David's Arrival: An Adorable Puppy, An Unfortunate Shopkeeper, and Wheel-less Luggage

Well, David's first foray into international travel was quite a doozy. His flight from London to Prague was delayed because the pilot apparently didn't show up, so he arrived an hour and a half later than he'd expected. We didn't particularly mind though. I just did homework at the airport and he lost a few more hours of sleep. Also, someone had brought an unbelievably adorable Beagle puppy to the airport so I had entertainment. What we didn't know at the time was that this delay was merely the foreboding sign of more to come.

When David stepped through the arrival door separating the baggage claim from the waiting area, he was talking with a woman from London and her son, who were making sure his party was there to pick him up. (I learned later that David made friends on pretty much every flight on the way here. Why am I not surprised?) We excitedly exchanged hugs and kisses, before I began regaling my master plan of how to get us back to his apartment. I had two 90-minute public transit tickets, one for each of us. First, retraced part of my route back to the middle of the city. We took Bus 119 from the airport to the green metro line, which we took to meet up with the yellow metro line. We got off at the closest metro stop to his apartment, which is called Florenc. After that, it would be easy, I had thought. We could only be a few blocks from his apartment and we had a few maps, though I had forgotten my favorite one in my coat pocket at my apartment (I had purposely left my coat out of a over-developed sense of confidence in cold weather and a masochistic drive to freeze my fingers).

As you can probably guess, we had absolutely no idea where we were when we got out of the metro. No idea which way was North or South, let alone which direction his apartment was in. Suddenly a few blocks felt like quite a long way to walk, especially with me carrying both mine and David's backpacks and him carrying his 45 lb wheel-less luggage over one shoulder. (Why wheel-less luggage? I asked that very same question.) We ended up just picking a direction and walking until we realized we were wrong, twice. We stopped into a convenience store once to ask for directions and a very well-intentioned Vietnamese man who spoke a little English tried exceptionally hard to help us but only left us more confused.

Finally we walked far enough in the wrong direction to hit a major street marked on our map. By this time we were cold and tired and pretty discouraged. We just set the luggage down and I told David about Grandmother and Papa and I trying to find our hotel in Fiesole over the summer, and how we basically spent a whole day caught up in things like this. It was helpful that one of us hadn't just gotten off an overnight flight, so we were both completely and totally brain-dead. Once we had regathered our strength we started trekking back the way we had come in hopes that we'd finally found the right direction. David had called his study abroad company and someone there had told us to catch a bus from the metro stop to his apartment,, but he wasn't too clear on where, not to mention that our transportation tickets had expired (and mine had fallen out of my pocket). After deciding to just walk the rest of the way, we found that we were following the buses we were supposed to be on, so we knew we were going in the right direction. When we finally found his street, we got very excited for about 5 seconds before we realized that the street numbers on opposite sides of the street didn't match up and we didn't know which way to walk. Even numbers are one side and odds on the other, but on side would be in the 40s and the other would be in the 70s. All very convenient. After calling David's study abroad company 3 more times, we found ourselves walking alongside increasingly odd numbers until we got to Husitska 65, where a college-aged guy was poking his head out of the doorway. I think we were briefly in danger of hugging him and regaling our long, arduous, and rather boring story to him right there on the sidewalk, but the desire to set our bags down overtook us.

Once we made it up to his apartment, we met two of his three roommates and collapsed on the couch in their living room. After we had regained our senses of space and time, we noticed that his apartment was actually quite nice. The couch was pretty comfy, the kitchen is much nicer than mine, and there is even a TV. His roommates went out after we got acquainted a little, and I headed out a few minutes later. In order to leave his apartment building, I had to go through two doors. The first opened with no problem and then locked behind me. The second, I needed a key to open. I promptly realized that my phone and computer were both dead, and that I had no way to get out of this tiny hallway. Panic gradually wracked my body. I resorted to pressing every button in the hallway and got the attention of two guys standing outside by knocking on the door. They tried to open the door for me, but it was locked from the outside too. Then they resorted to laughing and periodically looking through the window. I was very much on the verge of crying in this little hallway. My last ditch effort was to pull as hard as I could on both doors. The door to the outside showed no sign of movement. Then I resorted to yanking the door back into the apartment building and to my utter shock, it opened. I had no energy left to question it, and I just started sprinting up the stairs to David's apartment. I think I completely freaked David out standing in the doorway panting and on the verge of tears. After I caught my breath, I explained what happened. David sat me down and volunteered to come with me back to my apartment once I'd calmed down. We took the metro to my apartment and David dropped me off around 1AM. I climbed the stairs, scarfed down food, and fell asleep. I learned this morning that the metro closed before David got back to the station, and he ended up walking all the way back to his apartment.

Honestly, I couldn't believe how well David handled all this, having never been in another country. I had experienced things like this on trips before and I know that they do not ruin the experience, and even turn out to be good stories. David, on the other hand, just had to take my word for it. He did such a great job staying calm and composed. I'm so excited to have him as my travel buddy for the next few months!

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In other news, I made an excellent pot of beans yesterday afternoon. They're better than canned ones and I am absurdly proud of them. The last few days before David got here have kind of blended together, quite honestly. They have been filled with exercise (finally), working on rehabing my knee (accidentally over-stressing it, and now trying to take it easy), finishing "Book Thief," grocery shopping, steamed cabbage, roasted potatoes and beets, and whole lot of reading about the Holocaust.

Roasted potatoes, beets, mushrooms, and spinach. It just too beautiful to eat...without taking a picture first.

View of the famous "Dancing House" on my way back from the gym. The lot stayed vacant for decades after the US accidentally bombed it 1945 (whoops). After the lot was cleared, Vaclav Havel (the man who Prague's airport is named after) lived there for most of his life. The Dancing House was built between 1992 and 1996.

I also spent a few hours at this coffee shop called Globe that is just a couple blocks from my apartment. I met a classmate there to work on a presentation we have on Tuesday. It definitely caters to Americans. The waiters speak English and multiple menu items contain the word "American." Independent of that though, I can't help but love it. The front window is filled with books, and when you walk in there's a little bookshop to your right. If you manage to pass the bookshelves, you come to a wood-dominated room full of tables and chairs. Once you fully enter the room and turn around, a huge projection of the Olympics appears on one wall. It's an excellent study place and I imagine myself spending a lot of time there, if I can manage to get over the smell of smoke (see Addendum of my last post).

This sign outside Globe reads "Books, Coffee, Internet." What more do you need in life?