Czech me out!

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1023/10- 10/24/10
So Thursday night was symphony. It was a nice symphony. I am not a particular Mahler fan, but he is not bad, just not my style. I sat next to Pat and he fell asleep and started snoring. Afterwards we were all dressed up and it was still early. Not quite ready to go back, Pat, Erin and I decided to go have a quick drink at O’Malley’s before heading home. It was fun and when we got back we realized that we still had to cook! Being geniuses, we realized that we would save a lot of money if we packed one or two meals instead of eating all our meals in restaurants. However we got back so late that we were cooking until 2 am. Then we got up around 4 am to go catch the train. I was so tired but I just went back to sleep immediately on the train. However we did not get out entire trip to sleep because we ended up having to transfer. But in the end it was ok because at that point we had been asleep for atleast 4-5 hours and it was morning and we got to look out the window and Czech country side is very beautiful. Finally we arrive, and have directions to find the hostel but we get lost anyway. When we get there, it seems a little bit sketchy to us but we decide to go in anyway, and it is one of the nicest hostels we stayed at. We settle in and we eat some of the food that we packed and then go to a small café nearby for coffee. We get a map and sweaters from the hostel and begin to walk around and see Prague.
Eventually we find a main square, where there is a small festival going on. It is not far from our hostel and we take about a million pictures of the famous Astrological clock. We keep walking around and make it to this really big outdoor market. Everything there is handmade. And it is really cool stuff. On the outside were shops that sold tourist stuff but the street itself was only the market. And the market was like wooden stalls that were all connected with like canvas roofs, and it looked so old fashioned and it stretched the entire length of the street. I bought a beautiful Pashmina, a handmade leather hair piece, and a handmade copper arm bracelet; my friend Becca bought these awesome really thick and warm knit mittens, and my roommate Lauren bought some amazing watercolors of the city. We stopped for a while to watch the artist painting them. Then walked around the city more, and saw lots of shops and cool places. Prague is very medieval so there are all these side streets that are covered by archways so it is like the city is one giant building with walkway cutout here and there. It is very cool and since there are rarely straight streets it really feels like you are a spy sneaking about. Also they were so many different kinds of shops selling awesome stuff. Outside a crystal shop a girl from New Zealand stopped to ask us of we knew where a good hostel was. I thought that was so cool. She just decided to go to city and didn’t even take long enough to plan where to stay.
Later that day, we are starving and decide to eat dinner and we happen to have made one already, so we go back to the hostel to eat and change before we go out to the 5 -story club. It is the biggest club in Eastern Europe. Not that that is saying much but we want to check it out. It was so much fun. And like everything in Prague it was cheap. It was literally 80 cents a beer. Each floor had different music and they really didn’t mix which was cool. One floor was literally called black music. The English over there can get a little wonky and it is always funny. Also because they have no black people, so there is no one to get offended. So we drank and we danced and listened to music and hung out and spoke German with people who didn’t speak English. Alex who had never drank at home had a few and asked us to teach him how to dance, because he genuinely didn’t know. It was so fun and funny! On the way back I really really really wanted a Kebab but stupid Pat (who was navigating because he claimed he had the best sense of directions- such a lie) said no, that we need to go home because it was late and it took so long to do things as a group and since half the group was drunk it would take even longer, but I was starving. I ended up eating a power bar from somebody. It was NOT satisfying.
Anyway the next morning, we eat breakfast, which was free with our hostel, yah! And then we leave to go on the free two hour walking tour which was so great. The tour guide was really funny, American and informative. He talked about all the buildings in the main square (and the clock of course) and the history of Prague from the time it was the capital of the great Bohemian empire to the capital of the Habsburgs empire when Leopold was scared of the Turks and moved it there to when it liberated itself from the Nazis only to be fucked by the Russians two weeks later. We saw the only remaining concert hall that Mozart actually played in. We saw the once thriving Jewish district and many cool buildings there; including one of only 6 buildings built as an architectural expression of cubism and the only one still standing (in the world) and the Kafka statue. He then recommended a place to eat lunch.
It was so authentic they didn’t even have English menus. In fact only one waiter spoke English and that was just barely. He tried really had to help us though. He says “we have chicken, cow, pig and duck- which you want?” I am the only one to order the chicken. He says “ok we have 3 kind dumpling- (names them but I can’t remember them all) which you want?” And that is all the information we have about our meal so we have no idea what we are getting. When it comes though, it is incredible. It comes with these amazing dumplings and sauce and delicious meat. I think I had bread dumplings and the chicken had some kind of spice rub and then it was grilled and some of the ends got a little fire and it was so good. And this sauce- I have no idea what it is because I had never had anything like it, but it was so perfect with the meat and the dumplings. Still one of the best meals I’ve had and I have no idea what it was called. Afterwards we split up at the St Charles Bridge. This is bridge has a very cool story. Apparently, there had been a bridge there since roman times but it was washed away by a great flood in the 1400s I think. They decided to build a new better bridge and in the cement the engineers said they need to put eggs…kind of like a meat loaf? Anyway in the story, hundreds of peasants from all around bring thousands and thousands of eggs and it made a bridge that’s still standing. Well about 20 years ago they tested the content of the cement in the bridge, and they found that it did have eggs in it!
So after splitting up, we walk around, buy a few things, and look for bagels in the Jewish district, and eventually we all meet up and go back to market and the main square where we buy beehive kind of pastries rolled in like a cinnamon sugar yummyness and a quick dinner at the main square. That night we go to the communist bar- Proganda. It was so cool! Everything communist ever from every country covered the walls. And to enter, you go in the front door and you see that you are in a stone hallway and that almost immediately starts going down stone steps. It is not super well lit but you realize that you are descending below street level and it clearly a room cut from stone that is completely underground. And then shock! It is a bar with the walls covered in pictures and posters and there is a really big blow up Lenin doll that would be at a car lot if Lenin believed in cars. We go to order out drinks and I ask the bartender to surprise me with a good dark beer, because I know nothing about Czech beer, and it was great. But then I didn’t know the name, so when the other people liked it too they couldn’t order it because we didn’t know the name! Also there is a good band playing that is southern bluegrass which I liked a lot but we didn’t stay for a super long time because we were all very tired. The next day we go around and have a late lunch/early dinner at a really good Italian place we found. It was fancy but affordable because of the exchange rate, but we had to eat at a weird time because we had to catch the train back to Salzburg.

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Photos

Lauren and Becca
found Star Wars in Prague

A really cool entryway
to a chinese restaurant

A picture of someone taking a picture
of someone looking at a picture

the main square
with Becca chasing Alyssa in the background

Food at the main square
yum!