Day 4 (10 June): Leaving the East to 'Go West'
I had a couple hours in Prague this morning before getting on a flight back to London for the weekend. I spent the morning at the hostel, organizing further bits of travel in Europe and exploring the neighborhood near the hostel some more. (I also ran into one of the other kids staying at the hostel who had gone to the Czech club with us the night before and listened to him tell a story about how a Czech girl bit him while they were dancing until he bled and then she licked it off: very strange and aggressive!)
I went to a different street market that was larger. What was most interesting about it was that all of the merchants were of Chinese decent and selling the same type of t-shirts, shoes, bootleg music/DVD's you can find them selling almost anywhere in the world. Two things impress me about this: 1) its incredible how much the Chinese get around and how cheaply they can seem to sell things for almost anywhere; 2) you can buy a NY Yankees hat in any color, anywhere in the world; the same should be true for Red Sox hats!
My plane ride was rather eventful as I had a 2+ hour conversation with a guy next to me. He had just finished his fourth of five years at a University in Prague and was going to the UK to work for the summer. What made the conversation really neat was 1) the guy was originally from Eastern Slovakia (which is the poorer part of the former Czech Republic and now its own country) and the only other countries he had been to were Bulgaria and the Czech Republic with the biggest city being Prague, and 2) that he had never been on a plane before. We had a long discussion about how all of the recent University graduates in Eastern Europe want to leave for jobs and maybe never go back. He also explained that very few of them had a desire to go to the US.
Economics observation of the day: there is a real business opportunity in fixing/improving the ATM networks in the Czech Republic. When I arrived I took out 2000 Czech Krona (approach. 80 USD) and received only one bill. It was nearly impossible to break the bill considering a pint of beer in the Czech Republic cost only 12Kc. The machines should recession the need for smaller bill/coins and dispense a portion of the amount in these. If you do take out a more odd amount, say 2100Kc, then you will get a 2000 bill and a 100 bill, so perhaps, the locals understand that they should always take out an odd amount of money, so they don't run into difficultly breaking larger bills.
I'll write more about arriving in London and the activities there in my next post...
I went to a different street market that was larger. What was most interesting about it was that all of the merchants were of Chinese decent and selling the same type of t-shirts, shoes, bootleg music/DVD's you can find them selling almost anywhere in the world. Two things impress me about this: 1) its incredible how much the Chinese get around and how cheaply they can seem to sell things for almost anywhere; 2) you can buy a NY Yankees hat in any color, anywhere in the world; the same should be true for Red Sox hats!
My plane ride was rather eventful as I had a 2+ hour conversation with a guy next to me. He had just finished his fourth of five years at a University in Prague and was going to the UK to work for the summer. What made the conversation really neat was 1) the guy was originally from Eastern Slovakia (which is the poorer part of the former Czech Republic and now its own country) and the only other countries he had been to were Bulgaria and the Czech Republic with the biggest city being Prague, and 2) that he had never been on a plane before. We had a long discussion about how all of the recent University graduates in Eastern Europe want to leave for jobs and maybe never go back. He also explained that very few of them had a desire to go to the US.
Economics observation of the day: there is a real business opportunity in fixing/improving the ATM networks in the Czech Republic. When I arrived I took out 2000 Czech Krona (approach. 80 USD) and received only one bill. It was nearly impossible to break the bill considering a pint of beer in the Czech Republic cost only 12Kc. The machines should recession the need for smaller bill/coins and dispense a portion of the amount in these. If you do take out a more odd amount, say 2100Kc, then you will get a 2000 bill and a 100 bill, so perhaps, the locals understand that they should always take out an odd amount of money, so they don't run into difficultly breaking larger bills.
I'll write more about arriving in London and the activities there in my next post...
posted by Traveling Brian at 1:04 PM
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