24 Hours: To Vienna and Back

For your enjoyment, a play-by-play account of our trip to Vienna on Sunday. Hold on to your hats!
14:00 Saturday afternoon, in our kitchen:
Geo: "Let's take a trip."
Krissy: "Okay. When and where?"
Geo: "Tonight, after the opera...how about Vienna."
19:00 Don Giovanni at the Estates Theater in Prague
22:30 Dinner afterwards with friends
23:30 Dash to train station to get on train with tickets one minute before it takes off
03:00 Transfer somewhere in the Czech Republic. It was cold.
03:45 Back in the train and off to Austria
06:00 Arrive in Vienna
06:15 Breakfast in the train station (first cup of cofee); plan they day (thank you, Rick Steves and Marc and Ivan)
07:45 Depart for town with an all-day transfer pass
08:30 Use tram to see "the ring" in Vienna
09:00 Begin tours of the Hofburg Palace--the Imperial Palace, including the silverware/porcelain collection and the Sisi museum (dedicated to Emperor Franz Josef's wife)
11:30 Snack at Hofburg cafe (strudel and espresso!)
12:00 Tour of the Treasury at Hofburg Palace
13:00 Ponder what to do next...Lipizzaner horses, famous opera house...settled on opera
13:30 Decided to finish a school assignment first, found an internet cafe to take care of business
14:00 Time for lunch--walked around until we found a great Japanese/Chinese buffet (all you can eat!)
14:50 Dash off to the opera house, but there were not going to be any tours today :(
15:00 Boarded double-decker bus for a one hour tour of "the ring" (I dozed off for about half the ride and Geo slept a few minutes too)
16:00 Starbucks (cookies and espresso--can one have too much caffeine in one day?)
16:20 Haus der Musik: a very interactive music museum that we could have spent all day in, but we only had a little more than an hour
17:30 Begin heading back to the train station
18:30 Board train going to Prague
22:50 Arrival, but 15 minutes late, causing us to miss the train back to our town, so...
23:10 Snack time at McDonald's on Wenceslas Square in Prague (salads and water, to detox after all the sugar and coffee we had all day)
0:11 Train back home departs
0:59 Home at last
Tired? We were too. One thing we learned is you shouldn't take an overnight train unless you have the possibility of sleeping for at least 6 hours (Vienna is too close to Prague). I took some pictures, and I think I can get those posted with a borrowed cable to upload them, so I should get those on soon.

