The Christmas Market

A couple of weeks ago, I know it's been a bit since I've updated things, a couple of my teammates and myself went down to the Old Town square to hang out at the Christmas market. One thing that Europe knows how to do well is Christmas markets. The ones in Germany are fantastic and Prague has a pretty good thing going on as well. We were able to spend some time down there just looking around at all the little shops set up for the occasion along with eating some of the Czech traditional food that they have for Christmas. The weather was really nice as it was only 0C so it was perfect to be outside drinking svarak, which is hot mulled wine and eating kolbasa's. They also have this traditional pastry/cinnamon bun type of dessert that they bake over a fire called trdlenik, so I was pretty excited to eat that. I'm pretty sure I blogged about it this time last year. All in all a great afternoon/evening hanging out with the girls and getting in the Christmas mood!


A view of old town square with the Christmas stalls


More stalls...the big roll thing that you see hanging from one of the stalls is called a trdelnik - my favorite!


The huge Christmas tree in the square - it's actually real!


Hanging out with the girls

Passionate for Pivo!

Well it's Wednesday and I'm of course procrastinating packing as I leave tomorrow for Regina for the Christmas break. We're currently sitting around, talking about what Czechs love most - beer - also known as pivo in Czech. They're not just passionate about beer but they perfer it in the purist form possible. If not directly from the brewery tank, then from the tap. Case in point...it's not uncommon to go down to your local pub with plastic pop bottle in hand, requesting a fill of whatever they have on tap. We've seen teammates do this on many occassions and thought we would try it out tonight. "When in Rome" I guess... make that Prague? So Chelsa went down to our local pub - or more like a small one room pub that is underneath our building of flats - and proceeded to fill a 1.5L water bottle with Gambrinus...so Czech. Well the beer was pretty good, slightly flat, (even though I'm not a huge beer drinker) but when you pay $3 for a litre and half of beer you can't really complain!

Losing Sucks!

There’s really no other way to put it but that losing sucks. So as you can tell we didn’t fare so well in our tournament on the weekend. We gave it our all, or at least I did judging by the fact that it’s Tuesday and I’m still sore, and we couldn’t quite get it done. Our first game was against Finland which we suspected would be our hardest and it definitely was a hard game. The first period we did not play well at all, mainly due to the fact that I think our bodies and minds were just trying to get adjusted to the speed of the game. Luckily for us our goalie kept us in it and we were only down 1-0. We were tied 1-1 in the third period thanks to a great goal by our captain, but unfortunately they scored with about 10 minutes left to go up 2-1 and we just couldn’t recover. The game was really bitter sweet because we were right with them and really could have won the game and on the other hand I think we did better than anyone expected coming so close to beating them and playing right with them. So that made the next game super important as we needed to win the next two.

Saturday was then our game against Kazakhstan and we knew it would be another tough game. After the first period we were tied 1-1 and I was pretty pumped as I scored the goal while we were on a 5 on 3 thanks to a sweet pass from Jeni. Then in the second period we had a defensive mental break down for about five minutes and they scored two goals within that time. It was really bad! So going into the third we were down 3-1, which a comeback from that score is quite doable. Our coach finally and I mean finally put all of us Canadians together on a line along with Sonja, our American/Czech teammate, and we started a comeback. I was able to pass it out front to Jeni who had an awesome tip in for a goal, so now it was 3-2 but it was too little too late. Our line dominated them but ran out of time for putting the puck in the net and we ended up losing 4-2 as they scored with a horrible give away at the end of the game. Therefore with that loss it meant that we would not be moving on to the next round. Disappointing? Very to say the least considering last year we lost in shoot out to go to the finals and now this year we come up short again. The next game we played Denmark and killed them 10-0. Where were those goals the day before? I’m still pretty bummed about the losses but definitely know I gave it my all as after the Kazakhstan game as I think I sat in the dressing room without moving for about 30 minutes partly due to shock that we had just lost but mostly because of exhaustion as I couldn’t move. There’s of course always the should of and could of’s that you think about after the game. But I guess losing is part of sports and something you have to live with if you play any sort of game...but it still really sucks!

Hockey...

