Prague was really unforgettable and certainly the most architecturally beautiful European city I have yet visited. I was there with Mike, Charity, and Bettina, who are CESRI fellows from Poland, Slovakia, and Germany respectively. I took a Schlafwagen (sleeping car in the night train) from Köln (Cologne) at 10:00pm-ish on Thursday and arrived 10:00am-ish on Friday very tired. The Schlafwagen was not worth the extra 100 Euro, but now I can say I've spent the night in a sleeper train! :)
The other CESRI fellows wouldn't arrive until 8:30pm, so I wandered around the town. I found this billboard directly outside my train station. No idea what they're selling.
I found our hotel and picked up a flier proclaiming itself as "The Most Useful Map of Prague!", which turned out to be handy if you wanted to find a hotel, which I didn't, since I already had one. It did include a metro-map though, so 15 minutes later I was down on St. Wenceslaus square in front of the National Museum.
"The Most Useful Map" showed parks behind the museum, so I wandered over there. Remember, I hadn't been in Prague so much as an hour, so I was a little shocked to find a drug dealer helping shoot up two kids in broad daylight behind the museum. Leather strap on upper arm, needle, lighter, the complete set. I even stopped to stare and they didn't seem to care. But that was nothing. Right round the next corner I found a lady holding a baby on one arm and shooting herself up with the other! I decided I didn't like Prague very much at first sight.
I took a walk down St. Wenceslaus and into the old town. I found hot-dog sellers, lots of tourists, and beautiful buildings everywhere. In one side-alley, I found a creepy Asian guy selling hand-guns and an M-16. Down another was a fantastic collection of cut and spun crystal. Crystal is a big thing in Prague. You can buy it
everywhere. I had Chinese food for lunch.
Here's part of the story I shouldn't tell, but hey, here goes.... So even after seeing these druggies behind the museum, I decided to take a little rest in the park. (Park was close to the Museum, which I wanted to see next.) My 15-min sit-on-a-bench turned into a complete 1-hour completely passed-out nap in the heart of shoot-me-up Prague. I sure felt stupid when I woke up....
I probably would have slept even longer, except it began to hail (in June!). It was an excuse to check out the National Museum, which actually sucked. They have this annoying habit of exhibiting things they don't actually own. For example, the Hope Diamond is in the Smithsonian collection, but somehow it was on display here. As a plastic copy. Next to the plastic copy of the Jubilee Diamond and the Blue Heart Diamond. OK. They also did this with two prehistoric human skeletons (also in the Smithsonian) and the Statue of the Dying Gaul (which, to be fair, has been copied quite a lot). The mammalian collection was really cool though. They have an enormous (real) whale skeleton.
I met up with Mike and Charity around 7:30 and we got some dinner. We were sleeping four people in a three-person room, so we had to keep a lookout for Bettina so she wouldn't try to check-in and blow our cover. Our watch was supported by some excellent Vodka and blackcurrant juice that Mike bought duty-free in Poland. Once Bettina showed up, we went out on the town! We walked through Old Town and across the Charles Bridge in the dark. It was very crowded with tourists, but very beautiful.
The next day was really full! We started at the Museum of Communism, where we learned about
Jan Palach who lit himself on fire to protest communism. Took the guy four days to die. After that, we took a hike around the city. The
Prague Castle and the view from
St. Vitus Cathedral were particularly amazing.
At noon, we watched the
Prague Astronomical Clock chime (I made a video).
My favorite part of the trip came next:
Bodies!
Bodies features humans which have been dissected and plastinated so every tiny detail is completely life-like. It's an amazing experience. There were exhibits for all the primary systems (nervous, skeletal, etc) as well as athletically-posed bodies. The reproduction exhibit included embryos and fetuses at all stages of development which had been treated with calcium dyes to show developing bones. There was also a body which had been cut head-to-toe into thin, evenly-spaced cross sections which was really cool, and a body where the skeleton had been removed from the soft tissue to look like two people holding hands, but it's really one guy holding hands with his own skeleton. Nothing is covered or removed, but everything is presented in a scientific light with a strangely artistic flair. My mom would have loved it.
After Bodies we went to a pub Charity had discovered. (Charity didn't come to Bodies, but I was glad Bettina went. She's a Vet so she gave us a much more interesting tour than my silly audio guide). I tried a few sips of
absinthe and a plate of traditional Czech food (cheese, anchovies, pepper, paprika, and bread, all soaked in beer) to go with my excellent Czech beer. At dusk, we climbed up a nearby hill where a gigantic statue of Stalin used to stand, but now there's a crummy giant metronome covered in graffiti and necking teenagers. It turned out to be exactly the right place to be because a fireworks show started not long after we arrived. (The city was launching fireworks. Not the teenagers.)
The next morning we visited the Czech Technical Museum. Only we didn't. We were confused by the Czech signs and went into the museum across the square, which was the Czech Agricultural Museum. We spent about a half hour looking for something technical beyond tractors before we realized our mistake. But we did find this drawing on a tack-board covered in children's sketches. Apparently Prague is a tough town.
After the museum debacle we went down to the river and rented a rowboat. Bettina and I rowed while Mike and Charity took pictures. I let Charity row long enough to get this photo.
We saw the
Dancing House from the river and all the marvelous Czech architecture. For lunch we stopped in a non-English speaking pub and ordered beer and random menu selections. Turns out we got fried spam, chicken and dumplings, and lots of mashed potatoes. Nice farm food.
This mistranslation was the source of innuendo for the next half hour or so, particularly when Mike "happened" to get a picture of Bettina's face just below the writing.
I left Prague at 8:00PM, sharing a seating car with four other people. I slept by spreading myself out on the floor and not caring who stepped on me, and arrived back in Köln at about 7:00AM. From there, I was one train-stop from a shower and the lab. Whew!
