Hello everyone out there,,
well what can i say? another month has passed, taking me to over six months being in slovakia, and my hasnt the time passed quickly, a few major incidents along the way, such as chopping my finger, havent held me back,,, overall the time here has passed alright and i am having quite a good time day by day..
School holidays started here on monday, so it has meant that the last couple of days have been quite quiet..
On thursday the 21st and friday the 22nd of June the students performed there play Romeo and Juliet, a lot of effort was put into this by both the students and the teachers of them, (including me),.. we often were at school till around 7pm getting things ready for the kids in the week leading up to the performance.. The thursday performance was exceptionally good, while on friday a few mistakes marred the night, making it not as good as friday night,, although for students who english is not their first language, to perform a 30 minute show, in front of a full house both nights is quite a good acheivement, considering that many of them struggle when it comes to using english properly in class, they have all done very well...
Also on friday the 22nd of june, i ran cycling and photography workshops, due to the high number of students enrolled to do my workshops i had to seperate the workshops into two, so i managed to get a couple of teachers help me, once i had told them what to do and what needed to be done in each workshop i was able to run two workshops and in the third drift between the two and make sure that both teachers where doing the right thing and also for me to give help as it was needed......
In other major news i have got a haircut, lol, and my what a slovak / european one it is too,, the lady left me with basically no hair!! i asked for a trim to the top and to shorten the sides, WELL didnt i get that, and a bit more, it is now very short on the top back and sides, apparently i look a bit like a marine,, lol,, ahh well at least with my hair i know that it will grow back pretty quickly so even if i decide it doesnt look good i can still be getting a new haircut in a months time or less...
That is all from the world of daniel...
take care
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Sunday, June 10, 2007
A weekend in prague
REASON FOR GOING TO CZECH REPUBLIC: Drop Sara off at prague for her week of work...
WHAT A HARD JOB IT WAS..
Friday afternoon after a long tiring day at school we head of to the train station here in bratislava, Both of us had a lot of things to do for the school to do with cambridge marking and it was a real rush to get out of the school on time, we both ran late and so had to run out of the school and to the bus stop outside, arriving with only seconds to spare before the bus came.. with a heavy bag on a hot 33 degree day in slovakia i can assure you this wasnt fun... a bus change, half hour in a traffic jam and a bit of rain later we arrived at the train station 30 minutes before our trains scheduled departure.. Sara hadnt got herself any czech crowns earlier in the week so we went to the exchange office inside the train station to get her some, all they had on premises though was 1000 crowns, not even to make it worthwhile changing money.. so we decided to go wait for the train..
Our train was full, it seemed like everyone wanted to go the prague or the czech republic,, luckily we had reserved seats on the train and after about 20 minutes of working our way up the carrige past people standing in the aisle or putting their bags up before they sat down, we kicked people out of our seats and sat down.. it still was extremly hot and our train did not have and air con,, all we had was a small window above us about 5X60 cm wide that would only tilt open, and ours was locked shut,, so for 4 hours we were stuck in a mildly hot carraige (luckily there was a breeze coming from other windows on the train). Finally we were able to get of the train in prague, unfortanetly our train terminated on the other side of prague from the spot where the lady who we bought our ticket from, and our ticket said the train would stop..
We decided that the best way to get to our accomodation from a place we didnt know was to take the taxi,, walking through the dodgeyiest train station i have ever been in,, sex shops with internet cafe's, dodgey women standing round, a casino area inside the main train station with heaps of smoke, the place was dirty and smelt funny.. we navigated our way through this and got to the area where we could reserve our seats for the trip back, doing this we booked a train for 3:30pm on sunday afternoon that would be leaving from the train station we were meant to have arrived at.. making our way out onto the street we found a few taxi's waiting for gullable people like us who didnt know a good price for a taxi,, as i turned out we got hosed, the guy charged us 800 czech crowns ($44.50 australian) for a trip that was around 5 minutes long,, the guy told us it took a while to get there and that it was cheaper than him putting the gauge on.. so either he has one quick adding gauge or he lied to us.. i think the second option is more correct...
