I had all kinds of expectations about Prague before ever setting foot there. Hearing about it from people who’ve been there, seeing it as the setting in various movies, reading about it in books and magazines, has caused me to conjure up my own strange image of this very eclectic city. The neat thing about it was that I was pretty dead on about some things, and way completely off about others.
The things I were pretty dead on about:
1. Absolutely incredible looking women roaming about everywhere. We’re not talking uppity supermodel attitude types. These were mostly just regular girls working at the local pizzeria or shop. I thought I was going to go blind.
2. The stunning views, architecture, and old city beauty. Something that even when captured on film, does not do it complete justice. The way Prague lights up its city at night is really something to drop your jaw at.
3. The friendliness and sincerity of the Czech people.
4. How Czech beer tastes better when you are actually there.
5. Did I mention the absolutely incredible looking women that were everywhere?
The things I were dead wrong about:
1. Czech cuisine, (it’s just ok).
2. There are armies of pickpockets out to rob you on every tram (there aren’t).
3. The city is clean and well maintained, (not always, but sometimes that adds to its charm).
4. It’s not a good idea to eat Czech hot dogs off of one of the street vendors (It’s not a problem).
I arrived on a Monday night from Hamburg. It was fairly late when I got off the train. I had booked a room online before I got there, but had no idea where in town it was, so it was going to be fun asking directions. The first “tourist information” guy I asked at the station said he would tell me but only if I bought a map from him for 250 koruna (about $10). I politely told him to stuff it and walked on. I did find a REAL info guy and he gave me directions and which metro and tram line to take to get there, no map purchase required.
The main train station was nothing to write home about. Not the best looking train station I’d been in. It was dank, old, and in need of a major facelift, as many other buildings in Prague were I would later find. Being summertime, there was a huge influx of backpackers and tourists coming off the trains. I wasn’t surprised by this at all. It was common knowledge that Prague had become quite “touristy” in recent years.
The thing I did realize when I got there was that I didn’t think I was going to play the tourist role. Yeah sure, I wanted to check out the Charles Bridge (An incredibly ornate bridge that was built in the 13th century and is still used), and Prague castle, but as far as other attractions and tourist sites, I didn’t find myself jonesing for any other points of interest. To me, Prague was a living, breathing creature and in a lot of ways just needed to be taken in as a sum of its parts, at least that’s the way I saw it. So I was going to be a wanderer of the city, an observer, a “lurker”…
After checking into my hotel late, I wandered around where the hotel was just to get a feel for the area. I was supposedly close to the center, but I didn’t have a feel for the city’s layout quite yet. Even with the help of a map (that was free, btw).
I ended up hopping a cab and heading to Wenceslas Square (which is called “Vaclavske Nemesti” in Czech), which was supposedly the major city center. I figured that this would be as good a place as any to start venturing through the city.
Like I said, it was late, past 11 pm on a monday night. Not much was going on, there were a few bars and clubs open, but there didn’t seem to be anybody there. There were all the barkers on the street, trying to get you into their “nightclubs” (read: strip clubs and in some cases, glorified legal brothels). Needless to say, it was a colorful crowd. There were the occasional group of drunk teenage guys staggering their way through the square to catch the tram home or wherever they were going next.
I was walking pretty blindly through the side streets going off the square, just wondering what were in the blocks behind. Most of the time, everything was shuttered. Occasionally, there was a street that had a popular “nightclub” that was all lit up, usually the only thing on the street lit up. Plenty of street girls lined the streets on these surrounding blocks as well as the square. But to my relief they weren’t uber-aggressive like the infamous Hamburg “gauntlet girls”.
I stopped by a couple of pubs and bars in the surrounding streets, mainly to get a taste of one of my fave beers on earth, Pilsner Urquell. This is the original Pilsener beer, coming from a Czech town called “Pilzen”. All other Pilsener beers simply imitate Urquell’s own special brewing process. It was nice to have it in its native land for a change. At one of the pubs I visited, I met a bartender named Tom. He was from a city called Ostrava, and had been living in Prague for about 3 years. He told me alot about the city, where to go, where not to go. It was a relatively slow night, so we had plenty of time to chat about lots of stuff.
So at the very least, I knew I’d found my de-facto watering hole for my time in Prague, I had made a new friend at the bar, and there was an endless flow of Pilsener Urquell, and Budweiser Budvar (the ORIGINAL Budweiser, only about 700 years older than the American Bud, and a LOT better, trust me). Which by the 2nd night I stopped by, Tom was giving me for free. I love that guy.
