Czech Out Prague

Lame, I know. Okay, first off, I made it to and from Prague, on my own, with very few incidents to speak of. Second, it’s taken me awhile to put pen to paper for the following reasons:

1. Work. As usual, is still, and will remain quite busy. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: going on Holiday is like driving past that rest stop when you have to go to the bathroom, and you’re thinking, “I’ll wait till I get where I’m going.” When you finally get back all that sh*t is still waiting for you, and it’s worse than when you left.
2. Lost. My friend sent me Season 2 on DVD (thanks, Meatloaf!) and I’m, once again, hooked. Expect me to remain so. Did you know you can buy the episodes on iTunes for $1.99 apiece?
3. Pictures. I’ve had several hundred photos to comb through. I’ll throw a few up here and there. Prague is a beautiful city and I’d photograph a pile of dog sh*t if I was allowed to.
4. On top of all that I’m still working through the details of selling my share of the house to my co-owner. It’s so hard dealing with money between friends. I don’t recommend it. Ever. You can get away with screwing your friend’s girlfriend, but you’ll never get away with screwing over your friend’s wallet.

So, where does it all begin? Well, it starts with a well laid out plan of my trip, a detailed itinerary, if you will. You know the like: packing list, directions to and from the airport, flight reservation printouts, hotel reservation printouts, tour reservation printouts, and a list of all I want to see and when. Yeah, I’m anal.

I wake up Friday morning, gather all my gear, and hit the road. I’ve packed all my gear, including all my camera equipment. It’s not until I reach the airport that I realize that, while I have all the camera equipment, I don’t have the camera. It’s too late to go back so I settle on the decision to buy another camera. Logical progression, right? More on that later.

The woman at the checkout counter, a lovely (married) Spanish woman, notes my U.S. passport and tries to set me up with her coworker, who always dreamed of marrying an American so that she can get her green card. Good times. I pass her up on the offer, head through security, and settle in at the gate to await my flight. My flight is through Brussels and nothing exciting happens on the way there. Basically I just continue to peruse my two, yes two, guidebooks on Prague.

At the Brussels Airport I’ve got a two-hour layover, so I use the time to find a camera shop and look for another camera. I’ve been in the market for something small, sleek, and sexy (a camera, people) anyway so this really isn’t a big deal to me. I decided upon the Casio Exilim, a good 5MP camera that is all of the things I’m looking for, except that it’s not a Canon. No big deal, so after doing all the conversions in my head (Euro to Pounds, Pounds to Dollars, Euros to Dollars, etc.) I buy that, plus a memory card and a case for it. Now I only have to worry about getting that damned VAT back. I make my way to the gate, plug in the camera to charge, and continue reading. Again, nothing exciting happens on the way from Brussels to Prague.

Landing in Prague I’m told the time and temperature. 6PM. Okay. –20 degrees. What!? Damn, that’s cold. Good thing I brought enough clothes. I’ve been known to leave winter coats sitting right next to my cameras. A pleasant taxi ride and I’m in the heart of Prague at my hotel, the K&K Central. Not bad. On deck for the weekend is a dinner cruise Friday night, a walking tour Saturday morning, another tour Saturday night, and a pub tour Sunday night, so I’m pretty psyched to get things started. I unpack and then perform what becomes the several times daily “bundling up” and ensure that all my dangly bits (fingers, toes, ahem, other things) are all accounted for and adequately protected.

Rolling out into the night I make my way into the heart of Prague. Immediately I notice how beautiful it is. There are two huge towers on the east side of the river in Old Town; these were once part of the wall that encompassed that part of the city. The Old Town Square has an old gothic church, several other beautiful buildings, and the astronomical clock. More on all that later.

The river cruise was designed as a way to meet some fellow travelers. But, with my luck, whom do I meet? The tour guide. Not bad. She’s nice and I think of all the questions I can have answered. But she has to make her rounds, so whom do I have dinner with? The tour guide’s 6 year-old son. And whom do I listen to the band with? The tour guide’s 6 year-old son. Who doesn’t speak a word of English? That’s right, the tour guide’s 6 year-old son. Okay, so the dinner cruise was a bust, but on the bright side I’m now fully fed and properly liquored up.

