Day 1: Things we wish we knew

View from hostel at night.
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Oh the lessons we have learned today.  For starters, breakfast had an interesting array of cheeses, meats, salads, breads, pastries, pasta, and cereal.  Quite interesting compared to the American breakfast.  We got a late start to our first meeting and ran into some interesting challenges.  We missed our bus by about 2 minutes, which was probably okay since we had to get a ticket.  We had no Czech changed and once we finally got some, a family took up the whole machine until the bus finally arrived.  We ran on the bus, attempted to buy a ticket, got some overpriced one, and sat down.  We thought all was well until a ticket dude walked around to make sure they were validated.  I got by, some how, but Natalie got checked.  We didn't have to pay the fine, but the guy took Natalie's ticket.  Not know what to do, I approached the guy and said we need that.  This is our first lesson... many people do not speak english here,much less understand it!  To end with, I took the ticket out of the guys hand and away to the metro we went.  There, we tried to figure out how to pay for our ride and purchased another ticket.  Here we learned how to validate it.  Lesson 2.  Got on the metro (Prague's subway), and headed for Praha 7.  Got to the meeting and all went well.  We aren't guarenteed many hours which worries us.  We have another meeting tomorrow.  We cancelled our afternoon one since we were exhausted and unprepared.  We ended up walking around Praha 7 this afternoon, and got some lunch at Bohemia Bagel.  There I experienced the truth behind our research... food is cheap, beer is cheaper!  Our meal together equaled roughly $12 with the beer costing a whole 95 cents!  And it wasn't that bad, but my nose is a bit stuffed and my smell isn't all there.  After lunch, we walked to a local aquarium, theater, and their hockey arena.  Our feet hurt a bit, so we figured we should take the tram back.  We wait and a tram pulls up, not the one we needed.  Everyone loads and I turn around to say something to Natalie and she is gone.  I look on the tram and there she is, standing there, minding her own business, unaware that I am still on the sidewalk.  I panic, and end up pushing my way through the closing doors.  Lesson 3 was taught to me then... keep a close eye on Natalie.  WE ended up going out of town a bit, but eventually making our way back.

Our 95 cent beer!
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Our next adventure was finding a cell phone for Natalie since she again is waiting for her luggage.  Dealing with Czech has been difficult, but we managed to find a prepaid phone.  Got it all hooked up and ready and the minutes run out quick.  So we need to get more.  Natalie spent over an hour calling their hotline to add minutes, didn't work.  In the end, we went to a local shopping mall and got in contact with a place to that sold minutes.  We got some put on and all works.  Now, that may seem all simple and easy to figure out, but the overall process took nearly half of our day.

Now, the evening is here, we did a bit of grocery shopping and have a nice $2 bottle of wine in the room with some stinky cheese.  We need to celebrate the arrival of Natalie's luggage.  Hope all is well in the states!