A Trip to the East: Prague

Main City Centre in Prague

Ciao, everyone. I've discovered that its harder to keep up with a blog than I originally thought. Not to worry, I'll try my best to keep everyone (Julie, yes, I know you're reading) updated. This past weekend, I went to Prague with Cait, Justin, Clarissa, Kyle, Naeemah, and Rose. It was a pretty big group of us, but we all decided we wanted to travel when we found out that our field trip was cancelled. We all flew out on Thursday after our cartography class. Our flight was around 4:30pm, and we got into Prague around 6:15pm. I'm not used to flights being so short. It seemed to be over right after it started. I have discovered the reason why some European flights are really cheap, though. They're really strict on baggage sizes, and with what is in your baggage and such. Random hidden fees are really common. Its annoying, but I don't mind the flights under 100 euros to travel all across Europe.

Salvator Dali museum: Divine Comedy room

When we got there, we went to the City Center and walked around and explored the city for the night. We quickly discovered the conversion from Euros to Czech crowns (Czechs? Krone?) was definitely in our favor, about 25 to one euro. Our first destination was food, and we found some cheap street food right in the main square. We all got Halusky, which is basically cabbage, potato, and bacon. We also got Kobasa, which is Czech sausage. Both were delicious. We mainly just walked around the city a bit, and saw the main bridge - the Charles Bridge.

On Saturday, we got started early to see the main aspects of the city. We meandered through the city for a while, finding the opera house and a few pretty sweet modern buildings. We weren't allowed to take pictures of them, though we found that out the hard way by getting yelled at. We finally made it back to the city center, stopping along the way at a chocolate shop so Kyle could get some chocolates (absinth truffles are gross, fyi) and Naeemah could get a chocolate waffle. We went into the Salvator Dali and Alfons Mucha museum. Both were pretty awesome, even though I'm not really a fan of modern art or art museums most of the time. I took pictures in the Dali part of the museum even though we found out later we weren't supposed to. My favorite part of the Dali museum was the Divine Comedy room. He did prints (woodcuts technically) of every canto in the entire Comedy. Some of them were really sweet looking, and it was interesting being able to tell the entire story from his prints.

View of Prague from tower on Charles Bridge

On our way to get lunch, we climbed to the top of one of the towers on the Charles Bridge. They had history of Prague and its kings on the way up, and at the top, there were breathtaking views of Prague. The architecture in Prague is so different than what we see everyday in Rome. I never really thought I'd visit any of Eastern Europe, so seeing what the cities there look like is really refreshing. We could see a lot of Prague, including the cathedral, castle, and river. The top of the tower still looked as it should have been. It wasn't made "safe" as a lot of tourist locations in the United States would be. You could still see all of the parts of the tower when you're standing right next to them. We went to go get lunch after our trip up the tower. We got stopped (again) by the Bridge Band playing on the Charles Bridge. They were actually quite good, and I was fascinated by the one guy who was playing a washboard. Rose bought their CD. We finally did get lunch after that, and most of us got goulash, which is basically beef, onion, and dumplings. It was delicious. I also had some Czech beer, Staropramen, which was pretty tasty.

View of Prague from the top of the castle

Cait, Clarissa, Justin, Kyle and I then decided to explore the St. Vitus Cathedral and the Prague Castle, which were up one of the hills of Prague. We entered the Palace, and were immediately introduced with this enormous Gothic cathedral. I love Gothic architecture, especially after learning so much about them, but the size of this cathedral was indescribable. The interior was even more breath-taking. It had huge stained glass windows on all the walls of the cathedral. How the light shone through the glass was so pretty, and it was amazing seeing how tall the main nave space in that church actually was. I'm jealous of the people who got to go to church in these spaces. The cathedral and castle seem to be connected, so we decided to go up into the castle next. Cait and Clarissa went up with me. We hiked up 287 steps to get to the top. I'm still quite out of shape. I was dying when I got to the top. It was breathtaking. You could see all of Prague, and you could see the Gothic spires close up. It was amazing. The sun was setting while we were up there, so it made it that much more beautiful. This was the first castle I've been to since being in Europe, and it was definitely a beautiful one to start out with. I only hope to see more castles and Gothic architecture in my future travels.

