Täglich Wiederkehrendes Abenteuer

Well, we’re back from the Czech Republic. Here’s the short version in case you don’t want to read this “much longer than anticipated” post: Prague is a wonderful city: visit if you get the chance.

Now for the long version!

We left from Linz early Saturday morning. We were up a little before six and were leaving on the train at 7:30. The train ride took about 5 hours. The first half of that brought us a ways into the Czech Republic where we changed trains. The Czech Republic, as Mary Jo says, “is definitely Eastern Europe.” Everything is basically the same, but older. The trains in particular were very different. They were an older design, had different seating layouts, and were a lot rougher on the tracks. It was OK though.

We had another two and half hour leg until we were in Prague. Despite being Eastern Europe, Prague is a very nice city. I was looking online, and the city of Prague actually has nearly twice the average income as any other place in Europe. Neat, huh? After we got off the train and worked our way through the train station, we made it a priority to find an ATM. The Czech Republic uses the currency of the crown. As far as we can tell, there’s no such thing as a crown cent. At least, we never ran into it, and Wikipedia doesn’t mention it. Everything is priced in whole crowns. The really weird bit though is that the numbers are what you would expect cents to be.

For instance, we found that a side order of fries is 29 crown. 29 dollars or Euros is insane, so you think 29 cents… which is also insane, but in an awesome way. Given that fries are 29 crown, expensive stuff, like a night in the hostel for both of us or a big toy, can be several hundred or several thousand crown. Oy. It really messes with you. I kept doing the conversion to Euros, but then ending up off by a factor of 10. It was really hard to know how much we were spending. Fortunately 100 crown is only four to five Euro, so it wasn’t that bad.

Once we had some crown in our wallet, we started the trek into the city to get czeched in at the hostel. See what I did there? I’m so clever. That’s the only time I’ve busted out that pun either in Prague or after we got back, honest. Anyway, we wandered into the city a bit. Quite accidentally, we went right past the largest synagogue in Prague. It’s quite the affair.

We found ourselves right on one of the big streets, so we looked at some of the buildings and tried to figure out where the heck we were. We eventually figured that out, then headed for the hostel. We arrived at the hostel and got all checked in. It’s kinda a weird place. It’s several floors worth of groups of rooms in this random building. There were a lot of younger people there enjoying the “freedoms” that Europe provides.

We stowed one of our backpacks in a locker and went in search of things to do. It was only about 2PM at this point, so we had a lot of sunlight ahead of us. We started by heading to McDonald’s. No, not to eat. The Communism Museum is located on top of McDonald’s… next to a casino. Weird location, but totally a legit thing. We got a couple of tickets and wandered through the museum. There were a surprising number of people there. We both thought it was so-so. It wasn’t stellar, but it was fairly cheap. It was interesting to really get an idea of what communist life was like. We get taught that it was bad and whatnot, but you don’t realize the horror. At least not until you see it in real life:

Oh I jest! Seriously though, it was creepy.

They even had some of the same listening devices we saw at that museum in Berlin. They also had slightly less stealthy devices.

We finished up the museum and got a quick photo op with a Lenin statue.

By this time we were pretty dang hungry, so we went in search of food. We decided to be just a little lame and eat at… wait for it… T.G.I. Friday’s. Yeah. They had a T.G.I. Friday’s. And as we’d later learn, not just one, but many. I don’t know who’s idea it was to put a T.G.I. Friday’s in Prague, but I love them. I had this massive burger and Joni had chicken with potatoes and veggies. It was insanely expensive by our cheap standards, but dang was it good. It should also be noted that with the exception of the waiters and waitresses, it’s exactly the same as in the states. Sure, the menu prices are in crown and they include food weights in grams and the beer list is localized, but beyond that, it’s exactly the same, right down to the uniforms and “flair”.

Joni also discovered that she can do that trick where you tie a cherry stem in a knot with your mouth. She was pretty proud of herself.

Stuffed to the brim, we waddled down the street toward the old town square. Along the way we got distracted by this giant toy store. It was four levels of toys. *sigh*

We reached the old town square and saw the three big attractions there. One of the attractions is the astronomical clock that does crazy stuff every hour on the hour. We didn’t really look too hard. We were distracted by the little food stands serving huge chunks of meat.

Wait, that’s not a huge chunk of meat. That’s one of the main buildings in the old town square.

