The Power of the Thriller
Location: Prague, the Czech Republic
Amount of LSD Taken: Insufficient
They call Prague the City of a Thousand Spires (by the way, am I the only one who loves all these badass, Lord of the Rings-style titles they give this place?). I'm inclined to believe it. One cannot travel ten feet without tripping over something steepled. I tried counting the pointy parts on just one building, but got bored after I hit fifty. Between all of these conical contraptions and the incredible amount of gothic architecture, it is as if the city is designed to impale the unwary. Yea, for there are buttresses, and lo, they do fly.
October 21
The day dawns grey and a little drizzly. Undaunted, I grab some breakfast and head out to spend my fortune. First stop of the day is an antiques shop I passed by before that was closed. If you wonder why I was interested in an antiques shop, let me say this: it contained blades. There, done. Sadly, this shop of shops is only open Monday-Thursday... how silly of me not to have known that. Why would it be open on any other days? Grrr... Oh, well.
Stop by the Town Hall Tower (that's right, even the friggin' Town Hall is a great, bloody tower) to see the hour chime on the Astronomical Clock. It's kind of cute. Every hour this giant clock parades statues of the 12 Apostles, while the hour is chimed by a mechanical skeleton. Does it make sense? About as much as the rest of Eastern Europe, I suppose.
Up to the Old Jewish Quarter, a.k.a. Josefova. The main attraction is exactly what you would expect in a Jewish neighborhood in Eastern Europe: a cemetary. I wish I could offer a chuckling zing on that, but it's really not a joke. The cemetary is neat, even viewed as I have to through a tiny grated hole the wall. Also wander by the stupidly-named Old New Synagogue. Flip this bitch off, because... yeah.
Raining harder now. Upsetting.
Still undaunted, head south to St. Wenceslas Square. Oh, yeah. Wenceslas. You know, the guy from the Christmas Carol? As it turns out, he's Czech (Bohemian, specifically, but now we're just splitting Yuletide hairs), and he's the patron saint of the Czech People. A kind of spiritual ruler, the same niche that Tommy Hilfiger fills in the United States. They love this guy here. Everywhere you go there's Vaclav something or other (Vaclav is Czech for "Wenceslas" ...I feel like something got lost in the translation). Wenceslas Square is dominated by a huge, triumphant statue of the man himself on horseback, sword raised to conquer. The only saint to be depicted in full battle regalia poised for battle? Or just the best? Either way, the finger is what he deserves, so the finger is what he got.
At the end of the square is the National Museum, so I decide to go poke around a bit. Tickets are for pansies, so I managed to sneak my way in by casually sliding around to the back entrance then waiting while the one ticket taker was inundated by an elderly tour group, then slipping up the stairs unnoticed. Daring Commando for Life, baby. The museum is architecturally beautiful, but the actual exhibits leave something to be desired. For a guy who grew up on the Smithsonian, it's a bit lack-luster. Oh, well. At least there was a video display of how to make spears out of trees and rocks, in case I ever become stranded in the Land of No Spears and want to become their god.
By this time the rain is truly a problem, so I head back to the hostel. Grab a pita thingy for lunch and try to wait it out. Meanwhile, some people and I watch "The Italian Job" in the lounge (the new one, sorry Michael Caine). Always entertaining.
The rain ends just in time for dinner. A couple guys that I met and I go out to this restaurant called "U Fleku," recommended for its traditional Czech cuisine. The guys are Tyler, a Canadian, and Hamish, a Kiwi. The restaurant is superb. It's a little wood-and-plaster hole in the wall with about half a dozen long tables and ladder-back chairs. There is live Bohemian music on accordian and tuba, and stewards wander around with trays laden with pints of dark beer. As it turns out, this place is also a microbrewery, where they brew only two types of beer, both of which are famous. Notably so; this is perhaps the best beer I have ever tasted, a hardy, dark Czech lager without any bitterness whatsoever. The food is exactly what you would expect, beef ghoulash with bread and bacon dumplings. This is a very "man" meal.
