Prague

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Activities:

I've been here for two weeks now and some of those days were just me basically being a vegetable so I'll try to summarize.

City Impressions: Prague is a pretty cool city. There's reliable and relatively inexpenside public transit, lots of pretty buildings, nice views, and it's not too big. I usually have about a week in a big city (Toronto, Tokyo, London) before I get too annoyed with the number of people and want to leave. It's been two weeks now and I havn't hit that point yet. Although I've seen pretty much everything I've wanted to see in the city I wouldn't mind coming back in the summer.

The Hostel: I was very impressed with the hostel at check in and two weeks later I still think it’s one of the best I've stayed at. I had previously sent an e-mail to the hostel asking about if I could work here in exchange for accommodation. When I spoke to the manager on arrival he told me I’d be working down as the bartender downstairs. I’d been expecting to clean dishes or bathrooms or something so this was a little unexpected. Still, I told him I was good for it and was trained immediately. Training involved telling me where everything was and the assurance that I'd be fine. There was a lot of information at once and I was a little apprehensive about starting that night. Once 6:30pm rolled around I went back down to the bar and went through a few of the basics over again with the manager before he left me on my own. I survived but these last two weeks have reminded me of how much I hate food service. Now, what's supposed to happen is I open at 7 and then I can close at midnight if there's no one ordering anything. On my second to last night I was getting ready to close, made the last call and then people kept ordering and I had to keep working until 3am. Yeah, I wasn't pleased about that. People don't often leave tips because it's just a hostel bar and even when they do it's usually about 5Kc (which is about 25 cents).

The other thing the manager told me I'd be doing is…get ready for it…front reception! Yes, I’ve gone halfway across the world to do what I did back home! No, technically I’m only helping out with the breakfast. Selling, serving, cleaning and whatnot. But of course I still got to be trained in the computer system they use (not Sapphire), on check-out, towel rental, and selling transit passes! I was a bit more nervous about working at the front than I was down in the bar because there’s a lot less traffic down there. But then I thought ‘Screw this, they’re not paying me and I’ve done more complicated things than this. I can do this.’ And I have.

Tours: So I've done three tour in Prague while I've been here. Two of which went over almost the exact same things. First was a tour run out of this hostel which goes to places that not every tour goes to…supposedly. Richard is a nice guy but not the best tour guide. His accent and tone of voice just make me forget I’m supposed to be listening to him. He took us to the Prague Castle area, but not into the castle itself. He didn’t stop talking the whole tour but I only remember a fraction of what he said. One of the things I do remember him saying is that there’s a very popular _fictional_ historic character and the Czechs have a museum to him. We went into the museum and saw photos he was supposedly in as well as his various possessions and alleged ‘inventions’. The whole thing is meant as a joke. Anyway, after the tour was over I went to see take some photos of the graffiti on the Lennon wall and then walked over Charles Bridge to browse some of the artist stalls. Didn't see anything worth getting though.

The next tour was the Prague Castle Tour run by Sandeman (a company I've done Free Tours with in Dublin and Munich). The guide, Colin, showed us part of the same places as Richard but Colin was much funnier and more memorable. We got to go inside the ground of Prague castle this time but St Vitus Cathedral was closed so we couldn’t go inside.

Another Free Tour was next after that. The guide told us about the buildings in the main square presentation by Fillip of what the Astronomical Clock does when it rings. After we walked around to Wenceslas Square and into St James Church where, the story goes, a thief tried to steal the jewels from the statue of the Virgin around the year 1400. The Virgin statue then came to life and grabbed his arm in such an iron grip that his arm had to be chopped off. The thief then ran away and they hung his arm from the wall as a warning to others. It's still there now but it's really small and kinda looks like a chunk of jerky. Next was onto the Jewish Quarter and we saw the outsides of the Old New Synagogue and the Pinkas Synagogue and also got a glimpse of the Jewish Cemetery. After ending the tour outside the Rudolfinum I headed back to the hostel to work.

Kutna Hora: On my last day in Prague I went on a tour to the city of Kutna Hora about an hour outside the city. It's a small town which used to have a very large number of silver mines and from the 13th to 16th centuries it rivaled Prague for political and cultural importance. The Church of St. Barbara's is the main attraction here. It's enormous and was built to snub the monks in the nearby town of...

Sedlec: Sedlec's primary claim to fame is the ossuary (an ossuary is a place they keep bones) beneath the Cemetary Church of All Saints. The ossuary is estimated to contain the bones of about 40 000 people, mostly plague victims and people who died in the Hussite wars. What makes the ossuary such a tourist attraction is that the bones have been, ah...artistcally arranged. There's a chandelier whcih contains at least one of every bone in the human body, several dozen strings of skulls, four large mounds of bones that have been so well stacked they look glued together, and even a coat of arms. You can take a look at the pictures to see what I'm talking about but I think the chapel was probably one of the coolest buildings I've been to.

