Day 11

Today I learned how beer is made.

But let me back up a little. Since today was our "down time" day, we could do whatever we wanted. So of course, i started out the day sleeping in (which was WONDERFUL!) After that, since I didn't have to meet my group until noon I decided to walk around Pilzen town square and do a little shopping. The only problem is that today is Victory in Europe (or VE) day, so everything was closed. After a while, I not only got a little lonely, but I started to get bored. Eventually I was able to meet up with two of my group members. We decided to check out the local "Pilzen Plaza" which is like a mall/shopping center. I desperately wanted to go, since I had left my sunglasses at home and I was ready to maim and injure innocent bystanders to get a pair of sunglasses of my own. This has become a major issue in the last day or so becuase the sun has been brutal. I have some serious sunburns from the last few days. So we visited Pilzen Plaza and I found a pair of sunglasses for 399Kc (that's roughly the equivelant of $24). It was only a short trip, and it was only me and the boys on our team so we decided to come back after lunch. After that we wandered back to the square stopping for a juice break. We met up with the rest of our group around noon when we went to a local mill restaurant for lunch. I got this tuna pasta thing that was DELICIOUS! After the mill restaurant, we went to visit the famous Pilsner Urquell brewery.

Now a word about the brewery: I knew that this experience would be totally lost on me because I do not drink beer, have never had beer, and don't really care how it's made. But I knew that it was important to our hosts and the culture I'm visiting, so I went. Oh my goodness! This brewery was like the Disneyland of Beer. You walk into their HUGE campus, and there's little brewery houses, shops, and gardens. On the tour, we started out watching a film called "Beer World". Soon my team member Allison and I were singing "Beer World, It's Beer World, everything is Beer World..." It got a little crazy. After the opening film, they took us to the Pilsner Urquell packaging plant where they package the beer in bottles and cans. We got to watch the process and it was like watching one of those manufacturing shows on the Discovery Channel. After that, we were taken by the Pilsner Urquell bus to their actual brewery. We got to ride on the largest elevator in the CR, up to their rotating auditorium. They showed us a movie depicting how beer is made as the floor rotated (i'm serious- it really is the Disneyland of beer). After that we got to enjoy "the full sensory experience" of the beer making process. We got to taste the barley and the hops- the "spice of beer" (ok, after the i tasted the hops which were in a finely ground powder form, i'm like "Seriously? Who drinks this stuff?!" it was NASTY. Allison assured me that was not what beer actually tastes like." Then they took us down through the big brewing kettles to the caves under the brewery where they cool and store the beer. Then whomever wanted to could taste unfiltered (that means there is still yeast floating around) and unpasturized beer. Some liked it, others didn't. I personally was ready to leave the magic kingdom of beer.

So we went back to the Pilzen Plaza to do some more shopping. Since it has been very sunny and unbearably hot the last few days, I desperately needed some sunscreen. I went to a drugstore in the plaza, and found some Nivea sunscreen. I thought for sure, since it was a brand i recognized it would be in english. Sure enough, when I peeled off the Czech label, the english was there underneath. Hallelujah! After that, I scoured the shopping center for tshirts to wear in the hot weather. Luckily, ESPRIT was having a sale so i loaded up on some tshirts to survive for the next few days.

After all this shopping, we were hungry! So we sauntered up to the mall food court to check out the selections. We had: Czech fast food (like sausages and saurkraut, ready to go!) Czech Chinese Food (interesting...) Angus Burgers, and Italian. We were feeling like American comfort food so we all got Angus Cheeseburgers. But apparently the combo meal has not caught on yet in the CR, so we had to order Cheeseburger, fries, drink, and ketchup seperately (yes, you have to pay for "Omacky" or ketchup. It's about 7Kc, which is around $.10). By the time they added everything up it came out to around 155Kc (which is like $9!!! Can you imagine paying that at Mcdonalds for a burger and fries???) So disgruntled about that (and the ad they had of a cow licking it's lips while it looked at a hamburger) we sat down to enjoy our meal. But here is the Czech version of a hamburger: no ketchup or mustard. Instead...Tartar Sauce! It was very strange.

All in all, it was an intersting cultural experience day.

And the words for the day: Toalety (prounounced "Toilet-y" meaning: bathroom. Or sometimes W.C. - which stands for "Water Closet" works just as well) and "Omacky" meaning, Ketchup.

Now a sidenote to all of my blog fans: In the morning I will be leaving pilzen to transfer to Ostrava, a town in the northern region of the Czech Republic. I'm not sure what my internet connectivity will be like there, so I do not know when my next blog post will be. But don't worry, even if i can't post daily i'll save the journals up and post them all at once when I do have internet. So as they say here, CIAO!!!