Prague

Charles Bridge in the early morning

This was my first visit to Prague in about 15 years, and man has it changed! Last time I went I remember you couldn't drink the tap water, and beer was cheaper than bottled water. That may still be the case, but now you can drink out of the tap. This city is definitely a lot richer since last I visited.

There were hardly any homeless people (at least in the centre), maybe they drive them out of there. It's definitely a place for British people who want to drink a lot. Perhaps that's always been the case. I guess it comes from the beer being so extraordinarily cheap. And since it was a lovely warm weekend they were out in droves, without their shirts on. What is it with the British male and this desire to go shirtless in the middle of town? I think they need to visit the beach more to get it out of their system.

The old town square

Anyway there were a few out and about, actually more like standing around in beer gardens and loudly getting drunk. Aaah it's nice to be in a region of earth where your nationality is not the most embarrassing one on holiday. I can tell people I am Australian without being associated with drunken, shirtless boors. Of course in South East Asia it's a different story.

Back to the city though. So what's the first thing we book into do, a walking tour of course! Prague seems to be known for the "free" walking tours. They aren't really free though since you are paying with your time, and if it's really bad there is no chance to do a different one. And of course you are meant to give tips once it's over.

We decided to actually pay for one. And it started about 10 minutes after all the free ones departed, which I think was a ploy by this company. Since we got to stand there and watch the massed hordes get organised into groups of about 50 to start their "free" tour. Man it looked bad. I guess it depends what you want, they are incredibly popular so they must be doing something right. Our tour guide was really good, though slightly disappointingly it was taken by an American. You have to wonder why they can't get locals to talk about their own city. I suppose the slight downside with getting a local can be that they don't give you both sides of the story, only the good of the place, none of the bad.

View across the river to the castle

The tour was really good though, and you always come away with a better feeling of the town. I never appreciated there was a Jewish quarter, and for hundreds of years Jewish people all had to live in this one little area of town. In the late 1700's they were allowed to move into the rest of the city, which seems quite progressive for that time. A lot of the buildings have been bulldozed so it's lost it's ghetto feel. Though the synagogues and old town hall still remain. There is a vast Jewish museum there, which I would have loved to visit, perhaps if we do another visit.

Early morning on the bridge

I've certainly found the place I'll stay at next time I'm there, it's the Hotel Residence Agnes. The service is unbelievable. Free pick up from the airport, then whilst you enjoy a complimentary drink (beer, wine, water, juice) the receptionist takes you over the map and points out things that are good to visit/see. If you want to visit the castle you can be driven up to the top of the hill for free, we needed to buy train tickets, so we were driven to the station and someone came in with us to help buy them. Just amazing, definitely stay here if you are ever in town.

The city itself is of course wonderful. We got to do a great run one morning, it's definitely a good one for running around, since it's pretty flat, and it's usually so packed during the day. So we got Charles Bridge pretty much to ourselves, which is pretty special. We also found a statue of Sri Chinmoy, which was a little weirder. He is the founder of a religion who's motto seemed to be self transcendence through physical pain. They do organise some great races though.

Dave with Sri Chinmoy

Of course we went to the castle, but I was a bit disappointed in that. It's not like castles in Western Europe, where the place has been restored to close to what it once might have looked like. This is just a shell of a castle, there is no furniture, paintings, tapestries, I'm not sure why this is, since the building seems to still be in use. For such a massive complex, you just expect there to be more care in the presentation of what seems to be such an important building to the city. Instead nothing, just seething masses of tourists.

There is a lot of other stuff on the plateau, above the castle. We visited the Strahov Monastry (upon recommendation by the hotel), and it was way better than the castle. Maybe because we had no expectations.  It was founded in 1143 and it has these great halls. The castle is just a big barn, but these rooms are amazing, full of books, with incredible detailing on the walls. They are just worlds apart, and I think there were a bunch of other buildings that could be similarly amazing inside. Just avoid the castle.

The Theological Hall in the Strahov Monastry

Upon the recommendation of the tour guide we also visited this memorial to Czech parachutists. They assassinated a Nazi officer during the Second World War and were hiding out in the the crypt of a cathedral, before they were betrayed. The church was stormed by the Nazi's and the parachutists ended up killing themselves before being captured. They are now national heroes, but it just seemed like a really bad time. Once the Nazi's realised who had participated in the assassination they rounded up their families and shot them all, including the little kids.

The astronomical clock, with it's many dials

Prague was spared the bombing that other cities suffered during the war, perhaps because they had already been so comprehensively screwed over by Britain, France and Germany. It does mean that things like their astronomical clock is still surviving and in working order. I never appreciated how cool these clocks were, it consists of all these moving dials, hands and objects. It shows the position of the sun in the sky throughout the day, sunset and sunrise, the current local time and the zodiacal position. And this is all without daily maintenance, pretty impressive for something that was built in 1410.

Just overall a really nice city to visit, and it's certainly changed so much in the years since I was last there. We still got all the warnings about not getting into unbooked taxis, apparently they will charge you some crazy fare-rate. And to watch for pick-pockets and that sort of thing. But it feels like Paris is more of a scary city these days than Prague is. Just watch out for the British bar crawls.