Prague

For those of you who have been waiting on the edges of your chairs for a while now when I announced that I'd be taking another trip, my destination was, of course, Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.

Sorry that this took so long to be posted. I was waiting for photos from some other people, but they've apparently disappeared. They're all the fun photos from the nights, because I never took my camera out. I'll add them when I get them.

For those of you who remember my first experiences in the Czech Republic, it's easy to say that this time was much better. For those of you who haven't read it, or need a refresher, see the end of my post on Krakow, Poland.

I arrived in Prague on Friday May 4th at noon after a 4 hour bus trip from Vienna. I had to meet Henrik and his friend Matt at the main train station at 2:45, so I had some time to kill. First, I wandered through the streets in the direction of the train station. After some wrong turns and a little eavesdropping on other tourists, I found my way to the train station. The Prague train station must have been extremely beautiful at one time in the past. Sadly, however, that is no longer really the case. The old entrance has been closed and turned into a small café. The 'new' entrance must have been built in the 60's or 70's during the height of communism. Thankfully, the station is now under renovation to clean up the modern sections and restore the old parts.

Below you can see the original entrance to the station, which is now only meters from a busy freeway. There is a large domed ceiling covered in plasterwork and murals in need of serious attention, but you can still imagine what it would have been like in it's glory days. On second glance, this picture doesn't look all too bad, although you can see some damage on the left.
Now with my proper bearings, I set out to explore the city. Prague is famous for many things (including its image as the new Amsterdam), but also for the prevalence of black-light and marionette theatres for tourists. The posterboard below is for "Yellow Submarine", a blacklight show performed to Beatles songs. The shows are all about the images created using blacklight puppets and sets, and most are completely dialogue-free.
We never got the chance to see a blacklight show, but neither has my Czech coworker, so it's not like I really missed out on an integral facet of Czech culture, just another tourist trap.

There are a lot of interesting museums in Prague, including the Museum of Sex Machines and the Museum of Communism with the cool poster below.
When it was about time for Henrik and Matt's train to arrive, I headed back to the train station and sat in the abandoned old waiting room with a sleeping backpacker and group of Czech teens.Being a bit bored, I walked around the front of the building. Hopefully the renovations get to the facade before it all crumbles away, although dilapidated beauty has its own charm.
When we met, we decided to go to the hostel and ditch our bags. The hostel turned out to be an amazing deal; it was close, cheap, and clean, what more could you ask for? Free breakfast? They had that too. The two people I met up with were my Swedish friend Henrik who is a former IAESTE Vienna trainee now going to school in Munich, and his friend Matt who is from Oxford, England but also goes to school in Munich. It was nice to see Henrik again, the first time since Oktoberfest, and Matt turned out to be really cool.

Our first big destination was the Old Town Square. The square is a big change from the narrow old streets which empty into it, a real medieval town, one of the only major cities in Europe to escape WWII without much structural damage.
The Church of Our Lady in front of Týn is one of the main attractions in the square. It was built in the 14th century, and has an almost creepy vibe, especially at night when the small windows in the towers are lit with orange lights. The main entrance is very odd. The row of buildings in front if the church in the photo above are actually attached to the front of the church. The only way in is through a fairly hidden and narrow passageway built into one of the buildings which leads to a very small courtyard.The other sight int he old town square is the astronomical clock which has components dating back to 1410! The clock not only tells the time, it also tells you the date, sunrise, sunset, hours since sunrise, zodiac month, lunar cycle, and more. Hard to believe it's all based on 15th century mechanics.
There are also some animated figures which move on the hour and at other times throughout the day. The two pairs on either side of the calendar represent the four things which were despised by the people of Prague, they are death (skeleton), vanity (the figure with the mirror), greed (the figure with the money bag), and last but not least, the Turkish (the figure with the turban). Nothing like a beautiful old racist clock. There are also statues of the 12 apostles which rotate though the two doors at the top. We just happened to be there when it was going off, and it was a little disappointing. The huge crowd of people gathered below made me think it would be a bit more exciting.

From the old town we wandered down to the river. Across the river on top of the hill is Prague castle, the largest ancient castle in the world, we decided that we should leave it for Saturday.
We passed a fountain outside the Kafka Museum that everyone who visits Prague has to see. I found a video of it running here on Youtube. Unfortunately only one of the guys was working, the other just lazily peed in one spot.
Many of the restaurants along the river face the street but have cafés down by the water. The little passage between these two buildings leading to a café was so long and narrow that there was a traffic light.
The oldest bridge crossing the river is the Charles Bridge which was started in the mid 14th century. The wide stone bridge is lined by 30 stone statues, installed around the year 1700. The bridge is currently being completely restored, but thankfully they're working on it section-by-section, so most of it is still open to the public. The only downside of the bridge is the large number of vendors and buskers selling everything from portraits to marionettes. It's hard to imagine how packed it must be in the height of the tourist season.
The "biggest music club in Eastern Europe" one of the many places we went Friday night. It has 5 full floors, all with different styles of music. The whole block of buildings (including the club) is built out over the river which passes beneath.
One of the many marionette shops in Prague, to some people being surrounded by this many marionettes would be terrifying, I just found it a little creepy. I was going to buy one as a souvenir, but they were all pretty expensive.
On Saturday we walked up the fairly steep hill to Prague Castle.
The site dates back to the year 870, but a millennium of additions and renovations has left little that looks more than a few hundred years old. The castle was very eclectic; every piece seemed to be of a different style. This made it interesting, but also made it seem much smaller, because you could never be sure what was castle and what part of the surrounding buildings.
At the center of the castle is the gothic St.Vitus Cathedral. It was started in 1344, but not finished until the 1920's.
The older gothic sections of the cathedral had gargoyles. I love gargoyles.
The stained glass windows were amazingly detailed, colourful, and all matched, something very rarely seen in Europe. Normally most or all of the windows were damaged in WWII, and are therefore either missing or mismatched.
We crossed back across the river to see the Dancing House, a building designed by a Czech architect in co-operation with Canadian architect Frank Gehry.

