so, i'm back stateside for the short time being.
i'm writing this from my friends house in Los Gatos, CA.
upon returning, the realizations this time:
- you can take the man out of Plzen, but you can never take the pilsener out of the man: i was walking down Haight St in San Francisco yesterday and passed by a bar. sitting outside the bar was a stand-alone slate announcing the specials of the day. the slate itself was topped by none-other than a Pilsner Urquell logo. Pilsner beers take their name from Plzen, the city in the Czech Republic. Pilsner Urquell is brewed there, to boot... so, i can leave the Czech Republic, but i don't think it will ever leave me.
- i'm more accustomed to European architecture now, by sight: flying into Amsterdam's Schipol airport, i saw the city of Amsterdam. it didn't strike me as looking any different to anything else in the world - it was not unique. there was nothing special. everything was normal in my mind.
and then i flew into Minneapolis... and it looked like a foreign country. i felt like i was in another world, almost... and i am, almost...
- warm climates are nice: it's nice to be just south of San Francisco and not have to worry about wearing a winter jacket. very nice indeed.
- you can stop the man from teaching English, but you can never take the English teacher out of the man: i'm cursed for life now. having been teaching English for over a year now, i will never be able to stop noticing grammatical errors in spoken and written english. it's nice to know the rules, but now i'm becoming a nightmare of proper English.
- reuniting with old friends is nice: i got to see one TP yesterday, after having not seen him since my 21st birthday when we hit the bars as a duo on that long-ago monday night. it was fantastic to catch up with him and to help drive home how much people can change in four years time - and i noticed it on both our sides. life is great and throws us some really interesting truths.
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short summary of this trip so far:
on Saturday I flew into MN and spent the night at my brother and sister-in-law's house. we ate Malts.
on Sunday, we started the day lazily by playing one of the fastest games of Monopoly in history - i just deSTROYed him. we followed that with Trivial Pursuit, which i won by answering a question about Judge Judy. we ate Noodles & Co.
that evening, i got on a plane to CA where i was picked up by my good friend (via prague) CMS. we drove to San Jose and had a beer at her boyfriend's bar before retiring to her house for a night of sleep.
two days ago, we drove up to San Francisco and did a mini-Vertigo tour of San Francisco, seeing the Palace of the Legion of Honor, Mission Dolores and Fort Point (where Kim Novak's character jumps into the bay). we also walked the length of upper-Haight St. we ate Mexican.
that night we went to karaoke at a bar where her boyfriend was running the show, but only after we ate chicken and asparagus.
yesterday, i woke up and caught a Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco, where i met TP. we had a vegan lunch.
after lunch, we played some darts and i did some shopping. i ate a falafel.
i spent last night on the train and sitting in CMS's house and ate a second dinner of shrimp pasta.
now you know more about my dietary habits than my San Francisco trip. i hope you enjoyed it.
Posted by iain at December 15, 2004 08:43 PM