Prague!

Samedi, le 24 février

After two hours of sleep, I woke up at 6:30 am, and crawled out of bed and into the shower. I’m not quite sure how, but I managed to make it onto the metro, and to the St-Michel RER station to meet Sara (OK, I was 25 minutes late…). Darcy was still not even awake, so we ended up tossing a coin (I won!), and Sara called Darcy’s house to wake her up. Let’s just say I’ve had better plane rides.

Anyway, we got to Prague in the afternoon, left customs, and the first thing we saw was a scraggly hippie with a cardboard sign saying “Sperm Festival.” Hmmm…anyway. After asking at three different information desks, we finally found an ATM, and a place to buy metro tickets. We went outside to the bus station, to find that the bus runs every 30 minutes, so we waited out in the freezing cold for the bus. We took the bus to the metro, and took the metro for 25 minutes to another bus. When we got on that bus, we realized that while we had the name of the bus stop for our hostel, the bus driver was not announcing the stops. At first we thought we’d be fine, because every bus station had a sign on it. Then we realized that those signs meant “No Smoking.” Luckily, we moved to the front of the bus, and found a screen that posted the upcoming stop. We got off the bus, and saw lots of signs pointing us to our hostel…so we followed them, which involved a 7-10 minute walk under a few bridges, through a barbed-wire-enclosed golf course, to the river. We saw the sign for our hostel, Hostel Boathouse, climbed the steps, and knocked on the door. Well of course no one answered. After some persistent knocking, one of the owners of the hostel greeted us with a “little present” of Prague postcards, and our room keys. We collapsed on our beds.

Our hostel was right outside of the city, but we decided to go into the city for dinner. We walked to the tram station, and waited 20 minutes in the cold for the tram (sad discovery: in Prague the public transportation is not nearly as efficient as in Paris…it’s really too bad, since it’s so cold there!). Anyway the tram came, and we got on it, only to realize that, while we had chosen a restaurant, the guidebook only said “Old Town,” and did not give a tram or metro stop. So we decided to wing it. We ended up getting off a stop too early, but we just walked the rest of the way to the restaurant. The best part of the walk to the restaurant was seeing the scraggly Sperm Festival hippie standing on the street corner…so Prague is a pretty small city, I guess…or the Sperm Festival dude was stalking us. Anyway, we figured that after our rough night/day, we should have some bland food, so we picked an Italian restaurant in Sara’s guidebook for dinner. This was the night we learned to not trust her guidebook. The pasta was pretty horrible, though to give the restaurant credit, the pizzas looked much better. We had dinner, and drank water. This was also the night where we learned that in Prague it’s just more sensible to drink beer – a pint of Pilsner costs $1, while water can cost up to $3. The check came, and the guidebook said that we should tip the waiter. So we tipped 15%...and then he brought us gelato as a “thank-you.” Turns out you don’t really tip in Prague. Did I mention that this was the night we learned not to trust the guidebook?

We found a closer tram, and went back to the hostel. The walk through the golf course would have been sketchy, but there were 3 of us, so it wasn’t too bad. We met a group of other students staying at the hostel, who are doing the Temple program in Rome. They were going out to a club, which was definitely not our “scene” for the night, so we headed to bed early.

Dimanche, le 25 février

Woke up and had the most delicious breakfast of all time. In case I didn’t mention it earlier, pretty much everything in Prague is dirt-cheap. Our hostel cost $15 a night, which included the largest breakfast I have ever seen. There was delicious Czech bread (somewhat like Challah), the Czech version of Nutella (sorry, Czech Republic, but real Nutella is better), amazing granola with all sorts of dried fruits and real oats (not the sugary kind), cereal, yogurt, and more. It was amazing. So we ate an enormous, and slightly embarrassing, amount in the name of not having to spend money on lunch.

Because the tram had taken so long to come the night before, we decided to take the bus. Yea, we forgot it was Sunday. 30 minutes later the bus came, we took it to the metro, and took the metro into the city. We decided to do one of the Walks of Old Town in Sara’s guidebook, so we started at the Municipal Building and the Powder Tower (turns out there are 2 powder towers in Prague…and while Sara’s guidebook says that you can climb one of them, we couldn’t figure out how to climb up either of them). From the Powder Tower we walked down a cute but touristy street with lots of colorful houses and crystal shops, and went to a concert information office to try to find a concert to go to later in the week, with no luck (I mean, we could have gone to see a new Czech Opera about ice hockey…but we decided not to). We walked to Old Town Square, and saw the astronomical clock strike the hour. I was really excited to see the “show,” but it turns out that it is a little less cool than I remembered (I guess when you’re seven, it would be more exciting). After the clock, we just looked around the square for a bit – saw St. Nicholas’ Church, Church of the Virgin Mary in front of Tyn, and all the beautiful buildings. While I still think Paris is the most beautiful city in the world, it was nice to see so many colorful facades in Prague, instead of an endless street of white apartment buildings. To finish up our visit to Old Town Square, we climbed to the top of the Town Hall Tower, to get a good look around the city.

