Monday, February 6, 2006

Yesterday I finally took advantage of Prague on my own. I woke up bright eyed and bushy-tailed (Saturday night I took it easy by going out with Emily, Erin, Dyani and her friends to a microbrewery with flavored beers like coffee beer, banana beer, blueberry beer, nettle beer and other strange concoctions, and crossing the river to a bar with rock climbing but the boulders were closed by the time we got there so we all had a beer and basically called it a night--oh, except for a disheartening run-in with a guy working for ISEC from Kansas who loudly, disrespectfully, and obnoxiously held up the negative American stereotype) and made my way to Wenceslas with a figurative pocket full of korunas and the intent of spending it at H&M. I bought a few shorts, a pair of pants, and a necklace (you know how most people overpack for study abroad? I underpacked. I've been here for less than three weeks and have already run 3 loads of laundry...no matter how clean I am, the cigarette smoke on my clothes never goes away). I then found a bookstore with an international floor and purchased Lolita. What a wicked funny and twisted book so far. And I'm only on page 50-something.

I have every intention of going to Kava Kava Kava (or KKK, as we Americans call it as we chuckle) who has free WIFI but my roommate text messaged me that their WIFI was down for some reason. So I began roaming around Nove Mesto with a vague idea of an overpriced, American-centric bar that has free WIFI. I turned down Panska off of Wenceslas and I came upon the Mucha Museum. I decided to pay the 60 korunas (which is less than $3) and see the works of the famous Czech artist. I did not know anything about him before this but I fell in love with his work. His most famous works were promotional lithograph posters of the Parisian actress Sarah Bernhardt. My favorite was the poster for Medea. He also was a very talented painter outside of his art nouveau commerical works and he created a work called the Slav Epic that detailed a great chunk of Czech and Slavic history. While it was not in this museum (it is in some cathedral here in Prague), I got to see pieces of it in the informational video I watched at the end of the exhibit.

The rest of my day was spent at Jama, the WIFI bar, and reading Lolita to my sickening pleasure.