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Published: December 22nd 2007
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I was really excited to get back to Prague. It's one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been to, and when I'd been in 2004, there were some key things like the Jewish quarter that had been closed, and we hadn't gotten to see.
After arriving exhusted on an overnight train from Ljubljana, we had issues flagging a cab. The only cabbie that picked us up didn't speak much English (odd from my recollection of Prague) and was also driving his wife in the front seat - odd as well. Turns out that it was an unlicensed cab, as we were stopped by the police 5 minutes after leaving the train station. Interesting device the Czech police have, is a lit signboard on the back of their siren set with a message to pull over, so rather than getting behind a car, they get in front of it to have it veer off the road.
The taxi driver and police argued for a while, and then I was asked to get out, prove my identity with my passport, and answer many questions like did I know the taxi driver, why had I gotten into the cab, etc... In
the end, the cops told me that my ride would be free, and if the taxi driver tried to make me pay, to call them.
We got to the hostel which was on the outskirts of the main city (finding lodging in Prague can be a major issue), and though tired, we went to walk around a bit, using Prague's efficient metro system. We hadn't walked more than a block when we were accosted by two attractive British girls who gave us invites to a Prague pub crawl that night.
After some tourism and a well-deserved nap, we were ready to check out the bars. The pub crawl was really fun. Prague is an extremely easy city to get lost in, and the bars there don't really advertise, making them very hard to find. Being shown around from place to place was really the only way to check all of these places out. The bars themselves were interesting - a lot of them looked like caves or cellars that had been done up - kind of like what you'd expect in a vampire movie.
Even though the foreign guides (mostly Americans) were a bit "too cool for
school", we met some interesting people in our group (check out the video of the British girls recommending a pub crawl in Berlin, only to remember we had been talking about Amsterdam). We also got to know some of the locals, who were pretty friendly and not surprisingly, spoke very good English. I'd definitely recommend the pub crawl in Prague to anyone.
We spent the rest of our days checking out a lot of cultural stuff. The Jewish quarter was very interesting, with a lot of history. It's actually pretty overwhelming, and tough to take all in with the sheer volume. But, all of this that used to be used nearly every day is just a collection of museums now. With such a seemingly thriving and large Jewish community having ceased to exist, as is evidenced by all those monuments, it really brings to light the harsh reality of the Holocaust's outcomes and its enduring effects... How so many lives were snuffed out 60-some years ago.
We also checked out a few chiller locales at night, like a Jazz club with an amazing singer who was an American expat, and our favorite, a marionette version of Mozart's Don
Giovanni. Mozart actually debuted Don Giovanni in Prague, and I wonder if there were any rumors about what he did that still linger on, or if he made an ass of himself there because the Mozart puppet was drunk and making quite a fool of himself throughout. The puppetteers were amazing. At times, it was easy to forget that the figures on stage were puppets and not people. Also, this was quite a racy libreto (once we read it on Wikepedia) to turn into a puppet play for children.
We were able to book a rental car after once again getting lost about 50 times trying to find the rental office, and left to drive through the Czech countryside. Prague had once again impressed me, but one of the biggest let-downs from going again after three years was how much more expensive everything had become, and the massive increase in tourists... I'd recommend trying to get there before it gets worse, especially before they adopt the Euro...
For a bit of a different spin, check out Dave's writings:
Finally made it to Western Europe...and am dealing with the crash of my travel blog ----------------------------------------------------
The events in this blog occurred in the period when TravelBlog was down. Luckily, I kept
a personal journal off which I am basing this write-up. Although writing in the moment is preferable, I think that the photos, people we met, and story are worth sharing.
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