From Old Town, we crossed the Charles Bridge, and walked around Lesser Town. Our guidebook mentioned the Church of St. Nicolas, and despite its unexciting exterior, we decided to go inside. It was amazing! At this point, we realized that unlike Paris, Prague has Baroque churches, not Gothic ones (great observation, I know). Anyway, the interior was breath-taking – totally over-the-top, but in a good way. I never really liked the Baroque churches we looked at in Art History 101 because I thought they were just too ridiculous and ornate, but this one somehow balanced ornate with tasteful.

From St. Nicolas, we went to Nerudova Street, where lots of the old merchant signs are preserved (in Prague they used pictures/sculptural reliefs on buildings to signal what was inside the building, so there are shops w/pictures of violins, green lobsters, etc. At this point we were freezing, so we went into a café and had tea.

After warming up, we walked around Lesser Town some more, following a walk in Darcy’s guidebook that took us to lots of different palaces in the area (palace in the conservative sense of the word…so really just buildings where rich people lived, and where the senate meets now.).

It was getting late, so we took a tram back to the hostel, and had dinner there. For $6, the hostel serves a homemade 3-course dinner, and we figured we’d try it. We had delicious potato soup, the largest piece of chicken schnitzel I’ve ever seen, potatoes, and ice cream. After dinner we made a tentative itinerary for the rest of our trip, and went to bed.

Lundi, le 26 février

After another amazing breakfast, we went back into the city. First stop: the Rudolfinum theater, to try to get tickets for the Czech National Symphony’s Wednesday performance of Mahler 5. Unfortunately, it was sold out. So we went back to the Municipal House, to see what concerts would be there over the next few days (little did we know this would be such a difficult thing to find out). First we went to one ticket counter, where the guy kept trying to sell us tickets to a concert of the 4 Seasons later that day. When we asked him if there was a concert tomorrow, he said “how should I know?”. Hah, well OK. So we went to the next ticket counter, where they told us to go downstairs. We went downstairs to the gift shop, where they said they could sell us $50 tickets to the Prague Symphony Orchestra concert on Wednesday, or that we could go outside and try our luck. We decided to go outside. After asking a security guard for directions, we went outside the building, walked around to the other side, and found the ticket office for the Prague National Symphony, where we bought $10 tickets…so that was interesting.

From there, we metro-ed to the Castle complex on the other side of the city. (side note: A lot of the metros in Prague have HUGE escalators. I mean HUGE. And steep. When I was little I had a rather traumatic experience trying to step onto one, and was scared of escalators for several years after our family trip to Prague. But I got on the huge escalator, and got over my fear! In my defense, my friends agreed that the escalators were huge, and we even saw other tourists taking pictures of them.) We saw the changing of the guards, which was nothing like what you’d imagine it would be. There was a mini-brass band that played music from the windows of one of the palaces, and then lots of Czech soldiers/guards. Sometimes they would march, etc, but they also smiled, chuckled, and even talked to each other…not like at Buckingham Palace, I guess.

From there we went to the Cathedral of St. Vitus, Wenceslas, and Vojtech, which was definitely the highlight of the trip to the Castle. Inside were breath-taking stained glass, including one window done by Alphonse Mucha. We climbed to the top (very high!), and saw a beautiful view of the city.

After the cathedral we moved on to the Royal Palace, which was pretty anti-climatic. I mean, it wasn’t a palace. I guess you could call it a large house. Maybe a mansion. But definitely not a palace. We were allowed to see maybe 5 sparsely decorated rooms. We did, however, get to see the famous window where the Defenestration of Prague took place! (woo AP Euro!).

Then we went to St. George’s Basilica, which is a small, but beautiful, Romanesque church in the complex. Then we walked along the Golden Road, which is this small street with little houses that are now shops attached to the castle wall. We ran into a few of the girls staying at our hostel and talked to them, then sat down at a café for a few minutes, and tried the famous Czech fried cheese, which was delicious, but very filling and greasy.