From the Dancing House we went back to the hostel for a siesta. Instead I watched some BBC World, which I have really been missing ever since October when we had to move out of Albert Schweizer Haus.

For supper we decided to check out a "dinner entertainment" restaurant by the hostel. It was caveman themed, and actually turned out to be a lot of fun. The restaurant was decorated with mammoth tusks, furs, bones, and fake rock, and the waitresses were dressed as cavewomen. All the food was very basic (meat and potatoes) and you had to eat with your hands. We sat down beside two Dutch women who were really funny, especially when the "show" started. The show was a drum circle around a caveman who was sniffing a large bowl of dry ice. I think it was supposed to be some kind of spiritual ritual, but it went on way too long. I was just worried that the poor guy would asphyxiate and we wouldn't be able to finish our food. After the 'ritual' they made us all get up and dance to the drums. Overall it was a fun, random, and completely unexpected. After dinner we stopped in a few places but eventually settled at a bar called "Harley" where we ran into a Canadian girl from Toronto and her class of Czech girls learning English. We ended up hanging out with them the entire night and had a lot of fun. (I'll add photos when I get them)

On Sunday it was raining, so Matt and Henrik decided to take a 1pm train back to Munich. As we were walking toward the train station, we passed the brightly coloured Jerusalem Synagogue. The architectural style and bright decoration make it look entirely out-of-place in the rather drab neighbourhood. It would have been cool to see inside, but it was closed. Too bad.
After saying goodbye to Henrik and Matt I still had 4 hours to kill. I wandered throughout the city and eventually found myself in a market. One stand sold different types of candy, including Czech "Smarties".
Another stall sold marionettes, there were characters from fairy tales, like Puss in boots and the big bad wolf, but also Harry Potter and Hermione.
I wandered some more and found myself in the old Jewish quarter. According to a few sources (which may or may not be true) the Jewish Quarter in Prague wasn't destroyed in WWII because the Nazis intended on making it a "exotic museum of an extinct race". This terrible intention resulted in a lot of Jewish artifacts and synagogues being preserved. One of these preserved sights is the Old Jewish Cemetery, which dates back at least as far as the 15th century and is believed to contain 12,000 graves.
The gravestones are grouped very close together, at odd angles, and various states of decay. The fact that graves are stacked and layered allows for the estimated 12,000 people to have been buried in such a small space over the ~350 years it was in use.
Walking from the Jewish quarter back towards the river I spotted the Prague Metronome. To get to it I had to pass back over the river via a bridge decorated with this statue.
A view down the river from up on the hill beside the 75 foot tall metronome.
The walk to the bus station from the metronome took me through the old town square one last time. I stopped and took a picture of the monument to Jan Hus who was burned at the stake in 1415 for proposing a reformation of the Catholic church in Bohemia. The tower in the photo below is the old city hall, which contains the mechanism for the astronomical clock which is on the lower part of the tower.
I arrived at the bus station far earlier than I should have. When I arrived I looked all over for a screen displaying departure platform and times, but couldn't find one. Then I realized that the bus station is by no means modern, so I had to go to the large schedule board, find Vienna, and find my bus. It was easy to do once I realized that I had to do it. As I was very early, I wandered around, and took a few last photos.
I really enjoyed my trip to Prague and can't wait to show you the photos from the evenings. I would really like to go back some day and check out some of the museums, see a black-light show and tour the castle.

In less than a month now I will be done work and in Italy with my mom, can't wait. On Thursday I'm taking the day off work to see my friend Szilvia's PhD defense. It will be interesting to see how it all happens and then we'll either go out to celebrate her success or drown her sorrows. Her brother Laslo is also coming from Serbia. We haven't seen him since we were in Serbia last November, so it should be a good weekend.

At the beginning of May my friend Andrew who was my neighbour in residence in first year will be coming to visit. Should be fun, hopefully by then it's a bit warmer and a little drier.

Only a few weeks left in Europe. I can't wait to come home and see everyone again, but I never want to leave. It's a good thing I can't afford to stay in Europe this summer and still go back to school in the fall, or else I'd be really tempted.