I've always wanted to visit Prague. Part of the reason I was so excited to move to Europe is the travel opportunities - but Prague has always been on my must-see list. So when I was invited to go with some of my friends from the office, I jumped at the chance. I have a few "circles" of friends at the office. This particular group was the interns. They only have 3 months here (and they're all here from other countries), so they're packing travel on most weekends. Anyway, we were to leave Friday around 5pm and get back Monday morning at around 7am, just in time to head to work. Most of the plans had been arranged, so all I had to do was buy a plane ticket (at roughly twice the price from everyone else, since I was the late-comer).
We left at 5pm from the office and caught a train to the airport. The Zurich airport is a bit odd in that you don't pass through security until you're almost at the gate. Each group of gates has a security checkpoint in front of them. This makes the lines tiny, which is fantastic. Of course, it must require significantly more manpower, but that's OK. Our flight was delayed by about an hour, but while we sat and chatted a woman behind me heard me mention Metallica and asked me some question that sparked a conversation. She lives over in Bern, and saw Metallica back in the early days. The funny thing is that she was from San Antonio, TX, but has been living in Switzerland for many years. We finally boarded, and it's only bit over an hour flight, so we were in Prague before we knew it.
Jana, one of the group, is from the Czech Republic and went to university in Prague. So she planned and was our guide for most of the trip. We met her boyfriend, Milan, at the airport. If it's possible to believe, I think Milan has even more energy than I do. This guy is just a ball of fire! I instantly knew we'd get along well. We had some brief discussions on what transportation tickets to purchase, and then handed Milan a ton of money to buy tickets for all of us. Then we were off. But by this point it was after 9pm and we were starving (or at least, some of us were). So at one of the stops we made there was a McDonald's - the only thing open late in Prague. Milan took orders from all of us and went to grab food so we wouldn't miss our bus to the hotel (since he could find his way if need be). He delivered the Big Macs and fries and I don't think I've ever enjoyed McD's food so much. I was so starved.
I need to pause the story here and note something. As I mentioned most people on this trip were interns, except of one other person and myself. As such, the trip was designed to be as frugal as possible.
Anyway, we arrived at the dorm-turned-hotel-for-the-summer. It was super cheap, but was an extremely rundown dorm room (although we had a semi-private bathroom), and they gave us sheets and the smallest damn towel and bar of soap you've ever seen. And here I never thought I'd never find myself in a dorm again, but it wasn't bad. Short of being run down, it was nicer than the dorm I lived in at USC.
Once we'd dropped off our stuff, we got directions from Jana to the club that Aiden (another intern on the trip) had been told to try. I was designated (as I usually am) the "responsible make sure everyone gets home in one piece" guy. Unfortunately that place had an obscene line (it was after 12:30am by the time we got there), so we went to the place next door. The first few songs were entertaining dance remixes of 80s US pop songs which were fun to dance to, but quickly devolved into bad hip-hop music. I tolerated it for about an hour before I corralled everyone home so there was a chance of everyone getting up for sight seeing in the morning.
Saturday we were to meet promptly at 11am in the lobby. We all met up and headed out for a full day planned by Jana and Milan. We got on the tram and headed to the city where we saw one of the main university buildings and other beautiful buildings.
We then had some traditional Czech lunch. I had roast beef in cream with dumplings. Note these dumplings are not what you'd think of as Asian dumplings. They're more like slices of a loaf of thick bread. Very good, but it takes you for surprise when you're expecting "dumplings." So far, Czech food is really good! Here's all of us at the restaurant. In the first picture, from front-left, clockwise: Vero, Jana, Milan, Allyson, Aiden, Christian, and me. In the second picture, Vero is taking the picture so that Mariya can be in it, and she's front-left as well.
We passed a variety of awesome things on our way to Prague Castle which you can see below. I don't know what any of them are except for the one with the Italian flag; that's the Italian consulate.
Finally we came to the castle. Here's us taking pictures like good tourists.
Several walls of the castle are decorated with a form of "scratch art" - the art of painting the wall black, then painting it white, and then while the white paint is still wet, scratching off a design into the white paint so the black paint below shows through. There's a name for this, but I can't find it. Some in our group thought this was also called "graffiti," but I can find no evidence of this online. The first two pictures below show examples. At this point, we could go up the stairs on the left, or the ramp to the right to get to the entrance to the castle. After some pictures, we chose the ramp on the right which was shorter, more popular, and included some beautiful views of the city.
See, I got some pictures with me in them, so you can see I really was in Prague! The castle has a huge cathedral in the middle with a building that goes around it. There's also a garden and various other buildings, but the building that surrounds the cathedral makes it quite difficult to take a picture of the behemoth structure that is the cathedral. Below you'll see the entrance to the castle, and then the cathedral over the top of the aforementioned surrounding building.