We left the Castle complex, and went to Loreto and Strahov monastery, but both were closed on Monday, so we walked over to New Town, and saw Wenceslas Square, which is Prague’s version of Times Square. Standing in the middle, we actually ran into other girls staying at our hostel (again, Prague really is a small city). We went to a grocery store to buy some food for lunch/snacks (we were tempted to be “The Traditional American Cookie,” but decided it looked too foul to get, even for a souvenir), then walked to the National Theater and Slovansky Ostrov Island, where there was a really fun playground, with cute little Czech kids.

We walked along the Vlatava River for a while, then took a tram back to the hostel for another delicious dinner – chicken soup, chicken stir fry, and ice cream. We hung out in the hostel for the night, and talked to the students from Rome a little more.

Mardi, le 27 février

We woke up early, and switched hostels. We decided to stay in 2 hostels for the trip because Hostel Boathouse (1^st half) was supposed to be really fun, and homey (which it was), but also far from the city (which it also was). So we moved to Emma Hostel, which is more in the center of the city, just a block from a big metro and tram station. After checking into the hostel, we metro-ed to the bus station, to try to get bus tickets to go to Terezin, a ghetto/concentration camp about an hour North of Prague. The bus station was out of control. Seriously, I had never seen anything more insane. There were signs EVERYWHERE, people EVERYWHERE, and no computer screens or other pieces of technology that might tell you current information. We found an information desk, asked where to get tickets for Terezin, found out which window number to go to, and waited in line as a somewhat incompetent British family bought their tickets for Terezin. We got up to the window, and the woman behind the counter told us to wait a minute. So we waited…about 7 minutes to be exact. Then she told us that Terezin was sold out, and we should try buying tickets from the bus driver. So we found the bus, asked the bus driver, but he yelled at us in Czech. At this point we decided to just wait and go to Terezin the next day, so we went back to the woman at the ticket counter and bought bus tickets for Wednesday.

It was raining, so we decided to cut our losses and spend the day in museums. First we went to the Alphonse Mucha Museum, which was small but very nice, with lots of his posters, some of his paintings and sketches, and a documentary about his life and work (I think he may be the first artist I’ve heard of who seemed to have lived a really happy and fulfilling life).

After the Mucha Museum we went to the City of Prague Museum, where they had artifacts telling the story of the development of Prague from the Bronze Age (or whenever, it was a long time ago) up til the mid 1700s.

Though tired, we decided to squeeze in one more museum, so we went to the new Franz Kafka Museum. I really loved the museum, though it was very bizarre. I guess the word would be “kafka-esque.” The wall-texts were written in his style, and the whole experience was just really surreal. There was weird music coming from different parts of rooms, pictures would flash up on the walls, etc. They did a really good job of telling the story of his life, his struggles between his job and father and his writing, and they walked you through the stories behind his major works. At the end, I decided that I really wanted to read more Kafka, but I figure I’ll wait til I get home…for now I’ll stick to French books :-).

Came back to the hostel, relaxed, and then met up with Dave, a friend from Williams who’s studying in Prague for the semester. He took pointed out the prostitutes on the street corners to us (apparently Prague is the sex tourism capital of Europe), and took us to a good Czech pub, where we had dinner. After dinner we watched the latest episode of Grey’s, and went to bed.

Mercredi, le 28 février

Woke up early, took the 10am bus to Terezin (the ghetto North of Prague – in addition to Czech Jews, the Nazis sent more prominent German and Austrian Jews here, and used the camp in a propaganda film, and brought Red Cross workers here to show them all the “good work” the Nazis were doing). I have no clue why the bus the day before was sold out, since this one was almost completely empty. We got to Terezin around 11, and decided to see the Museum first, since we figured it would give us good background information. While the museum was interesting, they had too much information, a lot of which was repetitive. After 2 hours, we decided to move on to the other parts of the complex.

We walked down lots of deserted & creepy streets, and got to the Magdeburg Barracks, where the Resistance used to have offices (now it has exhibits about the music, art, and literature created by people living in the Ghetto, and also has some reconstructions of what a room in the ghetto would have been like). From there we walked to the columbarium, and then to the Russian and Jewish Cemeteries. It started to pour rain & thunder, so we went inside the freezing-cold Crematorium, and looked at the displays, which included a reconstruction of a dissection room, and the crematory machines. Finally, we went to the National Cemetery and the Small Fortress. The Small Fortress is where the Nazis stayed, and it’s also where they executed prisoners, etc.

