Day 2: More Praha

It's crazy how little I've slept in the last few days, as tired as I was last night I went to sleep and still woke up around 5:00 am local time here in Prague. We left our hotel at about 8:30 am to go get some breakfast before it was time to meet with Jan again. We found a spot and sat down. There is a reason why The United State is heavier than most European countries, and I found that out first hand at breakfast this morning. I don't know the name of what I ordered but it was basically a ham and cheese melt that was toasted, and it was fantastic. The problem was that it was tiny. I could have eaten at least three times what I ate. That is why Europeans are so much skinnier, they eat way smaller portions. In the US we are so concerned with how many grams of fat the meal has, and how many carbs and complex carbs, I don't see any of that over here in the short time that I have been here. It seems that, in general, Europeans don't care so much what they eat as far as health goes, but they just eat much less of it that Americans do. Also here in Europe, if you order a coke, you get a coke. Only one coke though. There is no refills, and even the drink that you get is maybe 10 ounces. In America you can order a medium coke at a fast food place and it comes out 32 ounces or something crazy, and even then if you sit in the restaurant you can get refills. Its a different world over here. After half a breakfast we went to meet Jan. Jan showed up with a big Czech smile on his face and off we went to walk around the city of Praha to the natives, but we call it Prague. The first place we went was to the Prague Castle, which is the residence of the Czech President, and yes it is called a president according to Jan. We were being guided by a local so we had a tip, you see for a long time this gorgeous Gothic style Cathedral building was open to the public, but a few years ago I guess they decided to charge to get into the building. Some religious people apparently made a stink about it because they simply wanted to go in and pray inside this beautiful church. So here we are, three Americans walking up to this guard with our Czech speaking tour guide, Jan, and he starts talking to Czech to this guy and after a minute or two, my sister and my dad and I are escorted into this building and then escorted inside the roped off area to sit in the pews where we were supposed to be praying, I guess. It was crazy that of the 500 people maybe, all of which were paying customers except us, here we were sitting in a roped off area as everybody else walked around us. Then after we left the Cathedral, we head over to the Tower. It cost 9 bucks a piece for us to go up there, and once you got up there the view was spectacular....once you got up there. We walked up 287 stairs in a spiral staircase that was maybe 8 feet in diameter, so you couldn't see more than six stairs in front of you at any given time. 287 stairs doesn't sound like a ton, but it was plenty of stairs for us Americans. It was enough stairs that about half way up I was thinking to myself that the Czech government should invest in a lift. It wasn't only us that were tired, I asked a guy that was coming down as we were walking up if we were close once and he said, "not really. you better pace yourself." Whew, we finally made it up the stairs and to my dismay there was no bed to take turns laying in when we got up there, but luckily I managed to make it up just fine. After the tower we headed out of the castle area, and found something to eat and drink as us Americans were tuckered out at this point. On our way back to our apartment we walked across the Charles Bridge which was very interesting. It was a bridge in which cars were not allowed and there were all sorts of interesting people selling stuff from drawings to dream catcher looking things. There was also a guy on the bridge who was apparently pretty famous because Jan had seen him before. This guy was playing literally at least 6 instruments and one time, and he was good too. He had 4 or 5 instruments attached to his hands and then another one each attached to his feet. Every time he tapped his feet it would make an instrument make a noise. It was very interesting and he drew quite a large crowd. From there it was time to start heading back to our apartment because we were tired and Jan had to meet his family somewhere. We took a subway back for about a mile and a half or so, and on the Subway I got to stand next to a beautiful Czech girl with long blonde hair and a great set of....I digress, anyway we were finally getting back to the area where I could kind of recognize and I knew we needed to take a left at this certain point of or journey to get back home. Us Americans were dragging from walking so much as we approached the point. When we got there Jan said, "I think we should go straight here," not because he didn't know where we were but because he wanted to take us to an island in the middle of the river, which ended up being pretty cool, but after so much walking me and my sister and my dad were ready to be back in our apartment and resting. We did finally make it back and after Jan came up to check out our place and chat for another ten minutes or so, it was time to say our goodbyes to Jan, as we are leaving the next morning for another town in the Czech Republic. As soon as Jan walked out the door you would've thought that the third atomic bomb had been dropped in our room because we all hit the pillows so fast. That is another thing about Europe is that there is so many less cars there, and everybody is always walking. Jan seemed very fresh as my family was stumbling down the stretch. Another reason why Europeans are skinnier maybe is because they walk so much. Anyway, this is getting long. I will catch up tomorrow when we reach our next destination in the Czech Republic.

