Thus, without any further ado, Part the First: Arrival and events.
Firstly, Toronto airport is the most improved airport in the world, has free wi-fi and a little play area involving bronze tigers, and announces everything in French, English and the language of the airline you're taking, which, in our case, was German. Also, Canada has money of its own that is neither dollars nor euros, so we didn't buy any of the wonderful things that the duty-free station had to offer.
The plane was nice and even though Christine and I didn't have seats beside each other, the lady sitting beside me switched seats with Christine so we could be together, which was kind. The flight was long but not too long, and the screens had this awesome, constantly updating map of where we were and how long it would take us to get to Dusseldorf, which was exciting. I watched about half of that movie with Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman because the girl in the seat diagonally in front of me was watching it. I read about half of Paper Towns by John Green and fell asleep to the opera station, giving Christine the opportunity to steal and read about a third of Paper Towns.
With another short flight from Dusseldorf to Prague, I had gained a good view of the city from the air (also a good view of the wind turbines- congrats on the renewable energy source, Europe!), an airplane blanket and an airplane pastry, both of which are still hidden away in my bags. Here's the part of the story where I become really proud of Christine's and my senses of direction. We found a transportation map of Prague, an ATM, the bus to the metro, the right metro and the right metro stop and the way to our hostel (even though we walked past it and had to turn around once) with the assistance of Christine's iPod and the difficult-to-locate Prague street signs (hint-they're on the walls of the buildings). Check-in was easy and after updating our respective families of our still-alive status, we took a nap... for eight hours.
This kinda put a damper on the intention to visit the castle that afternoon, so we adventured out to get food and wander in a totally safe way. On a recommendation from two people in the next room over in our hostel, we headed toward the Charles bridge to find food, but were accosted by a small man outside a fancy restaurant and ended up eating there instead. Good, but pricey. Also, the Czech currency are Czech crowns, about 16 of which equal a dollar. It used to be about 50 crowns to the dollar maybe ten years ago. I learned this thanks to our economics-studying tour guide from Wednesday night.
We wandered across the bridge listening to the man playing the recorder by the gate before making it to the Old Town square by the astrological clock. We took pictures and sat around and wandered back.
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| As much as I hate light pollution, some things are pretty at night. Statue and Tyn Church. |
The next morning we climbed the hill by our hostel to the castle, which still had a wonderful view of the city, even if it wasn't the bell tower of the cathedral. We moseyed around the castle and its grounds, looking at the cathedral, the palace where the Defenestration of Prague happened (I know you shouldn't be happy because of the death of someone, but defenestrate is such a wonderful word and it wouldn't have entered my life without the Defenestration of Prague, so thank you, 17th century man being thrown out a window to begin the Thirty Years' War) and St. George's Basilica.
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| It's much more impressive in person, I think. But so pretty! |
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| DEFENESTRATE! |
That afternoon I went wandering and found a park by the river where there were families picnicing, people biking and people walking.
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| Vltava river, looking back at the Lesser Town side of things. |
As with any good park, there were pretty statues, my favorite of which was hidden in the trees...
...and as with any interesting place, there were creepy post-modern statues. Faceless babies. Huge, creepy, faceless babies. Even though I had been warned by Cracked.com (the faceless babies had made number nine on the 14 Most Unintentionally Terrifying Statues in World list), I was unprepared for their barcoded heads and huge, crawling bodies. Seriously, they're taller than me, just crawling around.
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| You think it's cute... |
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| but then you see this. (Tourists are included for scale.) |
On the cheerier side of the park, a family lit a sparkler, put it on a cake and gave it to the children to carrying to one of the women at the picnic, singing Happy Birthday in a language I didn't understand, but I'm going to guess was Czech or Russian or some other Slavic language. That's the wonderful thing about an international city- there are so many languages floating around. I heard snippets of French followed by a barrage of German all amongst the background of Czech and the all-too-frequent English. It was a nice way to spend an afternoon, people watching in a park in the summer.
Day 3 in Prague was taken up with St. Nicholas Church and Our Lady of Victory in the morning, a late lunch on the square which took on quite a different personality by daylight, teeming with people, tents and a stage, a long afternoon in the Jewish quarter and an interesting evening on a guided tour. So, to give you the last flavor of Prague, I bring you thoughts from our guided tour.
There's a statue of Freud hanging off a building which I never would have noticed unless our guide pointed it our. The Tyn Church right off of the main square has two intimidating towers, and being a gothic church, the whole effect is rather imposing. Our guide said it looked like something from Lord of the Rings, like Cirith Ungol or Minas Morgul, which is a geek win for sure. I didn't get a chance to check out the inside of the Tyn Church, but at least I have a story to associate with it. The Lord of the Rings reference also probably explains our guide's wish to travel in New Zealand and Australia. Good choice, tour guide, good choice.
Along the way, we talked about the unfortunate multitude of tourists, especially Japanese tourists with their cameras and substantial memory cards, St. Patrick's Day, different traditions on Easter and traveling around world. Our tour guide was finishing his masters in economics, apparently for free because public school is free in the Czech republic, after earning his bachelors in three years and finishing the masters in one and a half. He really wants to travel, though, and didn't sound super excited about an internship involving economics, his inevitable future.
You see a lot of people in Prague. Well, I guess you see a lot of people in any big city, but I was fascinated by some characters here. The man playing the recorder on the bridge the first night, sitting outside the tower door playing haunting melodies that belonged to no song at all, only to be replaced during the day by an unfortunate soul in red and yellow garb and armor, standing watch over the musician's spot with his fake sword.
The guards inside the castle, marching through crowded plazas in full uniform, sunglasses guarding against the summer morning. The woman sitting watch in the synagogue, perched over the main room, observing the tourists from a hall covered in remembrances of unfortunate times come to pass. Our tour guide, content in his work but ready to see more of the world. Finally, this poor man who walked to the back of the train, hoping to get a room by himself, ending up with the two of us and our backpacks on a four hour ride to Berlin (another public transportation success, I might add). He's stuck watching the beautiful scenes go by outside our window, accompanied by the melody of my typing. I feel a little bad, especially since he helped me put my pack up on the rack. But life is full of eventual inconveniences. There are worse things in the world.
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