Today we got to sleep in a little bit, but still had to get up sort of early for our meeting with the folks at Czech Google. After arriving at an unmarked Google building and office we were escorted into a room that was VERY Google style. Love seats/couches, guitars, piano, drums, almost as if we were in a play room. We met with two individuals out of nine which make up the Google group. These two individuals have been with Czech Google for a couple of years and their main task has been market research, in the sense that they inform US Google how to properly market to the Czech demographic. Some of their job includes translating and remaking English texted Google commercials. We also learned out of the entirety of Europe the Czech Republic has the least market penetration. Apparently Google only controls 70% of the Czech market.
After our visit with Google we proceeded to meet up with Martin from Charles University and he had printed out papers with information regarding the Karlstein Castle we were about to visit. To get to the castle we had to literally run to the train station in order to catch the train on time and then we took a 40min train ride to the castle. Once at the castle we stopped for some food and yet again I got another traditional Czech dish which was very good however what do you think was in it again? (Dumplings) We also yet again ordered some traditional Czech beer which was again amazing. After lunch we proceeded to walk up the hill/mountain to the castle. Once in the castle we had an amazing view of the country side and got a good sense of what it would have been like to live in this castle many years ago. Once again I found the architecture of the castle to again be very breathtaking.
Upon returning to Prague we met up with Martin’s wife Tana, who is a very famous meteorologist on Czech TV. After meeting her we went to an Italian restaurant and ordered some pizza which was surprisingly very good.
After dinner a fellow colleague of mine and me decided to head down town to check out the night life that Prague has to offer. We got a tip of a night club that isn’t to large but is always the club to be at. Once we arrived we each paid 50 Crowns to get in. Once we were inside I was surprised the main floor was a standard bar with tables and such, but downstairs was the club. If you are familiar with Indigo in downtown State College, the club portion was about half that size. Additionally this bar/club was American themed! So there were Cadillacs, American motorcycle choppers, Redneck parking signs, Harley Davidson signs, and pulp fiction being played on all the tvs. The music was also to my surprise in the sense that anything they played would be a song they would play in an American club. Additionally some people would be singing the words to the songs which were in English and then if you tried to talk with them in English they wouldn’t be able to understand you because they don’t speak English. Another interesting thing I found is no one ‘grinds’ at those clubs its all dancing face to face style. At the end of the night we made our way back to the metro and found it had closed. A homeless guy then told us in English that we could catch a tram on the street which would get us home. By the tram stop we had a hard time figuring out when our tram would arrive so a fluent English speaking Asian man from Kazakhstan instructed us as to which tram to take. We then got on the tram and made it back safely.
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