Tom even invited me to head out to Ostrava with him on Friday for a weekend road trip. He said that the town goes nuts on weekends during the summer and the scene is absolutely unmatched, even in Prague. I was sold on the idea, and signed on. I was supposed to get a train on Friday to Ostrava and meet up with him, as he would have already been there because he was taking an early morning train. So we had a plan, and it was a good one, because it was going to give me an opportunity to see more of the country than just Prague.
The hotel room I had left some things to be desired. Sure it was cheap, only about 35 Euros a night (about 40 bucks), had hot water, and a TV with no working channels. But there was a problem. The floor of the room appeared to be a bunch of loose sheets of plywood with carpet draped over them for covering. The floor moved, creaked and sagged with every step I took in the room. It was disturbing and I doubted it was very safe. I asked them for another room the first morning, but they said that they were now booked, and I was stuck with that room. Since I’d prepaid the room, they were exactly right. So I made the best of it, and walked along the walls and on the furniture as much as possible.
After my third night, I requested a different room, only to find out that they didn’t have any rooms at all for me. So I was out on the street. I managed to find another hotel that was a bit more, but MUCH MUCH nicer, and a little more central in location. And no creaky loose plywood floors, to my elation. So all in all, things worked out.
Over the next couple of days, I slowly ventured around Prague. Starting again from Wenceslas Square, only because of familiarity and ease of access, I worked my way outward. On my first try, I found the Old Town center. This is where the REAL Prague is.
It’s a grand, old traditional cobblestone square, surrounded by some of the most amazing architecture you’ll ever see. On some of the smaller side streets, deep in the Old Town, you can actually get a feel for what life was like hundreds of years ago on these streets. On the east end of the square, there is an old medieval church that has a working astronomical clock. It tracks time by instead using a star map than an analog clock face. Pretty cool, though very cryptic.
On the hour, its bells sound, and a little “performance” ensues, when two little doors above the clock open and these different figurines row by. Each sticking his or her head out during a little musical number. Crowds of tourists and locals alike gather at the clock before the hour strikes to witness the event. Which oddly, doesn’t always happen, sometimes you just get the bells, but no show. Not sure why that is.
On Thursday night, I ventured into some of the larger discos and dance clubs to get a feel for what kind of music is really popular in Czech. I went into one place that seemed especially attractive because it was on the roof of one the large bulidings that bordered Wenceslas Square. I went up to the top, paid the somewhat ridiculous cover, and took a walk around, and checked out the awesome view of the city from its terrace. I was definitely one of the older people there, but no biggie.
This club, called Duplex, had several levels to it, with the dance floor being split level connected with catwalks and other stairs all around. It seemed to be an interesting layout. But then it occurred to me that the music was brain-bleedingly loud, and it was really starting to hurt, maybe I am too old for these places. Well, anyway, I headed straight for the elevator, because now it felt like a serious migraine was kicking in. I made it out of the club, and just kept walking until I couldn’t hear that horrendous skull-shaking throbbing beat anymore. It was too late, I had a full blown migraine, and it was almost debilitating. It was actually the first time in a long while, more than a year or so, that I got hit with such brutal migraine episode. I barely made it to my tram stop, and when I got there, I found my tram wouldn’t get there for another 20 minutes or so. Those were the longest 20 minutes in my recent memory.
The tram finally showed up, and I jumped on, just hoping it would go into warp drive and get me to my stop in nanoseconds. It wasn’t to be. I did get there in a reasonable time however, made it to my hotel, staggered up the stairs, made it into the room, and became violently ill. After a horrendous porcelain god-worshipping session, I crashed.
I woke up feeling ok, but pretty hungover. Bad migraines will do that to you. I managed to get out of bed and start functioning normally. I then realized that I was supposed to meet Tom in Ostrava, and I was supposed to catch a 4 pm train. I unfortunately needed to back out of that, because the last thing I wanted to do was get sick again on the 4 hour train ride, or in Ostrava. So I sent Tom a text message with the bad news. He was quite nice about it, and told me that he’d see me Monday.
The rest of the day, I took it easy, ate light and just let myself recuperate. By evening time, I felt good enough to at least head into Old Town to see what was going on. I walked by a nice looking bar called Tretter’s that seemed to have a nice crowd. I went in and had a beer at the bar. That’s when I met Lucie and Teresa, two local Prague dwellers at their usual Friday after-work bar. Lucie works for a large British law firm in Prague, and Teresa works at one of the better hotels in the city. After some chatting, they invited me to come along with them to another bar, which was bigger and had dancing. It was just down the block, so I said why not. We ended up hanging out there until at least 3 AM. Good fun, no doubt.
