Another early morning getting onto the bus and heading for the capital of Czech, the country that consumes more alcohol per person than any other in the world. And the drinks are cheap too... woohoo
Along the way we had a couple of stops, firstly in Dresden) still in Germany). This was an optional night stop for our trip but we chose not to. 95 percent (cant find the percent key...) of Dresden was bombed by the allies during WWII so it is fairly new place.
We also had a hour or so stop off in a place called Terezin (Czech). This whole town was a Ghetto for Jewish people and was controlled by the Nazi´s. Just out of town there was also a Concentration camp. We did a tour of the camp, this was not a death camp, more a housing camp for people before they were sent to place like Auschwitz, however more than 5000 ppl died due to illness and of course execution. There were bullet marks all in the walls and also the platforms for the hangings. The tour was amazing, we had never seen anything like it before. You could see rooms that housed up to 600 people with only one toilet during the cold winters. You couldnt really imagine what it must of been like for them back then. This was one of the first camps to be closed at the end of the war. Krystal and some of the other girls had a sick feeling in there stomachs the whole time!
We finally arrived in Prague (Praha) later that afternoon. We were staying right in the centre of town, unlike most people from the bus who were out of town. We caught the train into town with another couple, luckily Peter was born in Czech and could speak the language cos we had no idea, there language is absolutely crazy and so hard to understand.
The centre of town was amazing. Every street is filled with gothic buildings from as far back as the 1400's and earlier. The old town square, where we were staying, had a HUGE screen TV and beer and food stands all round it for the Euro Cup. That night some of our friends came into town to meet us and watch the game, the centre was packed. We ate local sausages and chicken from the stalls and had a few beers.
The next day we all met at 'Muzeum station' for our walking tour of Prague. It was run by an English guy who was off in his own world for most of the time. We got to see heaps of the city, including the Astronomical clock. This was built in the 14th century. It only tells time by the hour but also has a zodiac ring which shows movement of the stars, sky and sun. It shows 3 times, including Arabic time aswell as Babylonian time (the only clock in the world to do so). It also has another dial which is a name calender and has all Czech names and their star sighs. Pretty impressive. The king of the time actually had the builders eyes gauged out so he could never build a better one.
We also spent a bit of time at the Prague castle which is the largest castle grounds in the world and sits up above the whole town. It is beautiful and parts of the buildings date back well over 1,000 years.
Later that night we went out to Plus Prague (were the other guys were staying) for an authentic meal, Krystal had Goulash which was grose as it had deer and the meat was terrible.
The next day we desperately needed to do washing, but couldnt find anywhere to do it... haha... We spent the day exploring the town and Krystal bought some Babushka dolls which are everywhere in Prague. We had a pretty easy day, in readiness for our Pub Crawl that night....
This pub crawl was more of a Cocktail bar crawl. The second bar we went to was Coyote Ugly bar and the girls did a show for us... Drinks were pretty pricey for czech standards. The next bar was an awesome underground bar, which we all loved. We finished the night at a night club on Level 6 of a building and had fantastic views over the city, not that we were interested in sightseeing at this stage. Finished up pretty late (with a Maccas stop on the way home), a few of the other guys had to catch the bus at 8am, luckily we stayed on for another 2 days and could sleep in til midday.
On the last day we took a day tour out to Kutna Hora, this is a small Bohemian town with some amazing churches and also has the Bone Church. You really needs to see this place... Everything in the church is made out of bones. There are bones to over 40,000 people in this church as a plague went through the town hundreds of years ago and they had no where to bury them. There are chandeliers and all the walls are just covered in bones, the artist who did it (if thats what you could call him) also made a replica of their coat of arms out of bones... It didnt quite feel right being in a smallish area with so many sculls and bones.
We also did a tour of an old church and Mint as Kutna Hora was a silver mining town and very rich back in the day.
There was also a carnival going on in the town which we got to have a look around for a while. Krystal got stuck into some local fairy floss (which was pretty good!). There was only the 2 of us and Brad on the tour for the whole day so it was good.
Prague has definately been our favourite place so far. We chose to stay an extra couple of nights than we have in other places and it was definately worth it.
