Five things you didn’t know about the Czech Republic

There’s the view right next to this restaurant Bella Vista (nobody strained any muscles with that one) yesterday. Today, we wrapped up day two of our classes at the Prague Security Studies Institute (PSSI), but again, here we will focus on far more critical things:

Czechs reenact U.S. Civil War battles. Legit for real, one of the Collegiate Network fellow’s has a friend putting together a documentary about these groups of Czech men who go out to reenact mostly WWII battles in American gear, but also Civil War, Bull Run style reenactments. Seriously, this has to be the most hilarious thing ever.

“Jaromir Jagr’s our Holy Trinity.” Sunday night, we went to a reception where we all got a chance to speak with some Czech and Slovak students and people who work at PSSI, which led to a sports discussion about Sparta Prague, and then the NHL, which they’re big on over here — the Penguins winning the Stanley Cup was on the front page of the sports section the other day. After we got discussing how everyone and their grandmother is an atheist in the Czech Republic, one of the guys joked that Jagr was the Holy Trinity. You want to know where is not the Holy Trinity? Washington D.C.

“The Lives of Others is so simple even Americans can understand it.” Life Lesson #426: When you marvel at your own cleverness and taste and ask a question about a foreign film you’ve seen because it has a relevant subject matter (i.e. Communist resistance), you will immediately be told that the movie in question kind of blew.

How I Met Your Mother is popular in the Czech Republic. AWESOME. This is probably the best thing anyone has told me in months. (Ever? Haha lol jk?) The girl I was talking to was like “I came back from abroad and my brother kept telling me, do you like HIMYM? HIMYM, what’s that? Then I go to this party and my friends were all like, ‘Oh, you’re such a woo girl.’” This then led to my having to explain the woo girl thing to most of the other people in my group, who did not appreciate the richness of the awesome at hand.

You can buy Redskins dolls and Harry Potter marianettes here.

There’s just nothing like a good piece of pottery for a sports fan.