At the next table over I heard the people speaking Danish and I’m always a bit giddy when I hear Danish in Prague. It’s not that often I get to talk Danish and it’s nice and homey to hear it. This time I got the idea that one of them was a blogger I had read before so I went over and said Hi and it turned out that it actually was Nicolai from auramin.com. He’s been in Prague for almost two years but it’s only been about 4 month’s since I discovered his blog. He always has some great pictures of the food he makes or eats and it was cool to meet him.

After the meal Kathleen, Carljan and I decided to take a night walk across town through some of the prettiest parts of town in the cover of darkness with many of the streets abandoned of people. I forgot to take any pictures tho.

Saturday I spent with Hermann geeking around trying to rescue the lost blog posts. More about that in a later post but things look bright. 

Sunday I was up early and then I went with a bunch of friends to the hills in Herlikovice . I haven’t really taken full advantage of having mountains 120 km from Prague but at least I got my second time in snow this weekend. Many of the others were on snowboard so I decided to give it a try and I really liked it.

I got some hard falls and sometimes the board was running way faster than I wanted it to, but controlling it wasn’t that different from skiing so I made some good progress. I never figured out how to make a a turn with the board facing downhill tho.
On the way home we stopped in a small village with a quaint square for a well deserved dinner

December and January was quite busy month with birthdays and house parties in Prague so instead of doing that for my birthday I decided to organize a trip out of town for my Prague friends. With the help of Helge and Pavel I found a small pension in Spinderuv Mlyn, the most popular destination for skiing and snowboarding in Czech Republic. We ended up being 14 people (from 10 countries). Here is part of the first group who took the bus ready to leave Prague.

The first day the weather was not the best but it snowed as well so we had pretty good slopes to work with.

About half the group went skiing and all of those had done it before. The other half went snowboarding with most of them being first-timers. This of course made the snowboarders drop on a regular basis for the enjoyment of the rest of us. Heres Grace after a less than graceful fall.

On the cool-scale Bjorn the German took the price skiing in his lederhosen with a regular coat. He was laid back as he went down the mountain and never hit the deck.

The nightlife in Spinderuv Mlyn turned out to be a lot of fun as well where we danced till we were completely done.

I dont really know what Mickey Mouse and Krteek was doing at the club but at that point we thought it was fun.

Here is a picture as we were ready to leave on Sunday with everybodys limps still intact, happy but bruised.

Last week I met with a fellow blogger, Al from the family blog Tischlers in Prague. After having lived in Prague for almost two years the Tischlers are moving back to Minnesota. I have been following the blog and their trips in and around Prague (and around Europe) since before I arrived in Prague so it was great to meet the man behind the words. Al has been working for Radio Free Europe in Prague while they have been building their new headquarters. He had great stories of his time in Saudi Arabia their life in Prague and filled me in on the New Wave music in general after we went to a museum on the history of the rock music in Czechoslovakia in the 80ies.

We met in a small beer garden very close to our apartment for a couple of beers. Al got photo documentation and posted it here. Its always a pleasure to meet other bloggers and Im glad I caught Al before they went back home. I wish the best for the three of them.

The good guys of the Prague search site Nelso has made an invaluable resource for people on the hunt cheap beer in Prague. The beer price heatmap shows the prices on beer at more than 250 bars in Prague. As I understand the underlying technology they have used a meteorological predictions based on the points to create the map – very cool. I guess that is also why all of Letna Park is expensive because of the 90czk beer at Hanavsky pavilion.

By the way – the sweaty beer on the picture is a 0,5L Staropramen at 59czk from Cafe Savoy which puts it in the red.

There is also a Danish edition for Øl i Prag.

Music is Virus by Mikael Simpson.

See the video at blip.tv.

The weather was really nice and the trees were slowly starting to change into autumn costumes.

The last week we have also been hosting Ryan and Marisol, two American CouchSurfers who are travelling Europe on their 8th months now. It is amazing how many places they have been and it makes me tick to go on big trip. See Ryans great pictures at Flickr.

While some of the weekend was spend with a bunch of IAESTE people at the Karltejn Castle, my hung-over Sunday was spend at the computer.

Ive changed the look of my blog for a cleaner one. There are usually plenty of pictures in my post so I decided to go for a simple design with Depo Clean theme. Here is a few more shots from the castle.

Last weekend I joined the local chapter of IAESTE on a trip to Southern Bohemia. We were 50 people from about 20 different countries so there were a lot of different talks and a good atmosphere.

Friday we drove to a camp site on the Vltava River were we camped for the night while making Czech sausages and drinking pivo around the camp fire.

Next morning we got up and got suited for a canoe ride seven kilometers down the river.

It was a warm day with temperatures up to about 35 degrees so it was great day for cruising on the river. I think Dennis and I capsized 4 or 5 3 times during the sailing because we had to get through a couple of falls which we werent very good at.

I ended up getting my camera wet so no more pictures from me that day. Instead Im borrowing some from Dennis who was a bit more thoughtful with his camera.

We sailed until we reached Cesky Krumlov which is a really magical town with a huge castle overlooking the town. The centre of the town itself is also very beautiful. The city center is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Here is one of Dennis pictures overlooking the town from the castle.

Sunday we went to see the real Budweiser brewery in esk

The bus system here is amazing. We paid 1160czk for two return tickets on an air conditioned bus with leather seats, showing movies and Friends episodes and complimentary copy of the days newspaper or Maxim.

On our first venture in Ostrava we jumped on the tram to take it two stops and figured we could do that without buying a ticket. Bad idea. As soon as the tram started roling a ticket officer busted us and we had to pay a 400czk fine each – doh!

I contacted a couple of people on CouchSurfing to see if somebody had couches we could crash on and thats how we ended up meeting Petr. Or we havent actually met Petr yet. He wasnt home but he got Zeno – his flat mate and landlord – to let us in so that we could sleep on his floor.

Zeno is a photographer and cinomatographer and the flat were staying in is also his studio. The rest of the evening we spend with Zeno drinking whiskey – good times.