DingDongDing...Praaahaaa

One of the things I remembered from my last visit to Prague – besides how to do a great impression of the metro voice announcing stops – is how difficult it is to leave the train station. In order to get to our hostel we needed to buy a 90 minute pass for the tram; the problem, however, is that in order to buy it you need small change or coins, and when you convert or withdraw Czech Krones, you only get big (500-1000) bills, when you only need about 20CZK to buy tickets. To make matters worse, no one in the train station wants to give change, so it is consistently difficult to get the right Krone denomination to leave. Add to that the difficulty of communicating, especially to the Metro help kiosk, which has only a tiny hole to see through to the inside which is located right at stomach height, forcing the questioner to bend over awkwardly all while stumbling to ask someone who doesn’t speak much English for directions. We went to purchase a drink at a convenience store – a drink that turned out to be licorice cola – in order to break the big bills and get tram tickets. Finally we got our tickets and were on our way.

Prague has a fantastic public transportation system, consisting of an underground metro with wonderfully long and speedy escalators, as well as a tram system. We had directions to the hostel which told us to take Tram #5 towards Lipanska. We found the stop, but were unsure of which direction to take the tram since it was unclear which stop was next. We hopped on the first #5, and took it two stops, until the conductor told us it was the end of the line and we had to get off. We got off, walked across the street to catch the tram going the other direction, only to see the conductor get out of the tram, take a cigarette break, and then come pick us up, on the very same tram, just a few minutes later.

The place where we stayed, Hostel Olet, was fantastic. It is a school nine months of the year, but converts to a hostel for the summer months. We slept in a classroom decorated with pictures drawn by elementary school aged kids, and got free breakfast in the morning and a free “welcome beer.” My first sign as to how gorgeous Prague is was when I looked out the window in the men’s room, where I saw steeples, spires, and red tiled roves covering buildings, the colors of which represented the entire pastel spectrum. If the bathroom view is that impressive, you know the city from ground level has to be even more so.

Friday evening we took the Metro to the old town and walked around, taking in the sights. Following dinner at a nice outdoor café, we walked to the Vltava River and then decided to journey alongside it. After just a couple hundred meters of traversing the river’s curves, we saw a number of people lined up outside a boat -- “Jazz Boat,” read the signs around the ship. After a bit of negotiation as to whether or not the boat trip would be worth 590 Krones, we decided to go for it, and grabbed ourselves seats on the top so that our view wouldn’t be obstructed. Performing that night was a jazz combo (piano, bass, drums) featuring a Czech woman who was a scat singer. Intrigued by the prospect of scat in Czech, we were pretty excited to see what the music would entail. In the end the music was only okay – occasionally the woman with bright red hair would get a bit out of control in her singing, pumping her fist in the air, once or twice actually hitting lights dangling above her, and even squeaking her voice – but the sights of sailing the river during dusk, sunset, twilight, and finally darkness was incredible. Already a beautiful city, when the sun is beginning to set, and the lights on buildings begin to turn on, Prague lights up both literally and figuratively and its beauty is shown off well from our view along the river.

On Saturday we wake up and head out to explore – what else? – a castle. After enjoying the panoramic views afforded us by the castle’s elevated stature in the city, we moved across the river to the “new town” – new by Prague standards means around the 1500’s – and looked for a place for lunch. We decided we wanted to try a real Czech place, as the city is truly overrun by tourists in the summer, and we wanted to get away from the crowds a bit. We found a menu at a small local pub where the writing was only in Czech – not one of these menus in four or five different languages. We figured out what chicken meant, so three of us ordered the dish where we recognized that word. The other two took random stabs at the menu. Our first dish came out, a large disk obviously deep-fried, served with pomme frittes. Jayne cut the mysterious disk, only to find that the mystery fried item was a wheel of cheese – probably brie. The second dish came out, featuring deep fried mushrooms again with a side of pomme frittes. Finally our chicken dishes came out, and to no one’s surprise, it was fried chicken with a side of pomme frittes. Despite the homogeneity of fried foods, we were pretty happy that we managed to order Czech food from a waitress who only spoke Czech – no English or German – and that we had experienced a real Czech dining experience – even if the menu only consisted of “choose your favorite food and we’ll fry it for you.”

That evening we wandered back to the Old Town for dinner, stopping at El Mojito Café, a place whose menu featured 11 pages of mixed drinks, and one page of food, all of which were pasta dishes. Regardless, the drinks we had – ranging from cheap Pilsner, to grapefruit juice, to the requisite mojito – were all fantastic, as were the big bowls of pasta which were fresh and very garlicky. The waiter/chef/bartender was a guy from Slovakia, running the family establishment, and had named some of the drinks after his family members, some of whom lived in the Czech Republic, while others were in Italy.

After a leisurely dinner we went to the old town hall, where an astronomical clock that dates back to the 1300’s resides prominently. Every hour, on the hour, it is supposed to feature a show where the apostles more around the clock. Surely every guidebook to Prague must mention it, as when we went out minutes before 10PM, the square was packed with tourists. Lasting no more than 45 seconds, the clock rang and then a series of movements – which surely must have been impressive 500 years ago, but today is nothing a middle school industrial tech class couldn’t do – has to be the greatest joke on tourists out there. It’s one of those “must see” sights, but I don’t think many of us walked away too impressed.

As if providing a fitting bookend to our Prague experience, transportation issues plagued us on the way back from the hostel to the train station. Leaving on a Sunday, the tram schedule runs far less frequently than Monday through Saturday. As such, we just missed one tram, meaning that we had to wait 15 minutes to catch the next tram – all with just 45 minutes before our train to Berlin left. Luckily, a whole number of trams run throughout the city, so making use of the various other trams, we shadowed the path that the 5 tram would take, getting on and off a different tram for just a stop or two, inching ever closer to the “Ndrazi.” Finally, about 25 minutes left before our train left, we faced a dilemna: wait another few minutes for the tram to come take us another few stops and hope we get to the train station in time, or run to the nearby Metro and take the faster mode of transportation. We chose the latter, jogging through a small square, and down the speedy escalators, and finally jumping on the B-line which dropped us off right in the train station where we made it to our train-track with a good 15 minutes to spare.

On the train ride back I had the opportunity to converse in German with the woman sitting next to me. Immediately thrust into German mode when she asked me a question “auf Deutsch,” we ended up talking for a good while on many different topics – places to see in Germany, the renovation of Berlin airports, the country of Denmark, just to name a few. More important than the topics, however, was that the conversation was all in German, and I was able to understand most of what she was saying, and she seemed to always understand me, even if I had to explain things in a roundabout way with my limited vocabulary. Regardless, it was a great Deutschland experience, where I actually felt like a German, as this woman allowed me to speak German with her – even if my German was “nicht so gut.”

Some more photos from Prague:

Jayne, Katherine, Lauren, Dave and Me on the Jazz Boat


In the metro:


Inside Prague Castle:


A rainbow across the Charles Bridge:


The end of Charles Bridge:


Beware of Pickpockets!