Fun Czech fact: the town of Plzen is the birthplace of lager beer. I don't mean a type of lager (although the word "Pilsner" comes from the town's name), I mean all lagers. That means that approximately half the beers on Earth can have their roots traced right back here. BoUNCers with your joy of Yeungling... this is home. Consequently, Czech beer is excellent. By this point in my journey, my belief in American beers is steadily waning.
Another fun beer fact: Budweiser was originally a Czech brand, widely reknowned. In fact, "Budweiser" was so synonymous with good beer that the Anheuser-Busch company took it as their brand's name. Ever since (some 150 years), there has been an ongoing legal battle between companies in the United States and the Czech Republic over the name.
After dinner it's back to the hostel for some writing and some bed.
October 22
I have but one goal today: to see the Bone Church.
The Bone Church is the name we have given to a small chapel in the town of Kutna Hora, about 75 km from Prague. It is a notable tourist attraction because, aside from being a quaint little country chapel, the interior is decorated with the bones of 40,000 human beings. I'm... ahem... "dead" serious. The interior of the building is covered with bones. All sorts of bones, every type found in the human body. Skulls, especially. Lots of skulls. They form crosses and chandeliers, alters and candle holders, even the Schwarzenberg coat of arms in a grisly 6-foot tall spectacle on the wall. It was awesome. The only bone's you're now allowed to touch are a couple dozen skulls in glass cases that belong... belonged to warriors killed in the Hussite Wars. You can still see the wounds that killed him, often detailed enough to make out the shape of the swordblade or spearpoint that cleaved their brain in two. I had fun. I can also now say that I have had my finger in the hollow nose socket of a human skull. I feel that if hardcoreness could be quantified, then surely my badassery quotient rises at least a bit from that.
Flipped off an alter while I was there, for good measure.
We had hoped to be able to obtain some sort of illicit drug and spend the night in the Bone Church, fighting off skelton armies rising from the grave to murder us, but sadly we were short on substances and had no contacts in town.
After the Bone Church came the inevitable drinking. Myself, Tyler, and a London-living Aussie named John had gone to the church together, and we immediately sought out a bar. Beer was good and cheap, and we went through several rounds before we had to catch the train home, spinning hilarious conversation the entire time (the bar had a television playing all the greatest rock ballads from the 80s and 90s... why is it that I have to travel halfway around the world just to revist my childhood?). In true Aussie style, John demanded we get a bottle of liquor to suck from to keep our buzz going during the train ride, which we did, in the form of bargain-basement Kentucky Jack bourbon. You know that old saying about "beer before liquor, never sicker?" Yeah, as it turns out that's true even in places where the local language makes nonsense out of the rhyme. Rather plastered, I had to endure John and Tyler's advocations of promiscuity despite my insistance on faithfulness to a certain lovely lady back home all the way back to Prague. Quite sensibly, I declined to go clubbing with them, instead getting some meat in my belly and passing out.
Still, though, fun day.
October 23
I have a 4:23 PM train out to Cesky Krumlov, so anything I do today has got to be fast. That in mind, I jump the subway to the south of town to see Vysehrad, a mostly-intact fortification that doubles as a lookout point/garden/church grounds (of course there's a church... there's a church in every spare open space they've got). The grounds are quite beautiful, with views over looking the Vlatva river and most of Prague. I get some good peaceful wandering around time in.
Metro back into the city center to grab a sandwich from Bohemia Bagel, a tourist-friendly cafe that was recommended. Sandwich... good.
I now have just enough time to grab my stuff at the hostel and hightail it to the train station. This time, I wisely wrote down all the necessary information to get on the train before I even left the hostel, since tickets here don't deign to provide any useful information like train number, the platform it is leaving from, or the time it is leaving. Fantastic. I manage to grab my first train no problem, riding to Cesky Budejovice in something resembling style. At my connection there, I only have to sprint about a hundred meters to get to the correct train, since they had two trains leaving from the same track of the same platform, but decided not to tell anyone that.