As we walked through the castle, it occurred to me - were in the castle. There was little to no security in most parts. The president, if he was in town, was likely in one of the many rooms around us. A very odd feeling.
Anyway, as we got to the inner part of the castle, I attempted to take pictures of the cathedral. Unfortunately, it's huge and we were way too close to it to easily take pictures. As such, I had to lay on the ground to get a decent shot, and this of course inspired Jana and others (including tourists I didn't know) to take pictures of me.
Describing the St. Vitus Cathedral isn't possible. It's intricate carvings, gargoyles, statues, details and general design hit you like an 18-wheeler truck. It's beauty defies words. It's attention to detail defies logic. It's size seems to overwhelm all your senses.
The cathedral started construction in the 14th century. In the 15th century building was brought to a halt due to lack of funds and war, and then in 1541 a fire damaged the building. In the 19th century work began again on the cathedral and it was finally finished almost a century later in 1929. This amazing structure took almost 600 years to build!
There was a bit of a line for entrance into the cathedral, so Milan got in line while Jana quickly showed us the perimeter.
We found Milan again who had been letting people pass him, and got in line, and were in the church within minutes. The church is still used for services, so it is sometimes closed to tourists. However, today it was packed with tourists from all over. The stained glass windows were brilliant, and much of the art work they had was exquisite. Some of these pictures are a bit dark since I was trying not to use flash where possible.
What picture album would be complete without a huge phallic symbol?
Oh! Guards that aren't supposed to move! Picture time!
Mariya was a little more scared of the guards (who aren't supposed to move, I might add).
Anyway, the plan was to go to old town from here, but I convinced our guides to take a detour and see the gardens which my friend Chris had told me not to miss. Everyone was quite glad too - the gardens were amazing. On our way to the gardens I got a cool distance shot of the cathedral.
And a picture of the walkway towards the gardens. I felt this showed how serene it was here.
And finally I can show you some "scratch art" up close.
I wanted to get a photo of our awesome planner and guide, Jana. She's, unfortunately very shy, and this was my first semi-successful attempt. But while we're at it, I decided to get a group photo as well.
A little scheming with our other wonderful guide and Jana's boyfriend, Milan, and I finally succeed!
Here's some more "scratch art," but this time there's no under-paint... just white paint scratched away.
We then came to the hunting-bird garden. Again, there's a real name for these birds and the gardens, but I can't find it. Anyway, this is where they keep and train the birds for hunting.
We'd arrived at the gardens. At the far end of the garden was the famous singing fountain.
And we find ourselves at the singing fountain. If you get under this fountain you can hear "tones" or "singing" due to the water hitting the bowl of the fountain. No one wanted to try this, but I slowly convinced almost everyone to.
Note this green roof on the building behind the fountain.
Looks like a beautiful green stone of some sort. Nope. Copper. Same as the Statue of Liberty.
Next up, we would head to old town. But first, some breath-taking views.
Oh noes! Going to be run over by horses! Here's something you don't see in the US.
Then we waited for the bus. Here's our awesome guides.
We took a short detour to get coffee/snacks/desert. I had more of the stratiacella ice cream I discovered at the Jodlerfest. After the break we walked across Charles Bridge, a famous bridge that's over 650 years old. During the day the bridge is full of vendors, painters, performers and the like. It's quite a fun place to walk down.
One of the first pictures I took required me standing up on the wall of the bridge, which Jana was entertained enough by to take a picture herself - of me, again.
The bridge has statues every few feet, some of which were just amazing.
There was a band playing some cool... eh, like Irish-sounding music if I recall correctly. We stopped to watch them for a bit (and accordingly, I tipped them).
A few final pictures of bridge art and our group members (and random folks in the way):
Finally we come to the end, and here's the arch to mark that.
The square at the other side of the bridge had plenty of its own art and beautiful buildings - and a museum of torture! The final picture below shows a shopkeeper making a marionette dance to music!
As we walked through the streets on our way to old town, we passed the place where Jana and Milan first kissed. Definitely a photo moment.
A few more random pretty buildings.
This is a character in Czech cartoons, Krtek. It's apparently quite popular in Russia as well, but it's one of the Czech republic's more recent claims to fame, apparently.
I find the streets and corridors in towns like this really cool.
Finally, we'd arrived at our destination, the Prague Orlog - a medieval astrological clock. The clock was made in 1410 and is one of only two like it in the world. It consists of three parts: an astronomical dial that represents the position of the sun and the moon in the sky and displays various other astronomical details, an hourly show of figurines depicting the Apostles and other figures, and a calendar dial showing the months.