I just realized that I haven't exactly blogged anything on how hockey is going over here. Well I guess to me traveling is just so much more exciting and interesting to talk about. So hockey is going pretty well. We are undefeated in our Czech League games and have two losses in our European League games. So we're doing fairly well. It is frustrating although as only three foreigners can play in those Euro League games and those are the best games of course to play in. So that means that there are usually three of us sitting out as we have four Canadians and two Slovaks on the team. Of course there are the usual ups and downs that go along with any hockey season especially when playing over in Europe. Our coach is not the greatest and doesn't exactly have a wealth of knowledge on the game. He tends to yell...alot really and then doesn't exactly correct the girls on what they have done wrong. So really frustrating on both parties. The girls over here have quite good individual skill just have no coaching to help make them better and therefore have no hockey sense.

About a month ago we played in the first round of the European Cup. We played teams from Turkey, Hungry, and Slovenia. We killed all of them as all of us imports can play making our team much stronger. Then this weekend we're hosting the second round of the tournament. That means we play Finland, Kazakhstan and Denmark. We play Finland today and it should be a really good game. We'll most likely struggle in our defence zone as that's our weakness. But it comes by honestly as we usually kill the teams in the Czech league so are never in our own end and then we never work on it in practice. So how are you supposed to get better or have any sense of what to do? Let's just say our goalie needs to be on her game. We need to be one of the top two coming out of the weekend in order to make it to the finals which will take place at the end of January in Sweden. I've always wanted to go there, so hopefully that will happen! I'll let you know how we do at the end of the weekend!

You Never Know When...

The title of my blog should really be the title of my life here in Prague and playing for HC Slavia. Why you’re wondering? Well basically playing hockey in Europe or at least for a women’s team in Europe requires you to be flexible, super patient and being prepared for the unexpected. I have a million examples of this but these last two weeks has provided me with a few I’ll tell you about. For one you never know when your schedule will be changed. Now we do have a hockey schedule, I guess a rough one at that with no times of the game on it. So we have no idea what time we’re playing at when we play away games. But usually with home games we know in advance what time our games are. So to start with this example I found out the weekend of Champions league had actually been changed from Nov. 29-30 to Dec .5-7 only two weeks before. Hum...now this normally would not have caused me any grief but this time it did as my parents had booked plane tickets and were on their way to come out and watch the tournament. Let’s just say I was very frustrated with my team management as they had known weeks before that and had not told anyone on the team. Now how are you supposed to plan for anything...or do people do that in this country? So of course my parents did cancel their trip as we only had one game this past weekend, a Czech game at that so not a very good one and not worth the flight out when currently my dad is extremely busy at work. So they’ve postponed their trip and will hopefully be flying out here sometime in January or February.

Like I said before you never know when...you’re going to leave on a road trip. We found out last weekend Friday night at practice that we were going to leave at 7am to head to Salzburg the next morning. Ouch so that means we were up at the crack of dawn as we had to drive out to our rink pack up our stuff and be on the road at 7am driving there. We then had a game on Sunday as well and just assumed it would be in the afternoon or evening as they usually are. But nope, the game actually started at 11:30am. Normally not a bad time but of course since we were playing in Salzburg that night we figured we would not get home until 2am.

Well you never know when...you’re going to hit a snow storm. That night we drove through a storm for most of the way back to Prague. It was the first snow fall of the year and we got dumped on. Therefore we got back to the locker room at 4am, which leads me to my last one...you never know when...you’ll sleep in the dressing room. Yes that’s right I did sleep in our dressing room, along with about 2/3’s of our team. We arrived at 4am and were told that we had to be back in the dressing room ready to leave at 8am to travel to Beroun where we were playing our game that day. So we did that math and figured we’d get more sleep staying overnight in the locker room as it’s about a 25min drive home to our house, so that’s close to an hour of sleep that we’d be losing. Other girls felt the same way so we found some of our stretching mats and camped out in the locker room. Now this brings me back to the whole scheduling aspect and lack of communication as if we had known we were playing that early in the morning then we could have brought stuff to sleep on at the rink, or even a change of clothes. But I guess playing over here is all about the experience right? Although this experience I could have done without.