anyway we made it to our accomodation at around 9:30pm,, which was located in the dodgey end of town,, think kings cross, but more sex shops and thousands more strange people wondering around, and you kinda have this place, it was just weird and felt horrible to be in,.. after cheking in we were so hungry that we decided to go and have a look at the kebab shop around the corner that the man who checked us into the hostel said was a good place for a nice kebab. it was nice but i must say it doesnt come anywhere near a kebab i had in Isreal back in 2005... walking back to our hostel via the 24 potraviny, (shop) we collected some small supplies and went to sleep with the worst pillow i have ever put my head onto,, this thing was about 2 cm thick and felt like i was just hitting a slightly set block of concrete.. still not hard but not at its mushy stage either,, it was horrible and i didnt sleep that well.. the hostel was great it was just the pillow that was the problem...
waking early the next morning we went for a stroll around the area just to see some of the sights,, the city looked much nicer in the daylight and we felt much more comfortable being in it.. not realising that we hadnt been charged for a key deposit we sat for half an hour outside the front door to the hostel and waited for the man to come and open so we could get our deposit back.. needless to say he was surprised to find us sitting on his front doorstep and thought something was wrong..
After we cleared this up we went on our way to our next nights accomodation which was behind the castle,, we decided that it wasnt far across the river to get to the place so we decided that we would walk.. as we didnt know what tram to catch anyway,, and as we were walking we would be able to buy sara a phone card so that she would be able to contact people while she was in the Czech republic, and since she would probably be back at the end of the year it was a pretty good idea to buy her one.. turning away from the waterfront we headed into the shopping district and found a T-Mobile store, from which sara bought herself a phone card, and got some credit... as we walked back through the city we saw a KFC and since we hadnt had KFC in such a long time ( as there are none in slovakia) we decided we should have that for lunch.. What a bad idea, it was the worst fast food meal i have ever had in my life, the chiken tasted like it had been heated a few times in the microwave and the c hips were small with the taste of rubber, it just wasnt nice, combine this with the ice cream being yellow, (scarey enough for starters) and the fact that it didnt melt at all after 20 minutes sitting in the cone, and we bagan to get suspicious, at this stage we were still waiting for half our meals so we decided to go and ask for our money for those bits back and to leave...
So we continued on our jouney to our accomodation, coming towards charles bridge we found a museum that sounded interesting and we decided to have a look into it just for the sake of it really,., it was called the museum of medievil tourture.. inside where three levels of exhibitions consisting of horrible ways that were used to torture people in the czech republic and surrounding conturies.. all of the methods were too horrible and brutal to write about here...
walking down the road we found charles bridge, the supposedly famous (even though i had never heard of it before) city landmark that stands over the Vltara river, linking the old city and the new city together, construction began on the bridge in 1357 and finished sometime in the 15th century, it used to be the only link in prague between the two sides of the river... most of the statues along the side of the bridge have been replaced by replicas, but for a bridge that old it is still in remarkably good condition i think... cobbled all the way across it is a great experience to walk across it, even though the midday crowd, with all the tourist groups can make things a bit tight...
on the other side of charles bridge the land kicks up into a hill that the castle and cathedral are situated on top of.. hiking up here in the midday 35 degree heat with full bags was not the funnest thing in the world, with no breeze to cool you down the going got very tough very quikly, after an hour or so we finally made it to the top of the hill and took a rest, we didnt have far to go to our accomodation and the rest of the trip was completed in 5 minutes.. Arriving at our accomodation we had to wait outside in the little cobblestoned laneway as the lady had gone out for a while.. it was alright though as we were able to rest a little in the cool air of the lane.. Our accomodation was brilliant and at only 1800 crowns ($100 australian) for the night it was very reasonabley priced as well, with four beds in the little house type place and a private bathroom it was very nice...
Finding out her phone was out of credit sara got very angry.. trying to point out to her that she rang matt off it straight away and then recieved a call from him for a long time that probably cost her money didnt work and so we had to go back into the town to get her a card in order for her to be able to ring the lady she was staying with to get directions for getting her to where she would be staying (this place turned out to be a city called Plzen over an hour away).. we caught the number 22 tram back down to the city and got back to the phone store in just over 15 minutes, only to find it closed... so we decided to go to the O2 store across the road where sara and i both bought ourselves phone cards. this way we would be able to keep in contact with each other while i was in the czech republic,...
