Czech Republic

Prague really promotes and lives it reputation of being a classical and artistic city – there are classical concerts every night in the main churches, opera, ballet, theatre and lots of classical music shops. Dvorak came from here and Mozart worked here a lot.

We went to the opera (The Kiss by Smetana - a local Czech). It was great - the best part being in the National Opera House. It was so beautiful with painted ceilings, huge chandeliers, galleries, live orchestra and red velvet everywhere. The tickets seemed very good value and the opera even had subtitles so we could understand.

Another night we sought out the local Jazz scene in the Bar Agharta – Rhythm Desperados were playing and they were very good, tight, entertaining and very well appreciated – more litres of beer … After that a late night walk along river to take in the night views of the castle and bridges and tram back to our apartment.

We had to decide between ballet, another opera and a guitar concert the next night. The guitar concert by a solo Czeck performer in one of the main churches won.

Eating out has also been one of our main occupations. There are hundreds, probably thousands of restaurants. The prices are very reasonable for all food and drink away from tourist areas. We usually look for a meal for about $A6-9 and beer is cheap. Fortunatley most places offer an English menu, because it is really hard to know between ‘s kfenem’, ‘se sunkou’ and ‘jablkovy zavim’ (one is horseradish, one is ham and one is apple strudel, I think). The language still hasn’t made much sense but it doesn’t sound like they are talking backwards anymore.

We have been in Prague for 3 days now and although it felt very foreign to start with it soon began to take on a feel of familiarity.

We landed in Prague from England to discover that Jeff’s guitar didn’t arrive … oh no! They assured him it would be traced and they would get it to us as soon as possible – 3 days, and numerous phone calls later, they have said it is Prague now and should have been delivered this morning – but it wasn't …

Prague is a beautiful old, ornate city that was saved from the bombings of WWII. It is like being in a fairy tale – castles, towers, wide staircases, fancy plaster decoration on everything, fine ironwork, detailed stained glass and cobble stones everywhere forming different patterns on each pavement. There are big central squares and boulevards, it feels very ‘European’. There are trams which are a bit of a novelty, plus lots of liquor shops (even selling absinthe), wine bars and pubs.

Our first hostel in the centre was in a good location but a bit on the edge … we moved to an apartment – even cheaper surprisingly – incase the hostel got noisy over the weekend. Our first meal was at a local Beer Hall. It was a sudden introduction to Czech traditions, food and drink. The place was like an old classroom complete with carved graffiti on the long tables and coat hooks on the walls, the food was hearty pork, with various sauces and potato, bread or bacon dumplings and the beer was in litre glasses followed by generous shot glasses of some potent herbal liquor. We are back in the lands where people smoke everywhere though and at precisely 11pm they closed up and asked us all to leave. For diner the next night we found a very cute restaurant with great food for very low prices and more litres of beer. Prague is famous for its beer – it is very nice and only about $1.50 / litre. Breakfast at the hostel consisted of the mysterious arrival of bread, jam and apples arriving in our common kitchen (which we had never seen anyone else use).

The Czech language is very strange though – it sounds like they are speaking backwards with odd groups of consonants like ‘vzechny’ ‘nski’ ‘tovna’ but there is usually someone who can help in English. In a book shop we visited they had done funny things to English words and names – Margaret Thatcherova and Jane Austinova to name a few. The sections in the shop were labeled Paperbacky, Thrillery and Detektivy!

The next day with marginally better weather so we went to explore the castle – it was very interesting with a high tower to the top of St Vitus Cathedral offering fantastic views over the city, big halls, lots of suits of amour (you could even buy one for only $360A), lessons in crossbow shooting, shields painted on the walls, an alleyway of tiny workmens’ cottages now selling souveniers blacksmith demonstrations and lots horrible implements of torture.

It was about at this moment that I somehow erased all my photos of the last 3 days … oh no.