Terezin

Two weekends ago, yes I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written, we took a day trip to Terezin. Jeni, Arielle and I decided to take a trip there as it’s only about 45mins away from Prague. Terezin is a town of currently about 3,000 people and I have to say a super dead one at that. There is a huge fortress surrounding the whole town that was built in 1780 by Emperor Joseph II, and it could accommodate up to 11,000 soldiers so that just tells you how big it was. I guess the fortress was never used during a war but ended up being a prison and as a side note for those history buffs out there (Jim) Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 to start WWI died in the prison there. That wasn’t the reason we decided to go there. The main reason was because the town became a transit camp for Jews during WWII. In 1940 the Gestapo created a prison in the lesser fortress and then later the whole town was evicted to create a transit camp for Jews. It said that more than 140,000 Jews passed through there with 33,000 dying in the camp because of the terrible conditions and then 88,000 were sent to Auschwitz. What’s really crazy is that now the town is about three thousand people and at the height of the camp they had 58,419 people living there. Pretty awful to say the least. The Nazi’s also used the place to cover up what they were really doing as when the Red Cross came to visit they displayed it as a Jewish refuge when in fact it wasn’t. They even made a movie to show the Red Cross how great the living conditions were.

So we started off the day by going to the Museum of the Ghetto which was really good. We were able to watch that original movie that the Nazi’s had made for the Red Cross as I had mentioned previously. I took us about two hours to go through the museum and even at that we did not read every single detail. From there we headed over to the Magdeburg barracks where they had a reconstructed prisoners’ dormitory which was really cool to see and of course makes you appreciate the space that you have. We walked around the town somewhat as the town is pretty much one big historical sight as all of the buildings were used during the time of the camp. The town has a really eerie feel to it when you’re walking the streets, as some of the buildings were really run down and we hardly saw any people out on the streets, kind of strange for a Saturday. So we explored some of the streets on our way to the crematorium and also the walls of the fortress. You could walk up on top of the walls which were really neat as you got a better view of the town and the moat that ran along it. We also went to a memorial along the side of the Labe River. I guess they had thrown the ashes of 22,000 people into the river during the time the camp was running. That really hit home for me as the river and area around it was so beautiful so to imagine the Nazi’s throwing the ashes into the river was really disturbing as of course was everything they did during that time. Finally we did a quick tour of the lesser fortress as we were running out of time. They had the prison barracks here along with some workshops and out in front they have a National Cemetery for those who were buried in mass graves. All in all a great day that was very informative and I suggest to others who are going to Prague to make a quick day trip out there as it’s worth it!


The Magdeburg Barracks


The eerie streets of Terezin


The town square


Standing on top of the fortress or the wall that runs around the city, looking down into the moat


Overlooking other areas of the fortress


Crematorium Memorial


Arielle standing along the Labe River where they dumped the ashes


The Memorial




In the Lesser Fortress going into the Jewish Prisoner's quarters with the typical German sign saying "work will set you free"


Courtyard in the prison


On the left are doors to the prisoner's cells where they held some of the "bad" Jews


Outside the Lesser Fortress, another memorial

Copenhagen!

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to have no hockey as pretty much our whole team was in China besides the foreigners. Why you ask? Well they were there trying to qualify for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Unfortunately they didn’t make it but in the other qualification tournament two of our teammates were playing for the Slovak national team and won, so they’ll be in the Olympics. It’s a pretty big deal as they have never even been in the A pool of the World Championships. So we’re all really excited for them.

Anyways, like the title says, I took a little trip to Copenhagen. I found a sweet seat sale and was able to fly there on next to nothing, which was a good thing cause it is not a cheap city! The main reason I wanted to go there was because a former teammate and friend of mine from Switzerland is now playing hockey and going to University there. Helga was an awesome host and we had the best time together. I hadn’t seen her since I was last in Switzerland so we had a lot of catching up to do!

