rajská Zahrada was not on the map. Then she just used her hands to show me where I needed to go. Finally I found tram tracks again and walked to the nearest tram stop. It was the last stop before Lehovec. I had walked in a circle. So I got on the tram to Lehovec again.

Then I remembered something my Estonian camp leader Kadi (from the voluntary work camp I did last summer) had said to me: “When you’re lost in the woods, just follow your instinct. It will always guide you home.” I know Prague is not really comparable to the woods, but I decided to follow her advice. It worked: with a small detour through a communist neighborhood I walked home in about 10 minutes. It was already 3:55 in the morning at that time. A quick calculation told me that it had taken me more than 1.5 hours to get home. The conclusion of this night out: I really need to move to a place closer to the city center. I hope to have more news on that subject soon. :)