Day Fifty-two

Day Fifty-two - 16.07.05 - [Prague]

• Got up and left our hostel at noon, stopped at the internet cafe to find out where we would meet Magda to meet up for what we think is a group of deaf people meeting up to work on plans to fight for better Deaf Rights in Eastern Europe.
• After checking email, we decided to try to get to a market to see if there were some cheap things to get to remember Prague.
• The market closed at 15h and we got there at 16h, oh well so we decided to take the metro for the first time to get closer to our hostel.
  
• We had a hard time deciding whether we should eat first or go to our hostel first, in the end we decided to go to the same place we had dinner last night first before going to our hostel.
• After we were done eating, we realized that there was no time to go to our hostel and change clothes and clean up before meeting Magda at 19h so we headed to the metro.
• Met Magda at the end of our metro ride and there were a lot of Deaf people at the station waiting for the city bus, we rode the city bus to a hotel.
• Everyone was dressed up nice while we were in our normal stinky clothes so we wondered what we were going to and when we entered the hotel, we saw a sign saying "Miss Deaf World" which explained everything!
• It was very interesting, Magda warned us that the people running the show were all hearing and for more than four years the Deaf people have complained that they run the show the wrong way, one example was they videotaped the person host (who was hearing and spoke without signing) all the time and showed a tiny box with the interpreter in the bottom right corner of the screen televison!
• We were shocked to also find out that the judges were hearing too! During breaks, they had young people perform dances, once again they were also hearing!
• There were nine women from Czech, Slovekia, South Africa, America, Bulgaria, Russia, Italy and two more that we failed to find out where they were from, the winners were 3rd - South Africa, 2nd - Russia and 1st - Slovekia.
• Magda also explained that every year less countries participate in Miss Deaf World - England and Canada used to participate, but they were not there and another guy, Mirek who came from Poland, but lives in New York City now explained that over time countries have abandoned the pagent because of the way it is run by hearing people and they prefer to participate in Miss Deaf Universe.
• After the pagent, there was a banquet, but we were too tired and still stuffed from our dinner so we told Magda we would head back to our hostel so we bid our farewells and told her if we were up to doing more tomorrow we would email her.
• On the way back to our hostel, we decided to look for a night club that had seven rooms built in an old catacomb! We found it, the enternace did not look very appealing, but we decided to take our time and look further back and found a stairway down to the basement, which led us to several catacomb rooms and tunnels!
• We decided to have our first Czech absinthe to celebrate my birthday - FrecklesFly got her whole cup on fire while burning the sugar! The drink tasted strange and burned our throats and after a few seconds we felt light-headed! The alcohol content of absinthe was seventy percent.
• We had several different cocktail drinks to cool down our throats before heading back to the hostel and on the way, I took some pictures of Prague at night.
  

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Fifty-one - 15.07.05 - [Prague]

• Arrived in Prague at approxmately 7h30 and we were very tired and kind of hung over from the Polish bar so we decided to look for a cafe to get something to eat and hopefully get rid of our headaches.
• Could not find a cafe so we went to McDonald's and they were serving what seemed to be a normal lunch-dinner menu. We both got salad, me pop and FrecklesFly coffee and relaxed under their sidewalk umbrella.
• After eating, we headed to the internet cafe to find out what time and where we could meet Magda, a Deaf girl who lives in Prague and would give us some tour of the city and booked our hostel. We decided to stay at a hostel that is on an island in the Vltava River called Traveller's Hostel.
• We got there and signed in took a look around the place and walked on the other side of the island and got beer and water, played a game of fooseball with their mini-fooseball table (took a picture of it, remind me to show it to you if you are interested in what a mini-fooseball table looks like.
• Went back to our hostel and rested for approximately one hour, before heading to Václavské náměstí to meet Magda at 15h.
• Met her and she began the tour by taking us to the old town square.
• Next we went to the Kings Garden, Prague castle, and going there, we crossed Chalres bridge.
• After that we headed back to our hostel and said good bye to Magda, made plans on how we would meet up tomorrow.
• We stopped at a vegeterian resturant with good food for good prices before going to our hostel for the night.
  

Amount Spent: TBA

Day Fifty - 14.07.05 - [Krakow -> Prague]

• Got up, ate breakfast at our hostel, breakfast was bread, cheese slices, slices of cold meat (which went to waste), coffee, and jam.
• Packed up and went to train station to get train that would take us to the town where the Auschwitz Concentration Camp (1 and 2) was, on the way stopped at a market and bought some berries and veggies to put on our sandwiches.
• FYI: Cheaper to take train to Auschwitz than take tour bus that are available in Krakow (approx. 11pln one way train ticket vs. 160pln tour bus, round trip).
• Got to the town and took city bus to the concentration camp, the muesum is free of charge, but we paid 4pln for backpack storage and 5pln to watch a movie clip which was pointless because we understood nothing with no english subtitles and the clip did not really have scenes we would easily understand what was happening.
• Bought a tour guide phamlet and walked around Auschwitz 1, it is smaller than Auschwitz 2, however we were worn out from onlz #1 so we skipped #2 and headed back to the train station (our night train to Prague departs at 00h05 and arrives at approx 7h30) and decided to look for a place to have dinner and found a simple place called the Skorpion across the street from the train station.
• Their menu had plenty of vegeterian choices so we had cabbage and onion pies (pegories) and cheese panackes (crepes with ricotta cheese and icing sugar) along with pickled red peppers and borscht soup with eggs. Delicous and cheap too!
• Headed to the bar next door because the beer there was cheaper than the restaurant and we wanted to use up all our Polish coins before leaving for Prague.
• Hanged out with a drunk Polish dude who seemed to understand some written English, but was fun to watch him struggle to understand or come up with English words to say to us and usually ended up speaking to us all the time.
• He kept on telling us we could sleep at his hotel, but we kept on trying to tell him that we were waiting for the train to Prague.
• Train arrived and we left, Poland is the first country we fully got rid of their coins!
  

Amount Spent: TBA