Well I've finally done it, I've finally left the country. And first stop: Prague.
I found the hostel (Miss Sophie's) with no real difficulty. It's more mid-range than budget, but it was my first night and given that it's in the Czech Republic, it's still pretty cheap. It looked great but my room wasn't ready so I left my stuff in a locker and went for an adventure. I went to the train station and tried to decode the train timetables, with surprising amount of success. I was disproportionately pleased with myself for getting a train ticket for the morrow using my very limited phrase book Czech. Afterwards I went to find food and ended up in a random old resturant, which had a guy with an accordian and a tuba player providing the entertainment. They served goulash and dumplings and foamy beer. Shame there's no smoking ban over here yet. Trying to eat with folk smoking is really not pleasant.
I spent most of the afternoon just losing myself wandering the streets. Prague is such a beautiful city. You don't have to be doing anything in particular to appreciate it. A lot of it was fairly familiar from the last time I was there a few years ago. In fact, the hostel was just round the corner from where we stayed that time. After finding a cheap internet cafe to type up my last entry, I headed back there to find that yes, my room was ready but no, I couldn't have my keycard because the computers were down. The lass behind the desk just had to let me in and out. The room was great though. It's clean, kinda Art Deco-y, a has the best shower I have ever experienced in my entire life. It's a power shower and the shower head is bigger than a dinner plate. Immense.
In the morning, i got up bright and early to get the train to Melnik (excuse the lack of accents, I can't work out how to get them on this keyboard). Did a fair bit of pointing at tickets and smiling at ticket conductors to confirm I was getting on the right train, but it was all good. The train was reasonably comfortable, on time and not over-crowded -- better than can be said for a number of UK trains I've had the joy of travelling in. Melnik is quite a small town to the North of Prague and you have to change at Vsetaty. A lot of the time, the train doesn't stop/leave from the track next to the station, so you just have to blighly wander over the other tracks to get to and fro. Ooh and the train line takes you past fields and fields of sunflowers.
I spent a few hours looking round. I went to St Peter and Paul's and saw the Ossuary. I had to more or less guess the direction of the town from the station, but once you get closer there's signposts and so forth. The Ossuary was pretty easy to find, although the woman on the door seemed to really resent my presense (and my inability to speak Czech) and ran round sweeping while i was looking round. The room is lined with walls of skulls and bones, all carefully placed to make patterns and symbols. They're from the plague victims in the 1500s and we arranged during the WW1 by a University Professor and his students, though i have no idea why. Also, I have no idea why they placed the Germanic skulls facing the opposite direction from the Czech ones.
I would've liked to see the church but it was closed so I walked around the old town. It's a pleasant stroll and I decided to have a poke around the Regional Museum. I'm fairly sure I was the only person there who wasn't employed there and all the infomation was in Czech, so I had to guess what some of the crazier stuff was all about. In particular, I'd like to know about one picture showing a guy sitting at a desk, probably a monk, probably working on a Bible. At his feet was a little man-like devil and at his head, whispering in his ear, was a cow with angel wings. Wuh?
There was a bunch of stone-age pots and what appeared to be the Czech equivilent of Wedgewood blue and white crockery. There were a few swords and guns, some natural history stuff, a bit on agriculture and folk history, and some stone wine cellars that were basically really cool caves. When I emerged from that lot, I was taken over the road to the other part of the museum: the largest collection of prams and baby carriers in the country. Possibly, in all Europe. I looked at them as politely as I could manage but bobbed off within ten minutes.
I headed back to the station via a friendly corner shop to get supplies for my long train journey to Harrochov...
