A Fairytale Ending

My final stop in Europe was Prague, the beautiful capital of the Czech Republic.  Walking around this happy city felt like walking through the pages of a coloring book.  Somehow Prague seemed like an imaginary place from a fairytale story, too perfect to be real. 

Let me paint you a picture.  High on a hill sits the Prague castle, keeping watch over the bustling city below and the red-roofed homes dotting the rolling green hills to the west.  Colorful Baroque-style buildings line the streets and the Vltava River runs peacefully through the center of town.  Content Czech people sit in parks and squares at outdoor cafés and beer gardens listening to live music while enjoying a coffee or a Bohemian beer.  Welcome to Prague, the fairytale city. 

Our first day my friends and I visited the Prague farmer’s market and took a picnic up to Petrin Hill.  Another day we visited the John Lennon wall, a public graffiti wall devoted to spray-painted representations of freedom, peace, and love.  We found some paint and contributed!  On one particularly gorgeous afternoon, we rented paddleboats for a leisurely ride in the Vltava River.  We also spent some time exploring Prague’s historic café scene.  During the Communist era, these cafés were popular social gathering spots.  One that we visited, called Café Louvre, was frequented by Albert Einstein in his day.  Who knows, perhaps Einstein was at Café Louvre when it occurred to him that E = MC2…

We had a few great meals in Prague, but dinner on our last evening was certainly the most memorable.  Three friends and I entered a random dining establishment with no idea that we were stepping into an authentic Czech beer hall.  The place was rowdy and seriously fun.  We were seated at the end of a long wooden table in a big room filled with Czechs eating goulash and drinking dark beer out of frosty classes dripping foam.  Waiters walked around with trays of beer and cinnamon-flavored shots, making sure customers were always satisfied.  For my last dinner in Europe, I ordered the roast duck with cabbage and dumplings.  Scrumptious. 

I’m writing this final blog post from the airport in London, waiting for my flight to Chicago and realizing with mixed emotions that my semester abroad is actually over.  Soon I’ll be back to the familiar, enjoying the foods I’ve missed, like juicy cheeseburgers, guacamole, barbeque sauce, homemade brownies, cold skim milk, and salads that actually contain lettuce.  And while I’m excited to get home to my family, I’m going to miss living this “postcard life.”  As I look back over these past four months, I feel overwhelmingly thankful.  I’ve gotten to see places and experience things that many people spend their lives dreaming about.  The memories I’ve made are simply priceless.  And Prague was just the cherry on top of it all, a fairytale ending to a fairytale semester.