Nealko=Tourist

Prague is beautiful!! I got here on Saturday; luckily with no problems. When I arrived, I stayed in the sweetest hotel room ever; imagine a fancy, modern, New York apartment in the middle of downtown Prague. After I spent a day recuperating from 20 hours of train, I went out to explore the city on Sunday. Let me tell you, it is absolutely beautiful and I have only seen a small part of it so far. Everything here looks ancient and antique-y and there is so much history behind it. So far, I have see the enormous National Museum and some cathedral that I'm not exactly sure of the name. We go on tours starting tomorrow, so there will be plentyyyy more sights to write about!

I moved into my apartment yesterday, which is located in a cute, quiet street a little outside the city. It was one other girl and me who moved in first so we got first pick on a room. Of course, we chose the best room in the house, with a balcony surrounded by grape leaves that has an excellent view of the city. As the day went on we met the rest of our roommates, all of whom are really cool and outgoing. We have a maid, sweet little Olga, that comes in everyday and states that we do not clean or wash a thing because she will do it all. She insists, so who am I to stop her?

Today, we went to the Vietnamese marketplace to find huge bowls of authentic veggie noodle soup and have a look at all the shops. The soup was well worth it and the cheap, imported, fake goods were amusing. If you ever need 50-packs of socks, that is the place to go.

For dinner, we attempted to find a place near our apartments and at first went into this seedy, old-man pub which had about two meals options. It felt like I was going to suffocate from all the smoke in there (there are no anti-smoking laws and pretty much everybody here smokes). My roommate, Kayla, decides which beer to order and points to it on the menu. It was called Nealko and to others just followed her and ordered the same. The bartender looked at us puzzled and tried to tell them that they didn't want it, but finally relented and brought back not three, but four beers for the five of us, even though me and one other girl didn't even order anything. Interesting way to make money, I guess. Well, they noticed that something didn't taste right and then we put together that "ne" means no in Czech and "alko" means alcohol, of course. SO, here are five blatantly American tourists, drinking non-alcoholic beer in a hard-core men's bar. We made a quick getaway soon after, but at the very least it was a learning experience.
Then, we found a really great place down the street with traditional Czech food and the nicest waiter in the world with very good prices. The cost of living is really cheap here, which is awesome, and my huge dinner with a side and soda only cost seven bucks!