Farewell boat party, Cesky Krumlov, and more pragueing

Well, last Wednesday we had our farewell boat party - pirate style. It was a lot of fun. All 200 of us dressed as pirates met in the lobby of the dorm at 6:30, then walked through Prague and onto the metro. We got some interesting looks as we rowdily made our way through the city and to the river where a boat with balloons was awaiting us. Some people got really dressed up, some didn't at all, and some tried to be creative with the "pirate theme". There was a "cyber pirate" (aka a hacker that messes up all of our computers) and he just put a computer mouse on a string and wore it around his neck. There was also a peter pan and some turkish guys dressed up as the mafia. Anyhow, it was a very fun night and gave us a chance to take some pictures with friends we have met over the semester. We danced and partied for about 4 hours while the boat cruised up and down the Vltava River. The party continued after the boat docked - there was indeed streaking across the Charle's bridge going on.. I was not apart of that - haha...although it would have been fun to say I did that.. I think only one brave k-stater accomplished the feat.

On Friday, Luke, Laura, Carl and I all took a short trip to Cesky Krumlov. It's a very small town in the Czech Republic in southern Bohemia. It is one of the places that people are told to go when they come to Prague. It's a very small town and an uncomfortable 3.5 hour bus ride to get there, but it was well worth it. We nearly missed our bus to the town, too, because of the lady who sold the bus tickets to us. Luke and I had gone and picked up the tickets earlier in the week. There are two main bus stations. When we bought the ticket I asked the lady if we left from this stop or the other stop which is at another metro station. She pointed out to the buses there and told us it was at platform 2. So....we show up at that station and go to platform 2. We started looking at the signs at the stop and not seeing anything about Cesky Krumlov, so I walk over to this information booth and after a few tries the man understands what I'm asking and looks at the ticket and confirms that we are supposed to be at the other metro stop. So we basically ran to the metro and caught one right as it arrived. Luckily, we made it to the other station in time, but it was a little stressful.

Anyhow, the city is very beautiful. It's main attraction is the castle that overlooks the city. The castle - and the city - are very unique because of the way the buildings are painted. The castle is very ornate the way they painted it to look as though there are individual stones that make up the building. It also gives it a very colorful and playful look. The castle also had a bear pit.. instead of a moat, there was a pit that a bridge went over that had 2 bears in it. They were very cute bears. We stayed at a cozy little hostel call the Krumlov house. They gave us a map with some highlated places to go - restaurants, bars, and sites. The whole first evening we were there it rained and wasn't too fun to walk around in, so we ended up going on a miniature pub crawl around Cesky Krumlov to the 6 pubs they have pointed out on the map. They had some interesting places - one was called the Horror Bar - and had skeletons and creepy, halloween looking decorations. The two girl bartenders were very goth looking - which we thought was an interesting type of bar to have in such a small town. The town reminded me a lot of a mountain town in Colorado - the atmosphere was about the same it seemed. There was rafting on the Vltava River that winds around the city. Unfortunately, it wasn't sunny and not very warm so the river didn't look too appealing. There is also horse back riding, but because of some kind of car rally thing we were unable to do that too, so that was a bit unfortunate. We decided to go to the torture museum. They also have this museum in Prague, that we see often, but have yet to go in. I was pretty impressed with the torture museum, because it really creeped us out. We were the only ones in there the whole time and we were going around in this cave area that was very dark with pieces of torture equipment and fake people (that sometimes looked like they could have been real and about to jump out and grab us). They had all these examples of the way people were tortured way back in the day. So, an interesting museum to say the least. We visited the castle gardens - which was pretty large and very beautifully done. We also went to a photography and art exhibit with some interesting work by czech photographer, Jan Saudek. They also had some unique souvenirs in the town that we have not seen in Prague, so we all did a little souvenir shopping.
So, we spent one night there and headed back to Prague the next afternoon - it was a nice break from the big city.

(a courtyard of the castle - all those "stones" are just painted on)

We are starting to realize how much little time we have left - some less than others. Of course, I have my whole project still to finish for studio, but that pretty much all of school I have left. So, Luke and I did some wandering around today in Prague. He had gotten up early and done some on his own, but then we decided we'd go to the park I had run to a little while ago and then make our way to the castle area, then hopefully find this hidden tunnel I've been wanting to find very badly! So we went around and took some pictures of Prague. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast once again, so the pictures weren't as great as they could be with a blue sky. We went to the park area, some gardens in the park which lead to the castle. Then we headed down this pathway/trail that goes around the side of the hill that the tunnel is on. We see it when we ride the tram, but had yet to do it and I always wondered if this tunnel was somewhere back there. So we hiked around and decided to go down this one path. We walked down it a ways and I recognized the entrance of the tunnel. I have a picture of it in a little pocket architecture/prague book. This was an exciting moment. The tunnel is an odd oval/egg shape that makes it very unique and it is made of brick. It has lights along one side of the tunnel. I'm not sure what the purpose of the tunnel is, other than connecting the two sides of this long pathway that continues on in this forested area.

(we thought the picture looked cool ... I know, I look kind of like an idiot)

(this garden area was so 'senior picture perfect' so I had to take a senior picture.)

Well, that's about it for now. I will be working very hard this week on getting some studio stuff done and over with! I also plan on doing some more exploring of Prague (what I just decided I want to call Pragueing) - although it is supposed to be rainy (go figure) the next two days. This city is so beautiful and I'm going to miss it a lot when I leave it!