That last one is the astronomical clock… from the wrong side. Seriously, we didn’t look around very much. We came back the next day, so when we get to that you can actually see stuff.

What we DID notice however, was tree cakes! Remember from Salzburg when the parents were here how we had those weird tree cakes? The guy said that they were Czech and had no German translation. Well, there they were in Prague!

They are pretty much the same, but this guy was using a charcoal grill instead of a propane oven.

We push on through the crowds and looked at a few shops. They have a ton of souvenir shops and places that sell marionettes. We don’t understand why, but that’s not something to be asked anyway.

We finally reached our next destination for the day: Charles Bridge. Charles Bridge is a bridge that crosses the Vltava river that runs through Prague. It’s fairly old and is a huge tourist attraction, as we found out.

As you can see, there were a ton of people there. We opted to take a little break to sit down and rest. We just chilled and enjoyed the view and watching people run about. We recovered our strength and were ready to head across.

The bridge is pretty neat. It’s got statues along the sides the whole way across and street vendors set up little displays. There were a lot of photographers selling prints and several sketch artists that were doing little portraits of people. The only downside was that it was packed with people. It did afford some neat views of Prague though, such as the castle and cathedral.

We never did get a chance to get up to the castle or the cathedral. We just ran out of time. That’s kind of a bummer, but you just do as much as you can. Mary Jo is kind of, sort of, maybe planning to get us back to Prague if we have time/money in June.

We got almost to the end of the bridge before one of the statues caught Joni’s eye. It was a statue of some guy, but that wasn’t the interesting part. The interesting part was that they had the Jägermeister logo on there. Well, kind of.

As you can see, the deer with the cross is the same logo that Jägermeister uses. Weird, huh? Something else to note is that most of the statues in Prague are made from sandstone, so they wear down and need to be replaced periodically. Statues can be damaged by weather, or in the words of the tour guide from tomorrow (the second day we were there) “drunken tourists”. The picture above is the bottom side of the deer. Here’s what the topside, the side exposed to rain and such, looks like:

We got across the bridge and walked up the main street. We stopped in a shop that had wood stuff and pottery. Joni bought a little wood clock she can use to teach time in class. We then made our way up to St. Nicholas church. We were getting a little worn out again, so we opted to not go inside and instead sat on a bench in front for a bit.

We were kind of close to the US embassy at that time, so we decided to swing by there. It was pretty non-descript really. Besides the little police check point looking at cars headed by, you wouldn’t even know it was an embassy. On the way there though, we did see “creepy pizza guy” who will forever haunt our dreams.

We had just happened to find a little flier for the “Museum of Medieval Torture Devices”. Being kinda curious, we decided to see if it was interesting at all. We found it on the second floor of a shopping center. It was pretty cheap, so we decided to just see what it was all about. Surprisingly, it was really interesting! Granted, some of that stuff was really creepy. Still, it was neat to read about some of that stuff. It’s doubly interesting because some people claim that a lot of what we see in museums was never actually used. Anyway, creepy.

I did want to point out one thing though. They had these things at the end of long poles so that they could pick into a crowd and grab people. Kind like a ye olde taser.

The end is spring loaded, so you can get it around someone’s neck, but they can’t quickly get back out. Kinda ingenious, really. Also, it has spikes.

After all that weird stuff, we took a little break and watched a swan and her swanlings swimming around the river.

It was getting fairly late by this point, so we headed back through the city to the hostel. We grabbed some water and took a little break. We had opted to go the cheap route, so we were in a dorm room with six other people.

Of course it wasn’t all that late for those six other people, so they weren’t around. We had kind of planned to sit around in the lounge before going to bed, but Joni had the idea to go out to a bar, so we did! The hostel was close to several different bars, so after looking at all of them, we settled on one and went inside. Now, we were at this bar for one thing in particular: Absinthe. The Czech Republic is known for its absinthe, so Joni wanted to try some.

For those of you that have heard of it, most of the common knowledge about it being all crazy is just plain wrong. It’s also not illegal in most places. So, don’t think we did anything crazy. Well, drinking it is quite the crazy process, but the act itself isn’t crazy.

Anyway, the waitress brought us everything for the absinthe drinking.

