Remaining part

July 16
195's birthday was TODAY, 25----->26 (no longer considered a youth adult by Europeans standard for discounts) sorry, honey. We slept in bit late on courtesy of 195's b-day and headed out to the internet cafe the first thing of the day to find out what was the plan with Magda for the evening as she said there were a deaf event in which we didn't know exactly what it was yet. After a good amount of time to do our stuffs on the internet, went out on a stroll toward more outer part of Prague to check out the market. It was ugly and pretty much poor part of Prague with some bums' homes scattered on bank of the river, the market was already closed in the early afternoon. Ah well, time to head back over to grand side of Prague and settled on eating at same restaurant instead of stopping at our hostel for the time was running out before the meeting time with Magda at the metro. We got to the stop of the metro that Magda told us to meet at bit late, thankfully, Magda was a patient gal. We met some other deaf people and got on bus (grinning at spite of ourselves for the bus was full of them with some isolated hearing person) We arrived at a hotel, in which, we finally discovered that the event was actually a Miss Deaf World pageant. Sadly, the whole program was run by hearing people down to every bit parts of it excluding the deaf contests (I hadn't seen them signed either!) Magda explained that her organization that was formed 5 years ago to fight for more of deaf rights had tried to get them to change some things such as TV screen to show big picture of interpreter and hearing spokeperson in small box instead the other way around that they had always done in the past. None of her organization's requests had been taken into action by those hearing people but Magda still hope that one day some differences would finally got through.

July 15
Ah Prague, Czech Republic! Yes, 7:30am was early but plentiful of people were already up as well. With our bleary eyes and backpacks as usual, 195 and I went to find a cafe and internet to have some breakfast and check on the email to see if 195 got anything from a gal, Magda that lived there, on where and time would we be meeting up. Flabbergasted, there were none cafe opened but McDonalds was! So we ate there but outside under one of tables w/umbrella (hoping no one would bust us eating at McDonalds) with much of grumbling but our stomachs were happy to have something to fill up. The internet cafe nearby opened at 9am, after even bit longer of sitting at McDonalds, 195 was able to check the email in which we now know that we would be meeting Magda in the afternoon in the same area that we were in. After looking up the hostels, we found one that was located right on an island in middle of Prague's river, Vltava. So we zoomed over there, hoping that it was not already filled up (no, not water but the travelers like us) and to our luck, there were a room for us in the dorm which actually was in a gym, interesting place (Travellers Hostel)! The day was still at beginning so 195 and I lounged out on one of benches scattered around the park around the hostel for an hour and went back into city, meeting up with Magda. She in the turn took us on a tour, went into Old Town first, saw its square and a church that had a beautiful clock in which the poor maker had his eyes took out just because the city leaders didn't want him to make any more for other places (very selfish of them). Alongside the way, we went over the Charles bridge, very old and was one of King Charles' projects. On the other side of river, we saw the Kings Garden and the Prague castle where before leaving its gate, we get to watch the change of guards, which was quite young between 16 to 20, I would say. One of them barely suppressed a smirk. We parted with Magda and went a down to earth restaurant and hit the sacks shortly after the dinner.

Remaining part of July 14
In our vain to find the way to Auschwitz Holocaust camp, the another local pointed us the exactly same direction that the woman at train station did. So we headed down with our backpacks on our back, enjoying the sweat creating creeks down our back. After a good distance, we didn't see any sight of bus or anything that show Auschwitz was in that direction, so we stopped while 195 went into convenice store to find out. The cashier pointed us back to the train station and putted down the bus numbers that we could take to that place. We were puzzled and wondered if the other locals were having a heck of time by telling us wrong directions. Finally we arrived at the Auschwitz and started our tour after deposited our packs at the luggage room (sure was glad that there were one). The Auschwitz was free and got various museums set up throughtout the buildings where the Jews, POWs, and some others were held at. It was around 5pm by the time we were done with looking, reading, and pointing...dued to the time and diminishing daylight, we decided not to visit another camp, Auschwitz II, which were even bigger and had lot more massacre done there. 195 and I headed back to train station area of Oswiecim and ate at the local restaurant which had surprising good selection of vegetarian plates. We helped ourselves to pretty local plates which was pedrogies (cabbage and onions), borsch soup w/boiled egg (beet soup), and cheese pancakes (crepes with ricotta cheese and powder sugar spiked all over it). Good and cheap! We later relaxed at the bar next door, also owned by the restaurant, enjoying cool drinks and watching the locals. At last, it was time to get on our train that was stopping in Oswiecim at midnight, arriving in Prague around 7:30 am.