Prague…
Praha… Synonymous with awesome – at least
it should be. Of all the cities we have been to up until this point (It´s
currently June 11th as I write this), Prague has been my absolute
number 1. It´ll be difficult to fully explain why, but I can try.
We arrived
in Prague mid-afternoon to more of that overcast weather that we had become
accustomed to, albeit briefly, in Munich. At first glance, Prague seemed a bit
strange to me. From the train it looked a little run down and potentially
dangerous. I couldn’t have been more wrong. One thing was abundantly clear
having exited the train, though, and that was that we would be having another
very difficult language barrier to break through, as Czech reminded us more of
Russian than it did English. We discovered early on that the Czech Republic was
on different currency than was the rest of the places we had been, and we were
forced to convert a bunch of our Euros to Czech Krona (Krohns or Crowns as we
called them). The metro took us almost directly to our hostel, though in
typical Steve and Jake fashion, we overshot it and ended up doing quite a bit
more walking than was necessary to get to the front door. First impressions of
the city having exited the metro: Clean, old, and dense. Our hostel, Miss
Sophie´s, had a pretty cool sitting room and bar just as you walked in, and our
reception was likely the friendliest and most helpful we had had up until this
point. The girl behind the counter chatted with us about our trip for quite a
while before giving us loads of information related to the city, how to get
around, where to go to drink, eat, sightsee, party, pubcrawl, etc. Pleasantly
surprised by our reception, Steve and I made our way up to our second story
8-bed mixed dorm. We chatted with our new bunkmates for a bit before heading
out for a bite to eat. We found a little place with traditional Czech fare not
too far from the hostel. Steve and I ordered two Czech pilsners (some really
fantastic beer) which I struggled to down with my stomach still being upset
from the food poisoning in Munich. The pork neck Steve got looked loads better than
the chicken I got, but it was all pretty fantastic, and we found ourselves
pleasantly full for less than $6 each. That night I opted to stay in, blog
about Greece, and sleep, while Steve went on the pub crawl.
The next
day, after hearing the stories of the previous night, I strongly regretted not
going. Anyhow, we grabbed a pretty fantastic breakfast in the lobby of the
hostel and I acquainted myself with a bunch of the people Steve had met the
previous night, including this Dutch guy from Amsterdam named Arjan. Arjan,
Steve and I quickly hit it off, and for the remaining two nights we spent in
Prague the three of us were pretty much together the whole time. Having missed
the 10:30 AM walking tour, we decided to do the 12:30PM one in the Old Town. We
walked our way through the city and met up with our tour group just outside of
the National Museum. The tour was freaking awesome, and our guide, and American
guy named Casey, did a fantastic job explaining the far reaching Medieval
history of the city, as well as the more recent changes related to the fall of
Communism in Prague, and WW2. We were even brought through the old jewish
ghetto, in which we saw a bunch of old synagogues and even the place where the
old story related to the Golem originated from. Three hours later, the three of
us were definitely better for having done the tour. After a quick meal of
goulash and pilsner, we took the metro back to the hostel. We hung out for a
bit, chatting with the new bunkmates we had gotten. After a few hours, the
three of us plus a polish dude named Machas headed out to grab some dinner at a
local microbrewery. Following a hilarious meal during which Arjan and Machas
taught us to swear in both Dutch and Polish, we all signed up for the
Hostel-Hosted pub crawl. I´d like to interject quickly, before I cover the
night, and mention that just about every interaction we had with a Czech native
was incredibly positive. The people in the Czech Republic, or at least in
Prague, went above and beyond to be friendly and help us in any manner they
could – likely one of the reasons why I am now so fond of the city. Anyhow, the
Pub crawl involved all of us having a fantastic time at a number of bars and
clubs across the city before finally ending up at a five-story nightclub on the
riverfront. Each floor played a different type of music, and the décor was
related to the theme. The first floor even featured an Ice bar, in which almost
everything was made purely of ice, from the benches to the bar to the glasses –
pretty cool!
The next
morning Arjan, Steve and I went to Praha Castle. The castle itself is
incredible, and we were told that its actually the largest castle in all of Europe.
We lost ourselves in a maze of winding side streets in trying to get there, but
ultimately we found our way and were able to hike up the castle steps to the
front gate. It wasn’t your stereotypical castle, with big battlements and
towers, but it was imposing and impressive all the same. The chapel was pretty
freaking cool, with a huuuuge gothic style towers, stained glass, and
gargoyles. We spent the better part of two hours tooling around and seeing what
there was to see before hiking down the hill towards Charles Bridge. Evidently,
centuries ago, a king was crowned in Prague named Charles the IV. He was both
the king of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor, and during his reign he
completely revamped Prague. He began a series of massive construction projects
which included the Charles Bridge, the Castle, Churches, Plazas, and a huge
wall that spanned the city. The Charles Bridge alone is very impressive, with
statues lining the edges and old cobblestones across the floor. Another
fantastic dinner with about ten hostel mates was a precursor to another night
of revelry across the city.
When we got
up in the morning, none of us wanted to leave the city. We spent the next few
hours napping in the lobby and chatting with one another before we could catch
our train to Montpellier. Ahead of Steve and me was a daunting 21 hour train
journey across a large swath of the Czech Republic, Germany, and France.
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