Lucie had the next day off, so she offered to show me Prague Castle and the surrounding part of Prague called Zone 1. Couldn’t possibly turn down an offer to be shown around by a local, especially someone as cool as Lucie, so I was all for it, especially since I was planning on hitting the castle that day anyway.
After the tram ride to the castle, there was a little bit of a walk up the hill to it. which gradually unveiled a nice wide view of the rest of the city. The castle itself is actually a very large walled-in “mini city”, that has for its center a huge 13th century gothic cathedral. There is a small district of shops and old tiny houses called the “Golden Lane”. These were the houses where the common people and laborers who worked in the palace, and for the royals used to live in the old days. Franz Kafka lived here for a time while he wrote some of his classics. We actually saw his old house, which is now a bookstore, selling Kafka of course.
From there, we walked on past an area called “Little Venice” because of its Venice style canals, that served as access to many of the houses and pensions that line them. Absolutely stunning. Then of course, there was the Charles Bridge, which was quite interesting to see, no less walk on. Spanning the Vltava River, here’s a bridge that is something like 8 centuries old, built in the 1300’s, and still used every day by pedestrians. There is a huge gate tower on each end of the bridge that once served as guard gates for the Prague Castle and its surrounding regal city. Back then this bridge was pretty much the only way to it. You can climb the towers, but we didn’t. All of it very ornate and stunning. There are dozens of wonderful statues of Czech Royals, knights, and other dignitaries. One in particular, if you touch the woman’s body on its pedestal plate, guarantees your return to Prague according to legend. And yes, I touched it, legend or no legend.
Lucie and I enjoyed some beers at several of the pubs in the area. Boy, those czechs sure can take down some beer. I was having trouble keeping up. Then we had a nice Czech dinner at one of her fave restaurants. I got to enjoy roast duck, with sweet cabbage and dumplings. It was wonderful, though I think I’d get bored eating that every day.
That night included another pub crawl back in Old Town. Teresa couldn’t join us because she was working late, so we proceeded to pub in her honor.
The next day, I slept in, and tried to get caught up on some online stuff, and writing. I did manage to get a lot done, especially considering I had been putting off alot of stuff the whole time I was in Prague.
Lucie and I got together again for a nice dinner on the evening I was leaving Prague. We went to a nice Italian place in Old Town, that was quite reasonable for the food we got. After that, she wanted to show me Prague’s oldest pub, called U Fleku, which has been in business consistently since 1499! Yes, you read that right. This place is over FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OLD and still packed every night.
We had a round of beers that they brewed right at the pub. It was a darker beer, but smooth and light to the taste. I enjoyed it immensely and would have had more if I didn’t have a train to catch. There was a roving accordion guy playing some of the favorite Czech folk tunes, and the place was quite festive. I can’t believe I didn’t see this place sooner! I still had my bag at the hotel, and I still wanted to swing by Tom’s bar to say goodbye to him before heading on to the train station. So after dinner and the impromptu visit to U Fleku, I bid goodbye and gave my thanks to Lucie, who really made my visit far more fascinating, and hopped on a tram back to the hotel.
Now, before I go on to my next anecdote, I know I always say that it really is a small world. And still some people don’t want to believe me. Well, tell me if this will convert some doubters.
On the very tram I hopped after dinner with Lucie, sitting directly across from me, was a guy named Ondrei. Ondrei is a Czech guy I met back in Utila about 4-5 months ago. I did tell him I was going to Prague, but he made it sound like he was not going to be back in Prague before the end of the summer. Anyway, not only was Ondrei back, he was on my tram. I had my MP3 player going, so I didn’t hear him right away calling my name. The guy behind me nudged me and pointed at him. It was quite funny. It took me a minute to recognize him, and when I did, we both laughed out loud.
Anyway, we hopped off the tram, and ran into a nearby pub to have a quick beer and chat awhile. I didn’t get to talk to him too much because I seriously had to go and catch my train, while picking up my bag on the way. Unfortunately, that chance meeting caused me to not be able to meet Tom, but Tom was ok with that as well. Ondrei did tell me how he had been back a little more than a month because he got called back early to his job as a film production manager. I did promise him that I would let him know well in advance the next time I’d be in Prague, and went on my way. So, yet again, you see, it really is a small world.
So I made my train, and off to Budapest I went. It was a heck of a week. It made a believer out of me when it came down to all that is Prague. I have a feeling I’ll be coming back here again. I also want to know more of the rest of the country, which is a good incentive to come back again too. Too bad I can’t bring Andiamo up the Vltava River to it! Dammit!
Oh well, that won’t stop me from coming back though. 
Comment from: mietsie [Visitor]
I just have to say this,
what a lucky guy you are, 🙂
not flat, captain, not flat at all…
mietsie