Art of Mucha: I was walking down the street to the Old Town Square and going into a few of the tourist shops to see what kind of souvenirs they had. In a few of the shops I saw some posters done in a style I really liked by a guy called Mucha. I looked him up later that night and found out there was a gallery of his work and a Mucha Museum not too far away. So the next day I went to check them out. Now, I don't really pay that much attention to art and I don’t go to art galleries. The fact that I decided to go to a museum dedicated to an artist is a first for me. The pieces in the gallery were old postcards, menus, posters, etc. with his work printed on them. I spent about an hour looking at all the pieces and didn’t get bored! After seeing most of his work I debated whether going to the museum would be worth it and decided that it couldn’t help to go and look. I'm glad I did go to the museum as well because there were some pieces I hadn’t seen before but, more importantly, there were descriptions of what each pieces was created for.

Food Adventures: I've had several food related adventures while I've been in Prague. First, they don’t have soup in cans here. The soup they do have is dehydrated in sachets and you’ve got to add water. One of these sachets was a very tasty ‘instant’ goulash. ‘Instant’ in the fact that it was supposed to take 10-12 minutes to cook but mine ended up taking half an hour because it wouldn't thicken. Of course I can’t read the instructions so I’m not even sure if I’m cooking it right. All I see is Czech and then '.8L' and them more Czech and '10-12min.' I suppose I could run the instructions through Google translate but that's too much effort for soup.

I've tried to have a traditional meal in every country I've been to. There's a nearby pub the hostel recommends and I decided to try their goulash. When it came there were some tasty looking cheese shavings sprinkled on top. I took a scoop of them and discovered it wasn't cheese. It was horseradish. So, with eyes watering, I choked down that mouthful and then tried to eat as much of the meal as I could so as not to offend. I wasn't even able to finish half of it. Right after I went to the grocery store to buy sweet things to get the awful horseradish taste out of my mouth.

While I've been travelling I've had the oppourtunity to try things I wouldn't normally have at home. Specifically I've learned the awesomeness that are muesli and Nutella. Muesli because it's like cereal that doesn't get soggy if you leave it in milk for a long time. And I've learned that Nutella by itself is tempting but but Nutella with crepes is seriously dangerous.

Creative Language Barrier Solving: I've found thta English isn't very widely spoken outside the tourist areas here in Prague. I've had to come up with creative ways of solving my problems in this regard. For example, when I got lost on arrival I went into an internet café to look up where I was and how to get to my desired location instead of asking for directions from people who probably didn’t speak English and who may not have known where the hostel was in the first place. Second, when trying to send two parcels via Czech Post I’ve had to look up the approximate cost on their website and then taken with me a written a note with the information I know they need (where the package is going, what’s inside and how much it’s worth). To do this I usually just run my sentence through Google Translate a few times back and forth and try to make it as clear as possible. I'm sure it's still the equivalent of our 'engrish' but at least that lets them know that I don't speak Czech so they don't try to ask me any more questions or fill out any forms.

Lack of Ugly Modern Buildings and Asphalt: In the Old Town, New Town and Prague Castle area there is a distinct lack of any kind of ugly glass modern building. Instead there’s a dozen different architectural styles ranging from Baroque, to Gothic, Neo-Classical, and even a Cubism building! The most recent buildings are from the 60s and 70s and while they’re not as pretty as most of the other buildings they’re not encased in glass either. Also, in those same areas of Prague there is a distinct lack of asphalt roads or concrete sidewalks. Instead they use cobblestone (multi or mono-coloured and varying from tight to loosely fit) for the road and either the same for the sidewalk or a nice black and white mosaic pattern.

Shopkeepers: When I was on one of my tours the guide said that there was a saying in the Czech Republic that anything that wasn’t nailed down was likely to be stolen. Maybe that’s why but I’ve noticed that shopkeepers watch you like hawks here. It’s actually a little uncomfortable. They constantly stare at you as you wander/look around the shops and it makes me want to not buy anything and get out of there ASAP. On a shopping-related note I stopped by a market recently to see what the stalls had. Several of the shops were selling brass knuckles and one store was selling tasers and butterfly knives! I didn't stop to see if the tasers actually worked.

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Photos

Mosaic made of a Million Glass Pieces
Supposedly, anyway.

The Powder Tower
Used to be the entrance to the city (when the city was surounded by walls) and was then later used to store gunpowder.

Sgraffito Architecture
You apply two different colours of plaster in two different layers and then scratch the top one off to get this effect.

Astronimocal Clock in the Old Town Square
It's supposed to be the number 1 overrated tourist attraction in Europe. The number 2 is the Glockenspeil in Munich.

Tyn Church as seen from the Old Town Square
Notice how the left tower is smaller than the right? It might have been because a) the building materials were stolen or b) because someone messed up.

Another Building in the Old Town Square
I just thought it was cool because it was painted.

The Jewish Cemetery
There's more than 12 layers of graves in this cemetery because the Jews were refused more land to bury their dead.

Schwarzenberg Coat of Arms
They're the ones that paid the artist to bleach and then decorate the ossuary.