I flew there on Thursday morning and was able to hang out with her for a little bit before she had to take off that afternoon to go to Sweden to watch a play for one of her classes. That’s right, Sweden. I had no idea but there is a bridge that connects Copenhagen to Malmo, Sweden. I guess it’s a really nice city but unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to explore there as well. She left me downtown which was awesome! I had so much fun shopping on their main street, as well as looking at a bunch of amazing buildings. The shopping was great as aside from Italy the people there are super stylish and dressed to the nine. So I finally found my pair of boots! It gets dark there around 4:30 so I spent most of my sightseeing that night in the dark. But the city is beautiful at night so had no issues with this.

On Friday we started by going to Helga’s gym, which is really nice. Way nicer than anything we have here in the Czech, so it was great to get a work out there. It was a good thing we worked out because after we had an amazing buffet at this Mediterranean restaurant. It was some of the best food I have ever had. Not to mention it was a buffet, as in all you can eat. They have not heard of such things here in the Czech Republic, or free water for that matter. Afterwards we did more shopping and sightseeing, going to some really old University buildings along with the old stock exchange, city hall, central station and Tivoli. For those of you who don’t know, Tivoli is kind of like a carnival/exhibition of sorts that is opened mostly throughout the year. But of course I was there when it was closed as they were getting it ready for Christmas. That was really disappointing as I had heard so much about it and how every Dane loves going there so I’ll have to go back. We also went to some really cool cafes and drank amazing cappuccinos. Helga is a coffee lover like me so every afternoon when she was like...you want to get a coffee? I couldn’t resist. Cafes in Europe are pretty amazing and everyone has a different feeling or ambiance to it. The ones in Copenhagen were pretty great as well.

On Saturday we started the day touring through the area called Fredieriksberg. This place was full of cool shops and cafes, kind of the artsy area. From here we had to make it over to Amalienborg, a castle where we saw the changing of the guard at noon. We went there by water bus which was pretty cool. It was a pretty good show, kind of the same feel as the one in Prague. Demark actually has a monarchy with Margrethe II as the queen at the moment. It’s crazy as they have a ton of different palaces throughout the city and they live in all of them throughout the year. From here we saw the Marble which is a super nice cathedral and then moved on to Nyhavn Street, the famous harbour street. This is one of the most beautiful streets/cannels I have ever seen. The street was lined with seafood restaurants and cafes so of course we had to eat there. Luckily for us we found a herring buffet. That’s right, I ate about 9 different kinds of herring. If you like herring this is the place to go. Thankfully Helga was there so she could tell me the different kinds of herring and what I was eating and how to eat it. We also had to have a small little glass of this herbal alcohol that I guess goes along with herring. I had no idea that’s what you eat with it, but it did taste good with the herring. My favourite kinds were the smoked herring and the dill sauce one, but I think I’ve had my fair share of herring for awhile.

After, I made Helga go with me to see the little mermaid statue from the story “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Anderson. I took a Hans Christian Anderson class way back in college where it was a video class. So the guy teaching it filmed it while he was in Copenhagen. It was a pretty interesting class and of course we read that story so naturally I had to take a picture. Helga warned me that it was nothing special which is kind of true but it was a great walk along the harbour to get to it and we were also able to see the Gefion Fountain along the way. That was pretty much it for the day as it started to get dark by this time.

All in all it was a great trip of course. It was super cool to be able to explore the city with someone who actually lives there, not to mention Helga is half Danish, and she was a great tour guide. The city is full of museums as well and only having about three days there doesn’t do the city justice so of course I’ll have to go back!


City Hall


Streets of Copenhagen


More streets, this time by the water.


Standing in front of one of the many statues in the city. I think this is of one of their former Kings...Fredrick but am not sure.


Changing of the guard outside one of the castles.


The Marble, a really nice cathedral by the castle grounds.



The Little Mermaid


Nyhaven Street


Helga and I

100 Years of Czech Hockey

Last week we were asked by our owner if we wanted to go to the 100th year celebration of Czech hockey. Naturally we said yes as free tickets to any event is always awesome, not to mention that when receiving free tickets from our owner it usually means VIP seats! I had no idea that the game was being played as it's hard to keep up with current events here in Prague when you don't have cable and can only read a bit of the langauge. We were even more excited for the game when I went online to find out more information regarding it and saw that Jaromir Jagr was going to be playing in the game along with Martin Straka. I've never seen either of them play so was super excited for it!

