Arrival & First Day

Today was our very first day in Prague! My flights over here started a little rocky, with my flight out of Pittsburgh getting canceled. While very stressful, the cancelation may have been a blessing in disguise as I was upgraded to Premium for my 8-hour international flight. Today was predominantly a settling-in day; we got our public transport passes, checked into our lodging (a dorm room at Charles University), got shown around the city by our program director Dr. De Vader, and finished the day with an early dinner.

While we did walk around the city some today, it was mostly just the little neighborhood area surrounding our dorms, mostly getting shown restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, and drug stores. Because of this, my pictures from today were some of the foods I ate.

The first picture is of an open-faced sandwich that is very popular in Prague. Inside the case were about 2 dozen different versions of these open-faced sandwiches, and while being shown around the neighborhood, De Vader brought us here to try our first authentic Czech dish. Mine was made up of salami, homemade mayo, a hard-boiled egg, a bit of lettuce, a piece of bell pepper, and topped with some other greenery that I didn't know.

The second picture came from the main course of my dinner. We started with appetizers of grilled Camembert cheese and steak tartar. My main dish was "Old Bohemian Beef Beer Goulash", a beef stew made with a dark beer. It was served with "dumplings", the white, circular pieces on the plate. While not our typical dumplings, made out of bread, these tasted pretty good although the texture was somewhat interesting.

Overall my first day in Prague went great! Learning the neighborhood I'll be calling home for the next month, trying authentic Czech dishes, and starting to get to know my other classmates, led to a wonderful first experience.Read more