Eurotrip Leg 6 - Prague, Czech Republic

December 31st - The day of New Years Eve was interesting and Prague is gorgeous. Our hotel's location is spectacular, as we are right in the middle of the old town and so close to everything. The hotel is called Bethlem Club, and the building dates back to the 1600s, it is right across from a famous church called Bethlehem Chapel, which dates back to 1391, and is well know because of a protestant minister named Jan Hus who bashed the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church burned him at the stake. Prague has it all, winding streets, shops, lots of things going on, and lots of tourists. I'm soooo happy I am spending New Years Eve here, and not in Regina.

We were out and about by around 10am, and walked around the old town square, where we located the Astrological Clock, which has been ticking since 1490, we actually saw it change over at the hour, but it looks far more inspiring than the change-over. Also in town square is a magnificient looking church called The Church of Our Lady, it looks like a castle. After seeing the old town square we shopped a little, picked up some souvenirs, a new pair of jeans, and some other odds and ends. After getting some shopping done, we headed into the Jewish Quarter, which is a bustling area with many beautiful synagogues. 1/3 of the Czech population was Jewish up to World War 2, nearly the whole of them were shipped out to concentration camps by Hitler, while the area is bustling the history gives me chills when I'm there. The most notable visit in the Jewish Quarter was to the Old-New Synagogue, it is the oldest synagogue in all of Euroope, dating to 1270. After this we headed back for some food to eat and to get ready for New Years Eve.

After supper, we ran out and picked up some beer, which for your information is cheaper than water here (about 80 cents for 1 L of it). Brian, Uncle Rob and I, relaxed in Uncle Rob's Hobbit-Hole of a room (the ceilings are uber-low, its in the attic, but man does it have character). After chatting for awhile, we headed out about 11pm, to go to Wenceslas Square, unfortunately everyone else in all of Prague had the same idea, and the crowd was rank. The scary part was here there are no rules for setting off fireworks, so a bunch of randoms were sending them flying, it was like being bombed, it is something that I cannot describe, me and Brian feared for our lives, lol... one lady got pegged in the head with a firework that went array, and the crowd went scrambling when a bunch started going off because some idiot decided to light the whole lot at once. Once we realized we didn't want to be there do to craziness of missile like objects and too many people, we started making our way to the place we wanted to go after. However, Brian was stopped and asked to take a picture by 2 girls from Moscow, Russia, they were nice and were leaving the square too, also scared. (Make fun of me, i know i'm a sissy :P ) So they joined us because they were also going to the same club: Karlovy Lazne. The lineup was really bad so we decided to wait until after 12 to go there, and headed for the Charles Bridge, which we also found to be packed, but we were running out of time so we settle for there instead, plus it was a great place to watch the fireworks. However once again, crazy guys started setting off fireworks in large crowds of people, sending people running and hurting.

Insanity, I can't even describe it. Anyways, so trying to leave that area we went onto the bridge, where the crowd was normal for a short time, and then maybe 11:50 started pushing, and it turned into a giant pool of people, you couldn't control where you went, and people got trampled. One girl was having a seizure or dying or something, her face was frozen and her whole body in convulsions, scary stuff...another guys face and head were bleeding from being trampled on. Absolutely nuts. Also crappy was the fact that due to the pushing crowd we had lost our 2 Russian friends. However, me and Brian were still together...hooray! So after looks of shock on both of our faces, we heard that it was 12, and people started cheering and really setting off fireworks, urgh. The most common were firework sticks that guys were holding in their hands and shooting into the air while walking in crowds of people, just stupid. So we got out of there, because we felt like not dying. We headed to the club Karlovy Lazne, where the lineup was short, and one of the security guards I made buddies with gave us a deal on getting in (equivalent of $25 each instead of $45 each), we also both got free bottles of champagne. We got into the club, and headed for the coat check which was crazyness, as Brian puts it...like a stock exchange with people tossing money and the workers tossing tickets back. We did a tour of the place and realized we were overdressed in our suits (they wear normal clothes here on New Years Eve). We also realized that giving everyone champagne bottles wasn't such a grand idea, as people were shooting corks all over the place and also spraying each other. Anyways we wanted to change, so we headed back to the coat check, retrieved our coats to run back to the hotel and change (only 2 min walk).

