Blog 2: Friendly surroundings

So its day one and our neighbors hate us already. Let me start from the beginning…

Upon my arrival in Prague, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my roommates and I had been upgraded to a nicer apartment than expected. It is a little farther from school but it is much bigger and closer to downtown Prague, which is very nice. Our apartment opens with double doors leading into a wide foyer. The foyer then leads to a long hallway, stemming off a dining/ living room, four spacious bedrooms with balconies and two bathrooms. My room is the only one facing west with a balcony facing the courtyard rather than the city. Thus our problem begins. Although our apartment is nice, you can tell it is an old European building that has seen its fair share of days. One of my roommates Jill and I decided it needed a little TLC to make it our own. We decided to start on the west balcony and make our way east. The west balcony had a nice little table and chairs (which we –and by that I mean our friend jake- has since broken) and tile floors, which we thought was for easy cleaning. There are two drains that let into the courtyard to drain water from the floor, so we found two mops and a bucket and decided to douse the floor in warm water and scrub away. Shortly after we began we hear this lady screeeaming at the top of her lungs in what can only be described as angry gibberish. Confused, we stopped and listened for a minute. Shortly after our house phone was ringing off the hook and there was an extremely forceful banging on our door accompanied by a man yelling in Czech. Great way to meet the neighbors, right? To unlock our door from the inside or outside you need a key. So I run to my room in the back of the flat while jill and I were yelling at the man that we were trying to unlock the door but simply didn’t have our keys. He kept banging and yelling. The key ring they provided for us has about 10 keys on it and we only know what three of them do. Awesome. As I am fumbling with the lock trying to get it open the door is shaking the man is banging on it so hard. My shaking hands finally get the door open and we find a Czech man standing in our door front in his underwear yelling about how we “stupid Americans” spilled water on his porch and hadn’t a brain in our heads. Apparently our drains led onto their porch and that’s just poor architecture if you ask me… So after yelling at us for a few minutes (my responses sounded something like this “yes sir, im so sorry sir, we didn’t know, it was an accident, yes we are Americans, no we don’t have brains in our heads… Translation? Please don’t kill me in my sleep tonight because you do know where I live now…) he finally stormed back downstairs still yelling something in Czech… welcome to the neighborhood!!!

Love love love from Prague!!