Life.

So here’s the latest: Saturday [09.26.09] afternoon, my roommate and I are sitting in Narodni Kavarna café [a five minute walk from our flat] enjoying a hot beverage. I decided to try hot pear juice, which was impressively outstanding. We both were on our computers catching up with emails, friends, family, etc when suddenly, after hearing some sirens, Lindsay starts freaking out saying something like “Gina, Gina, look upppp, the Pope, the Pope!” Just as I look up I see the Pope go by in his little Pope mobile! I couldn’t even believe I just saw the Pope completely on accident. My friend Jane just minutes earlier asked me if I was going to see him, and not having a clue he was in Prague, I asked, “What do you mean?” She then explained how he is in Prague until Monday or Tuesday. Apparently he hasn’t been here in 12 or 13 years. Anyway, so after we saw the Pope drive by, we noticed quite a crowd building up on the streets outside. It was as if they were waiting for him to drive by again, so we went out there to see what and if anything was happening. It’s crazy how fast news travels because those streets got SO much fuller in a matter of minutes. There were several policemen, people, snipers [on top a building] and the contagious feeling of anticipation. With Prague being known as an atheist country, it was interesting to see a reaction like this. I got the feeling there was lots of excitement. Lindsay and I were coming in and out of the café anticipating seeing the Pope again. While we were outside, about 5 or 6 Irish guys were cracking jokes, while drinking some beers. One of them asked me when the Pope was to go by; I told him I hadn’t a clue and how Lindsay and I had seen him earlier. After we got talking, I asked him what he was doing in Prague. He explained how him and the other guys were here for a stag party and how the groom had missed his flight by just five minutes!!! He was laughing saying “Can ya hardly believe that?; what a foocking clown!” So, all the guys arrived in Prague for the stag party, except for the groom – who was to arrive around 7 or 8 p.m. Go figure. Hilarious and unfortunate. It’s almost like ‘The Hangover” kind of theme.
Anyway, aside from seeing the Pope, I realized [by all the security and policemen guarding the street] that he’s staying about two streets away from me! Haha. Crazy right. So after that, Lindsay and I decide to do some grocery shopping and made plans with our friend Pete to hike up to the top of Petrin to Czech out the mini Eiffel tower after we had dinner. After dinner, we set off for our adventure. The sun had just set, so while walking on the bridge of the Vltava River, we had to be touristy and take some pictures because the view was just too gorgeous. So, we start trekking up these steep, windy roads. About half way to the top, there is a nice restaurant that was playing Celine Dion pretty loudly. We noticed several people that were dressed up and soon realized someone had just gotten married and they were celebrating on top of this little mountain. The view you can experience is stunning. We stopped for a couple minutes not only to enjoy the view, but to catch our breath as well. I looked up in the sky to look at the moon for not even a minute, and I ended up seeing a shooting star! Soon after, we decided to keep going. Not even 5 minutes later of walking, there was a small art gallery to our left with a woman standing outside greeting us. She asked us if we wanted to go in and tour Reon’s artwork for only 50kc [about $3]; we asked what kind of artwork he did and she said ‘Mostly magical.’ We stepped in, glanced around and agreed to tour it. A lot of the paintings were astrology based and mythical creatures were in them such as unicorns, centaurs, fairies, & tons of violins, etc. etc. Reon’s artwork was brilliant. We ended up staying for over an hour and even got to meet him! I tried to accurately guess his astrology sign but I was off; Close, but not quite [I guessed Pisces, but he’s a cancer]. By just judging from his appearance [and well his paintings too] he looked completely insane/eccentric. He was wearing these weird pajama-looking pants, a faded t-shirt with his hair all messy and long, a completely untamed beard, yellow teeth and just being totally peculiar. He spoke like 5 or 6 different languages excluding English – or very little, so it was a bit difficult to communicate. It was so cool to meet him though. When we were saying goodbye, he mentioned how this was a very nice visit and thanked us [I think mostly for the conversation]. He said it with such sincerity, as if he’d been trapped in loneliness. Maybe, being an eccentric, it can be very lonely. We didn’t get to talk very much because of the language barrier, but he looked so pleased we came and talked to him. It’s likely that I took like 3434534 pictures there. Haha. All of the paintings were so detailed and the colors were so vibrant. So after an hour or so, we left to finish our journey to the top.
After trekking up steep windy hills, we were at the top. On our way toward the mini Eiffel tower, there were beautiful rose gardens that I’d like to eventually see in daylight. My legs were already feeling pretty exhausted, never mind the seemingly infinite number of stairs I was just about to walk up [I can’t imagine walking up the real Eiffel tower]. Let’s fast-forward to the top, so we get there and the view was just ‘it.’ That’s exactly what I needed after the strenuous way up. I took a few pictures and a video before my batteries died – thank god because the panoramic view that Prague’s city lights, castles, and bridges had to offer was absolutely astonishing. At one point, I had my head against my arm, which was against the window and I was just marveling in the view. When I turned around to talk to Pete and Lindsay, Lindsay asked me ‘Did you make a heart shape with your breath on purpose??!” I looked over to where I’d just been and sure enough, on the window, my breath left a heart shape impression on the window. Any of you reading this may or may not know my obsession with hearts [and skeleton keys]. I see hearts all the time; sometimes in the shape of a puddle, a leaf, a cloud, etc. Just random places usually, with my heart-shaped breath being one of the coolest and most memorable! Once we got back down from the tower, we heard loud noises, and soon discovered were fireworks! We raced to get a good view of them and by the time we got there, they had just stopped. Either way, it was awesome. Czech’s set-off fireworks all the time - seems like I hear or see them every few days. It’s pretty cool.
For the record, this entire blog was only one day. There’s even more that happened, but it would make this the never-ending-blog. Haha. Needless to say, accidentally seeing the Pope, a shooting star, meeting an amazing Czech artist, climbing the top of the mini Eiffel tower, seeing fireworks, etc was, in short, epic.