We were at the rink about an hour before game time and met our owner outside to get the tickets. We then found out that he had two extra ones and asked us if we knew anyone who could use them. Well I had been bragging that day at work about those tickets to Jen, a collegue who hails from Sask and is a hockey fan, so knew that if I told her she would love to come. She also happens to be dating our Vice Principal, a Scottsman, and strangely enough an avid hockey fan. So perfect, two tickets for the couple. It worked out great as they were able to come to the game and had, I think at least, an awesome time. I have a feeling a good reference letter is pretty much a guarantee after hooking him up with those tickets!

The game was pretty good to watch, with the Czech's beating the Slovak's 7-0. Jagr even scored so that made it even better for the sold out crowd who would continuously chant his name. As soon as he touched the puck, no matter where he was on the ice, the volume level in the rink increased ten-fold! After that game was finished they had an oldtimers intersquad game with ex-players of the Czech and Czechoslovakian national teams. I recognized a few names but didn't really know who the players were.

Of course the buffet was amazing and I paced myself this time making it more of a marathon event. hehe. Also before the game we saw our owner's daughter who just happened to be hanging out with Jagr's girlfriend. So naturally I was able to chat it up with her for about 10mins seeing how life was for them in Russia. Looks like he's having a good season and they're liking Russia. Kind of neat talking to her but would be even better if I had met her boyfriend!


Chelsa and Sonja before the game


A view of the rink before warmups


Ceremonial puck drop


Sold out crowd


Jagr!


Again!


Hasek was there as well.


We're having a great time as you can tell!



Oldtimers lining up for the second game of the night.

Sunday Drive to Dresden

We had this past Sunday off from hockey so decided to take a little drive to Dresden, Germany. We were laughing in the car how my parents will take a little drive out to Moose Jaw, or on their bikes out to Lumsden on a Sunday, but nope we drive to another country!

I had wanted to go to Dresden for a little while now to look for shoes. Crazy I know, but they seem to have more shoe stores and bigger sizes in Germany so I’ve been pretty lucky finding shoes there. Well I didn’t exactly plan this out very well as we went on a Sunday and low and behold every retail store was closed. I had no idea as everything stays open in Prague so figured it would be the same there. Well nope, that wasn’t the case. No problem though as Dresden is a beautiful city and there was a ton to see and do while we were there.

The funniest thing happened to us when we first got there. We were looking for a place to park down town and saw a bunch of parkades but decided to look for something on the street that might be cheaper. We found a side street right close to one of the main squares and was about to park in the spot when we saw that there was a no parking sign. Well low and behold this guy gets out of his car and moves it forward a couple of spots so he can park there and us as well. It was hilarious! I guess that’s what you get for not having the no parking sign cemented to the street.

Like I said the city was amazing! I didn’t know this but apparently it was bombed during 1945 by the Allies in WWII. Most of the city has been rebuilt and you can see with some of the churches on the inside a fine line as to what was left standing after the bombings and what has been rebuilt. It was actually really sad to see all the pictures of the city just devastated and rubble everywhere, can’t imagine really. The city is cut into two parts, one part being on the north side of the river and the other on the south. We walked all over the place as you can see from the pictures and stopped for an amazing lunch at a Canadian Steakhouse. Pretty funny to be in Germany and come across a restaurant called Ontario, but we were pretty pumped to find it and each had huge buffalo burgers! I think those burgers were worth the drive!


Jeni and Arielle standing beside our movable parking sign


A statue of Martin Luther by the Frauenkirche


Streets of Dresden from the Bruhlsche Terrace


Arielle and I on the Bruhlsche Terrace


View of Old Town from across the river (would be a better picture on a clear day)


Love the self timer!


A really cool mural


Schloss (Castle)


Arielle and I in the gardens of the castle


The three of us

Frauenkirche at dusk (finally no clouds)

Happy Halloween

Halloween is not exactly celebrated here in the Czech Republic - unfortunately. It would have been great to have kids come to our door trick or treating, granted it could have been a little hard as we live on the top floor of a five story building and our whole area is wall to wall apartments. I’m not sure how that would work with kids trying to get candy...not too well probably. Actually there is an area in Prague called Little America where there are huge houses with big yards, kind of what you would see in the suburbs, so all the International kids that celebrate Halloween go there for some trick or treating. I guess it starts at 6 and usually ends around 7 as it’s a mad dash to all the houses. Talking to one of the moms on Friday night, she told me that a lot of the houses ran out of candy, so looks like they were busy!

