lucky or un luckily for you, depending on how you look at it, after i was in prague i began writting notes on what i did there, and although i didnt finish them.. i do have at least something that tells you what i did.
Also if the writting bores you, as it might, just ski down to the photos.
After a very pleasant sleep on my overnight train, I arrived at the main station in Prague. From here I quickly grappled the metro system ( which happens to be the easiest in the world ) and headed to another station to meet akash and incey, who caught a slightly less comfortable bus. By this I mean, i had a lady serve me breakfast in bed in the morning on the train, and they were squishes next to each other eating chocolate biscuits on a bus. From here we caught a couple more trains a short way to our accommodation. Which was a pretty sweet studio apartment. There was a small moment of tension when we walked in, to a room with 3 men, who shut the door behind us... Did I mention the apartment was in the basement. However all went smoothly, and nobody was mugged or killed... at least that day. So we all jumped on our computers and onto the net to make a list of what we wanted to do in Prague. You see we felt we had made the mistake of not doing this in Amsterdam or Belgium, and hence felt we didn't make the most of those places. That night I made a big pasta with tones of veggies for dinner and it was so nice to have a proper meal, and I really enjoyed cooking.
The next day started off very well, there was a little food market near our aparment, and I got a punet of fresh raspberries for what would be something like $1.30 Aussie dollars. The sun was shining, which hadn't been the case for a while, and we headed to what akash remembered as one of the best markets he had eve been too.... , a it turned out it wasn't the market he remembered, also mostly this market just sold weapons; knives, tassers, bb guns, knuckle dusters, you name it. Fail akash. So we decided to move on into the city for the free walking tour, except now we had some time to kill. So we started to wonder around, and we began to realise we were surrounded by police, police in riot gear, loud scary police dogs, police on every corner. So we were like... Ok what have we stumbled into here... When we saw a protest, of skin heads, a this point we kind of thought hmmm, akash is the only person of ethnicity we can see, maybe it's time to retreat a bit. However as we rounded a corner we bumped into what was really going on... The Czech Republic first ever pride parade... It was huge, and was as much as a celebration as a protest, as their president is a bit of an idiot ( please see video link further down) and also homophobic. So now we felt a bit more comfortable with our safety, we skipped along to our free walking tour. A two hour walk around the city full of information on architecture, history and cultural insights, such as the Czech's think vegetarianism is an illness. I really do think the walking tours are the best way to start in a new city. By this time it was raining again, so we headed back to the apartment to make dinner, a delicious veggie soup. After some more planning on the net ( how People traveled, backpacker style before the Internet I don't know). We headed out to a cafe/bar and revelled in how cheap drinks were.
After changing accommodation, into a hostel next to the main square in the morning. We headed out on a castle tour, with a guide who was part Irish and part Greek, who was very nice, and thought himself a joker...though i belive this was questionable. The castle tour was super interesting, and went for like 5 hours, it was crazy - as it was a walking tour, it was fairly exhausting. We got so many little stories about different buildings and people, and learnt about many quirks and more tense moments in the Czech Republic's history. Our guide even acted out a more recent event in which their president stole the chili presidents pen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uToMvq3yw2A&feature=related
Following the end of the tour were we saw a beautiful view of the whole of Prague, akash lead the way to kafta's ( a famous writer from prague) favorite park, and boy could you see why it was his favorite, and how it could be inspiring - it was so peaceful and breathtaking. Then we headed to a site I had been looking forward to the love locks and the Lennon wall. The love locks is something I saw on eurovision, as they had little clips with things from all over Germany. And it turns out there all over the world. It it when two lovers, buy a padlock, perhaps engrave or insrcibe their names then, lock it onto a brige or gate and throw away the key, into the water. And then more and more gather. Next to the prague love lock wall, is another wall full of love notes, so I added a tiny one in. The Lennon wall, was a point of youth rebellion during the communist regime, and appeared around the time of lennons death. It began with anti communist, and peace message, using the Beatles and in particular John Lennon as a vehicle. It kept getting painted over, but the writing and art work kept on re appearing. After the end of the communist regime, it was left, and continually added to. Except like so many things is ruined by stupid jerks.. Who paint things on top like "jez and joes euope tour 11".... But there is still a couple of nice pieces, and it is always changing.
By the time we were getting back over the bridge, it was nearly sundown, which was around 8.30 and the lot was beautiful, but after taking a bit of rest at the hostel we ran into a small problem, all the restraunts kitchens were closing, it was raining and we were hungry.. So we kept looking. Finally at about 10.45 we found a Mexican restraunt - I will always remember how yummy our food was that night, and how quickly we ate. Of course that wasn't the end of the day though beause when I headed back to the hostel, back into my all girl dorm... Someone was already asleep and this someone was snoring... Very awfully and very loudly. So I tried to ignore it, unsuccessfully, I tried getting out of bed and coming back a little later just in case it settled down, it didn't. I began to make a lot of noise every 2 minutes, as it caused the snoring to cease momentarily. In these two minutes I tried as hard as I could to will myself to fall asleep instantly. No luck.. Then the other two girls from the dorm came in, and fell asleep, so my noise tacktit didn't work anymore... Hours passed, murder plots were created, escape routes thought of... Until I felt like I was going to explode, so I decided to do the opposite of trying to sleep, ... Showering and getting up. It was 4.30 in the morning, I had gone to bed at about 12.30... So it was a bit ridiculous.
Needless to say the first thing we did that morning was stop for coffee ( although that was in fact what we did every morning) so after that we headed to the Jewish quarter , and proceeded to get terribly lost, and spent a lot of the time walking around in circles.
ok so thats all I wrote.. so here is what i can rember after this.. but in no particular order.
- We saw an exhbition of Alfons Mucha's artwork. - amazing, that some of his most beauitful artwork was on inviations and menus for dinner parties.
- We went to the old jewish cemetery which is crazy, it started in the 15th C, there is something like 12000 tombstones, but many more bodies are burried there, as there layers of earth kept of being added, to allow for more burials. - It is such a chilling and sombering place, that as usual is ruined by tourist, who for some reason think it will be a nice photo for their wall if the stand in front of the tombstones, grin and give the thumbs up.
- The Pikas Synagogue, which since the end of WW2 has been a memorial to the Jewish Victim of the second world war. On all the walls are the details of each victim, names, communities, and deates of their birth and death. There are 80,000 names of the Bohemian and Moravian. - it is astounding at how much space the names take up, which really gives more depth to the number of people lost.
- The Museum of Communism - in this museum was a video of all diffrent aspects and kind of the timeline of the communist regime ( which went from like 68 - 89. this was the most disturing video i have ever seen. i felt like i had seriously been lied to, as the call the protest that lead to the end of the regime the velvet revolution, because there wasn't any violence, i felt this was a bit of a sham, as up until the day before the communists were bashing people left right and centre. and it was clearly only because the whole regime all over europe was collasing.
- The Franz Kafka Museum - obviously in our aim to not waste our time, and miss out on anything in prague we went to every single museum, gallery and site possible.
- We went and saw the english band , The Wild Beasts.
- We were climbing a tower, and suddenly i heard some music, and i was like oh, that sounds like that band, Bond, who are a electornic string quartet, who my high school principle used to be obsessed with.. weird... yep turns out they were just across the way cracking out some tunes... weird...
umm thats all ive got i think for prague..dont worry i remember less and less about everwhere else, so a post wont be this long again.
No comments:
Post a Comment