Greetings once again, this time from Praha!! The train ride from Krakow was fairly uneventful, although I did meet a nice Polish lady, Irinata, who spoke English and shared her sandwiches with me :) We chatted for some time having the berth to ourselves, but as it filled up with passengers from other towns, we settled in for the 7 hour ride being content to watch the countryside roll by. There was plenty of snow around and some of the landscape remined me of Russia, but then it became more hilly and we passed through several tunnels as we got closer to Prague.
So it was a little disappointing to finally get here and there was no snow to be seen! Anyway, I got my bearings and decided to walk the 400m or so to my hotel. So why did no one tell me about the hills! Lugging my packs around for an hour and a half on the wrong road (damn stupid map!) made me feel like I'd climbed Mt Everest without an oxygen tank by the time I found the right place.
Anyway, once I settled in, what's the first thing one does when in Prague? Get a Thai massage of course! lol. I thought I could do with some muscle attention and went for a 30min head, neck and shoulder treatment, but now I'm not sure if I ache more from the trek with my backpacks or the so-called 'relaxation' treatment I got from the local Thai-Czech girl!
I awoke the next day pleasantly surprised though as it had snowed during the night - like 8 or 10" now completely blanketed everything! The streets were a slush as sweepers busily cleared the thoroughfares, but wow it looked awesome :). I opted to go on a free walking tour so caught a local bus into the old town and checked out the sights close by, including the amazing astronomical clock and the beautiful buildings and churches right there. I had half an hour to kill so went to the Salvador Dali exhibition - the man was surely a genius and a nut case! I saw some famous pieces as well as many I'd never seen before, but now I have a greater appreciation of what he acieved in his eccentric life.
The walking tour started with a local Slovakian girl taking us around the main sites. The group was made up of a couple of yanks, a few Indian girls, a Danish bloke who had worse money problems than me recently, a few Brazillians and of course the Aussie contingent :) We spent most of the day gaining a historical and architectural perspective of this famous city. I just love the Gothic style. It has elements of sacred geometry as well as being developed by the Protestants to piss the Catholics off, hehe. We saw the astronomical clock (again), the Old Town, the New Town, and the Jewish Quarter. It snowed for most of the way, and we rested for a coffee at some infamous witchy cafe (Agatha's?). Then we continued to a statue memorial of Franz Kafka, some Jewish synagogues, and a museum for Rudolf II - some eccentric King who was into the arts and the occult (and spent his wealth on floosies to the chagrin of his dear old mumma). We crossed the river and had a beer at another cafe (well, at least the Aussies did) and stopped at the 'pissing fountain', a modern pair of male statues peeing water from their willies, lol. After that it was a brief stop at the John Lennon Wall, a place for people to freely graffiti their anti-government or peace slogans. Actually several famous people have left their mark on this city, including Micahael Jackson, Mick Jagger, George Bush and Tom Cruise when he filmed Mission Impossible here.
The tour ended but I wanted to see the Prague Castle so made my way up the hill. It blew me away - not the main castle buildings which are all beautiful, but the dominating St Vitus Cathedral which is the most outstanding Gothic Cathedral I've ever seen (maybe the only one?). So after watching the changing of the guards whose blank expressions rival that of the London beefeaters, I walked to the Cathedral. It was all free to enter and it oozed with relics from the middle ages exalting the glories of Christ and had superb stained glass windows and statues of every biblical character you could think of - JC, Mary and Mary, John the Baptist, as well as beautiful icon paintings of some royals from centuries past. From outside, the views over the city shrouded in snow were just like I imagined they would be, so I was happy about that :).
Having got my fill there, I headed back to town over the famous Charles Bridge, and had visions of my mate Brett playing his djembe there a few years ago when he visited. There were still plenty of tourist art for sale, as well as artists doing sketches and a small jazz trio playing some tunes. The tourists were thick and strong, and by now I had enough of the crowds so caught the bus back to the hotel.
Its been a long day but a good one. My lightning tour of Europe continues tomorrow when I head south to Ceske Krumlov. Thinking about it now I should have left myself more time to really enjoy these places, but its certainly enlightening nevertheless.
Stay tuned for more stories from the road :)