I’ll take this opportunity to interrupt and tell you that, in my experience, tour books exaggerate the dangers of traveling. You know, they say beware of pickpockets, watch out for prostitutes who steal your organs (who brings a piano with them on travel, anyway?), and other such warnings. Well, the Prague guide book was spot on. While I didn’t get my pockets picked, and I didn’t meet any hooker with a bag of ice and a scalpel, I did get approached twice by shady characters going, “psst, marijuana? Pills?” so that was nice. And then I passed the old guy leaning against the Powder Tower taking a piss while his wife window shopped. At least, I think it was his wife, and not some scimitar-waving tart, but it’s hard to say. Anyway, to the writers of the Prague tour books: good on ya, mates. One thing about my hotel that really rocks: heated bathroom floors. Whomever invented this, I salute you (and those of you about to rock, too).

The next day, after breakfast, I once again performed the bundling up ritual. Today, again, the book was spot on. On the way to the Astronomical Clock I got hit up by the money changers. Bastards. But, thanks to the book, I simply kept moving and avoided further hassle. It also pays to be in a city where people speak Czeck, Russian, German, English, Italian, and maybe French. At any given time I can pretend to speak whatever it is they don’t.


The clock tower is where I’m to meet the tour guide at 11. I’m glad to find it’s not the guide from last night, and the little boy is nowhere in sight. This guy was pretty cool. I certainly recommend taking a tour of just about any city when you get there. I learned so much about the history and architecture of Prague that I almost feel like I could give a tour myself. Well worth it. For instance, the Astronomical Clock is one bad-ass machine. Built in 1490 it shows the Earth as the center of the universe. Big deal, does it tell time? Yes. So what, so can my Seiko. True that, but this thing also tells you when the sun is rising and setting, the phases of the moon, when that’s rising and setting, what day it is, what zodiac it is, and what phase of the life-cycle the indigenous population is in (for example, the new year equals rebirth). Pretty amazing for 1490, AND it rings and things move on it and all that cool ADD stuff. Add to that that all the little statues are there such as Death, the Philosopher, the Angel, and the Drunk and you’ve got a pretty cool clock. Oh, but don’t try and see it do it’s thing after 9PM because it only does it from 11AM to 9PM. Apparently the locals get a pretty big kick out of watching people stare at it around 10PM.

So that’s my intro into this tour guide. I have to say that I was impressed. Then he kicks into the history of Prague. For instance, Good King Wenceslas was good king Wenceslas because he gave the Czechs 20 years of peace with their surrounding neighbors and he gave them Christianity. Later he was murdered on the way to mass by an ungrateful nephew. And then there is the thing about true gothic cathedrals having one tower, representing Adam, be larger than the other tower, representing Eve (which sometimes never gets built at all due to money), and how the tower of Adam is set so that it ‘protects’ the tower of Eve from the Sun. Stuff like that. Hell, by the time we left the square I knew about all that and about how you can see Gothic, Baroque, Neo-Classical, and Renaissance architecture all in one square, one of the few places anywhere that’s possible. Oh, one last thing about all the small doors in Prague and the fact that many buildings are set below street level. A long time ago the city flooded quite badly, worse than the one in 2002 even. To avoid much of the destruction should that happen again they made the decision to raise the street level nearly two meters. Basically they built much of Prague on the foundation of old Prague. That’s why some doors are so small and some restaurants and such are now below ground level (because they later dug them back out).

Anyway, to make a long story short we toured the square and made our way a bit into New Town where I had THE BEST hot chocolate. A, because it was so f*cking cold, and B, because it was practically just melted chocolate and milk. Awesome. After that we hit the Jewish Quarter, which was eye-opening in its history. Hitler wanted to wipe out the Jews, right? I hope you knew that already. Well, he collected a bunch of their gear from all over and put it in Prague to eventually become a museum to house the history of the (what he hoped to be extinct) Jews. Well, that plan failed, but Prague continues to house many Jewish artifacts (though less than 10% of the Jews themselves remain). The cemetery was amazing, too, as was one of the few active synagogues in the Czech Republic.