The aforementioned hourly show is what we were here for. While tiny in scale by today's standards, the show is unbelievable given when it was made. The figurines dance and move, windows open and other figures stick their head out the window, etc. It's quite a cool thing to see.
At this point Jana and Milan had plans, so they made sure we knew how to get home, and then headed off. The rest of us headed off to find food. About 100 seconds of heavy rain threatened to make that difficult, but fortunately was, obviously, short-lived. On our way, more pictures were had.
We settled on a restaurant overlooking the courtyard. Apparently some guy came over and said something unintelligible about swearing to Aiden before proceeding to complain to the hostess. We assumed I was the problem due to my penchant for swearing, but none of us seemed to remember me swearing in the past several minutes. This was quite unfortunate, so I made a point to step it up a bit. Anyway, we enjoyed some more Czech food (I had pork schnitzel with Czech dumplings) as well as a sorta parade-like thing that passed us.
At this point, we walked through the streets on our way to find the club we couldn't get into the night before. But we passed a group of people dressed in all red and hats. Allyson deemed it must be a bachelor party, but there were two girls who were pretty obviously not strippers. So we did what any self-respecting tourists would do - we stopped them to ask.
Turns out that they're actually a bachelorette party! The bachelorette's friends are mostly guys, so they took the "hen" party, and combined it with a "stag" party to make it a "sten" party, which was the word on their shirts. They were from Wales, and since Allyson and I are both American, they felt the need to explain to us where Wales was. We told them we already knew, but I said I understand their assumption that we might not have known. They invited us to come along to a bar nearby that was playing metal and drink with them. With the exception of Christian and myself, the rest of our group wanted to find a hip-hop dance club. Thus we politely declined and headed our separate ways. But then Christian and I decided we could just meet up with the group later, and headed back to find the sten party with the better taste in music than our interns (Christian and I are the only non-interns in the group - perhaps there's a correlation between interns and bad taste in music?). We found the party, who was thrilled to see us, and immediately involved us in their awesome Welsh drinking games. As it turns out, they're all medical doctors who met in med school. Many of them did a European tour 8 years ago when they were in med school and spent several days of the tour in Prague. These guys were awesome. Next time I'm in Wales, I have to hang out with them. They were just a metric tonne of fun. Here's a group picture at the bar.
I honestly don't remember any of their names, but the girl in the middle is the best friend of the bachelorette, while the one of the right was the one to be wed.
Anyway, 4 or 5 rum and cokes and more fun (and difficult) drinking games than I can remember later, and they decided we should go find a place to dance. They said they'd love to find this club they went to the last time they were in town if it was still open. They said it was 5 floors each with different music and asked if we knew where it was. Turns out, we actually did - this was the club we had tried to get into the previous night, and the club our interns were at. So off we went. We took a quick pit-stop to show the ladies Charles Bridge since they hadn't seen it before - thus pictures ensued. I tried to get some pictures of the lights over the river, but it didn't work that well. I've only kept two below since most of them didn't come out at all.
The second floor had some great 80s rock/pop music to dance to, so we all danced for several hours.
After a while, our interns ran into us, and the party got even bigger!
Eventually the sten party called it a night and I got one of their numbers so I could send them pictures - and hopefully meet up with them if I'm ever in Wales. Our group stayed a bit longer to dance, and then headed out. Corralling everyone home tonight took a bit more effort since much more alcohol had been consumed by the interns (admittedly a few people wanted to go home even before I did) (I drank more overall that night, but had only had one drink the 3 or so hours before we left).
In particular our paranoid intern Aiden was very certain that when he'd bumped his head against a beam he had cause significant internal damage and really wanted to go to the hospital. Lacking any sort of evidence of a problem other than his alcohol-induced headache, we told him he was fine. But as we walked towards our tram stop, he jumped into the street, hailed a taxi and jumped inside yelling not to worry and he'd be home after he went to the hospital. And then he was gone.
Blink.
Blink.
He was gone - in a random taxi in Prague. Lacking a decent way to follow him, we decided to head home, and try to call or text him in about 20 minutes (although we know since he was worried about roaming costs he'd only answer us if it was an emergency). We got back to the hotel, texted him, waited a bit, and then headed off to bed. Well, some of us did. Some of the interns didn't, including my roommate, Allyson, who ended up getting back to the room around 5:45, apparently just after Aiden got back from the hospital.
Sunday my alarm went off at 10 again, but Allyson wasn't in a getting up mood. I got ready and met Vero and Mariya downstairs. Jana and Milan showed up and told us they'd prepared a list of sights to see including information about them and maps, but wouldn't be accompanying us today. We thanked them and headed off.
We took the tram into town, and started with some pictures of a cool building and an odd damn-like device in the river.