The things to note are: absinthe, regular spoons, table sugar, and a lighter. We, uh, didn’t really know what to do with any of this. We asked the waitress and she kindly tried to walk us through it. Unfortunately, the language barrier made it a little tough. We had several issues with it and didn’t get it quite right. For the record, the correct method for doing this without sugar cubes is:

1. Put sugar on spoon
2. Add a little absinthe to sugar spoon
3. Light sugar spoon on fire
4. Slowly dip sugar spoon into absinthe until absinthe lights on fire
5. Quickly drink absinthe (putting fire out is optional?)

Yeah, it’s insane. We first dropped the spoons in the absinthe and just put out the flames. Then we got it lit, but we were too scared to just drink flaming absinthe, and by the time we blew it out the glasses had become too hot to touch. The waitress gave us new glasses, we moved the absinthe into those, then we just drank it.

That stuff is not good. It’s downright disgusting. Joni, loves it… but only because it takes a single shot to make her happy! In her own words “I don’t like the taste, but I love the effect.” We had our absinthe, then munched on some 29 crown fries while we had a Czech beer. The beer was super dark and really good. We were both surprised by that… but I’m not sure why.

We went back to the hostel, sat in the lounge for about 10 minutes, then went to bed. And that was the end of the first day in Prague.

Welcome to day 2! After having a fairly decent night’s sleep, we got up, had our little breakfast at the hostel, and got checked out. We had decided that we were going to do something really touristy with the second day: take a tour, like with a tour guide and everything. We hadn’t done that yet in Europe, but we figured the country where we didn’t know the language was a good time to take an English tour.

On our way down to Wenceslas Square where the tour met, we walked past this:

As far as we can tell, that’s just a retractable door for a loading dock. Not too interesting, right? Well, it’s a little more interesting once you get closer and can see what those little bumps actually are.

HEADS!! Ahhhhhh, creepy.

We continued on and eventually made it to Wenceslas Square.

Wenceslas Square is a main city square in Prague. That big building at the end is the National Museum, but according to your tour guide, it’s just got bones and old stuff. He doesn’t recommend it. The square itself is important though because it was the site of the mass protests against communism. When we were at the Communism Museum the day before, we saw video of protests at the square. It was pretty neat to actually be there.

We had some time before the tour started, so I did my phone book tearing thing. If you’re not in the know, I’m ripping a phone book in half in every country we visit. Why? Because I can. Once that was complete, we just walked around the square a bit, then waited in this little strip mall where everything was closed.

Soon enough it was time for the tour, so we headed back out to the square and found the tour guide.

The tour started with our guide telling us about the protests in the square, some history of the country, and little random factoids. The Czech Republic hasn’t had the best luck. Granted, we were hearing this from a native Czech, so maybe he was a little biased, but it really sounded like the Czech Republic has always been very developed, but they keep getting invaded and occupied by other countries that aren’t all that great at keeping things running well!

He also told us about Duke Wenceslas and the song that’s named after him. You might know it: Good King Wenceslas. I guess that every country used to get a patron saint and Saint Wenceslas was the Czech’s. He was also a duke, contrary to the Christmas Carol. The tour guide recommended that next Christmas we change the lyrics to match history. Here’s a picture of the big statue they have of him in the square.

The tour group actually had a number of Americans. One from Virginia, some from Boston, one from California, and then a few more that I don’t know where from. The there were a few people from some country I don’t remember (they were with the Californian) and we even had a couple of girls from Mexico. Our rag-tag troupe marched down the square toward the Municipal House.

The Municipal House is a fancy building with a restaurant and little theatres in it. It wasn’t all that interesting, but there was a lot of other stuff going on around it. For instance, for a measly 60 Euro, you could ride around the city for 50 minutes in one of these:

We didn’t get a chance to try it, but I think it would have been fun. That wasn’t the only attraction at the Municipal House though. Our tour guide led us over to a change booth where you can exchange Euro for crown and back again. He then proceeded, standing right in front of the place, to tell us how they scam you by having different rates going to and from crowns and then giving different rates for “large” and “small” transactions. He even said that you need to know where to go, and that particular place will screw you. RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DANG PLACE!

The young kid behind the counter didn’t seem to happy and before we knew it, a security guard (who was trying very hard to look like a cop) showed up and (we assume – this was all in Czech) told the tour guide to get out of here. Our tour guide, being a gigantic bad a… butt, just told the security guard and the kid behind the booth that if they had a problem they should call the cops. It was awesome!

Continuing on, we arrived back at the old town square. Now you can see what that astronomical clock looks like.

