We left for Prague on Wednesday morning at about 10:00. We were taking the train from Sudbahnhof and everyone seemed to make it on time. The train ride was about 5 hours long. I was able to sneak in a few awkward naps and listened to a few tunes between edifying conversations with my car-mates about headless chickens. (Turns out I’m the only one who’s had personal experience with headless chickens and their acrobatic ways…go figure.) Finally arrived in Prague at about 2:00 and were met at the station there by our tour guide, Vlad. Vlad was an older, skinny, balding Czech man with a deep gravelly voice that sounded like he had some sort of serious throat cancer going on. He was hilarious! Best tour guide ever. We had tours from him almost every day we were in Prague and everyone in our group loved him. First stop was our hotel where we could drop off our luggage before heading out into the city. Our hostel was called A+ Hostel, which of course immediately leads one to believe that it is improperly named. The hostel wasn’t too bad, actually. There was a decent breakfast every day and we were able to get plenty of exercise living on the “third” floor (keep in mind that in Europe the numbering of floors doesn’t start until the actual third floor.) When we were ready, Vlad took us out into the city to show us some of the major sights. Prague is probably one of the most architecturally interesting towns in the world. Because it is very old and wasn’t bombed out during the second world war, there are loads of beautiful old buildings. We visited churches in the Romanesque, Baroque and Gothic styles, art nuveau coffeehouses and cubist restaurants. It is the only place in the world where walking down a single street you could probably see buildings from every century since about 1000 AD. We saw the Powder Tower, the Charles Bridge, the Old Bridge Tower, the Prague Castle, St. Vitas’ Cathedral, St. George’s Basilica, Wenceslas Square and more. Such a cool city! Oh, and there are some pretty cool museums there too, from the national museum and the Dali/Mucha museum to the medieval torture devices museum. Everything you could possibly want and more!
Prague is known for its beer. The local favorite, Pilsner Urquell, is widely known as some of the best stuff in the world. So, one would assume that such a famous place would be rather soggy, eh? Oh yeah. The place was absolutely dripping in beer. Drinking is the national sport of the Czech republic. Every meal consists of beer and things to eat with beer. Our first night in a restaurant our waiter was completely and utterly smashed. He could walk straight, kept repeating himself and broke just about everything in the place. Water pitcher: dropped and shattered. Pepper shakers: dropped and smashed. Our plates after our meal: dropped and destroyed. They had a lady working full time following the waiters around cleaning up all the broken glass. Hahahahahaha…
The food in Prague is very…heavy. Not exactly diet eating. In fact, one of the restaurants had this listed on the menu:
Light calorie options -
- Fried chicken with bacon
- Roast beef and mushrooms in gravy
- Sausage and butter fried potatoes
Sure sounds low-calorie, yeah? Well, that sums it up. First night I had lamb, wonderfully tender and cooked in gravy. They are all into dumplings there: I had dumplings with just about every meal. Also on the plate was some sort of spinach mash. Good food, very filling.
On the Charles bridge, there is a statue with a sculpted mural underneath. It illustrates the story of a saint (honestly, I can’t remember what he did to merit the statue but I think it was pretty significant). Next to this is a small relief of a dog. For years, it has been traditional to come onto the bridge and to touch the saint for luck. Oddly, however, it is also a big deal to touch the dog. Why? Noone knows. In fact, it’s quite amusing to ask people why they’re touching the dog as they do so. It’s completely pointless.
Ok, yeah, I touched the dog.
Why? I don’t know.
It’s just what one does in Prague.
We finished off our first evening in Prague with hot chocolate. We finished every night in Prague with hot chocolate. Hey! It was cold! We needed warmth! They had lots of good cocoa there. Once again, I was impressed by the culinary offerings of another European city. No surprise.
Thursday our tour guide met us in the morning and took us through the Jewish quarter of Prague. The Jewish section is very cool. We saw ridiculously old synagogues and got to walk through them, learning about Jewish life and religion. There is an old legend in Prague about a rabbi that built an earthen golem to protect the Jews from the Christians and the golem has made his way into just about every tourist stand in Prague. They thrive on that sort of stuff. The best part of the Jewish section, at least in my mind, was the inner town cemetery. Right next to one of the synagogues is an old cemetery. Since it was in the middle of the cemetery, they rapidly ran out of room to bury people. What did they do? Added another layer of dirt and buried some more. They continued this practice, in some places 12-15 times. The best part is that each time the added a layer they pulled up the gravestones from the lower graves to the surface along with the new ones. The result? The most beautiful cemetery in the world.
Back to the subject at hand: beer. They have beer flavored soap and shampoo here in Prague. Crazy!
Oh, and you know how Chinese restaurants sometimes translate things awkwardly? Imagine Chinese people in the Czech republic translating into English! The result is this – “Strange taste chicken”.
We were able to see the outside of the church where Jan Hus, famous Bohemian reformer, preached some of his sermons. I think one of the best parts of this whole European experiences is to visit the places where so many of the things I learn about actually occurred. The church where he preached. Not where the church used to stand or some ruins, the actual, honest-to-goodness church. Amazing!
Thursday night we went on a serious hunt for tasty goodies. We traversed the city, looking high a low for good pastries, yummies and hot chocolate. Mmm…love those kind of journeys. We had strudels, Czech crepes, honey cake, hot pears with chocolate sauce, fruit yeast dumplings and much more. There were several of us partaking, lest you think I was able to eat all that myself. I wish such was true but I fear the days of my eating everything in sight and asking for seconds have passed away with my teenage years. Alas, I’ll have to suffice with stuffing myself silly with three plates instead of seven; a sad day indeed.
