Advertisement
Published: April 9th 2006
Today we leave the city that we have spent the most time in apart from New York. At once it feels like we have been here forever and that we have just arrived. The past few day we have managed to keep the delicate balance of being productive during the day while enjoying the local brews during the night.
The day after I last write, Pudd headed out with our mates from Wisconsin while I did a walking tour of Prague that focussed on the Communist era, basically post-World War II. It was a bitterly cold day so the tour was only myself and and an old American Professor who had come to Prague to teach Jewish Mysticism, he had quite a few interesting questions to ask. The tour basically talked about the era as one of great depression of the people as a whole. Everything was controlled by the government. If you wanted a washingmachine you applied for one from the government and just had to wait until one was ready but since you got paid the same amount (which was not much) no matter how fast or hard you worked, the people making the washingmachines were in no hurry to get them made, and so on. So everything was controlled and everything moved slowly. I really enjoyed the tour and learning about a time and a place so different to the one in which I grew up in.
The next day we went off on a tour of a Czech Brewery and an old Czech Castle. Both were great! The tour guy picked us up at 9am (It was just me and Pudd on the tour), opened the boot and handed us a beer! We felt bad but after consuming several the night before we opted for the water instead. The brewery was about an hours drive away and when we arrived we were offered more beer, its rude to refuse twice, right? They gave us a selection of the beers that they made, varying from very light to very dark beer. It was great to see how the stuff gets made, I mean we drink enough of it so its good to know what goes on before it reaches your lips.
The guide walked us around the factory showing us the various processes and procedures and informed us that they bottle 50,000 bottles per hour! So in the summer when they work 24hrs, that equates to over 1 million bottles a day! Now, as I said, I had done the Communist tour the day before so I had a head full of Communist information and decided to ask if during that era beer production was the same or less?
Less? the man answered, astonished.
It was much more More? That didn't make sense to me. I mean I suppose people were unhappy which could definitely lead to a drinking culture, but people had much less disposable income. So I aked why that was the case.
Now there is no Communism people can no longer drink at work was the answer. Well there you go.
The brewery was a great experience. In Year 10 we were supposed to go to the Fosters factory, an excursion that we were actually looking forward to unlike most. But the teachers in their infinite wisdom cancelled and changed it to the Yakult factory.
After the brewery we headed off to an old Medieval castle in a small town in the middle of nowhere. It was such a cool little village. Exactly what you would expect a small Czech Village to look like. With little cottage houses and the like. The castle belonged to a king and was quite small castle, as castles go. It had a chapel, and a knights hall and a library but the most interesting thing was probably the Dungeon were the prisoners were held. They were also tortured there. Its quite hard trying to cast your mind back to imagine what it would have been like for them. Not good, I suppose.
Friday night we went with two American girls from our room to a cool little bar in the centre of Prague. After quite a late night Kristian, myself, the two American girls (Liz and Sarah), and an English guy called Alex managed to get ourselves out of bed quite early to go off to Paintball. The field was out of Prague a bit, across the river from an old fortress. We played against a group of Northern Irish guys. They were anti-terrosim police from Belfast, and we made them look silly. We beat them everytime except once. They couldn't believe it.
Paintball finished at around lunchtime so our little group spent the rest of the day in the sun drinking and gazing across the river. This was yesterday. Its hard to say which has been the best day of the trip so far but I can say there have not been too many better than yesterday. Such a great day.
So today we are heading off to Berlin with Liz and Sarah, coindently they were heading there the same day as us. And after that we do not know. For the first time in 2 months our plans are not set. As Kristian previously mentioned we are very keen to make it to Turkey for the ANZAC day ceremony so we will probably go to Munich after Berlin and may even make it to Stuttgart to attend the birthday of a friend from the Oxford Backpackers. After Turkey perhaps Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. So it seems that I will not make it to Iceland however this is by no means the last time for me in Europe so there will be other oppurtunities. At the the moment unfortunately the whole of Scandinavia offers us, amongst other things, lower temperatures and higher prices. Two things we try to avoid.
Hope all are well
John
Advertisement
Tot: 0.048s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 11; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0269s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
adam
non-member comment
Hey
hey fellas. i dont have the internet at home anymore so i went to uni and sucked every one of your entries into my dump drive. I just finish reading everyone of your 13,823 words (61,580 characters) so far and wow. im just worried that when you get back you will be like, "and then we" and we will be like "yeah yeah we know we read it on the blog" so i hope you are doing some realy weird shit that you cant write about and are saving it for the pub back here. I just got back from paintball myself, i went with some guys from uni and i gotta say all those comp games realy paid off. im at ericas house now and everyone is comming round to say bye as she is pissing off too tomorrow. (shit i wish it was me, i cant believe you write so much. It would be like "remember adam whatever happened to to that guy") woo is me. anyway i gotta say maca kisses a photo of a missing guitar player everynight before bed ria talks her fair share too, shan is called monica from friends, im kicking macas ass at squash 8 to 18, anth is a vegetarian and richmond poured my beer over me. the other week they all set up the band in richmonds place and jamed at 12am for 3 songs ill show you the photo of DD on the drums with the kitchen sink behind him. GOLD. Take it easy guys and live it up. Adam '