Phoning the lady sara would be staying with, we got vague instructions on where we had to go and realised that this was one trip we would most likely have to figure out how to do on our own, so we travelled up to the accomodation, got sara's bags and took her back down to the metro station, where we managed to read the incomprehensable signs (After about 10 minutes of struggling) and figure out which direction we needed to go... getting to the stop which was supposed to have a bus station we got off the train and went outside the station,, the bus station was meant to be directly outside so we walked around for about 15minuts looking for it, through some clever detective work we managed to trace back to the station by following the route of coaches we saw go past us,, it turned out the bus station was located behind a huge builidng on the block behind where you came out of the station,, after a while we managed to get sara a ticket and after an hours wait and a mcdonalds meal, she was on her way.....
WHAT A HARD JOB IT WAS..
Friday afternoon after a long tiring day at school we head of to the train station here in bratislava, Both of us had a lot of things to do for the school to do with cambridge marking and it was a real rush to get out of the school on time, we both ran late and so had to run out of the school and to the bus stop outside, arriving with only seconds to spare before the bus came.. with a heavy bag on a hot 33 degree day in slovakia i can assure you this wasnt fun... a bus change, half hour in a traffic jam and a bit of rain later we arrived at the train station 30 minutes before our trains scheduled departure.. Sara hadnt got herself any czech crowns earlier in the week so we went to the exchange office inside the train station to get her some, all they had on premises though was 1000 crowns, not even to make it worthwhile changing money.. so we decided to go wait for the train..
Our train was full, it seemed like everyone wanted to go the prague or the czech republic,, luckily we had reserved seats on the train and after about 20 minutes of working our way up the carrige past people standing in the aisle or putting their bags up before they sat down, we kicked people out of our seats and sat down.. it still was extremly hot and our train did not have and air con,, all we had was a small window above us about 5X60 cm wide that would only tilt open, and ours was locked shut,, so for 4 hours we were stuck in a mildly hot carraige (luckily there was a breeze coming from other windows on the train). Finally we were able to get of the train in prague, unfortanetly our train terminated on the other side of prague from the spot where the lady who we bought our ticket from, and our ticket said the train would stop..
We decided that the best way to get to our accomodation from a place we didnt know was to take the taxi,, walking through the dodgeyiest train station i have ever been in,, sex shops with internet cafe's, dodgey women standing round, a casino area inside the main train station with heaps of smoke, the place was dirty and smelt funny.. we navigated our way through this and got to the area where we could reserve our seats for the trip back, doing this we booked a train for 3:30pm on sunday afternoon that would be leaving from the train station we were meant to have arrived at.. making our way out onto the street we found a few taxi's waiting for gullable people like us who didnt know a good price for a taxi,, as i turned out we got hosed, the guy charged us 800 czech crowns ($44.50 australian) for a trip that was around 5 minutes long,, the guy told us it took a while to get there and that it was cheaper than him putting the gauge on.. so either he has one quick adding gauge or he lied to us.. i think the second option is more correct...
anyway we made it to our accomodation at around 9:30pm,, which was located in the dodgey end of town,, think kings cross, but more sex shops and thousands more strange people wondering around, and you kinda have this place, it was just weird and felt horrible to be in,.. after cheking in we were so hungry that we decided to go and have a look at the kebab shop around the corner that the man who checked us into the hostel said was a good place for a nice kebab. it was nice but i must say it doesnt come anywhere near a kebab i had in Isreal back in 2005... walking back to our hostel via the 24 potraviny, (shop) we collected some small supplies and went to sleep with the worst pillow i have ever put my head onto,, this thing was about 2 cm thick and felt like i was just hitting a slightly set block of concrete.. still not hard but not at its mushy stage either,, it was horrible and i didnt sleep that well.. the hostel was great it was just the pillow that was the problem...
waking early the next morning we went for a stroll around the area just to see some of the sights,, the city looked much nicer in the daylight and we felt much more comfortable being in it.. not realising that we hadnt been charged for a key deposit we sat for half an hour outside the front door to the hostel and waited for the man to come and open so we could get our deposit back.. needless to say he was surprised to find us sitting on his front doorstep and thought something was wrong..