Friday morning – tour of castle hill overlooking Prague. Our tour guide took us up there and we walked around, took pictures and froze our noog’ums off. The castle itself was rather nondescript (we weren’t even allowed to go in for whatever reason…some government thing going on) but around the back of it was St. Vitas’ cathedral. Oh my goodness! I’ve seen a lot of cathedrals on this trip (St. Stephens and Notre Dame included) but this place was easily the most imposing sight I’ve ever seen. A huge, brooding gothic cathedral with intricate carvings in dark stone, large bony towers jutting into the air, gargoyles keeping watch and massive buttresses that sits on top of a hill, overlooking the town and speaking volumes of the history of the catholic church and its influence on the town. I was totally blown away.
Right next to St. Vitas’ is St. George’s basilica, another catholic church but one built in the Romanesque style, giving it an entirely different feeling and look. Much more simple, St George’s seemed to focus less on the grandeur of God and his kingdom and more on pious worship. Almost an austere building with straight walls, small windows and much simpler frescoes. It was great to see the contrast. Later we visited a baroque church, St. Nicholas’ and I was met again with great contrast. St. Nicholas’ is in the baroque style with all of its pomp and pageantry. Baroque churches are very, very beautiful. They were meant to give the worshipper some idea of heaven and are warm and inviting. Lovely carvings, huge marble pillars, statues of saints and angels and frescoes of mortals ascending into heaven really give one the feeling of intermixing with angles and the divine. I loved seeing the three churches in shot succession, it really increased my appreciation of architecture and design in church buildings and the messages they send to the people therein.
There is a road near the castle called the “golden lane”. It used to be the home of many apothecarists that got into a lot of trouble promising the king gold and not delivering. Now it is a lovely little lane with shops of all sorts of crafts and goodies. The best part was the short doors. Perfect for the altitudinally challenged!
Much to my delight, we were able to walk past the window through which one of the infamous “defenestrations of Prague” occurred. Apparently, at several times in history, it has been a particularly popular pastime for mobs in Prague to hurl government officials out of windows. Sometimes this resulted in death and sometime it didn’t (depending of whether or not the mob stationed folks with pikes outside the window…). Anyhow, we visited the famous window of the 1618 defenestration where two catholic lords were thrown out of a second story window, part of the buildup towards the thirty-year war. I have been a fan of the defenstrations for several years (Thanks to Mike for the introduction) and I was delighted to see one of the infamous defenestrated-through windows.
The fall colors in Europe continue to amaze.
Food update! Friday’s lunch was at a great little Czech place called “Bar bar”. (Many thanks to “cheap eats in Prague” for the tip). I had a Czech pancake filled with some sort of extremely salty cheese, very sour cabbage and bacon with mashed potatoes on the side. Very different, very good. Some probably wouldn’t like it but I’ve been encouraging my ability to eat pretty much everything edible. So far I haven’t found anything in Europe that I wouldn’t gladly eat again. And it’s not like I’ve been avoiding questionable foods, I usually try to get the most unusual and/or traditional thing on the menu. For instance, I’ve had liver at least three times prepared three different ways. Love it!
That afternoon we climbed the “mountain” overlooking Prague for a better view of the city (and because we all wanted to get out of the city a bit…we’re sort of country bumpkins that way). On the way up we saw a sculpture dedicated to the victims of communism. I liked it a lot; I’ll let you come to your own conclusions:
It got dark as we ascended the mountain and we walked past one of the creepiest buildings I’ve ever seen. It was a museum/store dedicated to magic/witchcraft/weird stuff and it was bizarre! They had decorated in a very fitting fashion with strange colors, things dripping and clinging to the ceiling and slightly creepy paintings of naked people. We hurried right along past that place. I felt no need to experience that part of the culture. Hahahahahaha…
The views from the mountain were gorgeous. Prague is known for it’s towers and lights and it didn’t disappoint. There was a large lookout tower on the top but it had closed 20 minutes before we arrived so we had to be satisfied with the pictures we could get from the ground. Ate dinner at a pub, surrounded by more beer. Woohoo!
Oh, that night we went to Wenceslas square, famous for its demonstrations against communism and the events of the velvet revolution that occurred there. On the way home we ran into a few friendly locals who seemed very intent on scamming us and taking all our money through various underhanded means. We skedaddled.
Oh, more beer stories: We stopped at a bar to get our hot chocolate one of the nights and while we were there I decided to use the potty. (In Europe free toilets are more of a privilege than a right and so it’s best to use them when you’ve got them. Same with drinking water. No drinking fountains ANYWHERE. I’ve seen a total of two in the last several months and one was broken) Anyhow, while I was in the bathroom I got in a lovely chat with several drunken Czech fellows. We talked about American geography (“Montana? Where the #%*@ is that? Oh, by Oregon?”), American culture (“This song [some random Bob Dylan song I’ve never heard before] is probably the most important song in America, yeah?”) and American clothing (“Great shirt, dude. Great shirt”). Friendliest urinal trip I’ve ever taken. We were great friends by the time we’d all done our business!
Saturday was our last day to partake of Prague food so we set that as the main agenda of the day. We had breakfast at the hotel, little snacks throughout the day at pastry shops and bakeries (including the absolute best bakery in the world. Yep, it’s in Prague.). Lunch was the climax. I had a quarter of a roast duck, several types of dumplings and some sort of beet sauerkraut-y thing in a restaurant where noone really spoke English. How great is that?
On Saturday the street musicians were out. We heard everything from a funky little 20s Czech jazz band playing English stuff to classical violin to a blind lady singing opera, “reading” her Braille script. Awesome stuff. I love the music in the streets in the cities we visit. Once in Vienna we ran into a lady that had dragged her piano into a main square and was playing Beethoven and Debussy. Lovely! This Europe place really does do some things right.
