um....Prague. Yes.

Arrive Friday around 7pm. Take the subway to the city…some jagbag puts on 30 squirts of cologne…no joke. We are ‘forced’ to clear out from that section of the train. Get to our hostel, turns out to be nicer than I imagined. And it helps that they have a wall full of flyers and business cards showing you what to do and where to go in the city. But of all floors to be on, we get the top floor…4th. Just like our apartment in Munich, how nice. I am really starting to love stairs right about now.

Take the Tram to the city center - we decide tickets are not needed if you are a group of bright eyed tourists…so we decide to chance it and ride it without buying one. So then got busted. A guy came over, in plain clothes, and flashed a metal badge showing he worked for the city and said “tickets?” I tried the, “no, I didn’t know how to buy one…” approach, but he had Allen, Curtis, and I get off the train after taking our ID’s. All in all he was friendly, showed us where to buy em next time, and then asked for the 500 Crown in fine from each of us. Turns our it breaks down to about 25 bucks.

So we make it to our restaurant…have an awesome home cooked Czech meal…equipped with a guy playing accordian, cheap beer, and polished off the meal with some liquorice fire after dinner drink. We start walking around the city, aimlessly, looking for someplace cool to check out. Haha, Czech out. Ok I’ll stop. The time comes and I need to pee, and after waiting as long as possible announce that whatever the next bar is I‘m going in to pee. On the way down, Curtis gets kick in the ass, and called a homosexual by some old guy outside. We didn‘t see this, but he starts telling us about it once we reach the bathrooms, and at this point we look around and realize we just stepped into a gay bar. Pee, leave, fast.

Finally we make it to a cool bar. Tables, huge bar, dance floor, the works. Something for everybody kind of place. I buy some beers, Allen thinks he wants to get the party started a little better, and buys shots of absinthe for all three of us. Now if you have never had this beverage let me tell you it will kick you in the teeth, burn all the way down to your lower intestine, and since you shoot it with sugar it goes to work, fast. We sat and talked all night, or about 2 hours or so together, had two more shots of absynthe, some more beer…and I myself finished the night on the curb out front of the bar realizing my stomach contents did not want to be with me anymore.


Quick recall of the rest of the night…walk home for forever, Curtis blew his alcohol intake on the bridge. 20 minute social commentary on Frank Gehry building. Taxi home in circles…double bill between 2-5am…threatened to call the cops on us. We argue, pay, and go inside the hostel for the night. Crash at like 4.

Okay so we all woke up the next day feeling chipper as ever…okay I think we all had headaches til 6pm, but that is beside the point. We head to the city center to get some much needed food in our stomachs. Found a nice little restaurant in the middle of 3 small streets filled with people and ate there. And check out this bill for lunch…1 Euro is 27 Crown or so, mind you…
I noticed there were some old cars parked next to us that had signs for touring the city. So after lunch, we head over to the red 1958 Skoda convertible and ask the guy for a tour. We hop in and off we go. Now this guy is entertaining to say the least. Starts telling us why he is living in Prague…he was born Czech, moved to Australia for some time, now back living in Prague to take care of his sick mother. He then moves on to pointing out things in the city, and at one time starts cursing at someone, maybe the police, I don’t really remember. But we all laugh, and he took this as a sign that he should continue this, which he did. Then he proceeds to become the ‘racist’ tour guide shouting out names for all the different groups of people on the street, walking, riding bikes, eating, etc. It was nothing too vulgar, so we still nervously laughed every time he did it. But it turned out to be a good way to see the city in about 45 minutes.


WTF?We then headed over to the Old Town Hall where the have the Astronomical Clock. On the way we ran into two girls who noticed Allen’s Chicago Blues shirt and came over hoping to chat with some Americans. Turns out they both booked one way tickets to Prague from Chicago, to come live here and work in the city hopefully to teach English. They wanted to hang out, but things go awkward when one of the girls mentioned they had to be out of their hostel that day and had no place to stay, and then proceeded to ask if they could just crash on our floor that night. Uhhh, what? This was 5 minutes into the conversation, yeah. So anyhow, we spend another 10 minutes or so hanging out, watched the clock do it’s hourly dance, which was grossly oversold. I imagined a bunch of stuff all moving and clicking and dancing, but all that happened was the skeletons arm moved, and the door opened and the 12 apostle statues played peek-a-boo one at a time. But check out how many people gathered for this thing….






Onwards to the Prague Castle. The gothic style architecture was alive and well. So much to see on this castle, just from the outside, which is all we got since you can’t go in it. The St. Vitus Cathedral (the castle) is over 1000 years old and stands as the establishment of Christianity in Bohemia. Pretty funny this old guy comes up to us and says “you know if you got any time they could use some help sandblasting…”. We all laughed.





Stayed in for the night, still recovering and wanting to wake up early Sunday morning. Refreshed…Curtis and I hit the Museum of Communism, where they cover the last 70 years of Prague’s history and revolution. I’ll save you the long history book lesson, but basically Hitler occupied Prague in 1939, liberated in 1945, and spent the next 40 years under communist rule under Stalin from 1948. The most moving part in the museum was video from the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when citizens by the thousands flocked to the street to protest their government. Video of police and military just beating them and terrorizing these people was quite moving. Even more so when you step out of the museum onto the street you just saw in the film, and realize this is where it all happened.


We then went to the Narodni Muzeum, which is basically the state museum at the end of the aforementioned street. Inside they had paintings, a huge collection of rocks and minerals, animal museum, and other things I can’t even remember now. It was a lot to take in with only one hour left before we headed to the airport.


Two men burned themselves to death in protest of the communist government back in 1969...this marks the spot where they died in front of the state museum...
All in all, beautiful weather, amazing sights, good partying, and above all, I was in freakin’ Prague!

parker