Praha, CZ (Prague)

June Fourth, 2012 –

With our bags packed and on our backs we went to the train station to leave Vienna behind and make our way to Prague, CZ.  On the 5-hour train ride we had another 6-person cabin with seats, a stagnant room, and almost no air conditioning.  On the ride we watched some movies and ate a little lunch in the restaurant part of the train.  I got a goulash soup and a drink to wash it down.  Surprisingly the soup was pretty good especially for train food.  When we finally made it to Prague we headed to the hotel and checked in.  Not long after we arrived we once again set out for a walk through the city.  Our goal was to reach the Charles Bridge and then Old Town Prague.  Along the way we saw Frank Gehry’s Fred and Ginger building, which represents a man and woman dancing and the woman’s dress flowing.  This is quite an amazing architectural and construction related building.  Next we crossed Charles Bridge and saw the true beauty of this part of Prague. 

After this we made it to the Jewish part of Prague and saw an old cemetery that must have had thousands of headstones stacked one on top of the other.  Next was the main square in Old Town and saw the Astronomical Clock Tower, which was a beautiful hand made clock and the man who was commissioned was the greatest clock maker at the time.  When he was finished he burned his own eyes out so that he could never make a clock better than it.  We were lucky to see the clock strike 8:00 and got to see the little figures come out and play a little music and then a man at the very top played a trumpet.

This was our last stop before we separated to get some food and view the nightlife on our own.  Some of us walked around looking at the shops in search of food.  We decided to get some food at a food vender that had old style ham from Prague, but were taken advantage of because we were Americans.  I ended up paying 340 Czk Crowns for a ham sandwich, which in US dollars is about 17.  To say the least it consisted of two slices of bread and 3 huge chunks of ham and it was pretty good. 

After eating a little food we went to Chateau L’Enfer Rouge and drank there for a little bit and listened to what they called “blackbeats”.