Prague Blog! A lovely weekend in the Czech Republic

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Loooong after I am home, I am STILL catching up on my adventures!

Prague
MAY 2 - MAY 4, 2008

THE JOURNEY
We took a train from from Vienna to Prague, and had wandered through the cars to pick a compartment to sit in. When three others came into ours, we wondered why they had chosen it with plenty of empty ones available. Then we realized that our tickets actually had seat reservations on them, so we were preparing to go find our correct seats, when we realized that we were already sitting in them! It was pretty unbelievable.

Our companions were from the states as well, a middle-aged husband and wife, and another woman. The couple's daughter had studied abroad a few years back and told her parents they would enjoy Prague, so they made a spontaneous decision to move from eastern Colorado to the Czech Republic, teaching English for a year. They did not seem at all like the type to do it, but they seemed quite content and unphased by the big transition. The other woman, Barbara, recommended a couple restaurants in Prague. She was very well traveled. She pointed out that many people accept everything as "the way things are", all the way from obvious custom to the little things of everday. Obviously "the way things are" is different in the places that you travel to, so while in traveling you learn a great deal about the world and others, but you also learn a great deal about yourself; recognizing that which you can adapt and change, and that which you absolutely refuse to let go - I very much agreed.

We hit the ATMs right away since we didnt have any Czech Korunas for the weekend. I was disturbed to pull out three 500 CZK bills- but converted thats only about 63 euro. The metro pass dispenser only took small change, and it was almost midnight so stores were closed. Our only option was to break a bill at the convenience store- I bought a very odd package of dry cookies.

After the metro we walked around fairly lost (a common theme) and finally got to our hostel. The person in charge was the quintessential czech- raven hair , angular glasses, and pale skin. Chelsea had informed me that Thank you in Czech is "Děkuji", pronounced, Deh-qwee, so I practiced my new czech mastery on him. Our room had about 16 beds in it- We had medium lockers but my guitar wouldnt fit, so I hid it under my mattress. We had a fun time positioning Watkin's huge FatFreddy luggage. It wouldn't fit under the mattress so we pulled the bed out, put her luggage near the head, and pulled the sheets and pillow over to look like an elongated bed. It really looked quite pitiful but we were so proud of our cunning. I do wonder the necessity of our effects since there always seemed to be a certain unspoken amiability among hostel guests - since we're all trying to save money it would be breaking some sort of moral code to be a hostile-hosteler. We actually met two really cool Slovenians there- Samo (who looked like Jesus, but disappointly worked for a magazine), and Blaz, a climate scientist working in Milan.

SIGHTSEEING
The next morning we ate breakfast in a modern-looking cafe in our Malá Strana (Lesser Quarter) neighborhood. It was really a good part of town to stay in- still with the old buildings but away from most of the tourists. I ordered scrambled eggs, proceeded to douse them in salt- and then wonder why my eggs tasted so weird. I had failed to perform the "is this a sugar or salt dispenser?" test. It was about 9 in the morning- and we looked at our fellow guests- What do the Czech have for breakfast? The usual + Beer. Multiple guests had a glass. The Czech are known for their exceptionally cheap alcohol, and not for their orange juice- but I didn't expect them to be making these type of economical decisions at breakfast.

Our first venture was to see the Prague castle. Walking up to the base one can get a great view of the gorgeous city- but I was surprised at how many tourists were swarming around me. We walked through a lot of the area, but picked only one line to invest time in. The winner was the St. Vitus cathedral, founded by the Duke of Bohemia, Wenceslas I (AKA Good King Wenceslas)! His relics are in a small chapel inside. The line had wrapped around the entire cathedral, and during our quality time trudging a foot/ min., I saw a kid walk up to the side, proceed to pull his pants down, and pee on the side of the church with his mother watching. Tsk.Tsk.

Later, we walked onto the Charles Bridge. Wenceslas IV (heavens, not the one looking out on the feast of Stephen) had ordered his wife's confessor, John of Nepomuk, to be thrown off this bridge to drown in the Vlatava river, for not breaking the seal of the confessional when he suspected his wife had a lover. It is a wide beautiful bridge, with statues on the sides. We must have gone at the tourist rush hour- because we were stuck QUITE literally in a tourist trap. We had not even gotten to the part of the bridge over the river when we aborted the mission and headed backwards and off. Later at night it was a much better stroll.

We were excited to see the Jewish quarter, Josefov, but the two times we tried to get in, it was closed- we had forgotten that Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath. When the nazis invaded, they actually preserved the museum here, holding thousands of items from destroyed Jewish Communities of the bohemian area, to preserve it as a "Museum of an Extinct Race". I really wanted to see the Old Jewish Cemetery, which holds 12,000 graves in 12 layers because it was the only area used for the residents of the Jewish Ghetto- they weren't allowed to bury outside of it. The pictures I have seen look like the quintessential haunted cemetery with its lopsided and clustered ancient tombstones.

