Czech Rep - Prague

EMAIL HOME - 3/4/05

dobry den’ from Prague everybody! we’ve been having such a ball in Czech rep. this week, 14 of us, our hostel is tremendous, the architecture - incredible, the beer’s cheaper than the water and I’ve slept a total of 15 hours in 4 days.

Saw two of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen this week. First, we were walking past the telecommunications tower at night and noticed that there were giant, black babies crawling up it, with slots for faces - it was seriously freaky! Would hate to see it if I was on LSD - they'd probably move. The natives hate it, but I reckon it’s pretty cool, if not bizarrely freaky!

If that wasn’t enough, yesterday, we went to Sedlec church, featuring 40,000 skeletons put to decorative use around the chapel. The centrepiece was a chandelier which included every bone in the human body. There were also huge piles of skulls in each corner. Insert your own skeleton/bone puns/gags… The journey home took 3 hours as our double-decker train hit someone on the tracks and we had to swap to another.

Lots of amusing happenings… Ali and Kez witnessed an elderly couple ‘getting it on’ in broad day light on a tram, only later to witness a wacky street performance of a man felating a tennis racket in front of children.

Graffiti, bloody McDonalds, KFCs, small-dogs-in-bags, mullets and other fashion mistakes are all very big out here.

in other news, one of us was thrown out of (the superb) Prague Castle (the world’s biggest!) for not buying a camera licence. We smuggled her back in with a genius disguise and change of clothes. Saw a guy carrying an axe today, a girl carrying a full length sword and a drunkard who insisted on putting out a litter bin fire with his feet, then blaming me for starting it!?! Ah, the randomness of travel.

i’m quite insulted that not one prostitute has acknowledged me, they’re everywhere -all over Kev. In fact, I accidentally sparked off a conversation with one the other night, just thought she was friendly. However, this remaining strand of naivety and innocence was brutally crushed, as I succumbed to peer pressure and joined the group at the ‘sex machines museum’. some stuff I didn’t understand, a lot of stuff I didn’t understand how it could be pleasurable. To be fair, our visit came only an hour after wandering around a ‘torture machines museum’ and a lot of the artefacts could easily be cross-featured!

The clubs (usually euro-techno and the like) and ridiculously cheap alcohol have proven fun, though we’ve had a little trouble finding the ‘happening’ places to go. Our group has expanded to include a couple of Americans, an absurdly gorgeous Chilean couple, a sleazy Greek chap (who we’ve now successfully shaken off), 2 Swedish ladies, some lovely Irish girls from Edinburgh Uni and some other dudes who happen to be at Leeds Uni.

though I usually like to try, I simply can’t get my head round the language and have been mispronouncing ‘thank you’ all week. general consensus is that the natives are generally miserable and reserved, but I think it goes hand in hand with decades of suppressive communism. then again, we’ve actually met some super cool Czechs and everyone’s been friendly enough to help with directions et al.

I’ve never travelled in a big group of friends like this before and it became a completely different experience to how I’d planned to do it alone. Although my usual video and camera footage have suffered this time, it’s been so funny, have loved every last minute of it - and still got a chance to befriend some other backpackers!

Spent £110 in 4 days, though some people got by on £80 - lived off supermarkets, £7/8 hostel pppn. Flights were £45 -- so highly recommended to all!!

see www.tomgrundy.tk

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