Luckily for us our friends, the Stewarts, had a Halloween party at their apartment so we were able to dress up for it. We had a great time figuring out costumes and hanging out at the party. Chelsa went as a girl from the eights, and Arielle a Roughrider, sporting her jersey of course. And then Jeni and I decided to go as a tomato and a rohlik. Why you ask? Well I’m not sure if you remember my blog from way back in August when we were at training camp and as one of our snacks we were giving a tomato and a rohlik (rohlik’s are little hot dog like buns that are a staple to any Czech person’s diet). So Jeni was the tomato and I bought about 15 rohlik’s and taped them to me. Pretty funny!


Arielle and Chelsa


The tomato and the rohlik


Roomies!

Two and Half Months without a Microwave...

Well yes it can be done, you can live without a microwave, or maybe I’m the only one that thought you couldn’t do that. That’s right, the furniture that we had did not include a microwave. Therefore I lived without a microwave until last week when finally...we got our furniture! Yeah!!! We have furniture, or more like a couch, kitchen table, tv and coffee tables. We were pretty pumped when the Ikea truck pulled up with all our furniture last week. Granted we’re still stumped as to why it did not come sooner but none the less we’ve moved on and are happy that it’s here. But all is not perfect as we’re still waiting on cable and WiFi internet. We do have internet but it’s just plug in with a cord therefore only person can be on the net or be using our vonage phone, so not ideal. Hopefully we’ll be getting the router by the end of this week. But of course you never know. You can now call me on my vonage phone (306-546-0740) whenever, and if someone is on it or on the internet, just leave a message, as we’re always checking it. But please remember the whole 7 hours ahead thing! Thanks and will try and post pictures of our new furniture soon!

Canadian Thanksgiving...Czech Style!

Last Thursday we decided to host a Canadian Thanksgiving inviting our entire team over to the house for it. Crazy idea, yeah kind of considering I haven’t exactly had any experience cooking for 20ish people, and neither has Chelsa, who was the one behind the idea! But why not try? So first off this is a little difficult as you can’t exactly buy all the regular “Thanksgiving” type food here. Chelsa was able to order a turkey from a specialty store and we did find some instant stuffing (yeah I know the real stuff would better, but this is our first massive dinner), and have been on the lookout for sweet potatoes, which we did find.

It was a really fun and interesting experience to say the least. Chelsa did a great job preparing the turkey, thanks to some instructions from our friend Erin (she’s a veteran cook!) Although it was pretty funny watching Chelsa give herself a pep talk before working with the turkey as she’s not a fan of working with raw meat. We were just barely able to fit our 8kg turkey into our small European oven and found out that because it was a convention oven you don’t need to cook it as long. We were watching that turkey like hawks and were able to take it out before it was over done, and it turned out great!

We made stuffing, mash potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy and had our friend Adrianne bring over some vegetables and Erin was amazing making three homemade pies! She even had a can of pumpkin filling and made pumpkin pie. That was unbelievable as you can’t by pumpkin filling here! Definitely a highlight for me! It was really funny as we had no idea when to start things as with our lack of let’s say zero experience of making big meals, we had no idea when things would be ready or if they would be ready on time. But we pulled through and had everything pretty much ready on time and just had to reheat a couple of dish.
The girls loved it and had a great time! We kind of had to force them to try some of the new stuff, like sweet potatoes but once they finally tried it they were hooked.

They really enjoyed the pies which many of them had never seen before. All in all a success! The night ended with some interactive games including charades and a massive game of hid and go seek in the dark. This ended with 9 people “hiding” on Chelsa’s bed and the bed breaking. So Thanksgiving ended up costing Chelsa a little more than she expected!


The girls gathered around the food


Enjoying the food!


Digging into the pies!


Arielle after eating too much!