One of the most moving things about the visit was how beautiful and eerie the environment of Terezin was. The whole complex was a fortress built by Emperor Joseph in the 1780s and 1790s (see pictures on picasa website). It’s hard to believe that this was a ghetto, at the same time it’s easy to believe that it was the Nazis’ “propaganda” ghetto – it wouldn’t have been too difficult to renovate it and make it look like a nice place to live.

We walked back to the Ghetto Museum, got on the bus to Prague, and 45 minutes later were back in the city. We took a bus back to the hostel, changed, and headed over to the Municipal House to see the Prague Symphony Orchestra. They played in the Smetana Hall (beautiful, art deco!). They played a (boring) overture by Kabelac, Rachmaninoff piano concerto #2 (with Eugen Indjic), and Stravinsky’s Petrushka. While not an exceptionally exciting concert, it was good, and it was nice to go to a live orchestra concert (I have yet to go to one in Paris).

After the concert we went to a restaurant listed in Sara’s guidebook, but it had already stopped serving dinner (yes, it was 9:30 pm…in Prague, people eat early). We wandered around, and found a bar still serving dinner, and went inside. It was a pretty crazy bar – the wall was decorated with very…lewd wall drawings. Anyway, we had dinner and hung out in the bar for a bit. Two old and slightly sketchy Czech guys sent beer to us…and then came and talked to us…which was interesting. Luckily the bar closed at midnight (yea, people go out early in Prague, too), so we escaped!

Jeudi, le 1 mars

Woke up, and headed over to Jewish Town. We saw the Spanish Synagogue, which was absolutely beautiful (done in a Spanish-Moorish style), the Old-New Synagogue (13^th century synagogue! One of the oldest existing synagogue in Europe, or something like that), and the Jewish Cemetery (beautiful, packed with tombstones). At this point Darcy left (she returned to Paris earlier bc her mom was visiting), and Sara and I continued on to the rest of the synagogues: Klaus, Pinkhas (white walls, with black & red hand-written names of all the Czech victims of the Holocaust), and Maisel (pretty on the outside, not much on the inside).

By this point, Sara and I were getting pretty sick of reading wall-texts in museums, so we decided to stop for a quick lunch. We saw a boulangerie-esque place, and walked inside. I guess Paris has impacted us more than we thought – this place was like the mecca for French tourists in Prague! It felt amazing to hear French again! We were all just missing the good, light, delicious food you get in France (Czech food is heavy, greasy, and way too filling!).

From there we went to Loreta, a beautiful baroque pilgrimage church/complex, with lots of different chapels, including one showing the Chapel of Virgin Mary Aching (a daughter of a Portuguese King who promised herself to the king of Sicily, then decided to stay faithful to Jesus, so she prayed to God to abolish the wedding – she was heard, she grew a beard, and the wedding was cancelled...but her father then ordered her to be killed on a cross…). Upstairs, there was a really extraordinary treasury, showing all different things that pilgrims brought to the church, including the famous diamond monstrance with 6,222 diamonds!!

After Loreta, we went to the Strahov Monastery, because Sara’s host dad told us that we couldn’t miss it. We only saw the library, which was really impressive – the first room had lots of medieval illuminated manuscripts on display from the collection (yea, I was very excited). Then, the next room had lots of different specimens of animals, including a Do-Do Bird (it looks like a turtle with wings). Then, there were 2 huge libraries – one devoted to philosophy, and one to theology, connected by a hallway with books on medicine. What with its medieval manuscripts and its Do-Do Bird, I think the Monastery may have been my favorite thing we saw in Prague!

Sara and I decided that we wanted to take a daytrip to Karlstejn Castle on Friday, so after our bus-ticket-incident we decided to get our train tickets for Karlstejn ahead of time. I said I had never seen anything more insane when I saw the bus station. That was because it was before I had seen the train station. Now that was insane. I took pictures, but the pictures cannot convey the madness. After walking to all the different levels, analyzing all the possible ticket lines, finding an information booth only to discover that they only spoke Czech, we finally found the English-speaking information office, where the woman told us to go to lines 1-15. Of course she didn’t tell us if we should be in line A, B, or C…but we decided to wing it. The line was huge, but it moved super-fast, and we bought our tickets quickly, and then rushed back to the metro, eager to leave!

