Prague, oh Prague...

Hostel Royale!!!

Old Town Square

Old Town, these neat buildings are everywhere

Eccentric canadian guide

Interesting sculpture... one for the ladies.

The Gothic chapel in Prague Castle

Prague Castle

Prague is one of those places that everyone seems to just love and so with great expectations we left little Dresden and headed on to see the wonders of the oldest still standing city in Europe…

We arrived and boldly headed off in what we believed to be the correct direction to our prior booked hostel, directions I might add that we had acquired from the above mentioned hostels website… So we found a large bus station and I sat down to guard our packs whilst Andrew walked around the station about 5 times looking in vein for bus number 115 or 26. Finally he ended up finding an information centre and luckily the lady spoke English (we have found this not to be the case in some other bus/ train station info centres) and informed Andrew kindly that these two busses did not actually go from this station. So Andrew headed back to me after about half an hour and we tried to find a map of the local bus system to work out where to go, these maps we were soon to discover were all gone… lucky us!! Did I add that it was a really hot day?! So once again Andrew headed off, talked to some people, searched around some more, ran around 3 blocks to find an ATM machine as we only had Euros and needed Czech money to pay for the public transport we at some point would travel on, and then went back to the information centre which proved a good move as the lady helped Andrew find us another route, this time one that actually existed!! So after a substantial time had passed we finally had a way of getting to the hostel…. What a relief…. But wait there were more surprises in store for us yet!!! We took around three different trams (yes we needed to go on TRAMS not BUSES!) and headed further and further away from the main city and civilisation to end up being dropped off outside a graveyard in an industrial work area. A kind man pointed us in the direction of our hostel and our hearts dropped seeing a run down old warehouse with signs like ‘cash and carry’ painted on the flaky yellow walls of what was to be our hostel! We hoped that the inside would be better then the out but this too proved to be false hope. Inside was a dirty hallway with a crudely written sign informing us that to the left was the hostels reception. Further down the hall were a couple of curious Czech men smoking and running around was a child dressed only in her underwear. We were soon to discover that this hostel mainly contained poor Czech and Slovakian families who lived there on a permanent basis… nice!!! After waiting for awhile the lady who owned the hostel arrived and in broken English informed us that the 3 bed room we had booked was actually not available (we could now see why the directions weren’t so helpful) but that she had a five bed room with two spare beds we could stay in. We agreed to this thinking that it wouldn’t matter too much as it was a cheaper room and our last hostel had 10 beds so would be better then that, you may ask yourself how by now could we still believe that it was going to be ok, but by then we just wanted to put our packs down and rest so would have almost agreed to anything… We had to wait another length of time while the owner sorted out our room (she seemed to have no order to anything) and Andrew had a look around. He came back to inform me that there was no communal area and the kitchen had nothing to cook with, or eat out of, or drink from as everyone had their own stuff because they lived there… wonderful! Finally we were led upstairs to our room to find that it was already occupied by 3 Czech girls who, you won’t guess, yes lived there! They were not too pleased to have ‘their’ room invaded by two other people and so were not too happy with us at first… At this point I cried (yes feel sorry for me) and then fell asleep. Did I also mention that by this time it was late evening and we had only eaten breakfast?!
So when I awoke Andrew and I decided we needed something good to feel a bit better so went for a walk to find a place to eat out. This in itself was an experience as we were to find that we actually were located in the ghetto with our closest neighbors some Czech people who actually live in little tin shacks beside some old abandoned train tracks… We walked for a while to find a nicer neighborhood, had a GREAT meal and a drink at a pub and headed back to our room to be lulled to sleep from the smell of cigarette smoke, oh yes the girls smoked in our room…

Luckily for us the next day we found a better way into town that only took us around 15mins. So for the rest of the time at our hostel we headed into town early and came back late, only to sleep… or more like try to sleep…

Apart from sub standard sleeping conditions Prague actually did turn out to be a lovely city to visit and wander around. We enjoyed a half a day free walking tour with a really eccentric Canadian. The history was amazing and the guide did really well at engaging us for a whole 3 hours. The way it works is that you go on this tour with no obligation to pay anything but at the end you can give them a tip if you think the tour was worthwhile.
A funny story he shared was when the Soviet Army invaded Czechoslovakia to bring their in communist reign. Czech radios went off at midnight so the Soviets thought that they would sneak in after 12 and take the whole country by the next morning with out the Czech even realising. However they forgot that Czechoslovakia had daylight savings and so they crossed the border at 11pm… oops! So it was broadcast all over the radio that they were being invaded, the prime minister at the time informed everyone not to resist as there was nothing they could do, and it would only cause a blood bath. So the Czech being very innovative people took down all the road signs except the ones pointing back to Moscow, and not only this they renamed all the towns and cities under the name of the Prime minister. This caused a lot of confused Soviets and it took them a week to get to Prague and arrest the prime minister!

This tour as well as giving us a good historical overview orientated us for walking around ourselves and so we went back and had a look at the sites that really interested us. One being a church that has a real mummified arm hanging above the door when you come in, its called the ‘church of the shriveled arm’. It turned out to be the most beautiful church we have seen thus far with ornate marble and big artworks everywhere, hard to describe and no photos either, but it was amazing! Go there!

The rest of our stay consisted of us wandering around looking at all the old buildings as every second building in Prague is a work of art!