In prague we decided to stay at a hostel called madhouse. By the name alone, you can imagine which type of hostel this was. I booked this one because I thought it would be fun for us to stay at one that had some good pub crawls and a party style. This was the extreme version of that though. Id like to make a point of saying that I am 20 and matt is 24. We have been travelling for close to 9 weeks and have only been really drunk once, and that was in Tenerife. Most people our age, I would think, would want to do this trip to see what partying in europe is all about. We have instead, seen europe in a different light... for example, daylight. At first I felt that maybe we were being boring, but the more I thought about it, you can get drunk anywhere in the world and with enough shots of tequila in your system your backyard wainfleet party next day hangover will be near enough the same as the hangover you'd get from a bar in prague. So with that being said, the madhouse was too intense for our liking. When we checked in, the receptionist was half buzzed from pre drinks and insisted we go to the bar with him. When we got there, the rest of the staffs idea of a good night was getting 10 shots of jager in before your first beer. How about I dont do that, and save myself the hangover and morning sickness. Cheers.
Prague, in the daylight, is a truly beautiful city. We took the sandemans free tour and learned a lot about the history and various things within prague.Our tour guide explained in detail how to read the astronomical clock and spoke to us about the large list of names on the bottom circle of the tower. Everyone in prague has to name their child one of these names, and if they don't want to, they need to ask the council if they can choose a different name and explain why that name is better. This clock is 600 years old, so you can imagine it isn't the greatest list.
We went down the road to a theatre where Mozart once played and recieved a 30 minute standing ovation. Can you believe that.. 30 minutes of non stop clapping! They loved him in Prague. We also went to another theatre that used to have 6 statues on top of it. Now it only has 5. Hitler used to love this theatre, it had his favourite musician, amongst 6 statues, including mozart and Beethoven. However, one of the statues was a jewish musician. Of course we know hitler wasn't the biggest fan, so he ordered some of his SS men to go ontop of this building and remove the jewish statue. They didn't know which one was the jewish one though. Hitler told them to get a ruler, and measure all of their noses. The one with the longest nose 'must have been jewish'. This is one of the most ridiculous things, even for hitler. They destroyed the statue with the biggest nose, only to find out later, that it was infact hitlers favourite musician, and wasn't jewish at all. Wow. I barely believed it when she said it, but it is a true story.
The tour was full of great stories, legends and lots of history. I would recommend this one for sure! Our tour guide told us that in 2 nights time, there was the first fire party of the year. This is basically just a party in the park, very artsy and free spirited. The style of the night was dreads and bohemian. Anyone was welcome, and in the center of the park there was about 20 people with drums, banging away and lots of people with various forms of moving fire. Some juggled, a couple hula hoops and a few things with chains. It was really cool. We didnt realize it at the time, but our tour guide recommended it, because she does it!! She had two different chains with little fireballs at the end, and she was very good. It was a very non touristy way to see prague.
The same day as our free tour, we booked and paid €15 for the beer tour. This was not a pub crawl, it was a beer tour, very different. Pub crawls, you get wasted over the span of 5 different bars... beer tours, you learn about the history and different types of beers, as well as food. We went to 4 different establishments, trying very different beers in each of them, as well as typical czech cuisine. Delicious. I dont actually like beer, so to me it all tasted bad, just different forms of bad. Matt however enjoyed each sip and of course got a 2for1 cause I didnt finish mine. One of the pubs had only one person who was allowed to pour the beer because it is poured in three different styles. The beer tour was well worth, learning about where it came from, ways to drink it, the local cuisine and last but not least, where would be better to take a beer tour than the beer drinking capital of the world.
Our last night we stayed in Florenc 41 hostel which was way older and not hostel atmosphere whatsoever. It was a great, quiet break. We took the train to a place called Kutna Hora. In this town there is a church which holds the bones of 40, 000 people. This happened because their cemetary became full, they had no where else to put the bodies, so they had to dig up the old ones and hold them in the basement until they could do something. Instead of burning them of finding a new plot of land to put them in, they decided to decorate the church. When you walk around the four corners hold majority of the bones, stacked ceiling high. The family that owned the church had their coat of arms or family crest, made out of bones and mounted on the wall. It is a little bit eery in there but if bones don't bother you, then its worth the look. This pretty much sums up prague for us. We enjoyed Czech Republic and its very easy to see why so many bachelor and bachelorette parties come here. Cheap beer, cheap bed, happy days. Next stop is Poland.
No comments:
Post a Comment