I was in Prague and then I wasn't

This weekend saw the advent of another excursion out of Deutschland and into the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. Here, therefore, are my thoughts on this city.

Most of all I got the impression that it was incredibly hard to orientate myself in. Perhaps because I spent most of the weekend being taken or lead to places and not looking at a map, but even when I did I still found it hard to mentally picture where I was in relation to everything else. This is a negative aspect of the city but it is quickly made up for when you realise how small the city actually is, so you’re never really far from where you need to be.

There is also an incredibly simple metro system (only three lines!) and regular trams, the former of which we wrestled with before we’d even got to the meeting point because we got off the train a stop too early. At this point I was grateful for knowing a small amount of Russian because it made reading Czech a heck of a lot easier. I actually discovered that the languages really are incredibly similar and I look forward to maybe returning to Prague after my time in Russia and getting on better with the language. I did actually, in a restaurant, successfully manage to ask where the toilets were in Russian and garner a response (in either Czech or Russian, I’m not sure) but then ruined it by thanking him in German. Oh well, I’m still learning.

Speaking of restaurants, we ended up in a small place on the first night and you’d think that the entire food culture of the Czech Republic was based on garlic if you’d seen what we were eating. A strange, green, starchy, potato-cake type thing (that I forget the name of) was heavy on the garlic, as were the cabbage burgers and the pasta dish that a friend ordered contained copious amounts (as in several sliced cloves) of the stuff. It did at least taste good and the following morning I was able to find some delicious quark-filled pastry things (called Formalnovy something) containing no garlic at all, for breakfast.

We also discovered that once again food is cheaper in Eastern Europe, but I don’t think it was as cheap as Hungary was. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with different currencies. The Czech Koruna doesn’t really work out to much. 25 of them is about one Euro and will maybe buy you a couple of rolls or about two and a half of the pastry things I had for breakfast. The irritating thing is having large notes, for example I went to the cash machine when we arrived and took out the equivalent of 80 euro in one note. Once broken it’s fine though and not too bad to cope with as long as you remember that a 100 Koruna note is worth four euro.

Prague also has fascinating buildings and a very interesting history, part of which was told to us by our tour guide Tijo (from Amsterdam) who was part of a group offering free tours of the city. This is what I mean when I said I was mostly taken to different places this weekend, rather than wandering by myself. We managed to see the main sights over the weekend though: the Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock and the Castle. Even though we did only see the castle in the dark, after wandering over a bridge and up a hill in the very snowy and sleety weather, getting lost and then hitching a tram back to find it. We still saw the view from the hill and I can confirm that Prague is indeed very beautiful; a city that I’d love to spend more time in.

On the whole an excellent weekend and many thanks to the organiser; I think that might have been my first independent (i.e. not school) holiday/trip with such a large group as well. Anyway, I reckon I’ve now procrastinated enough with my ramble about Prague and should definitely finish the essay that I’ve had half finished for ages but not yet completed. Until next time!