Děkuji Prague!

We are well and truly behind in our blogging as we write this on the train from Salzburg to Vienna (Posting in Budapest!). Time is flying and we are seeing some wonderful things, which makes it hard to draw our attention away from the city and back into a word document. 

The train into Prague we have already written about in the Switzerland post, but it did come with a unique experience of being yelled at in German. In the middle of the night, I start coughing uncontrollably, I leave our sleeper carriage hoping not to wake everywhere and proceed to the bathroom where I can’t stop coughing. Eventually leaving the bathroom the conductor yells at me in German, all I can make out is ‘toilet’. Standing there as he shakes his hand at me I look blankly and say, “Sorry only English”. He continues his rant, trying again “sorry I don’t speak German”, it goes on and it gets louder, mustering all the German I have “nein sprechen German”. On second thoughts I should have said “nein sprechen deutsch enshuldigung”* but at the time this was too much. Eventually I give up and leave with him shaking his head. I still don’t know what this man wanted, Simon tells me sometimes they are just talking and they can sound angry and reassures me he probably just said “I hope you had a nice time in the toilet”. I am not so confident.

*German spelling absolutely incorrect 

Prague is one of those cities that everyone raves about, we have heard it is a “must see”, “it is one of the most beautiful cities and old towns I have ever seen”, “it was the highlight of my trip” and so on. With this is mind we had really high expectations of Prague. It would seem that most Aussies have heard the same things as we seemed to hear them and bump into them from the moment we left our hotel in the mornings. Sometimes hearing amazing things can be less than ideal because it gives you a high expectation which can lead more easily to being disappointed as things don’t meet the expectations you have placed on them. Prague was not one of these places, Prague did not disappoint, Prague lived up fully to its reputation and Prague is beautiful. Now that we have said this, we hope when you go you find it equally as beautiful. 

Day 1

After dumping all of our stuff we meet Mark and Vanessa in the city for a free walking tour to get our bearings for the next few days, and get to know this history of Prague a little more. It is about 5 degrees a positively balmy day for the locals who are used to -20C, the temp it was at this time last year.

We have our first cultural experience seeing a woman take a pee in the middle of a crowded street. We find it completely strange, but notice nobody else seems to care, and google confirms its OK in Prague. This would not be the last time, but thankfully the others were a little more subtle using at least some bushes to hide in. 

The town hall

The Prague Astronomical Clock, that one touristy thing that everyone has to see

Later that night we meet up with Vanessa’s friend Veronica and hit the town. We confirmed the Czech love of alcohol, this being Veronica’s 4th beer of the day, adding that her mum starts with a beer first thing in the morning and this is the usual done thing. We ask her to take us to a place where the locals go, she takes us to a small pub tucked away in the back streets, you can’t see through the window the smoke is so thick. Luckily there are no seats, so we find another place, and after a few rounds and an average but traditional Czech feed we look for the next place. Nothing much was open, so we find another smoke filled joint and have a cheap beer. It was then we learnt the real value of our no smoking in venues laws back home. We reeked of smoke for days. Still it was a sensationally fun night full of laughter and stupidly cheap beers with great company.

Day 2

For some reason when we have a few days in one place it can often mean that we allow ourselves to slow down the pace. In some respects this is a good thing, in other ways it also means we don’t end up seeing as much of the city as we intend. On this note, we wake late, and take a leisurely afternoon doing nothing in particular and just walk. We find ourselves up at the Prague castle, but by then it’s too late to gain entry. The castle grounds are completely packed, again we shudder to think about this place in high season if this is low. In fact we actually have no idea how you would move in high season. 

We had hoped to visit the Jewish cemetery. Some say this was one of the inspirations for the Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin – if you remember it was in our Berlin blog. According to halakhah, Jews must not destroy Jewish graves and in particular it is not allowed to remove the tombstone. This meant that when the cemetery ran out of space and purchasing extra land was impossible, more layers of soil were placed on the existing graves, the old tombstones taken out and placed upon the new layer of soil. This explains why the tombstones in the cemetery are placed so closely to each other. This resulted in the cemetery having 12 layers of graves. Today it was not open, but we did take a peek through the fence, and what we saw was incredible. 

