Czech out Prague

After a while we finally decided to tackle the metro system to get to our hostel, we had the name of the station we needed and the name of the building the hostel was located behind, unfortunately though as we emerged from the underground the big department store which the guide advised us we could not miss appeared to be missing, we spent a good hour looking around before finally asking some street cleaners, I left this to Nina mainly because she spoke one more language than me (no that's a lie, i just could not be bothered and was in a bit of a mood), turns out neither English nor Italian was any use and they ended up pointing at words and streets, 30 minutes later we arrived at our hostel and after waiting another 10 minutes for the host to answer the door were finally able to down our back packs and realign our spines.



Check in was not until 2pm in the afternoon so we decided to head into Prague and see what was about, some say Prague is a City that never sleeps due to its masses of clubs and stag groups, me and Nina however decided that morning that Prague was a City that never wakes up as wondering around at 8:30 the place seemed like a ghost town. I was hoping to catch sunrise from Charles Bridge but the stupid hidden department store had put pay to that idea, however strolling across Charles bridge when it is pretty much deserted was really nice and really peaceful so it wasn't all bad news, once we reached the other side we decided to grab some hot drinks and Breakfast, turns out the Czechs serve a pretty awesome bacon and eggs although they only seem to serve Earl Grey which just does not work, with a greasy fry up it has to be good old PG tips or Tetley at a push, I did have this discussion with Nina but not being a tea drinker she didn't fully appreciate what I was saying.


By the time we were done with breakfast it was still only 9:30 and nothing seemed to open until 10am so we wondered back across the bridge and located the torture museum hoping to erase the memories of the one in Sighasoara, finally at 10:15 the doors opened and in we went, this time we had 3 floors of all kinds of crazy devises to look at and were really impressed with the collection, we were also pretty chuffed that things had moved on slightly since the dark ages as I'm pretty sure Nina would have been burned at the stake for being a witch or something (seriously 9 weeks and you'd understand). The torture museum allowed us to kill a good few hour and a half but we still had a long time to wait until we could check into our hostel so we decided to head to the old square where we sat outside a cafe with mauled wine watching the astronomical clock as it hit the hour. Each hour on the hour the bell chimes, some characters pop out of a window, death turns the sand timer (a bit depressing), the cock crows and then the big bells chime, as you can imagine this really draws the crowds and inevitably a round of applause always greeted the end of the clocks functions so automatically that it could be mistaken for an extra part of the mechanism.

With the mauled wine sitting warm in our belly's we decided to head towards Wenceslas square and had wonder through a few of the shops, there were still plenty of sights we wanted to see but we were simply too shattered to take any of them in so we figure window shopping would be preferable, it killed quite a bit of time and after we had grabbed a bit to eat from one of the numerous food booths located on the walk way (really cheap, tasty yet unspectacular grub, Nina had fired cheese in a bap and I had 4 sausages in a bap) it was just about time for us to head back to the hostel and crash, this time as we had the code to the door we were able to get straight in and within 10 minutes we were both dead to the world in our 8 person dorm. After dozing for 3 hours or so we were woken by some newly arriving room mates, 2 Americans who were "just like sooooooo excited", after exchanging niceties for 5 mins sleep beckoned again and we didn't wake again for a good 3 hours, by that time it was 7:30.

We had decided earlier in the day we would take in another museum in the evening as many of them were open late into the night, given a choice between the communist museum and the much more light hearted Sex Machine museum both of which we wanted to go to, we opted for the light hearted option one of the noisy excitable Americans joined us. You can find the Sex Machine Museum down an alleyway just opposite the Astronomical clock and I would recommend it to all, it is simply hysterical, the velvet red curtains you have to pass to enter makes the whole affair seem a lot more seedy than it actually is, its hard to give much more of a description of what you will find but put it this way the horny people of the past were certainly very creative and some would say slightly warped. After spending and hour or so simply dying of laughter and cringing at the descriptions of the uses of some of the objects we decided it was time to head for a bit e to eat we had already got a recommendation off of the hostel workers as to where to go to.

We didn't mean to be unkind but both me and Nina were slightly peeved that the American seemed to want to accompany us to the meal as well but being to kind to object we just allowed her to tag along, the restaurant we were going to was close to our hostel and served mainly traditional Czech food ( meat, meat and more meat), luckily as we arrive at the door the American decided she was continue wandering which allowed us to enjoy are meal and discussed how narked we were at the fact that the two Americans were so loud when they first arrived earlier during our nap (we're so bitchy). the food was pretty good and the service was cool too, however Nina was beginning to realise that if you are vegetarian in Czech Republic you need to like fired cheese. After a couple of beers it was time for us to head back to the dorm to get a proper nights sleep, unfortunately that night we had to complete with a snorer and the American girls loud objections to the snoring, they were really beginning to grate.


The next morning we were again woke by the two Americans and their friends who were having a full scale conversation in the middle of the room with no concern as to who was sleeping and who was not, eventually one of the guys at the far end who had been out partying all night and whose damp slightly vomit stained shirt hung over the radiator voiced his objections and finally the shut up for a while. Included in our hostel price was a breakfast which you could either choose to eat in the hostel or you could grab a sandwich and eat on the move, we decided on the latter and headed onto the streets of Prague once again.

Prague has started to get a bit of a reputation for being a haven for stag parties and overly touristic but to be honest we found it very easy to avoid these supposed trappings, its simple really if you don't want to hit Irish bars or run into stag do's just avoid Wenceslas square after about 6 pm, in truth other that its history (the attempted revolution in the 60's with Jan Pallach setting fire to him self) Wenceslas square is probably the most disappointing part of Prague, the streets are lined with McDonalds, Subways and Marks and Spencers and as Nina kept pointing out it is simply not a square. By all means it is worth a look but time in Prague is definitely better spent around the old square (actually is a square) and across Charles Bridge on the castle side of the city.

On our second day in Prague we headed to the Communist museum and spent a good two hours there, it was so well done, lots of reading but very very interesting, there was also a brilliant subtitled video documenting the attempted revolution and the various forms of oppression the citzens had to suffer when ruled by the soviets under the guise of a puppet government, much like the tour of the Third Reich in Munich and the various bits and pieces in the former Yugoslavian states the Museum left me wanting to learn much much more about the whole situation ( i am going to be doing a lot of reading when I'm home). After grabbing a Subway (see the touristy side of things does come in handy) we head over to the Bodies exhibition, obviously this is totally un-Prague related but I had wanted to catch this when I was in London, it is basically and exhibition set up by the scary German guy who did the live autopsies on Channel 4 a few years back, the exhibition was amazingly well done and you had to keep reminding yourself that you were actually looking at real people (bodies), Nina admitted to feeling a bit queasy at certain points but we both found the whole thing fascinating and would recommend it to anyone should you get a chance to go.

That same evening wanting to avoid spending to much time at the hostel we decided to head to a bar which was just across from the cheap restaurant we had chosen to eat at, the bar was called O'Che's and was a weird mix of Irish stroke revolutionary bar, but beer was cold and the atmosphere was nice so we were happy, we spent a good few hours there with me giving Nina a hiding (albeit using the wrong rules) on our backgammon set we had recently acquired. Eventually we decided to call at night and headed back to the Hostel as the following day we were leaving Prague for a couple of days and heading to Cesky Kromlov about 2 hours south west of Prague, Nina had booked a private room at a hostel which looked really sweet there so we could get some much needed proper sleep, unfortunately we ended up having a few extra guests who were definitely unwelcome.