We came back to the hostel and relaxed for a while. We decided on Mexican food for dinner (we were both craving margaritas, and Sara goes to Rice, so she’s used to having Mexican food, and there’s none in Paris). The restaurant was really good, and cheap, and we had a really nice time. After dinner we metro-ed back to our area, and decided to go to a bar. The first one we walked into, it looked like there was no bartender. That’s because he was playing darts with the other people in the bar. Did I mention that the dart board was next to the door? Yea it felt like we were being attacked. So we left…and then he ran after us…but we decided to keep going. So we went to the next bar, which was really quiet, and had a beer.

Vendredi, le 2 mars

Woke up early, and went to the train station. Found the train, and waited for it to open its doors. Finally it did, but it opened them on the other side of the tracks. So everyone ran to across the tracks to that side of the train. Then the doors closed. And re-opened on the right side. So everyone ran back. It was priceless. The train ride was uneventful, though slightly scary since the conductor didn’t announce any stops. When we got to the Karlstejn stop, however, you could see the castle up on the hill, so it was pretty clear we were in the right place.

We left the train station, and followed the signs for “Hrad” (“castle” in Czech) across a bridge, through some pretty desolate areas, into the town, and up the mountain/hill. The castle is gorgeous (again, see pictures) – it really looked like it just came out of a fairy tale! You can only go into the castle on a tour, but when we got to the ticket office, we found out that the next tour was in an hour-and-a-half (it’s not exactly prime tourist season). Sara and I hung out and talked for a while, then realized that this really obnoxious group of Spanish high school students were going to be on our tour, so we got tickets for the next tour (another half-hour later).

We were pretty freezing when it was time for our tour, and were really looking forward to going inside the castle. Well it turns out that castles are cold. The tour was really good, and we learned about kings and patron saints of Prague (in one week I learned more about St Wenceslas than I thought possible), and got to see lots of the rooms of the castle. After the tour, we went to the town and ate goulash in a cafe (which was actually more like someone’s house – you basically ate in the dining room, and could look into the small kitchen where they prepared the food).

In the café we met this guy named Gregoire who is from Paris, but works in Poland. He offered to buy us coffee, but we declined, and went to the train. Well we saw Gregoire again. At the train station. And on the train. He kept asking us about places to go out in Prague…it was…interesting, considering he’s 36. Well he gave us his card in case we wanted to meet him & one of his “friends.” Hah, no.

Finally back in Prague, we metro-ed to our hostel, relaxed, then went to dinner at this upscale Thai restaurant that the guy who works at the hostel recommended. The food was delicious, and again extraordinarily cheap. We came home, watched Grey’s, and went to bed early.

Samedi, le 3 mars

Last day in Prague! We woke up early, packed, checked out of the hotel, and went to the Mozart Museum. The Museum was kind of a let-down – it was the house that Mozart stayed in while he composed Don Giovanni, but it just had copies of random letters and pictures, and was not organized in any coherent way.

From there, we headed to the Nardoni Museum, which is Prague’s Modern and Contemporary Art museum. It was pretty cool – the architecture was a bit like a rectangular version of the Guggenheim, and it had lots of Czech artists, as well as a very impressive collection of French impressionists and post-impressionists.

Unfortunately, it was time to leave, so we took the tram back to the hostel. We got to the hostel, and the incompetent girl who works there had locked herself out when she went outside to smoke. So that was great. She doesn’t really speak English, so she was like “Sorry girls we must wait.” And then she just banged on the windows of the hostel (but I mean, who will be there at 2pm?). Luckily, after 20 minutes, someone came and opened the door…so we ran in, grabbed our stuff, and ran to the metro. We took the metro to the bus station, where we waited 45 minutes for a bus to the airport. At this point we were freaking out, afraid we’d miss our flight. Luckily, the airport was empty, and we were able to check in without a problem.

2 flights later, we were back in Paris! I’ve never been so happy to hear French. I was literally skipping. We took the RER back to the city, and went to meet Darcy’s mom at her hotel in the 7^th. We drank some wine and talked for a while, then headed home. I got home, and my host mom was still up, so we talked about my trip for a while, and then I went to bed…and woke up at 1pm the next day :-).

All in all, a good trip. It was great to feel so independent and confident in a completely different country, with a language that does not resemble English (or French) at all. While I had a great time, it made me so happy to be studying in Paris, where there are tons of things to do every day, where it’s warm(ish), where I speak the language (sort of), where things are somewhat efficient (I never thought I'd say that).