The Czech Republic, along with its neighbours are world renowned for their symphonies and general quality of musicians, and we wanted a taste. That night at the main concert hall the Rudolfinum we saw a classical music concert by 5 extremely talented string artists. It was perfect, Simon and I were about as relaxed as we had been in weeks, as we just sat, closed our eyes and took in this superb moment. After we headed to the St Charles Bridge to view this glorious city illuminated at night.

The Rudolfinum

Day 3

Determined to do ‘all the things’ today we get out of bed at a reasonable time and head to the train station to get our tickets from Krakow to Vienna. Unfortunately we either left getting them a little later or there are no couchettes on this service, only private sleepers. We cringe whilst handing over our bank card and printing the tickets. They were pricey but we have now experienced the full array of overnight train travel from regular seats, couchettes, shared cabins to private cabin. More on that when we get to Vienna down the line.

Going back up the hill to the castle we grab our tickets and immediately we recognise that this is THE thing to see in Prague, the crowds are out of control busy.  Fortunately having seen the outside of everything the previous day we push through the gawking crowd and get to the good bits. Firstly we went inside the Old Royal Palace, old because its old but also there is no Czech royal family these days. Featuring the usual opulent interior decoration of a palace we had a look over things before pushing again through the throng to next door, the Basilica of St George. Formerly the main church of the palace prior to the cathedral being built it is typical medieval gothic architecture with a small tomb below for important Czechs.

NO MESSING AROUND

The castle offers great panoramic views across the city

Wandering down the hill to The Golden Lane we found a strip of houses restored to their medieval days, complete with low doors and ceilings, containing traditional crafts and craftsman making their wares. Along the top of the houses to old castle wall runs which after climbing a horribly tourist clogged spiral staircase you can walk along the inside of the wall and look at displays inside the turrets. It was terribly full and we struggled to move around. Deciding it wasn’t worth the headache we looked to get out, this took 20 minutes because of the congested stairways. 

Finally the highlight! St Vitus’ Cathedral, this glorious structure is visible from across the city, perched on a hill making a perfect backdrop for most panoramas. We looked at it the day before and even went inside but our tickets let us behind the velvet rope to look at the knave and altar much better.

We catch the tram jammed with tourists down the windy hill on our way back to the old town square for lunch. We stop in at the Church of our Lady Tyne which is the dramatic double spired church you see in all the photos of the Prague square. To be honest the inside is not much to write home about, it’s the exterior that really makes this one special.

We were fortunate enough to get tickets to La Boheme playing at the state opera house. Dressed in our finest, which was not fine enough we walked into this rich building. Women were draped in fur, and when we checked our coats the long length dresses were on display. Men were dressed in suits and tuxedos. Then there was us, we are both in our best jeans, our only pair of shoes other than thongs, the best shirts we have, and our faces and hair neatly done. Thankfully there were some other low key tourists in the vicinity. We did get a few funny looks, our tickets were checked additional times. We get this treatment quite a bit on our travels, it can be insulting but it doesn’t really get to us anymore, it’s just fascinating how people make assumptions about you. We didn’t care what looks we were given because we had the best tickets available, and the view was perfect. 

This is what we have to say to people who treat us badly. Also we thought they already think we dont belong so lets just behave like idiots.

The opera was absolutely magic, and such a memorable time. The opera house was like the ones in the movies, lavish and opulent, it was a bit of a pinch yourself moment. While taking away a wonderful memory we left Simons gloves behind, and they were never to be seen again. It was a sad parting, they had been good gloves and they will be missed.

While wandering home, we finally got to see the St Nicholas Cathedral, which we had forgotten to do by day, because there are so many beautiful things to see in Prague. 

These are the gorgeous old trams in Prague, for a modern city these are a really great throw back in time. 

Day 4

Our day started at the St Charles bridge, we managed to get their just before ALL the tourists arrived. Not only is the bridge itself pleasing to the eye, it’s the view you get over this historic city that makes it something unforgettable. 

Today we have booked onto a day tour to the close by town of Kutna Hora. This small town has a dense and dramatic history, but is mostly known for the remarkable Sedlec Ossuary aka “The Bone Chapel”. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, (victims of plague and the 30 years war) whose bones have in many cases been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the centre of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large Schwarzenberg family coat of arms. The amount of bones in the place is almost overwhelming, we had never seen or imagined anything like it. In the description of the place we had imagined it be really creepy but it was actually done very tastefully and we were in awe of the magnitude of the bones on display. This is actually still a Christian church, and the bones are actually meant to remind people of eternity. 