After we cleared this up we went on our way to our next nights accomodation which was behind the castle,, we decided that it wasnt far across the river to get to the place so we decided that we would walk.. as we didnt know what tram to catch anyway,, and as we were walking we would be able to buy sara a phone card so that she would be able to contact people while she was in the Czech republic, and since she would probably be back at the end of the year it was a pretty good idea to buy her one.. turning away from the waterfront we headed into the shopping district and found a T-Mobile store, from which sara bought herself a phone card, and got some credit... as we walked back through the city we saw a KFC and since we hadnt had KFC in such a long time ( as there are none in slovakia) we decided we should have that for lunch.. What a bad idea, it was the worst fast food meal i have ever had in my life, the chiken tasted like it had been heated a few times in the microwave and the c hips were small with the taste of rubber, it just wasnt nice, combine this with the ice cream being yellow, (scarey enough for starters) and the fact that it didnt melt at all after 20 minutes sitting in the cone, and we bagan to get suspicious, at this stage we were still waiting for half our meals so we decided to go and ask for our money for those bits back and to leave...
So we continued on our jouney to our accomodation, coming towards charles bridge we found a museum that sounded interesting and we decided to have a look into it just for the sake of it really,., it was called the museum of medievil tourture.. inside where three levels of exhibitions consisting of horrible ways that were used to torture people in the czech republic and surrounding conturies.. all of the methods were too horrible and brutal to write about here...
walking down the road we found charles bridge, the supposedly famous (even though i had never heard of it before) city landmark that stands over the Vltara river, linking the old city and the new city together, construction began on the bridge in 1357 and finished sometime in the 15th century, it used to be the only link in prague between the two sides of the river... most of the statues along the side of the bridge have been replaced by replicas, but for a bridge that old it is still in remarkably good condition i think... cobbled all the way across it is a great experience to walk across it, even though the midday crowd, with all the tourist groups can make things a bit tight...
on the other side of charles bridge the land kicks up into a hill that the castle and cathedral are situated on top of.. hiking up here in the midday 35 degree heat with full bags was not the funnest thing in the world, with no breeze to cool you down the going got very tough very quikly, after an hour or so we finally made it to the top of the hill and took a rest, we didnt have far to go to our accomodation and the rest of the trip was completed in 5 minutes.. Arriving at our accomodation we had to wait outside in the little cobblestoned laneway as the lady had gone out for a while.. it was alright though as we were able to rest a little in the cool air of the lane.. Our accomodation was brilliant and at only 1800 crowns ($100 australian) for the night it was very reasonabley priced as well, with four beds in the little house type place and a private bathroom it was very nice...
Finding out her phone was out of credit sara got very angry.. trying to point out to her that she rang matt off it straight away and then recieved a call from him for a long time that probably cost her money didnt work and so we had to go back into the town to get her a card in order for her to be able to ring the lady she was staying with to get directions for getting her to where she would be staying (this place turned out to be a city called Plzen over an hour away).. we caught the number 22 tram back down to the city and got back to the phone store in just over 15 minutes, only to find it closed... so we decided to go to the O2 store across the road where sara and i both bought ourselves phone cards. this way we would be able to keep in contact with each other while i was in the czech republic,...
Phoning the lady sara would be staying with, we got vague instructions on where we had to go and realised that this was one trip we would most likely have to figure out how to do on our own, so we travelled up to the accomodation, got sara's bags and took her back down to the metro station, where we managed to read the incomprehensable signs (After about 10 minutes of struggling) and figure out which direction we needed to go... getting to the stop which was supposed to have a bus station we got off the train and went outside the station,, the bus station was meant to be directly outside so we walked around for about 15minuts looking for it, through some clever detective work we managed to trace back to the station by following the route of coaches we saw go past us,, it turned out the bus station was located behind a huge builidng on the block behind where you came out of the station,, after a while we managed to get sara a ticket and after an hours wait and a mcdonalds meal, she was on her way.....