Day 1...and a half: Journey to Prague

Wow, what a long day to Prague. First a 4 hour flight from Seattle to Detroit. Next a 7 hour flight from Detroit to Paris, and lastly an hour and a half flight from there to Prague. Whew, that was a long one, and like I said yesterday, I intended to sleep on the flights but I didn't do much of that. Instead, I watched a couple movies from Detroit to Paris, including Rain Man, which was a great movie and made Alan's comments and actions on The Hangover even funnier. After that movie, I did the dumbest thing that I have done in.....maybe a week or so. I got up to go use the bathroom about 12 seconds before the drink cart passed my row so that when I got out of the bathroom I wasn't able to get back to my seat because the drink cart was in the way. I ended up chatting with a different flight attendant for about 20 minutes, and she was married and has two kids and lives in Detroit in case anybody wanted to know. But eventually we made it to Prague and a guy named Thomas picked us up and took us to our apartment that a guy was renting out to us for two nights. We(actually not me at all, but my dad) gave Thomas 500 Czech Koruna for taking us. A dollar equals about 17 Czech Koruna so I will let you do that math because I am tired. We arrived at our apartment at about 4:00 pm local time on Saturday evening, and we had two hours before we were going to meet a friend of my dads that he had met on a different trip. We met at the Hard rock Cafe in Prague, mostly because that was one of the few signs that we could read and recognize. A 27-year old man, who was fluent in Czech, English, German and Chinese, walked up named Jan. Jan was dad's buddy, a local guy, and he took us around Prague for the remaining few hours that we had left for that night. "Jan" is pronounced Yawn, which ironically enough was what me and my sister were doing all night long. We were tired, so we were indeed "yawning." Anyway, after walking around the streets of Prague for many hours we sat down at a restaurant. I was starving, and Jan recommended the Roasted Duck and Dumplings, so that is what I ate with my local Pilsner Beer that I really didn't enjoy all that much, but it was cool to say that I had a local Czech beer. The Duck on the other hand was stupendous. Jan said to never ever leave The Czech Republic without learning the most important saying in Czech, "Budo mit jeste jendo pivo." which means, "I'll have one more beer." I will leave all(and I use the word "all" lightly) of you with a question that Jan asked as we were walking away from an ice cream stand. You see the lady running the ice cream shop had a quite visible tattoo on her cleavage. As we were walking away eating our ice cream Jan asked me a question that was something to the effect of this, "If I make a compliment about her tattoo, is that a nice thing to say, or does it look bad that I am even looking down there at all??" Its a no win situation I guess, Hmmm the thoughts to ponder in Prague Czech Republic. I will catch up with you all tomorrow hopefully.

Its the Night Before Day 1:

So here I sit in my house at 4:00 AM Pacific time in the Great Northwest. I am about to fall asleep on the couch because if I sleep in my bed, I will have to remake it, and I don't want to do that. I am goofing around on facebook and youtube trying to stay awake as long as possible, so that I can sleep tomorrow on the plane. Where am I going you ask? Well that is a good question, and I don't know the full answer, but I'll tell you what I do know. I am positive that my flight leaves Seattle at 1:15 in the afternoon(Day 1 of my trip) and I am positive that we stop in Detroit and then get on an Air France flight that will take us to Paris, France. Then its a short hour and a half flight to Prague Czech Republic, our destination. When I say we I mean my Dad and sister. My dad is the brains of the operation, and while I was trying to graduate college he was making plans through Europe. Anyway, its Prague for about a week I think, and then some other places for awhile too, including Vienna Austria, and Hungary. That might be it, but I'm not sure. That is kind of the fun of it for me, I don't exactly know where I am going or how long I'll be in a place until I am there. I am going to do my best to write a little something in this blog each and every day of my 18 days in Europe, and maybe one of you brave souls can read about and follow my journey to wherever it is that I go. Day 1 begins tomorrow and I look forward to updating everybody on the busy day in the airports.

