Finals, tables, final tables

Pictures are finally up from Berlin!!

Saturday night ended up being a quiet one, which was fine with me - I watched Super Size Me.

Sunday we visited the ruins of the castle Landštejn, a HUGE Romanesque castle that used to look over the border into Austria (the border isn't there any more). We finished our trip with a breeze through another town with another awesome, huge castle, the name of which escapes me now because it was really long. Jonaš and I had a smaženy syr for lunch, and we were on our way back to Praha.

Last night was fun too. Dan had gotten wind of a poker tournament happening at a casino in the middle of town, so to celebrate my almost-doneness I decided to accompany him to what could very well be a fantastic tourney. I'm trying to spend as much time with Dan as I can in my last week here, making every moment of our long-wished-for time to live in the same city after high school.

Three tables filled with Americans, Czechs, Swedes, and others competed for a prize pool that ended up being 50,000CZK! That means third place out of this pool of about 28 people got 10,000CZK ($500). Dan and I were in this for the long haul.

And we both played the best games we think we ever have. My personal favorite moments were when we got to go head-to-head with our self-declared arch nemesis, a huge Czech guy sitting across the table from us who we could tell was the type who liked to bully people around with his huge chip stack. Dan and he had a big hand, which Dan cleaned him out on. The first time he and I met, I flopped a flush and called his huge bet for the win and he threw his cards down in disgust!

That win gave me a really nice chip stack going into the final table, which Dan and I were elated to find we had qualified for. Third place suddenly didn't seem so far off, and that's all we were aiming for in this crowd of gambling addicts (many of them were playing online with their laptops while they played the real-life game at the same time...). I won another huge hand against Fatty McCzech (pocket queens against his ace worked out for me even after he paired the ace on the flop. I yelled at the queen on the river, and he laughed it off, mocking me to his friends and saying to me "you're very happy!"). With the group down to seven, things got more dramatic as the blinds increased. Dan was eliminated in seventh place. I held on, dodging a few bullets...and picked up fifth.

So my 1000CZK entrance fee didn't win me anything, but I did play poker for four hours and came away with some great stories. My head hurt.

Today I had my final Czech language oral exam, where I talked to my teacher for twenty minutes in Czech. Yes, twenty minutes. I rule. Which leaves me with only the end of one paper and two tests before I'm completely done for the semester.

I'm excited to be done with the work, but what a bittersweet feeling it is to know that as soon as the work is done, I have only two more full days in Prague. I was eating lunch today with Stephanie at the American expat coffeehouse The Globe, when I looked out the window and suddenly actually iterated what I've been thinking for so long. "I have to come back here," I said. And there's no way I can't. Leaving now is like leaving right in the middle of developing something. Going home will honestly feel, at first, like a vacation before I just come back here. Is that how it's supposed to be?