June 6, 2009

And The Winner Is...

Okay, so, what happens when no one gets the question right??

I spent the 2001-2002 school year in the Czech Republic, teaching English in a public high school. Before leaving the US, I trained for the year in California. There I had a roommate who went on to teach in Hungary. During the school year, I was able to visit her and tour Budapest.

When I arrived in Prague, it was without a work visa, and I needed to wait for all the necessary documents to be finalized. In the meantime, I had thirty days to stay legally in the country. After that, my tourist visa would expire. A friend and I decided to take a train into Germany, get our passports stamped at the border, and head home. We got out of the train, walked around for about half an hour, and then headed back to Prague. Weird thing is, we saw two or three dogs while we were there and they were all German Shepherds. I am NOT making that up! We also needed to hunt down the customs guy on the train. He was not interested in stamping our passports. We found him in the dining car, smoking a cigarette with a lovely lady. He grunted at us but stamped our passports so we could be 'legal' once again.

In February of 2002, I had a special visitor fly in from California to visit me. He proposed on the night of the 25th. We decided to go to Vienna, Austria to celebrate.

And so, even though my grandmother still calls it "Czechoslovakia," the fact of the matter is that I was never there because it doesn't exist, and I never went to Slovakia.

So, I'm sorry to report my first contest had no winner. Thankfully my husband DID know the answer to this question, but neither he nor I have hair long enough to use the pony-o. Stay tuned for another contest coming soon!

6 confessions & pardons:

Blueberry Eyes Design said...

that was my second guess

Blueberry Eyes Design said...

PS..I want an epidural for NOT HAVING A CAR!!!!

Dawn said...

Hey now, trick question, cause anyone who's lived in Eastern Europe knows that the train goes into Slovakia on its way to Budapest!! I guess you were saying you had to set foot in said country. :) Leave it to me to get all technical.

Guilty Mom said...

Dawn, this is a question that hubby and I debate all the time! He thinks if he has a layover somewhere, then he's been there. I totally disagree. I may have passed through a place, but I was never there to experience the place. Now this gets tricky when you ask the question - what if you died while passing through that place? It would be reported that you died in that city/country. Even if you were just on the train passing through. So if you're morbid like me, you realize these things. Otherwise, you're happy just to call this a grey area. It's up to you!

Dawn said...

I see, I see... I've never taken it as far as the "where would you be declared dead" scenario before. I think I have always counted layovers & such. On my first overseas trip to Russia, we changed planes in Frankfurt, and I always said, "I've been to Frankfurt!" (Not claiming to have experienced it in any great way; just stating a fact.) It's like driving on a Northeastern US vacation through all the "little" states, driving through Delaware, not stopping, and then saying you haven't been to Delaware. So I'm with Marc on this one.

Guilty Mom said...

Okay, but you haven't been "TO" Delaware, just "through" it - see my point? Again, something that's debated in our house quite a bit!