Finding our way

I haven't had much to write about this week, so I will try to summarize the things we've done to keep us busy since the last post.
Last Thursday, Andrea, Connor, Heidi and I set out to explore the town of Čelákovice, the small town where we are staying for school. We walked up and down the main street of town, looking at the stores, figuring out what they sell and what their hours are. That kept us busy for a few hours, and then because we were quite cold after spending that much time outdoors, we stopped in a Greek restaurant for some hot chocolate and lattes. They cost about a dollar each, which gives you a nice portion.
On Friday, the whole class went into Prague for a scavenger hunt. We were split into small groups of 4 or 5 people (husbands and wives were split as well) to answer as many questions about Prague (3 pages worth of questions, activities and challenges) as we could in 2 hours. We were a bit sluggish because of the cold, but we had fun in the process. One of our challenges was to find out how many stairs there are in the Prague replica of the Eiffel Tower. You could use a book, search the internet, ask someone, or go there and find out for yourself. Our team decided to go there. It's all uphill getting there, and then there are lots of stairs to climb (completely frozen stairs, I might add). But, we trekked about so we could have the pleasure of finding out for ourselves how many stairs there are (1046, if I remember correctly). Also, we got bonus points for taking a picture once we got there. So, that was the gist of the scavenger hunt. I think the team I was on came in last. Our prize was a pair of fuzzy socks for each of us. The team Geo was on came in second or third to last; they got some warm gloves. The rest of the teams got various warm items, like a beanie, a scarf, and ear warmers. The winning team got a bottle of sparkling wine each, and they were kind enough to share it with the whole class at our magnificent lunch we had after the competition. We went to a restaurant where the menu was already ordered for us...a nice big salad, a special Czech entree of beef with bread dumplings and a sweet, rich gravy, and apple strudel for dessert. I didn't have to eat again the whole day...
After lunch, which was actually a very late lunch or a very early dinner, we took a walking tour of the "mysteries of Prague". It was mildly entertaining to hear our local tour guide tell the old "ghost" stories of Prague. But I should have known better to sign up for an outdoor walking tour after dark. At least it wasn't snowing! After the tour, we went to another restaurant (people in the group were actually hungry) and we ordered a light snack, so we wouldn't go to bed hungry. We got home around 10:30 pm, so it was a full 12-hour day of fun in Prague.
Saturday we intended to do laundry, so we sat around our apartment the whole day while we waited our turn. It was later revealed to us that a staff person had the key to the laundry room and there was no way to get ahold of her. So, Geo made the best of the day and studied all day. He got a lot done. I sewed a lot. It snowed mostly all day, but it stopped long enough for me to go to the grocery store. It was about an inch of snow by the time it was finished snowing. Later that evening, Geo and I went out for crepes.
On Sunday, we finally got the laundry key, so we did one load in the early afternoon. Then we went in to Prague for church...we found a group called Prague Christian Fellowship. They meet at 4:30 pm. That part is the best. It was a nice service, and it was really nice to be back to church, since we hadn't been since Christmas morning. After church, Geo and I went out to dinner in Prague--the Pizza Coloseum. We had delicious pizza and pasta. And tiramisu and ice cream :)
Geo doesn't have classes on Monday, so he had more time to prepare the rest of his homework. A lot of his classes are only 5 weeks, so he really has to get moving! In the afternoon, I did a little research with Andrea about the possibilities of going to Italy for the Olympics. Then we ran to the pharmacy (Connor seems to have pneumonia, poor little guy) and then to the store for food for dinner. Geo studied and ran, and studied some more. He's starting a club here that will set up touring the Central Banks of various countries and maybe the whole EU. We had to do a little bit of advertising and planning to get the club charter turned in by today.
So, that's an update. I guess we did a little more than I thought. Now I'm doing another load of laundry while Geo's in class. Tonight we go into Prague for "First Tuesday," a Thunderbird get-together that happens all over the world. Students and alumni (and sometimes potential students) gather for some sort of social activity. I think it will just be appetizers tonight.
Friday we're going to tour a beer factory. I'll summarize that over the weekend for you.
It snowed again this morning (another inch) and snow/rain is the forecast for days. Temperatures today are about 36 F (feels like 24, says Yahoo) and shouldn't be over 30 the rest of the week! Brrr...

Missing!

It seems I've misplaced my USB connector for the camera to the laptop. I don't know if got left in Kenya (the last time I used it) or if it's just been misplaced with all the unpacking and rearranging we've been doing here. That doesn't mean the end of the blog, but it might seem a little empty for awhile without a visual on life here.
Here are some other senses for you to experience while the pictures stay stuck in the camera:
Hearing: Let me tell you about the radio we have in our rooms here at the CMC. There is a large box in each room that plays one radio station. It is a decent station, with some songs in English, some in Czech (I think) and maybe some songs in other languages as well. I have heard quite the mix of English songs though: Patrick Swayze's song for the "Dirty Dancing" soundtrack; Duran Duran; and Whitney Houston's "One Moment in Time" (a song I had never heard until we sang it for high school graduation in '96 and haven't heard since). At least the one radio station comes in clearly.
Smelling: Cooking (usually one of my favorite activities) has become a challenge with two hot plates, a wok, and a pot. What I really need is one of those 4 ingredients or less cookbooks. That still doesn't mean I can handle the recipe though, since we don't have an oven. And even the ones that can be done on the hot plate might not make it. Take tonight for example. I wasn't too excited to eat any more potatoes (Czech's really like potatoes, so I was going to try something else) so I thought some rice might be nice. Well, I haven't cooked rice in a pot in ages (thank you, rice cooker at home) so I did the best I could without my Joy of Cooking to refer to. I brought the rice to a boil and let it cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. At 18 minutes, I smelled burned rice. The rice was attached to the bottom of my brand new pot. And of course, the top layer was undercooked. Geo ate it anyway, it wasn't too bad. But so much for rice. And I hope my pot turns out okay. Anyway, the scent filled up the whole place and we had to air it out, which leads me to the next sense:
Feeling: All we feel is cold. The rooms are heated well enough for our desert blood, but due to the burned rice incident, we turned our rooms into freezers for a few minutes. It helped get the smell out, but it got really cold inside. 2 hours later and it's starting to warm up. Thanks also to a hot pot of tea.
I'll write some more about the other senses later. And I'll keep looking for the camera cord.