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So Very Foreign--Trip to Pilsen

Guten Abend aus Regensburg!

Today my wanderlust took me to Pilsen in the Czech Republic. I cut class and took a 2 1/2 hour train ride (one way) to a totally different and foreign country, and I'm so glad I did. I will be thinking about this experience for a very long time. Germany is foreign, but I can communicate and I can read all the signs, and understand all the announcements, but in the Czech Republic, I don't even know one word of the language. 

I wandered into an open-air market sort of place, and food was one of the things they had on offer. One of the first things I tried was hot honey wine. I exchanged some Euros and got Czech Crowns in change (which are my souvenirs). It was really good. I think I like that better than the Christmas Gluhwein we have here. Pilsen is actually more famous for its beer: think "Pilsner" beer...They invented it. They offer a beer brewery tour with beer tasting, but it would have been wasted on me. Instead, I went back to try hot current blackberry wine, and found it quite tasty, too. You won't find this sort of thing in America, though, where outdoor consumption of alcohol in public is verboten. 
I was looking for something for lunch that seemed halfway Lenten. I'm not sure what this was, but it was greasy, and waaaay to big. Maybe if I spoke the language, I could have asked for maybe a quarter of it. Anyway, I paid 5 Euros for this. I only ate a quarter of it and tossed the rest. It seemed kinda like a potato pancake, but it wasn't. They had different toppings, but I had no clue as to what they were. Yes, it was quite the experience to go around in a country where I couldn't speak or read or understand ANYTHING. And interestingly enough, I've always heard all these Europeans speak at least 2 languages. Maybe if you count the A1 level (very beginner) as 'speaking' a language, that qualifies. Whenever I approached someone I needed to communicate with, I would ask, English oder Deutsch? Often they would say they could speak a little English. Most knew neither. 
On the way from the train station to the Altstadt, I stopped in a a local grocery store. These prices seem high, but the exchange rate was 20 Krowns to 1 Euro, so the meat on the right would have been about 4 Euros, or $4.10. A trip to the grocery store in every country is a must, just to see what people eat. They eat sausages and other unfathomables in the Czech Republic. 
European architecture is always full of ornate details and colorful. Seems the Czech style is a little more ornate than the German. It is similar in many ways, but also very different. I would have to study it more to say just how.
This is a famous Jewish Synagogue. Notice how buildings are joined together and not separate as they are in the US.
As I made my way to the Altstadt, I ran across this memorial. 

I navigated around the Altstadt fine, and allowed an hour to get back to the train station, and I'm glad I did, because I made wrong turn somewhere and lost track of where I was. However, my navigational skills are improving, for I was able to retrace my steps to familiar territory in the Altstadt and pick up the correct route to the train station. 

Going back into Germany seemed like returning home after the adventure in a more foreign land. 

Well, my motion sickness pill is doping me, so I'm going to say, 

Gute Nacht!










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