When I get into Cesky Krumlov, there's a bit of an episode. The train station is about 20 minutes walk from the town and I have no map, so I hope to grab one of the shuttle buses into town where I can more easily get to my hostel. Upon getting on the bus, however (confused because the driver is not taking money for tickets), the conductor from the train I just got off of gets on the bus and asks me for my ticket. Not anyone else. Just me. Not knowing what else to do, I hand her my train ticket. Upon examining it, she flies into hysterics, running off the bus chattering in Czech and motioning me to follow her. The other 8 people on the bus likewise wave me off urgently. I exit the bus, surprised to find her flagging down the conductor for another train. The new guy looks at me and says "Praha?" I reply, "Yes, I just came from Prague... Praha." They start screaming at me to get on the train. I insist that I just got off the train, and I have successfully arrived at my destination. They continue unabated. Thinking that shouting must be their way of communicating, I shout back, "I'm here! I just came from Prague." Surprisingly, they seem to get that, although they aren't happy about it. I turn around to get back on this bus just in time to see it drive away. The new conductor, somewhat smugly, points the way the bus drove off and says, "Walk, 15 minutes." Thanks, asshole.
I still have no idea what prompted this bizarre need to get me onto a train to the city I just came from, especially since the ticket the conductor examined clearly conveyed this information in her native tongue. At any rate, I hike into town and bed down at Hostel 99, the first place I come to, determined to find my preferred hostel when it is light out and the tourist information bureau is open.
The hostel is very neat, built as it is directly into the city walls. I find out that it actually used to be a 16th century hospital for lepers and the insane. Perfect. Everything is all rough stone and unfinished wooden beams. Quite cool, really, except that the one woman on staff is a bitch. Oh, well. You can't win 'em all.
Progress Thus Far:
Countries Visited: 4
Stupid Tourist Moments: 33
Monuments Flipped Off: 21
Free Food Ganked: 3
Free Booze Ganked: 15
i'll drink enough of anything to make this world look new again.
-Gin Blossoms
Amount of LSD Taken: Insufficient
They call Prague the City of a Thousand Spires (by the way, am I the only one who loves all these badass, Lord of the Rings-style titles they give this place?). I'm inclined to believe it. One cannot travel ten feet without tripping over something steepled. I tried counting the pointy parts on just one building, but got bored after I hit fifty. Between all of these conical contraptions and the incredible amount of gothic architecture, it is as if the city is designed to impale the unwary. Yea, for there are buttresses, and lo, they do fly.
October 21
The day dawns grey and a little drizzly. Undaunted, I grab some breakfast and head out to spend my fortune. First stop of the day is an antiques shop I passed by before that was closed. If you wonder why I was interested in an antiques shop, let me say this: it contained blades. There, done. Sadly, this shop of shops is only open Monday-Thursday... how silly of me not to have known that. Why would it be open on any other days? Grrr... Oh, well.
Stop by the Town Hall Tower (that's right, even the friggin' Town Hall is a great, bloody tower) to see the hour chime on the Astronomical Clock. It's kind of cute. Every hour this giant clock parades statues of the 12 Apostles, while the hour is chimed by a mechanical skeleton. Does it make sense? About as much as the rest of Eastern Europe, I suppose.
Up to the Old Jewish Quarter, a.k.a. Josefova. The main attraction is exactly what you would expect in a Jewish neighborhood in Eastern Europe: a cemetary. I wish I could offer a chuckling zing on that, but it's really not a joke. The cemetary is neat, even viewed as I have to through a tiny grated hole the wall. Also wander by the stupidly-named Old New Synagogue. Flip this bitch off, because... yeah.
Raining harder now. Upsetting.
