When I was a freshman in college, I had the amazing opportunity to spend Spring Break in Prague as part of the Cornerstone Program at Texas A&M University.
This trip would be a lot of firsts for me.
The first time I’d ever been out of the South.
The first time I’d ever flown on a plane (And yes, it was a 12-hour flight. When I go, I go big!)
The first time I’d ever seen drunken soccer players.
The first (and last) time I’d ever eaten a “ham”burger overseas (It was a Spam sandwich!).And the first time I almost got stranded in a remote village because some college kids couldn’t tell time.
Oh wait, just wait. You’ve got to hear this story.
The purpose of the trip was to visit historic places, like the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn.
And Wenceslas Square.
I really got to see the city in its full glory.
Of course, we had a little fun, too.
Silly boys.
One day, we headed to Kutná Hora, a small village outside of Prague.
We rode the train into the city and headed out to see the sights.
The Sedlec Ossuary was really creepy…the church was decorated with human bones.
This chandelier is made up of every single bone in the human body.
It was a long day, and we were all pretty tired and ready to head to back to the city.
One of the girls in the group had the train schedule, and the last train was supposed to depart at 5:05 pm.
We dawdled in the little town, wasting time until we could head to the train station. We went to a cafe. We window shopped. We saw a little kid smoking a cigarette.Yes, you read that right.
The boy looked like he was 12 years old.
My poor, pure little Texas heart was shell-shocked.
But I digress.
We got to the train station at 4:45 pm — *plenty* of time to be there for the next train, right?
Wrong.
It seems my friend had misread the schedule…the last train was scheduled to depart at 15:05 pm — that’s 3:05 pm!Oh. My. Jeez.
Everyone panicked. I mean, where were we supposed to stay the night in this little bitty town?
Our professor would have a conniption fit if we weren’t back to check in. And we had no way to contact him.
What were we going to do!?!The most level-headed of our group decided to ask the station manager if another train would be departing that evening.
Luckily, a train was running late and we were able to make it onto that one when it arrived at 4:56 pm.
Just in the knick of time.
I was so glad we had gotten to the station when we did!
We had dinner at Al Capone’s Pizzeria that night.Doesn’t that just sound cool?
It was a really fun trip.
I learned a lot about other cultures, got my first flight under my belt, and almost got stranded in a Czech village!
You’re probably wondering why I’m sharing this adventure with you.
Well, I consider this trip my greatest adventure.
Beth Revis, author of Across the Universe, a Young Adult dystopian novel that will be released in January 2011, has asked her readers to share their greatest adventure.
You can head over to her blog to read everyone else’s adventures. If you share your own, you could win an advanced reading copy of her book!
Thanks so much for looking!PS – Pardon the poor quality of some of the photos in this post. This was back when I had a crappy camera with (gasp!) film.
I was almost stranded in a small Czech village during a week-long trip to Prague in college. It was an adventure!
I'm so jealous! Prague is in my top three places I would LOVE to visit. Looks like you had a great trip!
I also can't wait for Across the Universe to be released!
Oh wow! The pictures look super great! Human bones? Omg scary! Glad to hear you didn't get stranded. The would be very scary too hehe. I can't wait to read Across the Universe either! Thanks so much for sharing your greatest adventure with us, Arena! =)