***NEW PHOTOS POSTED***
My trip to Prague was an impromptu one. I arrived back in Dublin after a Sunday Daytour with my friend from Hope, Maggie, and I decided that I did not want to sit around my apartment all week (I only have class on Thursday and Friday, so the beginning of my weeks are usually boring) I also felt like I needed to get out of the country. I love Ireland, but there's only so much of it to see, especially in winter - I mean, it is only the size of West Virginia!
So I went on Ryanair, the cheapest possible airfare EVER, and looked for cheap flights that would leave the next day, Feb 12, and return just before my first class on Feb 14. Prague was the cheapest, so I decided to head off to the Czech Republic. Now, I didn't know anything about Prague, save that it was an old haunt of Mozart, so I went to the local bookshop, Hodges and Figgis, and picked up a travel guide.
My plane was to leave at 6:25 am from the Dublin Airport, so I woke up at 2:30 am to get ready and get a bus, which was late. When I got on the plane, I suddenly realized why Ryanair is so cheap. It is not your standard luxury airplane - there is no complimentary beverage service, the overhead storage compartments are packed with billboard like advertisements, it's general seating, and they fit about twice as many seats in the aircraft than are intended, ie no leg room. However, for the price I got, I wasn't going to complain.
As soon as the airplane lifted off, my trip was off to a spectacular start. The sun was rising in a clear sky and the colors were a vibrant, linear rainbow lining the horizon. A little later in the flight a sheet of clouds gathered under the plane and were all I could see for miles below the clear blue sky. It was as if a curtain had been laid over the land to postpone the unveiling of the old city until the perfect moment. That moment happened as we decended through the sheet of clouds into a thick, dark mist and I held my breath as I entered Bohemia for the first time.
After we landed, I changed my money and was off to the city center. Despite the fact that I do not speak any Czech, I successfully made my way to my hostel using both a public bus and subway! On the way to my hostel, I was struck by the beauty and age of the buildings surrounding me. Most of them had art-nouveau facades, but I suspected the buildings were much older than that. I passed through the Jewish Quarter, with beautiful synagogues, and Old Town Square, which I passed at exactly noon. I saw a large crowd of people gathered around a tower in the square and I went to investigate. On the Old Town Hall there is an Astronomical Clock which tells the month, day, hour, minute, position of the earth, among other things. It turns out that at noon every day, the windows of the clock open and there is a Parade of Apostles - a sort of coo-coo bird, but with John, Peter, etc . . .
I checked into my hostel and continued to explore. I went from Old Town to Lesser Town by crossing the Charles Bridge, adorned with elaborate statues of Biblical scenes and Saints every couple of feet, as well as vendor selling jewelry or original paintings of the city. At the end of the bridge, there was a Marionette workshop and store. It house beautiful, if prohibitively expensive marionettes of every color, shape, and size. There were elves, devils, princesses, trolls - you name it, they had it. I picked out an original marionette of a gorgeous ghost woman with a sword through her neck who was about 3000 czk. I know - it sounds a bit morbid, but she is absolutely stunning. For lunch I had a duck. Well, I was presented with a whole duck, but I only ate about six bites. I hoped that wasn't what ALL Czech food was like, because I'll tell you, it was absolutely wretched.
That night I had one of the most wonderful experiences of my semester so far. I went on a tour called "Prague by Night." This tour is four hours on a riverboat with a dinner of Czech cuisine, a live accordion player, and spectacular views of the city by night. You all know how shy I am when I first meet people, so when the tourguide picked me up and I saw that she was all alone and we would have to walk to the boat, I was a little nervous. Still, I picked up a conversation with her and we talked throughout the whole 30 minute walk to the boat. I learned that she was a student of history and had previously studied in Italy. She couldn't believe that I wasn't cold (it was about 40 degrees) and I told her it was because I'm from Michigan, the refrigerator of the world. It was nice to speak with someone from Prague instead of the tourists I kept bumping into.
Eventually we got on the boat and I made two more new friends. They were an older couple, Tellulah and Pierce, from a small place in Ireland called Skibbereen in County Cork. The accordion player was playing old European classics such as La Vie En Rose and gypsy songs and Pierce was swaying with the musician as the two of them crooned like two souls in search of Edith Pilaf. It was a delightful atmosphere that seemed out of place in the 21st century. The food was Czech cuisine - chicken, dumplings, bread, turkish delight - much better than my disastrous lunch. After an hour stint on the deck taking photos of the breathtaking lights of the city, I settled in below with a nice cup of hot chocolate, closed my eyes, and listened to Dvorak played on the accordian.
The next day was amazing. There is a company of students who give free tours of Prague and ask only for tips at the end proportional to how much you liked the tour. Seeing as how normal tours of the city are about 490czk (30 dollars), I decided to go for free and maybe have a below average tour. Boy was I wrong! The tour lasted for 3.5 hours and took us pretty much everywhere in Prague that doesn't charge admission. My tour guide was a student of art history and she was extensive in her knowledge - she told us history, stories, and joke, as well as recommending places to eat and what to eat. After the tour, I explored some. There are over 200 old churches in Prague and each of them gives a classical concert almost every night. I walked past one of these churches and decided to go in. It was an Ave Maria concert with an organist, a violinist, and a soprano who performed different renditions of Ave Maria. The quality of the music, even in this, one of the smallest churches, was superb.
After the concert, I headed off to get some dinner. I decided to take my tour guide's advice for one of her favorite Czech meals: Svičková. Svičková is braised beef in a meat cream sauce served with whipped cream and sweet cranberries. I was a little put off at first, but I gave it a go. It was the best meal I have had in a while. I would never have put the ingredients together, but they melded perfectly and left me wanting another serving. Instead, I decided to have a traditional apple strudel for dessert and a small glass of Pilsner, a Czech beer which they drink like water. The strudel was excellent, but the Pilsner tasted a bit like carbonated urine (but don't tell any Czech's that, I might get a gang after me!)
On my way back to the hostel, I saw that they were holding a concert in the Municipal House. It was a collection of Mozart, Vivaldi, Dvorak, and Smentana. I decided to go in and it was a wonderful concert. It featured a string quartet, a bass player, a trumpet player, from the Prague Philharmonic and a soprano, who I gathered from the reception given her is fairly well know. They strings closed the set with Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, one of my favorite pieces and I decided that my decision to come to Prague was a great one. I was hearing this piece in one of the first place Mozart took it. I was in a city that I would never have visited had I cheaper choices, yet I would have suffered a great loss to have passed it by. Prague is an ancient city with a young heart and I only hope that I will have to opportunity to visit it when I have more than two days to sample all it has to offer. In the meantime, I am looking for new adventures for the coming months, for those of you with suggestions.
Reagan
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