John Lennon wall - Yellow Submarine

After visiting the castle, we walked down toward the city center. We came across a shop that sold beer shampoo that apparently legitimately had beer in it. If it hadn't been so expensive, I would have considered getting some to see what it was all about. We also ended up finding a vineyard, the oldest in the Czech Republic. We were able to see the actual grapevines. Its a shame that we were there after the harvesting season. It would have been cool to see actual grapes.
After getting back to the city center and meeting up with Rose and Naeemah, we found the John Lennon wall. Basically, he wrote on the wall years ago, and people have just been putting graffiti and writing on it ever since. Someone painted a yellow submarine, and I wrote in the corner of it. I wonder if I ever visit Prague again if my name will still be there. Its really a cool looking wall though, I just wish that Lennon's original painting was still visible. It does bring back memories from first year though - good old Yellow Submarine movie.

Astronomical Clock at night

After finding the wall, Cait, Justin, Clarissa, Kyle and I decided to do a ghost tour. We found two people standing on the side of the street, one of which was dressed like the Grim Reaper. They were right next to Prague's astronomical clock, constructed in 1410 and one of the oldest astronomical clocks still in existence that still functions. The clock has the astronomical dial representing the Sun and Moon's positions in the sky, a clockwork hourly show of the figures of the Apostles with a figure of Death striking the time, and a calendar dial that shows the months. It's truly an awesome looking clock, and we watched a projection show projected on the clock while waiting for the ghost tour. It just celebrated its 600th birthday last year.
The ghost tour was absolutely hilarious. It wasn't intended to be scary at all, at least I don't think it was. Our tour guide was dressed in a black cape with all white face paint and red contacts. We walked around several churches and deserted streets while he told ghost stories from all periods of history in Prague. He also told the story of his long deceased lover and how he died. Apparently he threw poor Isabella down a well and poisoned the entire town. He was quite entertaining though. They actually have a facebook page, Cloak and Dagger ghost tours, if anyone is interested to find out more about them. I'm kinda curious to know if they are in other cities other than Prague. I'm definitely interested in doing one in Rome. I'm sure a lot of the ruins look really creepy at night.

To see the 600th anniversary projection show on Prague's astronomical clock, see video above.

The next day, Saturday, I had decided to leave early with Rose and Naeemah to save some money. Saturday morning we visited the interior of the Tyn church, the church right in the city center. It was heavily decorated, but the amount of ornamentation was interesting to see. We also went to Cafe Kafka (at the recommendation of our ghost tour guide, ironically) and I had some honey cake. It was quite good, though I'm not positive what was actually in it. After that, I basically had to head to the airport. I took the Prague metro, which wasn't too bad. It works essentially the same way as Rome's, which was comforting. I guess I might actually be getting used to city life. Our flight was fine, and we got back to Rome in time to unwind. I ended up just getting some pizza with Rachel and relaxing for the night.

So, this week we'll probably actually be doing some work for studio. Most of us haven't done much since our Phase 1 deadline, and we have a site model we need to start. We will be going to Pompeii and Paestrum this weekend, and for Italian Studies I'll be going to Cinecitta, which is basically Italy's Hollywood. It should be interesting to see both. My camera finally arrived from Wales yesterday (took... 10 days?) so I will finally be able to take normal pictures again. I've now witnessed first hand how slow Italian post is, as it took almost a week for the package to get here from Milan. It did come in a nice wrapping from the Royal Mail, which made me feel special. Ah, I want to go to England very very badly.
I also just booked tickets for Thanksgiving break, so we are all officially going to Ireland for Thanksgiving! Yay! I am also going to try to make a short trip to London during that trip as well. I am also planning on going to Paris in December (Christmas in Paris, anyone?) and Switzerland sometime in November. All of the traveling should be really fun. Hopefully I'm able to get my work done. I've realized my motivation here is pretty minimal.