Praguesome!

PRAGUE… AWESOME!

We arrived at Prague in the arvo with no plans/accommodation whatsoever (getting better at this ad-hoc organising stuff).  It sounds cool except for the fact that it’s just a matter of wandering into a tourism office and getting them to do the hard yards! So we ended up doing that and the guy behind the counter is like, “We got this one place available in the centre of Prague (yay!), but it’s sort of a construction site (oh!)”, but we thought what the heck. The owner guy picked us up and took us for a wild car trip through Prague’s cobbled streets, it was crazy.. In Australia we are just used to streets in a GRID.. north-south, east-west, but this place is nuts they are just plonked everwhere and anywhere.. check out google maps of the Jewish Quarter (where we were staying) in Prague and you’d get an idea. Anyway, we got there and it was a construction site but the room was actually not bad, but there’s still no way this place would fly for accommodation in Australia (mains cables hanging out of wall, the gas heater attempting and failing to start every 5min, etc.) BUT it was a great location, 5min walk to anywhere in the centre and we didn’t blow up or asphyxiate!

We had an afternoon/evening walk through the Jewish quarter and down the river before an early one.

OUR RIVERSIDE WALK

Well, we were up reasonably early, shocked that it was sub-zero temps as we did a forced march down to the old town square. We found a nice restaurant with heaters and blankies - a nice spot for a hot breakfast and coffees overlooking the square. 

YES, THAT'S RIGHT... A SCARF AND A LATTE

Afterwards we met up with the tour dudes and got and another good tour that lasted a few hours. I recommend that anyone should take these tours, they are so informative and FREE.. the guides work only for tips and they work their butts of trying to get them which makes it a great tour. So much better than a guide who’s already got their stack of cash and is only half interested in giving a good tour.

Well, I won’t get bogged and blog about it too much but Prague is beautiful and it has a rich history, it’s visible everywhere in the city. They were in the thick of it during World War II and had a rough time, especially because they got rid of one dictator which was simply replaced by another (Hitler à Stalin). As you know, the Jews had a tough time everywhere in Europe during this time but in Prague especially as even before the war years they were confined to the Jewish quarter only. They lived and died in this quarter, fenced in. An eye-opening site was the Jewish cemetery in the Jewish quarter. Because they were confined to this small space, they ran out of burial room. They literally had to pile them on top of each other and build up the ground level. The result is a raised bumpy area in the middle of Prague with gravestones poking out everywhere, so close to each other you couldn’t walk through them. The question was asked during our tour why did Hitler not destroy the cemetery and the answer was he wanted a MUSEUM for the extinction of a race, what a terrible dude. 

JEWISH CEMETERY

Anyway, another reason why these tours are so cool is when you breeze through the city you get idea where you want to go back and check out more thoroughly, the guide also suggests other good places outside of the tour. One such place is this cool little boiled lollie shop where you can watch them at work, really interesting!

LOLLLIES!

THEY HANDED OUT THE FINISHED PRODUCT... YUM!

There's a hill on the northside of the river overlooking Prague with a nice park and view. On top of it back in the day, Stalin decided to put a statue of himself overlooking the city, anyway in ’89 when Prague come into it’s own again they decided to blow the crap out of it with 800KG of dynamite!!! Apparently the city got showered with debris and somehow his head survived which now graces a bar someone in the city, no doubt used as a dart board or something. Where the statue was is now a big dorky looking metronome. It symbolises the wasted time under communist rule and moving forward.

ON THE WAY UP THE HILL ON NORTH SIDE OF TOWN

VIEW FROM NORTH SIDE OF RIVER

PRAGUE STREETS

ASTRONOMICAL CLOCK

ONE OF THE MAIN DRAGS, LOOKING UP TO THE PRAGUE MUSEUM

LOOKING FROM THE TOP DOWN

MY GIRL NEAR THE OLD TOWN SQUARE

Early evening put us back in the Old Town Square. I love this area of town, there are crazy medieval sword fights (not the sissy kind but the kind where they really bash the crap out of each other!), pigs on spits, weird gypsie dancing in front of tepees complete with a medieval folk band covering Tool, haha I know! So we kind of found another good seat with a view of the square and ate and drank the afternoon away, a couple of hours with a few courses, several beers and coffees… we got a bit carried away, hah. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see the bill but when it came it was under 50AUD! This place rocks!!

THE GUY IN TAN GOT PAWNED

OLD TOWN SQUARE

We were told about some sort of light show that starts at 730pm on the side of the old tower where the astronomical clock is in the square to commemorate 600 years of Prague’s history so we thought we’d check it out. We had a little time to spare beforehand so we went up the tower with a view of the square which was nice by night.

OLD TOWN SQUARE BY NIGHT

Anyway 730pm was nearing and there was a projected count down on the side of the tower letting us know. We found a good spot and for a 5-10min show man it was impressive. It’s hard to explain in words but I think there is a youtube video of it somewhere out there in the interwebz if you’re interested.

PRAGUE'S HISTORY PROJECTION

THE SOVIET STAR GETTING TORN DOWN

Sadly that was our time over in Prague, we were off to the train station early again on the way to Vienna.

We winged (wung? wang?) it again in Vienna and after some bad advice from a ticket information dude at the station (sending us to a closed tourist info office) we found a Starbucks (bathed in a halo) for some free dataz and sorted out our own accommodation. After arriving there and a short google I realised a morning in Vienna was not going to be enough! So I organised another night in Vienna. We were pretty buggered by that time so we got room service from a restaurant down the street (wow) and packed it in early.

Apart from The Sound of Music Vienna is known for its coffee houses and they didn’t disappoint. Finally… good coffee, we’ve been surprised how hard it is to find good coffee over here (we are pretty blessed in Australia). The coffee houses are not just cafes, they are pretty big fancy places with prim and proper service (I think they looked down their nose a bit at us grubby Aussies) and one cup of coffee entitles you to stay there the whole day if you want. It is because of this that a lot of writers spend their time in them. I’d like to know how many books have been written in there and if I know of any of them!!

CAFE SPERL COFFEE HOUSE

CENTRAL CAFE COFFEE HOUSE

Well when we weren’t enjoying coffee bliss we were basically just wandering around Vienna, the first and oldest quarter mostly. The Hofburg palace and surrounding buildings make up a huge complex, apparently it is the second biggest in the world, the first being Vatican City (but that’s for later!).

DA HOF

ME JUMPING

ME FALLING AND AMY TAKING SWEET REVENGE FOR ARTHUR'S SEAT

VIENNA SQUARE

After the old quarter we made our way over the river to another big park where there are these massive concrete towers which were anti-aircraft placements during WWII, interesting but that’s about it. On our way home we checked out a couple of wedding dress shops but nothing struck our fancy so my wallet could unpucker it’s butt again.

AA GUNS

Well there’s not that much more to report as this morning we just high-tailed to another train station and another train, these Eurail tickets are paying off! We are currently on our way to Lucerne in Switzerland where we hope to be bumming around for about a week or so. I’m currently looking out the window at snow-capped peaks, win!

VIEW FROM OUR SEAT, WOO!

Stay tuned!

Matt