I know, I know, when are we going to get to the Charles Bridge and Prague Castle? I was merely trying to point out that there is more to Prague than cheap beer, Charles Bridge, and Prague Castle. We made our way through the narrow, cobblestone streets, lined with shops, to the Charles Bridge. Charles Bridge is cool. It’s lined with statues of the saints and packed with vendors. You could spend hours crossing it if you visited every vendor and read the history of every statue.

Once across the bridge we catch a tram to the top of the hill where the castle is. It’s gorgeous, a combination of Gothic and Baroque, I believe. We check out the changing of the guards, which is much less showy than the one in London. After that we head into St. Vitus Cathedral. If I had been allowed to take photos you’d currently be picking your jaw up off the floor. This place was gorgeous. But, as I have no way to prove it, I’ll continue. Quit crying and buy a picture book.

The downside of George (my tour guide) and his knowledge is that his tour runs over an hour late (for a total of 5+ hours) and I’ve now missed my evening tour. That’s fine because I’m so damn cold that I don’t think I could continue anyway. I head out of the castle by way of the old castle steps and head back across the river, where I’m forced (yes, forced) to buy this old pilot’s headgear and goggles. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.

I warm up back at the hotel and head out for dinner. Guess it in one what I went for and you win a prize. That’s right: sushi. And it was pretty good, too. I think I’ll make it my life’s goal to have sushi in every city I travel to. Might be an interesting experience. But don’t worry, I eat some local dishes later on. How can you pass up German-influenced cooking? Pork and sauerkraut? Damn right!

Sunday in Prague brings the return of the drug dealers. So now we’ve had some drug dealers, followed by some money lenders, followed by some more drug dealers. I was offered more drugs in Prague than my entire life put together (at least, I was offered more drugs by strangers). I’m still not sure where the pissing geezer and his window-shopping wife fit in. They weren’t in the tour book. With all the major touring out of the way I set out to do some shopping and just walked around town snapping pics. I did get a chance to head back across the Charles Bridge and check out the entire wall dedicated to John Lennon. It was pretty cool.

A brief nap at the hotel and I was ready for the pub walk. I met up with the guide. Again I was glad it wasn’t some chick and her 6 year-old son. And it wasn’t George either. It was Anna, and she was lovely. To explain that, I was simply glad I wouldn’t be babysitting and I wasn’t in the mood for another architecture lesson, so it was good to just hang out with a local and have some beers. The only other people on the tour was this nice, Australian couple who would be getting married the next day, in the middle of their world tour. I’m sure there’s more of a story there because I picked up that they only knew each other a few months. Regardless, I didn’t ask questions and they seemed happy. The first pub was cool and it was here that I found out why Czechs get so drunk and pass out, only to be found after the snow melts. There, on the bar, sat a meter stick. End to end, on this meter stick, sat shot glasses. When questioned about this the guide said that sometimes, just sometimes, aspiring locals attempt to complete the meter stick. To that I say, “Good luck.” At each bar we had a drink and shared stories, with dinner coming at the last stop. It was a great tour, good beer, and delicious food. On the way home I tried a few photos with my new camera and my travel tri-pod. They turned out pretty good, for a drunk guy.

Monday, my last day there, was very relaxing. I was all toured out and ready to go home so I spent most of the time reading at the hotel, interspersed with journeys into the cold for more souvenirs and post cards, along with some more photos. I hopped in my taxi, which was a sweet Mercedes, and made my way to the airport.

Once I was all checked in there was nothing left to do but grab some food and drink, and wait for the plane. All was going great, until the flight. Seems I make a habit of feinting on planes now, and today was no exception. It happened once in 2000, but now it’s happened once in November and once in January. What’s up with that? It did, however, score me an entire row in First Class. Sweet.

In Brussels I attempted to get my VAT refund for the camera to no avail. The customs guy looked, and sounded, like someone straight out of Stalag 13. Seems I have to wait till I leave London. No worries. Then it will seem like free money. I hop the plane into Birmingham and make my way home doing 90+ all the way (one of the glories of the British road system). After everything that’s happened I think a good sleep in something as close to my own bed as I can come over here was much in order.