Prague

Sorry for not writing for ages, [insert excuse here]. To make up for this (OK, maybe not just to entertain my loyal readers), I went to Prague for the weekend, and took lots of photos.

A friend, Sarah, is living there at the moment and kindly offered her couch and tour guide skills for the weekend. I took a night bus from Berlin arriving in Prague at about 6am. I managed to get a little bit of sleep on the bus, but it nicely set the tone for a sleep deprived weekend.

First thing on the list was a visit to Charles Bridge, the famous bridge in Prague that's on all the postcards. It's covered with souvenir stalls and tourists most of the time, but was very pleasant early in the morning in the off-season when we went.

Statue on Charles Bridge

Here are a few random photos from the rest of the morning.

I forgot what this was called, some building of some kind. It was close to the miniature museum, which was not very big, and had all kinds of really small art, so small they had microscopes set up to see the pieces.

Skodas everywhere! Noone else in Europe seems to think they are a joke, especially not in the Czech Republic. We did get asked to help push start one, though...

Then I checked out the castle, the biggest in Europe, I'm told. It was indeed very big, and pretty crowded with tourists, but there was still room to breath, I don't think there is in summer. Maybe I should have taken a tour, because I don't really have anything else to say about it, it had a nice feeling though.

The changing of the guards. Their bayonets look pretty scary.

Postcard shot of the castle.

Another clichéd postcard shot of the castle.

That night, we met Sarah's flatmate (Jana) at a pub in the region of Prague which boasts the most bar/pubs per square meter compared to the rest of Europe. It was a pretty crazy place, full of crazy Czechs. It kinda looked like a good old fashioned country pub, only it was full of incredibly drunk (+) people singing Czech anthems and jumping on the tables. Someone had a bubble blower, and there was a disconnected telephone hand piece and a ski mask on our table. The one owner/barman/chef somehow managed to stop for a chat with all the regulars, and people seemed to deal with their change themselves from a bowl on the bar. An old man with missing teeth pointed out that we had the same shoes, and showed me a special orthopedic insert he had put in his. This sparked a flurry of more shoes being removed and closely inspected.

Jana had trouble leaving...

Sunday, after a slow start, we saw many more of the sights. Unfortunately, my camera battery died, so there are no pictures for them all. They included; a metronome, churches, cemeteries, hills, bridges, old buildings, many small dogs and many more Skodas.

To finish we had dinner at a great restaurant which had been recommended by 3 different people at various times. And the last sight I hadn't managed to see was the astronomical clock, "the iphone of its day". It predicts sunset/sunrise, phases of the moon, zodiac, and all that jazz, and every hour it does a cuckoo clock kinda thing. So we are standing in front of the clock at 10.59pm, dozens of tourists have their cameras at the ready. Finally, the minute hand ticks over and the bells begin chime. Nobody breaths and the fingers on shutter buttons tense. Then the chimes stop. Nobody dares breath. Then the minute hands ticks over again. Some of the tourists begin to lower their cameras, people begin to look side to side. The minute hand ticks over again. Nothing happens... nothing happens... nothing happens. The darn clock is on the blink. Beaten but not broken, we give up. I'll be back, astronomical clock!

Thanks for reading, hope you are all fine. I hope I get to see many of you in a couple of weeks! I'm in NZ from the 17th Dec till the 10th Jan, so keep those dates in your diary!