So getting to Prague in itself was a bit of a challenge. We
used this website called e-dreams to book everything and all 7 of us ended up
spread out on 3 different flights. But we managed to make it to the hostel
fine. An added bonus was that I ended up sitting next to some really cool
people on the two flights I had to take—from Nice to Frankfurt I talked to a
German chemist, and then from Frankfurt to Prague talked to a Czech
businessman. I felt like taking advantage of the opportunity to ask them about
their cultures a bit because let’s face it—we live in a society where we play
on our phones most of the time rather than talk to the people sitting right
around us. So, despite how awkward I felt striking up a conversation, they were
both very friendly in answering my bizarre questions about their education
systems, how they perceive Americans, their cultures, the problems going on in
their countries, etc. (May seem like a weird question but it came from a place
of genuine curiousity.)
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| Prague by night when we first arrived. |
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| Getting settled in at the hostel. |
We started out the day with a free walking tour. All we had
to do was walk over the Charles Bridge to the Old Town Square and find a guide.
Now, in all fairness, I knew next to nothing about Prague or the Czech Republic…
but I loved the tour and fell in love with the city. Not only was it absolutely
beautiful EVERYWHERE, but it’s jam packed with history and a culture that’s just
completely different. I learned about the Astronomical Clock, the Defenestration of Prague (defenestration
has been my favorite English word for quite some time now, so I enjoyed that),
the invasion of the Germans during World War II, the end of the war within
Czechoslovakia, the beginning of the First Republic and communism there, the “Velvet
Revolution,” and the “Velvet Divorce” into the Czech Republic and Slovakia
which was really only a little over 20 years ago!
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| The Charles Bridge! |
We also got to have a 30 minute break at a restaurant where
we tried goulash for the first time! I didn’t have any idea what it was but oh
my goodness was it delicious. It’s basically really tender yummy beef drowned
in some really good sauce with onions on top and is served with this bread that
is soft and simultaneously heavy yet delicious.
After the tour we got a bit lost on the way to the Lennon
Wall where we took some pretty sweet pictures. We didn’t have a tour guide to
really explain the history of it but had met this guy who told us that while
Czechoslovakia was communist, citizens couldn’t do much of anything without
getting into trouble and would come and graffiti the wall as a form of art and
protest.
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| Says "Life is Beautiful Chaos" but my jacket covered up the "s." |
At night we went out to an amazing place to dinner where we
tried a number of different things. Then we ended up going to this club that
had 5 stories, each one with a different theme of music. We were having a blast
and stayed until about 4:30, realizing that the time had shifted an hour over
here in Europe and it was later than we thought.
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| The 5 story club! |
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| My dinner of beef in cream sauce with bread and dumplings. |
The next day we slept in a tiny bit but then went and
checked out the Prague Castle—the largest ancient castle in the world! That’s
not just me saying that. It was more of a town than a castle as I normally
would imagine one to be. But we bought student passes that let us into the HUGE
cathedral as well as some of the other buildings.
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| Inside of the cathedral in the castle. |
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| One of the sausages we bought from a street vendor. |
Got a sausage from a street vendor for lunch and ate it in
the Old Towne Square. We checked out a very random but cool Tim Burton
exhibition. Then we went and napped a bit before having literally one of the
best meals I have had in Europe. We didn’t want to walk far so we went to a
restaurant two doors down from the hostel that had a special of potato soup,
goulash, and apple strudel for 190 crowns (which is a little less than $10!).
It was this adorable little place in a courtyard where we got blankets on the
seats to keep us warm. Since we’re getting used to meals in France we ended up
sitting there for two and half hours just eating and talking and laughing. It
was by far one of the big highlights of the trip.
Our last day there we had a train leaving for Salzburg at
13h33 so we spent the morning walking around, doing some shopping, and
revisiting the Jewish Quarter which we had passed through on the tour. I found
some really awesome “Europants” as I call them. Then we bought one last “trdlenik”
(?), which was this cinnamon bread roll thing that was DELICIOUS before getting
on the train and heading to our next destination: Salzburg!
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| View of the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle at night. <3 |
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