An hour later i found myself back in the accomodation and feel quite happily to sleep on a nice soft mattress with a nice soft pillow...
the next morning was up at 10am and out ready to make the trip back to the train station which would be where the train for the return journey would be arriving,,, walking back down past the castle we had a look at the cathedral and then continued on our way down the hill,.,, when we arrived back at charles bridge and decided we would like to get some lunch,, so we went down a street and happened to eat at the first resturant opened after the velvet revolution in 1991.. owned by a icelander who is the icelandic ambassador for the czech republic... there we had an extremely good meal and left quite happy.. wondering around the town for an hour longer we decided it was time to get a cab back to the train station as the train was in just over two hours and we didnt know how far it was to the train station.,.. getting a cab for 600 crowns ( we thought this was a good deal, it turns out we still got hosed, as a cab from near our accomodation should only cost 200) we arrived at the station an hour and a half early to find it running 20 minutes late..
waiting in a horribly hot station for an hour and a half wasnt good at all, especially when we all found ourselves feeling ill with funny stomachs,,, finally at around 3;50 our train arrived and departed,,
all was going well for the first half hour, then suddenly our air con went off, this was not good on a hot day, especially when the carraige is full of people and the window do not open,... after two hours of swealtering heat, the air con finally got fixed and we were all able to cool down again.. then a half hour after this when we were nearing Brno the trained stopped, and an announcement came over the intercom in czech that made passangers groan, we knew this could not be good, and when the message came over the loudspeakers in english we found ourselves correct... the train would be stopped for at least the next hour at the small little country station we were at due to congestion up ahead,.. what it really turned out to be was we were stuck for three hours due to the train before us pulling the overhead wires down on our line, meaning we couldnt go any further... so at around 10pm we finally got moving again, 2 and a half hours after we were meant to arrive in Bratislava,,
the rest of the trip was spent feeling sick and reading TIME magazine,,, finally arriving back into Bratislava station at around 11:30pm and getting home to the unit after 12pm...
So that was my trip to Prague,, it is a beautiful place in the old city, and overall i enjoyed my time, if i had more days and less rush it would have been better...
Ahh the joys of travel and europe...
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Over Zealous Neighbours
Ahh Comrade, come over here! ,, i am sure this is what my neighbour was trying to say to me yesterday in my garden as he waved his arm and then uttered somthing in slovak that i had no hope of ever understanding.. being the great guy i am i sent my sister over to see what the old man next door wanted and stayed in the comfortable surrounds of my own house.. thirty seconds later however my sister reappeared with a shocked look on her face telling me that we both had to go over there as he had cooked us some food.. so back we went through the fence to meet our slovak comrade, he had cooked for us a hearty meal of 8 sausages, bread and mustard sauce.. now the sausages tasted good, and the mustard was a bit strong but his intentions were good and he was smiling and happy which was also good.. he introduced himself through gestures and insisted upon us eating a second piece of sausage and bread, accepting his kind offer of a slice of bread from a loaf he had just unwrapped in front of us i instantly regretted my decision, as looking down the bread was in fact very mouldy. Now i was stuck in a tight spot, this old man was being so nice and hospitable, yet i couldnt eat this piece of bread as i knew i would get sick, and i couldnt tell him about it as i didnt want to be rude, nor do i think i would have been able to communicate the fact to him anyway.... Luckily an opportunity arouse where he deccided to show us his strawberry patch, so i was able to hastily put the piece of bread into my pocket... down at the strawberry patch we were able to pick some strawberries, he has thousands of them and they taste rather nice too,, sara was tricked with some fake plastic strawberries that he had put into the patch for a joke.. after picking a lot of strawberries it was finally time to say goodbye and go back through the fence to our house.. but it was a good adventure all the same...
in other news there is alot happening in my life at the moment but not alot to talk about,, it is just work at the school, i have a lot to do but i think i am keeping on top of it all,, just... not long now till i am finished here, i only have one and a bit months, then i am in england for a month then i have 4 months or somthing and i am finished,, so i will be seeing all you aussies again soon i think...
keep safe
Dont eat any mouldy bread!!
my mouldy piece of bread,, hehehe
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