Still undaunted, head south to St. Wenceslas Square. Oh, yeah. Wenceslas. You know, the guy from the Christmas Carol? As it turns out, he's Czech (Bohemian, specifically, but now we're just splitting Yuletide hairs), and he's the patron saint of the Czech People. A kind of spiritual ruler, the same niche that Tommy Hilfiger fills in the United States. They love this guy here. Everywhere you go there's Vaclav something or other (Vaclav is Czech for "Wenceslas" ...I feel like something got lost in the translation). Wenceslas Square is dominated by a huge, triumphant statue of the man himself on horseback, sword raised to conquer. The only saint to be depicted in full battle regalia poised for battle? Or just the best? Either way, the finger is what he deserves, so the finger is what he got.At the end of the square is the National Museum, so I decide to go poke around a bit. Tickets are for pansies, so I managed to sneak my way in by casually sliding around to the back entrance then waiting while the one ticket taker was inundated by an elderly tour group, then slipping up the stairs unnoticed. Daring Commando for Life, baby. The museum is architecturally beautiful, but the actual exhibits leave something to be desired. For a guy who grew up on the Smithsonian, it's a bit lack-luster. Oh, well. At least there was a video display of how to make spears out of trees and rocks, in case I ever become stranded in the Land of No Spears and want to become their god.
By this time the rain is truly a problem, so I head back to the hostel. Grab a pita thingy for lunch and try to wait it out. Meanwhile, some people and I watch "The Italian Job" in the lounge (the new one, sorry Michael Caine). Always entertaining.
The rain ends just in time for dinner. A couple guys that I met and I go out to this restaurant called "U Fleku," recommended for its traditional Czech cuisine. The guys are Tyler, a Canadian, and Hamish, a Kiwi. The restaurant is superb. It's a little wood-and-plaster hole in the wall with about half a dozen long tables and ladder-back chairs. There is live Bohemian music on accordian and tuba, and stewards wander around with trays laden with pints of dark beer. As it turns out, this place is also a microbrewery, where they brew only two types of beer, both of which are famous. Notably so; this is perhaps the best beer I have ever tasted, a hardy, dark Czech lager without any bitterness whatsoever. The food is exactly what you would expect, beef ghoulash with bread and bacon dumplings. This is a very "man" meal.
Fun Czech fact: the town of Plzen is the birthplace of lager beer. I don't mean a type of lager (although the word "Pilsner" comes from the town's name), I mean all lagers. That means that approximately half the beers on Earth can have their roots traced right back here. BoUNCers with your joy of Yeungling... this is home. Consequently, Czech beer is excellent. By this point in my journey, my belief in American beers is steadily waning.
Another fun beer fact: Budweiser was originally a Czech brand, widely reknowned. In fact, "Budweiser" was so synonymous with good beer that the Anheuser-Busch company took it as their brand's name. Ever since (some 150 years), there has been an ongoing legal battle between companies in the United States and the Czech Republic over the name.
After dinner it's back to the hostel for some writing and some bed.
October 22
I have but one goal today: to see the Bone Church.
The Bone Church is the name we have given to a small chapel in the town of Kutna Hora, about 75 km from Prague. It is a notable tourist attraction because, aside from being a quaint little country chapel, the interior is decorated with the bones of 40,000 human beings. I'm... ahem... "dead" serious. The interior of the building is covered with bones. All sorts of bones, every type found in the human body. Skulls, especially. Lots of skulls. They form crosses and chandeliers, alters and candle holders, even the Schwarzenberg coat of arms in a grisly 6-foot tall spectacle on the wall. It was awesome. The only bone's you're now allowed to touch are a couple dozen skulls in glass cases that belong... belonged to warriors killed in the Hussite Wars. You can still see the wounds that killed him, often detailed enough to make out the shape of the swordblade or spearpoint that cleaved their brain in two. I had fun. I can also now say that I have had my finger in the hollow nose socket of a human skull. I feel that if hardcoreness could be quantified, then surely my badassery quotient rises at least a bit from that.Flipped off an alter while I was there, for good measure.
We had hoped to be able to obtain some sort of illicit drug and spend the night in the Bone Church, fighting off skelton armies rising from the grave to murder us, but sadly we were short on substances and had no contacts in town.
