Onto the Czech Republic

Hello Kids,

It's story time again :-)
This week was a very short one for me... Monday night I booked a 4 day trip to Prague leaving Wednesday night... how's that for last-minute planning! I'm becoming a pro at it now... hehe.

So busy busy Mon and Tues updating blog and working. Then Wednesday night.... the overnight bus to Prague... woohoo and oooh damnit all in one breath. The overnight bus is not fun.

Onto the travels.....

I arrived at 5:30am after getting a couple minutes sleep the whole night. I had this lovely old Indian dude sitting behind me who loved to cough then spit out whatever he was coughing into a bag.... yummo.

I got onto the Metro (subway) on my way to my hostel. Now, I didn't have any Czech Crown (currency) and there were no exchanges open, so I had to get on illegally. Now, what does Murphy's Law say? Some metro police got on board and started flashing their badge around checking tickets. Luckily, my stop was next... but those 30s seemed to go on forever and my heart was racing. I managed to get off just before they got to me... phew. That was an adrenaline rush for the day! Who needs coffee for a wake-up call? :-)

I then got off and started walking trying to find my hostel. I couldn't find any landmarks as I was surrounded by massive old buildings (kind of like Vienna). I wandered around and then found I was walking the complete wrong way. I had managed to walk half way to town before I realised :-P

Anyway, got into the hostel and checked in. The hostel was run by this lovely middle-aged woman and her son. She was very friendly and really willing to help. It was too early to go into my room (at 7am), so she gave me a map and told me of all the places I can go. So I left my bag with them and headed out for adventure!

My first views of Prague were simply breathtaking. I walked along the river and you could see the magnificent views of the Praha Castle, the biggest castle complex in the world! Now, before visiting Prague, Vienna was the most impressive city that I've seen. I think Prague topped it as a first smack-smack-in-the-face impression of a city.


There are so many old buildings around the aptly named "Old City". Prague was not bombed during the war because of the Munich Pact (whatever that is) so everything is very much intact.

I walked along the river taking in the grand architecture of the place and headed straight for the castle. Over Charles Bridge which is a medieval bridge with statues along the side. Then up the hill to the top. I got an audio-guide and wandered around the castle for about 6 hours (yes it is just that big!). It was very very touristy, but was an entertaining way to spend a day.
It was not cheap though... Prague has two extremes: the touristy area - where everything is way overpriced, and everywhere else - where you get $1 beers from a bar! I'm not going to bore you with too much about the castle as the pictures speak for themselves (check out my online photos - when they are ready). The St. Vitus Cathedral was very spectacular though and a randomly cool thing I did see was a guy doing some blacksmithing with some old gear which was pretty cool. Oh Chris (my brother-in-law) would have loved it. There was an armoury of all sorts of medieval forged war-gear, which could be purchased :-)


After the castle I headed back to the hostel. I was pretty shattered and just wanted to chill. So I grabbed some Chinese (really cheap as I wasn't in a touristy area) and some beers then went back to the room to eat.

I talked to some random Pommy chicks that were travelling, then 2 of my room-mates came home. It was two Polish people named Luke and Ewa (Eva for us English folk). They were pretty cool and we talked about Polish politics.... now I know what you are thinking. But this was good. Polish politics are a complete joke, the stuff they were saying was just so funny. In Poland, if you commit a crime, you can't leave the country or do almost any job (teacher, etc.)... but you can still become a politician! They have got one leader who went to jail for... "raping a prostitute"... how silly is that!

(Luke and Ewa)

I also learnt a few Polish swear words... 1 of thousands. Polish has the most swear words of any language. They even have a Polish swearing dictionary that is 500 pages. A lot of Polish people use the word "coorvah" (bad name for a whore) as a comma in their sentences :-P Also a word that sounds like "who-ya" is a really offensive saying in Polish. So they laugh when they hear it in English songs. Oh, and the Czech name for girl... is the Polish name for "prostitute".
Random huh?!

Anyways, after talking half the night we managed to get to bed around 2 or 3... so was a long day for me :-P