You guys have probably heard about the flooding going on over here in Europe right now, or probably not. In case you haven't, it's been raining non-stop for practically the last two weeks and now a lot of Europe is experiencing extreme flooding. I thought I'd share some of my pictures of the flood from when I went into the city this past Tuesday. The family I work for lives up on a hill to the south of the city, so we haven't had any problems, except for the fact that the main road leading into the city from our little town (Velká Chuchle) has been closed. It goes down into the valley near the river, making it dangerous or simply unusable during high floods. So this means the buses haven't been running their normal route and this has led to some adventures on my part. More on that later...

View of the Old Town. Usually there's probably a ten to fifteen foot drop between that island and the water line.

This is the restaurant I have a picture at of me and Anna that I shared a couple of posts ago. The water level had actually gone done several feet in the days before I took this picture. The Krseks told me that it was just under the roof line the Sunday before.

If you look down at the waterline, you can see it's gone into the building.

I also decided to wander around the Kampa area to see if I could find more flooding. Apart from a lot of closed off areas by the police, who deemed them unsafe to be in, I found this cool church...

And I also stumbled upon the Lennon Wall. I found some cool things written on there.

A cool lock bridge with some interesting fairy tale character. Or what I'm assuming to be a fairy tale character...

It always makes me a little bit sad when I see a cool building like this one above, and then right below it someone wrote a huge graffiti message. I guess, though, that Europe has a lot of old buildings to spare so its not such a big deal. Not like in the States where the government is all "this building is 56 years old! We must preserve it for all to remember!" Not that I blame them... I mean, in 500 years, that building will be really cool too!

I guess ten years ago there was also an extreme flood in Prague and so the government officials decided they would build this wall that could be put up and taken down whenever the need arose. However, as these things usually go, the construction was delayed, and so it wasn't finished in time for this wall to be of much use. However, it was finished in some areas of the town, as you can see above, so it was able to save some of the more historic downtown areas. It's pretty cool how much water these things can hold up. I saw a picture where the water was literally about a foot from the top of the wall and it was still holding up just fine. This is a huge river, with innumerable amounts of water rushing by per second, and this thin, tiny little wall is holding it all back from flooding the rest of the city. Amazing what they come up with these days....

This island, however, was not so lucky, and was under probably about at least a foot of water in some of the higher areas, and I think even deeper in others.

So on to my "crazy" adventures, which are not actually that crazy. So Tuesday was my day off, hence why I was in the city. Martina told me that I could get a ride into town with Petra, their assistant (I think that's what she is, at least), when she took the girls into school, and I could get a ride back with her in the afternoon. Well, on the way, I noticed the buses that I usually take driving around, so I asked Petra if the buses were working, even though the road was closed. She told me they were and so I thought, well then I have a ticket for the public transport, so I'll just use that and not have to worry about meeting Petra at a certain time in a certain place without a cell phone to facilitate in the matter (no worries, I have now acquired the use of one, so we're all set).

At the end of my jaunt through the city I get on the bus and don't bother to look at the stops listed to make sure it will actually be stopping in Velká Chuchle.... big mistake. What the bus was doing was taking the back way from it's beginning stop to the end stop with very few stops in between, and none of them anywhere near the usual stops it takes. So I'm in the middle of the back roads of Prague and thinking "Well dang it. That was a waste of thirty minutes. I'll just have to stay on the bus until it goes back to the beginning and try to figure out how to use the other bus that goes to Velká Chuchle, hoping that that one does actually stop in Velká Chuchle."

But, on the way back to the beginning of the line, I recognize one of the crossroads were about to pass. So last minute, I push the "Stop" button on the bus and it stops at the next bus stop, which is more in the middle of the country than I realized it was, driving to the Krsek's home at about 40 mph the two times I had actually gone that way. I get out and realize how stupid I look, walking along some country road with my huge bag (I was lugging around my camera that day, of course, and some things I picked up at Tesco before heading back for the day) as multiple curious drivers flash by me. To make matters funnier, I just decide to heck with it and whip out my camera, because as ridiculous as the situation was, I wanted some pictures of those danged fields (which I think are really pretty)! So not only am I in the middle of the country where there's not a sidewalk or another pedestrian in sight, but I'm very obviously some stranded tourist with their massive camera taking pictures of some random field with huge power lines. But there are three positive things I've gleaned from this experience:

1) It has been reaffirmed that I'm pretty good with directions, and can correctly distinguish one field from another in estimating just how close I am to home.

2) I got what I think are some cool pictures.

and 3) I made it home!

So that's what's been going on in my life. I hope everyone else is doing well in their respective endeavors. I love you all!