falling in love on the road

some love stories from the road involve a certain special guy or girl, but mine are with a special city.

i have told many a tale here about my undying love of berlin, but while i was studying there i unexpectedly fell in love with a different city. a city that i fortunately happen to live very close to now. she’s praha, the golden city. the city of a thousand spires. and while i visited her for the first time a year before this, it wasn’t until the next year when i really opened my eyes to her and saw all her quirky brand of loveliness.

i was hanging out in prague for a weekend away from berlin (only five hours by train or bus– cool beans!) with a group of buddies in early november, 2007– almost exactly to the day of this writing. and man, that autumn and winter was a COLD one! it was freezing the entire time, but we went on our merry way doing the usual prague things. i bought a krtek mug from a gift shop in the castle, not even knowing what krtek was at the time besides the fact that he was adorable. we came across an anti-fascist rally, strolled around josefov, popped into all of my favorite places (which are still big favorites to this day).

on the last evening in prague after a black-light theater show and going pub hopping, i bid my farewells to the group, as i had to catch an early train to berlin the next morning to meet my dad (who unexpectedly came to berlin to visit giving me only a week’s notice!) so i left the pub in old town, looking to make my way back to žižkov, where we were staying that time. i think it must have been the courage of the czech brew that made me think leaving my friends and trying to find my way to another part of the city was a good idea. i didn’t have a map, and only memory to go off of. i stuck near the river for awhile, at one point brazenly walking into a fancy hotel to use the loo, and started feeling a little nervous about what i had done… walking alone around midnight in a city i barely knew. was i crazy?

and then… while wandering the eternally confusing winding streets of old town which eventually opened up to narodni trida… a snowflake fell. and another, and another. the first snow of the season. the light, fluffy snowflake kind of snow where they whisp around in the wind before finally falling to the ground. (photo via)

i may have been wandering through some really sketchy areas (erm, ever walked around florenc late at night?) but the snow gave me joy. and confidence. and happiness. even though i was alone in this massive foreign city. it took well over an hour, but i finally made it to the žižkov hostel on my own.

ten minutes later, my friends all came crashing through the door to our dorm. (they took a cab– sigh) but if i had never bravely ventured out alone, i would’ve never fallen in love with prague the way i had. nor perhaps decided to study for my TEFL certificate there five years later. i have stated before that some of my best travel memories were because of who i was with, but this unforgettable moment was me on my own in a big snowy city in the middle of europe. falling in love.

linking up for travel tuesday & the november travel link-up.