Shaka-n the World

On Sunday, March 13th the Virginia Commonwealth University(VCU) Rams were sitting in front of the TV watching the Selection Show on ESPN, hoping and praying that they would just get into the tournament. And when they got that call, they didn’t take it for granted. Two weeks later to the day the VCU Rams punched their ticket to the Final Four in Houston next weekend. What a ride they have had, so far.
All of the critics on Selection Sunday have everything negative to say about them. “They had a sub-par year, they lost to South Florida, who was awful this year. When you look at their resume, its just not right that they are in over Colorado or Virginia Tech.” Well ol’ Shaka thought otherwise, and wasn’t going to be satisfied with just getting there. They were clearly one of the last teams in, as they had to play in the “opening round game” against USC the Tuesday before the main tournament even started. If you win that game then you get to be the 11 seed, and face a Big East team, Georgetown in the second round(what used to be called the first round.)
The Rams were not huge underdogs against USC, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to see them knock off the Trojans in an opening round game, 59-46. Yah that was a good win, a good way to say F you to the critics who thought they shouldn’t be in, but everybody in the world thought that that was as far as they are going. Well almost everybody. Shake Smart and the rest of the team in that locker room before the Georgetown game thought otherwise. VCU came out and shocked the country and ruined a lot of brackets in the meantime and beat Georgetown, badly. VCU looked much like a 3 seed as they rolled to an 18 point win over Georgetown, 74-56. “Yah they beat Georgetown, but the Hoyas were on a 5 game losing streak going into that game, and has injury issues. No way they get by Purdue, who had a 14-4 record in the Big 12.” Said all of the critics. All of the sudden VCU beats a very good defensive Purdue team by a score of 94-76, and all of the sudden the country starts to watch.
An eleven seed in the sweet 16 in not all that uncommon, it seems like every year there is one double digit team that gets to the sweet 16, but typically get beat right away when their opponent has all week to study them. They usually just flat out get beaten by a better team. It seemed no different this year when VCU went to the sweet 16 to play another favored team in Florida State. Florida State was a 10 seed, but just got done beating a great team in Notre Dame out of the Big East. Yet again, VCU upsets a team and this time advances to the Elite 8 by beating Florida State 72-71 in overtime. After the game, Shaka Smart said one of my favorite quotes in sports, “It’s amazing what a team can do when nobody cares who gets the credit.” That quote rings true for the Rams as that teams scoring is spread around so well. “Great, you beat Florida State to get to the Elite 8, this is a great story for the VCU players and fans, but they are not going to get past Kansas.” Everybody in the sports world, including myself, was saying this about VCU’s chances against Kansas who was the far superior team on paper. In fact, at tip-off of the game Kansas was favored by 11.5 points in Vegas.
It was a chance to get the Final Four for both teams, and both would come out strong, so we thought. In fact Kansas came out strong and started the game on a 6-0 run. But it wasn’t the score that seemed overwhelming for the Rams, but mostly how Kansas’ D gave them no real good chances on the offensive side of the court. But all of the sudden VCU started to play, they got great shots, made most of those shots and shot especially well from 3 point land. VCU went on a run and ended the first half up by 14 points on the heavily favored Kansas team. At halftime Shaka Smart said, “Kansas will make a run in the second half, they are good. We have to be ready and try to protect the lead when the run comes.” Shaka was a prophet, Kansas did make a run and got it all the way down to three points, but the Rams of VCU proved their prominence in this tournament and held off the Jayhawks, eventually winning the game 71-61. VCU was underdogs in every single one of their wins in the tourney, all of which were to opponents from different conferences. USC is from the Pac-10, Georgetown from the Big East, Purdue from the Big 10, Florida State from the ACC, and then Kansas from the Big 12. Ironically enough the Rams play another team from a different conference on Saturday, the Butler Bulldogs from the Horizon League, who are there on their own Cinderella run as they were last year as well. Now if VCU can win on Saturday followed by a Kentucky win on Saturday night over UConn, the Rams would play their 7th team from 7 different conferences(Kentucky from the SEC). That would be quite the story on the way to the National Title. I for one am cheering for Shaka Smart and the VCU Rams to make a run the whole way. Win or lose this weekend, it is safe to say that Shaka Smart could be a very very rich man in a few months when potentially some big school start to chase him and pay him the big bucks. But for now, go VCU, good luck in the final four in Houston this weekend.