It was pouring buckets so we waited awhile inside the metro station before popping our heads out at Wenceslas Square. In the center is a statue of King Wenceslas on a rearing horse, and in the background is the huge elegant building of the National Museum. This building was passed off as the US Embassy in the movie Mission Impossible, and as a Venetian hotel in Casino Royale. The square is actually more of a long rectangle lined with taxis at night and modern streets bordering it. This is the famous location of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, which was considered an "overnight revolution" because it only took about 10 days of demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of people to overturn the communist regime that had been present since WWII.

The old town square, Staromestske Namesti, in Prague is incredible. It was raining when we were here, giving the darker buildings a sinister look. Among the many architectural tresures is the gothic church of Our Lady Before Tyn, the Baroque church of St. Nicholas, and the Old Town Hall with an astronomical clock with an hourly 12 apostles figure procession. (We missed it). In the middle is a statue of Jan Hus, a symbol of Czech nationalism and a 15th century heretic.

ON THE SUBJECT OF FOOD...
Barbara, from the train, had recommended two restaurants, which we both found to be tourist-free and off the beaten track. Like many hidden gem restaurants in Europe they both looked like absolutely nothing on the outside. In the first, I ordered an almond tea from the pages and pages of tea menu, then some asparagus, roasted potatoes (opékané brambory), and pork roast. It was some of the best-tasting food I had in Europe (Although, my hunger had been increasing steadily as we tried to navigate with Barbara's make-shift napkin map to the restaurant)

That evening we ducked back to a bar in our less touristy neighborhood, and our server was quite grumpy. We ordered some sausage (it was called something like Petrinski sausage) that sank like a rock to the bottom of my stomach, and Pivní sýr (beer cheese) that Chelsea and I pushed toward Elizabeth, the only person that could eat it, let alone stand the smell, that reminded me of some strong artifically meat-flavored dog food. I looked it up later to find the smell might have been owed to the mustard and raw onions it is mixed with.

#2 from Barbara was a traditional Slovakian restaurant. Inside was very folklorish and with logging decor- which explained the hearty meals offered. After I ate my Halusky (Slovak gnocchi)
with bryndza (Slovak sheep cheese) and fried bacon, I was ready to take the axe off the wall and build a cabin, but instead I ordered a chocolate covered crepe for dessert to clog up the arteries a little more.

I was ashamed to have waited until the second day in the Czech republic to devour a Koláče(kolache) since I have always enjoyed my great-grandma Slama's poppy-seed recipe. After we ate that first one we found ourselves sporadically ducking into little shops for another taste. Out of all the various fillings, I ordered the tasty mak, or poppyseed, ones the most.

For breakfast another day, I thought I saw a small sign for coffee, but went in and saw only a type of convenient store. Back outside we saw the sign again, but we refused to let it elude us, so we marched back in until we found the little breakfast nook. It was very tasty! Once again we had a long list of teas to choose from. I ordered ham and eggs and finished it off with some baklava.

OUR LAST EVENING IN PRAGUE
We found the Infant of Prague in the Our Lady of Victoria church in the same Malá Strana neighborhood as our hostel. The infant is in a clear box with gilded edges in front of the right kneelers surrounding the altar area, so that people can go to the front of church and really get quite close to it. I think it is moved during lent. Mass was entirely in Czech, and we were quite tired, so Elizabeth fell asleep and jerked her head up so many times I thought she had whiplash! (I had to get permission to add this detail!)

Elizabeth and I tried to get tickets to go to the opera house, but they were sold out. We went to the national theatre ticket counter but there were only a couple seats left in different price ranges for the "Rusalka" opera. We bought one ticket for 280 koruna, which is about $18, and a ticket for 30 koruna, which is about $2!!! I couldn't believe the amazing price. We split the cost and switched seats at intermission, not knowing who would get the better one for the third act. For the first act I sat in the more expensive seat. I went down a long hallway to door number two, and opened up into a box looking out on the beautiful theatre. There were two men taking up the front two seats of four in my box. I could see 1/4 of the stage sitting, and 1/2 of the stage standing and leaning on the side wall. When we switched at intermission the cheaper seat had a great view of the stage so when we found a couple empty seats we opted to stay up there for the third act. The opera was by a Czech writer but luckily there were subtitles above the stage in english. The plot : A water nymph falls in love with a man,and begs to be made human despite the powerful king's wishes (her father). An evil witch grants her this wish, but she has to remain mute.. Sound familiar? It was an uncanny parallel to Disney's "The Little Mermaid", but ended much more tragically. What was most tragic was the result of living out of a small suitcase for 2 weeks- a nice shirt, but jeans and very visible quirky blue and red striped socks with unmatching green shoes, which were hard to disguise from the opera-goers.

After the opera we walked on the St. Charles Bridge, and decided we should head back to Barbara's first restaurant recommendation- we remembered seeing Fondue on the menu. We ordered fondue and Czech wine (I can't remember the name!) and all was jolly until we realized the metro had stopped running as it was after midnight. We walked to Wenceslas Square where we knew we would find a tram as this area is alive well into the night. With very few trams running and a huge list of stops... we ended up going the wrong direction.. for an hour. This is one of the moments our blatant refusal to take overpriced taxis did us in- exhausted travelers arent great navigators.

We woke the next morning, got breakfast at our hostel and took a cheap ryanair flight to Dublin! Yes, Grandma Schmidt! I'm finally going to write my Ireland blog!

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