The family coat of arms, using all the bones in the arm - enough said.

Going back into Kutna Hora town we explored the Italian Court where Czech coins were minted from the local silver mines for hundreds of years, the court was called The Italian Court because Italian coin makers were hired to train the Czechs to produce high quality coins. After that we walked to St Barbaras which is a huge gothic style church which has unusual tent like roofs because they ran out of money to build spires when the silver mines closed.

Kutna Hora was once a large rival to Prague and to show it they had the original builder of the St Charles Bridge come to town and build a replica of it just to show their wealth and power. To us it seems strange to copy someone you’re competing with rather than building something different or better but it’s still bizarre and beautiful. 

We (finally at 3pm) ate a group lunch at a local pub off the tourist trail, and enjoyed a hot cider, the local brew and wild boar goulash (we are unsure if that’s just a name or its legitimately ‘wild’ boar) with what tasted like Christmas pudding savoury dumplings – simply scrumptious. On a table with the other 12 Australians on our group of 24 we all shared travel stories and about places we had all been and picked up some good information for our coming adventures to the far east of Europe.

On arrival back to Prague, we climbed the New Town Hall Tower and looked over the old town square. Luckily all the tourists had come by day so the view point was nearly ours, which from our understanding is usually packed to capacity, with a line going down several stories. The view from the top despite the rain that had blown in was magical over the square illuminated with the Christmas markets and the fairytale church of lady tyne just behind the square.

Descending the tower we sat at an overpriced bar in the square and drank one last time on this trip of Prague, soaking it all in, the architecture, the ambiance and the complete beauty. Prague is truly a beautiful and majestic city. We collected our belongings from the hotel and boarded our overnight train to Krakow. We were in a 4 person room but were treated to being the only occupants. A bonus that made no difference to Simons inability to sleep through the train ride but helped in writing the bulk of the 

Swiss blog post.

Lessons Learnt

• Book trains as far in advance as possible, leaving it to within a week is not a cost effective or budget friendly way to travel.
• We left a lot of ground unexplored that we could have done if we structured our time better.
• We know better but still drank inflated priced drinks in the square. Sometimes its just easier to pay for the convenience, and the view.
• Beers are $2 and a good meal is $10, a fancy meal might set you back $2
• Public urination is totally acceptable for men, children and women. Pants down middle of the path and go acceptable. Baffling.

Parting Thoughts:

• Prague is touristy but understandably so with so much to offer at such affordable rates. We fell in love with city, and appreciate why so many others do. Prague is so much more than just its history and old town, it is modern with great boutiques and design stores, we even love that there are multiple Marcs & Spencer’s. A trip to Europe would not be complete without a stop through Prague, and 3 well-structured days would be a good amount of time.
• There are Aussies everywhere! We cannot seem to get away from ourselves. 3/4 of English speaking people we encounter on our trip are Australians. It’s just striking that there are so many of us abroad and in the same places at any given time.
• The beer in Prague is dirt cheap, cheaper than soft drink and mineral water cheap. Like $1.50 for half a litre. This leads to good times. Actually pretty much everything in Prague is cheap, we have eaten out everywhere for every meal and always spent a pittance for delicious full meals.
• Where is the freaking snow Europe!!! Its usually -5 or colder and snowing in Prague and the worst we got was 5 and rain. The lack of snow is frankly gutting.
• There is no such thing as ‘healthy’ or ‘light’ local food and if you are vegetarian and lactose intolerant you will die. The standard vego option is fried cheese. Goulash, dumplings, sausage and other meats are the standard fare.
• The architecture in Prague is beautifully baroque with a slight twist on more western capitals that separates it from the pack. The way that medieval gothic churches combine with this is fantastic and gives the whole city a unique appearance and feel. You can understand why people fall in love with this city.
• There are concerts and live music everywhere, people are constantly handing out flyers for concert here, live performance there. It’s really wonderful to have a choice of live music and shows to attend each night.
• The average Czech adult consumes 18.5 litres of pure alcohol per annum and the Czech nation is in the top 3 world’s largest consumer of alcohol per person. This was confirmed through talking to local Vanessa, beer is like water and drinking before 12 is not taboo, it’s usual to have beer with breakfast. Fascinating.

Simon & Amy xoxo