I guess that when it chimes every hour, stuff just goes nuts. The little statues start wiggling and doing stuff. We almost got a chance to see it, but it’s a big attraction for some reason and the crowd gets pretty big. Actually, even when it’s not going the crowd is pretty big. Our tour guide was actually forced to break out the little tour guide flag.

Of course in the case of our tour guide, it was a yellow rag tied to an antenna from a boom box. That’s just the kind of thing you’d expect a bad a… butt to use for a flag. He doesn’t need your approval. He doesn’t need a nice flag. He’ll use what he wants gosh darn it!

We walked down the big fancy shopping street where all the really high priced shops are. That same street has the oldest operating synagogue in Europe. We stopped there for a bit, but didn’t go inside. We walked on to the docks where we would transition into the second half of the tour on the boat. We elected to brave the cold and sit up on the top deck.

As we started the boat ride, we took stock of what we had seen so far.

The tour took us down the Vltava river to the nearest lock, then back up the river to some of the main sites. We went past the Czech government building. You could tell it was a government building because there were limos outside.

Well, that, and the tour guide told us so. he even pointed out the big house at the top of the hill, directly above the government building, was the prime minister’s house. Convenient. I’d totally sled down to work every morning in winter. We also got another view of the Prague castle and cathedral.

Even Charles Bridge looks different from the bottom.

And the big yellow plastic penguins are a sight to behold!

Wait, what?

Anyway, we came up to another lock, so the boat turned around and headed back to the dock. On the way, the tour guide turned on some music by Czech composer Bedřich Smetana.

On the way back down the river, we finally got an explanation for this thing that we had seen before getting on the boat. Just for reference, it’s on this huge hill on the other side of the river. I’m zoomed in as far as I can go.

The deal is that the site at the top of the hill used to have this gigantic statue of Stalin. Like, 50 feet tall solid granite huge. The problem was that Stalin wasn’t all that popular after the thing was built. So, one night they just went up there and blew it up. No notice to the public beforehand, and no reports of it in the papers after. It was just destroyed without anyone saying anything. A while late they put up this big metronome. Stalin’s statue was supposed to stand for all time, so the metronome was placed there to represent the continual flow of time.

Then in 1996 Michael Jackson put a 35 foot plastic statue of himself in front of the metronome as a promotional stunt for a European tour. That has since been taken down.

Toward the end of the boat tour, the tour guide came around and asked everybody if they had any questions about the city. Joni wanted goulash, so we asked him if he knew a good place. He did indeed and even had coupons for free beer with a meal. So, we walked down to the place he recommended. It was this medieval style little hole in the wall. Hole in the basement?

The place is called Krčma. I have no idea how you pronounce that. It’s on a side street off that super expensive street we had been on earlier, so it was easy to find.

It’s got a pretty neat atmosphere, even if it is a little dark.

They use real candles for lighting sometimes, so there are sections of wall and candle holders with quite a bit of built up wax.

The weirdest thing though is that you have this real old setting, wood benches with little chunks of fur as cushions, and stone walls, but then if you walk past the bar you can see a computer monitor for their order system built right into the wall. At any rate, we both ordered the goulash and got our free beer. Goulash in the states is more of a soup, but here we got it as more of a sauce. We got the goulash with beef, some dumplings, and a couple of fried potato cakes. It was pretty tasty. There was some spice in the goulash I couldn’t identify. It was kinda peppery. Anyway, it was a good meal. It was also nice to try something a little more traditional.

Once supper was complete, we headed over to the train station, got tickets, and hopped on a train for home. We played Angry Birds again.

While Joni played, I looked at the scenery.

There’s some weird stuff in the Czech republic. Like, what on Earth is this for?!

Maybe it’s an armored car? Bars to keep people out and a platform for armed guards? I have no idea. I do know that they’re into green power, as is evident by this straight up solar panel farm.

Then there are these things! I saw these at a number of different stops. Sometimes they were back behind the tracks, but other times they were right next to the station. If anyone knows what these are, please let me know. I’m really curious.

We finally got back to Linz and got back up to the dorm. That was pretty uneventful. We saw a slug, but that was the highlight.

We got back a little after 9PM, checked on the Internet, then went to bed and slept very well. We had a good time in Prague. There’s something about the city that really draws you in. Joni thinks it’s all the history and how they had to deal with communism and whatnot. We got to do most of the things there, but we never made it to the castle, so if we have time and money after our big June traveling binge, we might try to get back there for one more day of looking around.