Day by day.

Since we are almost over with the program I thought I would give you a little insight about what we normally do here. Our classes normally run from 3pm-6pm Monday through Thursday and Fridays from 10am-1pm so this leaves a lot of free time for us. When we first got here it was very chilly for the weather. So during this time we really did not explore Olomouc until April. Once it got nice out that’s when we would start getting onto trams that we do not normally take and see where they lead. Or take the bus to the store since we never really take the buses. What really threw us off is that one day, all of the trams were changed. What had happened is that there is major construction going on in a section of the town. So they added new trams to go around to those sections that were on the other side, and took out any of them that went through that section. Once we take the tram into the squares of the town then, we usually are off to find food. Usually we try to go to a place that we have no been to.. At first it was really easy, however, now most of them are not close or we do not know where to go. We try and stay semi close to the squares of the town. How Olomouc is spread out is that there is an upper square and a lower square. Sounds simple but you have to remember that lower square is on a hill so it seems like it should be upper. After a while we started getting favorite places to eat. Opera Café is the place we go if it is later than 9pm and we haven’t ate. There is a place that serves good Viamtese food, and of course there is bull restaurant, which is not the name of the restaurant but it a lot eaiser than trying to say the name.

One of the churches not far from my classes.

After we eat usually we are headed off to class. If it has been a week or so than usually it is laundry day for us. This was really difficult for us to work out but now we have a system down. So usually around 8am or so we will walk down to the lobby of the dorms and ask to borrow the keys to the washer. Make sure that we have our dorm card, which is a little purple piece of paper that you MUST have in order to borrow anything from then. This is where I got in trouble because when we arrived here I was not informed that the little piece of paper was needed so I threw it away and it took over half an hour to get the women at the front desk to understand that I did not have one and that I needed a new one. So after we have the keys then we must go back to our section of the building and drag our laundry to the basement to the laundry room for our building. Then it is the waiting game. You can only use one washer at a time and the washers here are half the size of the ones in the States. Each load takes about an hour to do. Then when we are done with that we grab all of our wet clothes, put them in our suitcase and take it about two blocks south to the Laundry Mat. Then pop it in the dryer which takes about 15 minutes to dry. If it is a large load then 30 minutes. Then drag it back to my room to put away. We do this instead of just going to the Laundry Mat because of the price. To rent the washer for 3 hours it is about $1.75ish, and the dryer is $2 for 15 minutes. But the other way is about $4 for just the washer and the $2 for the dryer. So after all of this I would rather do it the more time consuming and save my money. So our daily life here is not exciting like traveling to somewhere new but it gives me time to just calm down and chill before I go somewhere. 23 days till I go back home! :-)

View from the top of the Town Hall building.