On our way to find food, we ran across a performance in front of a church that was very cool. The performers' faces were painted black, some of them had masks, and one of them had a dragon costume on. They all had sticks which they hit together rhythmically as they danced around each other. It was very impressive.
Mariya picked a small place to eat at which turned out to be fantastic. I had something called the Czech Sword or something (more meat and dumplings as I recall), followed by crepes with ice cream inside and chocolate on the top. It was an absolutely fantastic desert. With food in our stomachs we headed off to find our first site, another cathedral. We made a bad habit of going just a little too far on each tram we took and added quite a bit of unnecessary travel to our journey, but got to see a lot of Prague. For example, here are some pretty buildings - and a water pump! Ever seen a real water pump? I hadn't until then!
We passed a church which we thought was the one we wanted, but it turns out it wasn't.
And we were on the road again... (walking on it, that is)
Then we approached a billboard advertising a car. But the car seemed a little too... lifelike.
I took the picture from an angle where you can see what's going on - but from the road it just looks like a very realistic billboard!
And then we'd arrived at the real cathedral we were looking for, the Augustinian Monastery (sorry, can't find a link).
The inside of the monastery was unlike anything we'd ever seen. Unfortunately, photography was strictly forbidden. Most of the walls were "scenes" - wooden puppets or wall carvings depicting various different scenes. Huge ones were over every window, and others all over the walls. It was wholly unlike any church, cathedral, mosque, synagogue, or holy building I've ever been in (and growing up a choir boy, I've seen a lot of them).
Behind the cathedral was a police museum! It had an old tank, truck, car helicopter and more!
Given a police car, our inner actors came out. We arrested each other.
The complete array of signs was awesome.
Particularly this one which we chose to interpret as "warning, bras in the road."
And do you know the difference between these two?
Or these two?
And of course our favorite - "beware of aliens walking down stairs."
More from the museum...
And a bizarre fountain outside of the cathedral/museum complex.
We headed off to go find another castle, and passed a very large building with a sign that Mariya translated as roughly "Gynecological Hospital." A whole hospital? Woah. Is there a testicular hospital on the other side of town?
Various pictures on the way.
And then we arrived at the castle. Here's a map and the wall around the castle grounds.
Here are some of the grounds leading up to the basilica.
The Basilica Minor (sorry, can't find a decent link) was massive and beautiful. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow pictures on the inside which had a lot of beautiful art. However, here's the outside. The pink doors with psychedelic murals over them were particularly entertaining.
We then went to the cemetery in the back, and there was some very, very interesting graves. I'm still not sure I get the Scream one.
Next up was the garden, which had some great statues.
We then stopped for a drink in a small cafe they had (where bees wouldn't leave us alone thanks to Mariya's strawberry drink).
Then Vero pointed out a somewhat hidden area next to us that had some amazing views!
And a few final views on our way out.
The Muzeum stop had a very trippy wall. Mariya couldn't tell which "buttons" were concave vs convex... it was quite an illusion.
The Mustek stop had a similar one (except they were all concave).
We got back to the center of town and walked around a bit more looking for food and found a few more sites.
We passed a hotel where a very famous author once lived (before it was a hotel).
And some fun pictures out of loopiness.
We sat down at a restaurant, and ordered drinks when the other half of our group walked by and saw us and joined us for dinner. We were together again. We swapped stories from the day. There was much fun about the bathroom. Myself and another guy at two points went into the only bathroom. Upon discussing the unisex bathroom others who had used it said that apparently after you walk in and get to the sink, the door on the other side of the sink (which myself and another guy had used) was labeled as the women's stall, and the door that's behind you is labeled as the men's stall. Me and the other guy who used it didn't notice these signs, but apparently the girls did. Hmm. This was quite a source of entertainment.
We then stopped by an ice cream shop I'd spotted earlier that looked fantastic (a few of us had had ice cream cravings all day). They had 'taster' spoons, but when I asked for a taste, I was quite rudely told, "no." OK, so I picked what i wanted, and saw whoever was in front of me (Vero?) get shit from the same lady for not having exact change. She then proceeded to yell at me for not having exact change either. Rudest damn ice cream shop I've ever been in!
While sitting and eating some ice cream, it started to rain. Somehow the conversation took a turn to Mariya kicking some serious ass - as you can see in this photo.
We decided to head home since we had an un-Godly early flight the next morning. On our way back to the hotel we took some final pictures. I tried hard to get a picture of the lights over the lake, but mostly failed. Sorry.
There was also these weird wooden things in the water which I couldn't figure out the purpose for. Sorry, it's hard to see.
I had a blast! Prague is a stunningly beautiful city, the food is fantastic, and everything is super cheap! I would go back anytime; I really loved it. A huge thanks to Jana and Milan for organizing the trip and showing us around the amazing city of Prague!