The Prague Blague... see what I did there?

I wanted to skip writing a post about Prague. My feelings about the city are complex, and potentially controversial (I didn't love it... eeeek), and part of me wanted to just put it behind me as I start living the Serbia life.

But writing these posts about each month really has helped me process my experiences, and hopefully has given you (yes, you, all 4 of my blog readers out there!) some insight into the weird world of living in a different city/country every month. So let's talk about Prague.

gets me every time

Prague was one of the cities I was most excited to live in this year. Without knowing much about it, I had heard fantastic reviews from people who had lived there or visited, and I was vaguely aware that the city was steeped in history. My perception was of a magical historical fairyland. And in a lot of ways, that's exactly what Prague turned out to be.

boats, castles, bridges... maaaaagic

BUT a few outside factors came into play in August that took away from Prague's allure...

Most of Europe was hit with a heat wave, and Prague felt like it was on fire for most of the month. Since the sort of heat we were experiencing was very unusual for the area, almost nowhere had air conditioning (including our apartments). At pretty much any given time throughout August I was dehydrated, groggy, sweating and lethargic. Cute, right? I recognize the irony that as a self-proclaimed sun worshipper, I ended up enjoying Bogotá's cold temps in May, and now I'm complaining about Prague's heat.

smiling through the sweat

Prague also came directly after Lisbon, which I loved THE MOST, so for the beginning of the month I was trying (and failing) not to compare Prague shortcoming's against Lisbon's perks. #missyouLisbon

On top of the aggressive heat and not-being-Lisbon situation, August was our group's eighth month of traveling. At this point in the year, a few different things were happening. A handful of people in our group decided to leave the program for various reasons and a few others went off for a while to solo travel Europe, and will be rejoining us later on. Most of us who were sticking around in Prague started to realize we should probably start thinking about what we will be doing post-Remote Year (what?! this is not life forever?!). ALL of us were flat out exhausted from the cycle of move to a new city --> figure out daily life things --> do those daily life things like twice because you're traveling to other places every 5 days --> move to a new city / rinse / repeat. That same cycle is one of the very reasons I decided to jump on board for this experience, but I didn't realize how much wear and tear would come along with it.

This combination of factors (plus a few others that I won't elaborate on, like Czech people being surprisingly rude, and the city being overrun by tourists) brought about a collective need to just chill for a bit. Most of us seemed to spend August laying low and regrouping before we head into the final four months of this experience. Sidenote: this year has been unreal and I am so grateful to have the privilege to complain about problems like this.

So with all that being said, I still had a lot of great times in Prague:

#basicPraguethings

I made friends with an 83-year-old history professor named Norma. During my first week, this very tiny and adorable looking old woman came up to me and my friend Heather at the gym, and I was sure she was going to scold us for talking so loudly (this happens to Heather and me a lot...). But she surprised us by just wanting to meet some fellow Americans, having overheard our loud English blabbering, and she wanted to learn more about what we were doing in Prague.

*I wish I had a pic of Norma to include here*

We chatted with her for quite a while, exchanging stories and contact info. Turns out she moved out to the Czech Republic from the US for a teaching gig five years ago, and loved it so much that she just never moved back. At age 83, she still travels back to the States and to other international destinations frequently, and was even leaving Prague that week for a casual trip to South Africa. For all of her travels, Prague is her all-time favorite city, and she ended up writing us a whole long list of recommendations that helped guide my touristing for the rest of the month. Seeing parts of Prague from Norma's perspective made me appreciate it so much more, and also made me appreciate all over again these unique connections that come about when traveling.

Petrin Gardens: Norma told me to go here, so I did

I learned about Operation Anthropoid and the role the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) played in World War II. The operation was a mission to assassinate one of the highest ranking Nazi officials who was temporarily stationed in the heart of Prague during the war. It was the only successful assassination of an important Nazi leader, and gave leverage to Czechoslovakia at a time when it needed to gain respect and support from the Allied forces. This is a super high level summary and I one billion percent recommend learning more about the operation for your own knowledge! Good stuff.

I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about this particular event before. Not only did we get to learn the full story (through a recent movie called Anthropoid, which we watched in an old school theater down the street from where the hit men hid out during the operation's planning stages), we then toured around the city to the various locations that were crucial sites tied to the event. Being there and visiting the different landmarks made the whole experience even more powerful, it was like being transported back in time.

Meg O came to visit and we had such a great Meg O & Sue Mirk week (sorry to all non-Longmeadow peeps, that sentence makes absolutely no sense to you). We leisurely partook in a wide range of activities - paddle boating, funicular rides, the aforementioned Anthropoid experience, the opera - while managing to 1) never feel like we were doing too much, 2) NEVER stop talking, 3) drink all of the seltzer in Prague, and 4) always find air conditioning right when we needed it most. Meg, the only thing we missed out on were those table pretzels!!

Meg O + Sue Mirk adventures

I side-tripped to Vienna with Biz, and discovered the glory of white wine spritzes, Habsburg palaces, Klimt paintings, beach bars that are actually on a canal (not at the beach), 20 euro buffet breakfasts that are #worthit, coffee sneakily flavored with chocolate, and European public transportation! Vienna was named 2018's most livable city in the world during the two days I was there, and I've gotta say, yep I'd love to live there (but I need a raise because it's also by far the most expensive city I've been to this year... yikes). After getting a taste of Austria via Vienna, I am determined to get back there to explore the rest of the country. Austria/Switzerland ski trip anyone?

spritz location - my fav palace of all time - another spritz location 

All in all, August was another memorable month, packed to the brim with new experiences and new challenges. Clearly Prague was not my favorite city, but who knows how I would have felt about it under other circumstances.