After the Bone Church came the inevitable drinking. Myself, Tyler, and a London-living Aussie named John had gone to the church together, and we immediately sought out a bar. Beer was good and cheap, and we went through several rounds before we had to catch the train home, spinning hilarious conversation the entire time (the bar had a television playing all the greatest rock ballads from the 80s and 90s... why is it that I have to travel halfway around the world just to revist my childhood?). In true Aussie style, John demanded we get a bottle of liquor to suck from to keep our buzz going during the train ride, which we did, in the form of bargain-basement Kentucky Jack bourbon. You know that old saying about "beer before liquor, never sicker?" Yeah, as it turns out that's true even in places where the local language makes nonsense out of the rhyme. Rather plastered, I had to endure John and Tyler's advocations of promiscuity despite my insistance on faithfulness to a certain lovely lady back home all the way back to Prague. Quite sensibly, I declined to go clubbing with them, instead getting some meat in my belly and passing out.
Still, though, fun day.
October 23
I have a 4:23 PM train out to Cesky Krumlov, so anything I do today has got to be fast. That in mind, I jump the subway to the south of town to see Vysehrad, a mostly-intact fortification that doubles as a lookout point/garden/church grounds (of course there's a church... there's a church in every spare open space they've got). The grounds are quite beautiful, with views over looking the Vlatva river and most of Prague. I get some good peaceful wandering around time in.
Metro back into the city center to grab a sandwich from Bohemia Bagel, a tourist-friendly cafe that was recommended. Sandwich... good.
I now have just enough time to grab my stuff at the hostel and hightail it to the train station. This time, I wisely wrote down all the necessary information to get on the train before I even left the hostel, since tickets here don't deign to provide any useful information like train number, the platform it is leaving from, or the time it is leaving. Fantastic. I manage to grab my first train no problem, riding to Cesky Budejovice in something resembling style. At my connection there, I only have to sprint about a hundred meters to get to the correct train, since they had two trains leaving from the same track of the same platform, but decided not to tell anyone that.
When I get into Cesky Krumlov, there's a bit of an episode. The train station is about 20 minutes walk from the town and I have no map, so I hope to grab one of the shuttle buses into town where I can more easily get to my hostel. Upon getting on the bus, however (confused because the driver is not taking money for tickets), the conductor from the train I just got off of gets on the bus and asks me for my ticket. Not anyone else. Just me. Not knowing what else to do, I hand her my train ticket. Upon examining it, she flies into hysterics, running off the bus chattering in Czech and motioning me to follow her. The other 8 people on the bus likewise wave me off urgently. I exit the bus, surprised to find her flagging down the conductor for another train. The new guy looks at me and says "Praha?" I reply, "Yes, I just came from Prague... Praha." They start screaming at me to get on the train. I insist that I just got off the train, and I have successfully arrived at my destination. They continue unabated. Thinking that shouting must be their way of communicating, I shout back, "I'm here! I just came from Prague." Surprisingly, they seem to get that, although they aren't happy about it. I turn around to get back on this bus just in time to see it drive away. The new conductor, somewhat smugly, points the way the bus drove off and says, "Walk, 15 minutes." Thanks, asshole.
I still have no idea what prompted this bizarre need to get me onto a train to the city I just came from, especially since the ticket the conductor examined clearly conveyed this information in her native tongue. At any rate, I hike into town and bed down at Hostel 99, the first place I come to, determined to find my preferred hostel when it is light out and the tourist information bureau is open.
The hostel is very neat, built as it is directly into the city walls. I find out that it actually used to be a 16th century hospital for lepers and the insane. Perfect. Everything is all rough stone and unfinished wooden beams. Quite cool, really, except that the one woman on staff is a bitch. Oh, well. You can't win 'em all.
Progress Thus Far:
Countries Visited: 4
Stupid Tourist Moments: 33
Monuments Flipped Off: 21
Free Food Ganked: 3
Free Booze Ganked: 15
i'll drink enough of anything to make this world look new again.
-Gin Blossoms
posted by Will Jones at 3:01 AM
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