Sitting in my Broken Chair. . .

Every time I move my desk chair falls apart.

I have spent a nice morning sitting in my room. The past few days have been busy, as I have been walking all over Praha with Sarah, so it has been good to spend some time by myself and just lounge around.

I almost went to Budapest this weekend -- Mike and Zac planned a last-minute trip -- but decided against it. I was looking at a calendar today, and next weekend I'm going on a day-trip to Hrensko (it is supposed to entail a hike!!), the next weekend Mom and Dad will be here, the weekend after that is Fall Break (Paris? Berlin? We'll see where the spirit leads. . .), and the weekend after that is the AIFS trip to Krakow. And that's all she wrote for October. It is going to fly. So I think 'll try to do Budapest sometime in November.

It was fun having Sarah here these past few days. She has been travelling by herself for a month, and has a month before she goes back to the States, so she seemed glad to have someone to talk to and hang out with. I don't think I could do the whole backpack-across-Europe thing. I'm way too anal and uptight to just go wherever, sleep wherever, eat wherever. I've realized I am a very one-place type person; I like to get settled in. (This from someone who has lived in 4 distinctly different places in the past year. . .) But hey, for those who can do it, it seems like a good time.

We did a lot of walking, because she didn't get a tram pass. So we made the trek up to the Kolej about twice a day, but tried to stay out of the room as much as possible, since Kathryn was sick. I took her to all the attractions, and we went to some cool parts of the city I hadn't been to yet, like Karlovo Náměsti Wednesday evening after we got falafel, and some side streets off Václavské Náměsti that had some promising cafes, for future reference. Thursday we checked out the Mucha exhibit near Charles Bridge -- lots of lithographs of beautiful women, so you can't go wrong with that, and I got some cool postcards. We grabbed lunch at Country Life; I had goulash with cabbage and some kind of wheat-protein stuff, and it was absolutely delicious. I love that place.

I went to see Swan Lake Thursday night, and really enjoyed it, especially when all the ballet dancers are pretty swans. I didn't follow too much of the "story," but the dancing was fun to watch, it was awesome to be in the Národní divaldo (the theatres here are so cool and old and ornate and classy), and the orchestra was great. I think I have enjoyed the awesome orchestras at Don Giovanni and Swan Lake more than the actual opera or ballet elements of the shows. That thing about Czech musicians is true. Sarah and I went to the Hanging Coffee Thursday night with Tina for a beer, but we got kicked out at midnight because we were Americans. Oh well.

Yesterday we slept in a bit, then walked around Malá Strana, sought out the John Lennon wall, picked up a ton of chestnuts falling from trees near it, and found a little cafe called sukr.kavá.limonadá (sugar.coffee.lemonade) and drank good coffee and ate delicious, cheap chocolate cheesecake. I think Malá Strana is my favorite part of Praha so far. We went to Malý Buddha for dinner; they put us in the little back room at a table on the floor with cushions, and it was quite a nice dining experience. We met up with Tina to try to go to an "analog electrojazz" concert by a Polish group at Roxy, but the cover was 150kč, and we are cheap. So we stopped in at Cafe Ritual and got delicious coffee drinks instead -- I had a Mexican coffee, which reminded me of LA. Went back to the Hanging Coffee after that to meet Megan and Bekka for some Moravské bilé vino, and ended up talking to these two 80-year-old guys, one British and the other Czech. They were quite funny, and quite happy to be drinking with five 20-something American girls. They told us about the best places to go in Prague, explained some cultural idiosyncrasies, and talked about what it was like to go to school at Cambridge and when Hitler rolled into Prague. It was quite interesting and fun.

Sarah left around 11:00 this morning to catch her train to Berlin, and I have no plans for the day besides chilling out and doing some reading. I kind of want to shop, so I was thinking about going to the mall at Anděl, but I might save that for later this week. Nothing wrong with just relaxing a bit today. A few Jim Jaramusch movies are playing tonite at the Světozor, so I might check out one of those later.