After changing and getting back to the club, we felt better as we weren't overdressed and our suits weren't going to get messy. We actually found our one Russian friend Maria, but her friend didn't feel good so she had went home. The club is really cool, but mostly tourists. It is the biggest club in Central Europe. It looks like a warehouse, of course with different lighting, dance floor stuff, and some other odds n ends, and is 5 floors. It is huge. It didn't matter, it was sooooo packed. Other random friends we made that night include 2 Croatian guys from Split, who were cool and into talking politics. Also met a girl from Belgrade, Serbia, lol... small world. Anyways, lots of people, but everyone was friendly and we had a great time (didn't get back to the hotel until around 6am).

Today is January 1st and despite being New Years Day and Czech Republic independance day (from Slovakia), everything is open due to the amount of tourists in town, if they shut everything down they would lose way too much business. So we slept in and the three amigos headed out around 1pm. We walked to the Charles Bridge, which is the bridge Prague is famous for, built in 1357. It is beautiful and I bought a piece of art for the office from a vendor on the bridge. After the bridge we crossed into beautiful Mala Strana. Which connects the old town area to the area with Prague Castle. We walked up numerous amounts of stairs and finally reached the doorstep of the palace, which was founded in 870 AD.

The palace and its grounds are enormous, there is lots to see, and we spent the afternoon there. Things we saw included the looming and gothic St. Vitus Cathedral, Sternberg Palace, the very small old servants quarters, and the dungeons where prisoners were kept, including some of the devices they used on them. The courtyards and varying styles of architecture are cool, as different eras continued to add to the Castle and its grounds. The palace was one of the best things I've seen on the trip yet.

After the palace we wandered back to the old town side of the Vltava River and went for supper at an Icelandic restraunt, and yes you guess it, we all had fish or seafood. It was good, portions were small though. After we headed back to the hotel. At night Brian wasn't feeling well, so he crashed early, and I hung out with our Russian friends from New Years, we took it pretty easy. We went to a dance club/bar called Lavka, which was really nice, and which played lots of latin music (love it). After a walk through the crazy streets of Prague, I managed to get lost a few times, but found my way back to the hotel and off to sleep.

January 2nd was basically our last day in Prague, and the first half of it was great, the three of us started off at the Czech Communist Museum, which was small but interesting, it touched on obviously the history of Communism in the Czech Republic, but also the different stages, from the Russian presence to The Velvet Revolution, which was basically a peaceful (relatively) transition from communism to a market based system. Me and Uncle Rob headed to the Prague City Museum and Brian headed back catch a few zzzz's, the Prague City Museum was good.

We were to meet Brian back at Prague Castle, as there was much more to see, that we didn't get around to the day before. Me and Rob got there a bit early so we grabbed a bite to eat and at 2:30 we met Brian at The Princely Collection, which is a fortune of treasures owned by the Prince of the Czech Republic. The collection was probably the best we've seen on our trip, it included everything from expensive artwork, to weaponry, to musical instruments, and actually included the original score from Beethoven's 4th and 5th symphony and an original score of Mozarts (I forget which). By the end of this Collection I was feeling like garbage, and am 99% sure i got food poisoning from the chicken I ate earlier at lunch. I ended up laying in bed from 5:30pm until 9am the next morning, because of how crappy I felt...fyi 12 upchucks and 10 dry heaves later. Brian went out shopping a bit and wandered around while I was trying to sleep my crappiness off.

I woke up feeling like a million bucks on the 3rd (this is why I don't think it was the flu). Me and Brian ran out and grabbed a few souvenirs while Rob was waiting behind the largest line-up I've ever seen at a hotel, and despite the line-up, we were on time for our train ride back through Budapest to get to Serbia. After reaching Budapest by train, we had a 5 1/2 hour layover until the train departed for Belgrade, so we went for a bite to eat at a restaraunt in the train station, which was average at best. They closed at 8pm, so the three of us headed outside the station across the street to a cafe style restaraunt to have a couple of drinks and wait for 11:30pm to approach (train departure time). We got on board after scrambling around like mad, with a few other passengers, running up and down platforms, as the train station was in disarray and pretty much no one was working. We also had the good fortune of Uncle Rob booking us in a sleeper car. So we each had our own seperate compartment with bed, chair, table and sink...love it. After a few passport wake ups, we got into Belgrade around 6:30 AM, and headed for home...just a quick stay, enough to grab some new clothes and check the computer. Me and Brian were going to go for a day trip to Novi Sad, which is the 2nd biggest city in Europe.

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