Prague - Bílá Hora

The eternal struggle to get over our Jet-Lag continues...

The early to bed, early to rise routine we've found ourselves in hasn't really lent itself to the more social evening activities that some of our compatriots have been engaging in. Most of them arrived a few days early so the adjustment period is over and the imbibing-all-the-beer-and-wine period has begun. I don't really mind so much, especially since I'm not even remotely capable of drinking either beer (tastes like feet) or wine (like grape juice that's gone bad), and the extra sleep means that we're really getting the most out of our days.

Yesterday we started the day with a great lecture from Dr. Scheffel (I'm a history student, lectures are my jam) and one of the girls we met on the walking tour decided to join us in our afternoon activity of finding the first landmark on our assignment list.

Our assignment for this trip is pretty freaking cool actually. We've got a list of important historical sites in each of the places we're visiting, and depending on how difficult they are to get to, the number of points they're worth is higher. We have to collect fifty points in total, and at each site we visit we need to take a picture of ourselves there, and write a short blurb about how we got there and the significance of the site.

It's all designed to get us out of our shell and talking with local people we might not normally feel compelled to interact with. Which is exactly what we had to do with this first assignment.

The Astrological Clock

Jen, Ashley (new friend from the tour) and I set out to find the information office beside the Astrological Clock in the hope that they would be able to steer us in the right direction of the site of The Battle of the White Mountain. Not only did the woman working in the office know what we were talking about, she gave us a free map and incredible directions to the transit station where we would be catching one of the tram lines all the way to the last stop, Bílá Hora . There is no way we would have found this place on our own, and we were feeling pretty triumphant as we left the office on our first adventure.

Of course we got a bit lost trying to find the tram stop, but we ended up finding a market instead that had and amazing booth selling pashmina scarves. I bought one for my friend Mallory back home - the first official purchase of the trip!

We finally found our tram and lumbered aboard with the grace of a herd of awkward gazelles: fumbling for change, tripping up the stairs, clearly looking like tourists. We are the coolest.

Finally, after exiting the city completely and with an increasing awareness of the extreme lack of structures visible, we found ourselves at the end of the line and it was...a field.

No lies. 

That little hill in the distance was actually a monument to the battle, though we all thought it was a bit sad that while it was there, it looked like it was in the middle of someone's crop of potatoes. 

All in all, it was a great day. We put ourselves out there and successfully communicated with someone who didn't have much english, used public transportation in a foreign country, and found our first assignment landmark. I can't wait to find the rest!

Definitely not tourists. 

Not even a little bit.