First night in Prague...

We arrived in Prague around 3pm on a Friday. The train station was so confusing because hardly anything was in English and the words weren’t easy to figure out. We first went to the international train desk to ask about tickets to Interlaken, our next stop. The guy at the desk spoke English, but apparently wasn’t in the mood to be very helpful. We did find out what time we needed to be back to the station in 2 days, so I guess that’s all we really needed. No reservation required. We have found it so helpful to make the international ticket desk our first stop upon arriving into each city. That way you don’t worry about travel or extra costs during your time in the city and you don’t have to come back to the station during your stay, but instead, just get there about 30 minutes before your train.

Next we stopped in the tourist help area…interesting name because they also didn’t seem to be in the mood to help. We didn’t have directions to our hostel just an address, so the lady pointed us in a general direction. We had to change money over to Crowns, which was a little confusing to get used to…their coins are worth quite a bit more than they seem! The change desk gave us all bills, but the metro ticket machine only took coins. So then we had to go buy something with the bills so that we could get change back. It worked and we finally figured out how to buy the tickets and which Metro line to get on and which to connect at to get to our area of town, Mala Strana.

View from Charles Bridge

Once in Mala Strana, I stopped a police officer to ask him if he knew where the hotel was. He didn’t really help much (see the theme here), but also pointed us in a general direction. We found Charles Bridge as we looked for our hotel. We stopped under the bridge at a plaza. There was a guy playing the guitar and singing, so it was a good little relaxing spot to try to figure out where to head to next.  I can't describe well enough how beautiful this city is.

View of Prague Castle from Charles Bridge

We finally found the hostel. It was really quaint and decorated Ikea style. Our room is more like an apartment than a room. It was actually made up of 4 rooms. The first was the kitchen/common area with a connecting bathroom. The next 2 rooms were the bed rooms, one with 2 sets of bunk-beds and one with 3 sets. There were nice lockers and tables in each room. As soon as we set our bags down we were greeted by a crazy Australian. Her name was Claire and she seemed really nice…and loud! She told us about a tour, the Beer Challenge, and we decided to join her because we were wanting to do a pub crawl in one of the cities.

View from Charles Bridge

The tour turned out to be a great idea! On our way to it we got to look over the Charles Bridge to both sides of the beautiful city. Incredible! Prague is known as the city of a hundred spires, but I think that nickname is underestimated by quite a bit. Every building whether an important historical sight or just a run of the mill shop was decorated with amazing architectural details from the door to the roof. I can’t describe to you how overwhelming it was to look around and everything in sight to be so antique, beautiful and full of history. Prague was the only city not to have been destroyed by WWII…well it actually did get accidentally bombed and lost part of the Old Town Hall, but nothing compared to the devastation other cities incurred.

The Beer Challenge included history of Czech beer (they think it’s the best in the world), beer drinking etiquette (before taking a sip, you must toast “Na zdravi” to each person you are with while looking them straight in the eyes, then tap your beer on the table and take a big gulp not sip) and stops at 4 pubs.

Before the fist pub our guide stopped us at a mini-market and took D in as his assistant to get everyone on the tour a bottle of the beer Staropramen. We learned of a new law outlawing open containers near the historic squares. The law was created in an effort to reduce the number of drunk bums from passing out in tourist areas. So we had to walk for a few blocks to get out of the historic area and onto safe open container grounds.

As we stood outside of the first pub on our tour finishing our bottles we learned about an artist that has created pieces of art and secretly hid them throughout the city. The one hanging over us was a man dangling from a beam. It was the only one we found.

After finishing our beers our guide told us to simply place them on the sidewalk. Sounds weird, but it is actually how they keep their streets clean. The bottles are worth 3 crowns if you take them back to a market. So when you set them down on the sidewalk within a few minutes a homeless person will snatch them up and turn them in for you. They also have grates along the sidewalks which are the places people are to throw their cigarettes. The streets really were amazingly clean. And since I’m talking about the streets, I want to mention how I’m so thankful neither of us twisted an ankle while we were there. The streets are paved with bricks, but don’t picture a smooth, flat brick street. Picture a very uneven street with huge gaps between each brick. It was very picturesque, but I’m not sure how the girls in high heels were walking around on them.

Back to the tour…We learned that on this tour we were going to be tasting un-pasteurized beer. New to us! On our way to the tour D had let me taste his pasteurized Pilsner Urquell, a Czech brewed favorite in this city. On the tour, our first pub beer was un-pasteurized Pilsner Urquell. Wow, what a difference! The un-pasteurized was much better, smoother with much less carbonation and lots of flavor. We learned that pasteurization adds the carbonation and chemicals giving you a fuller feeling and a hangover if you drink too much…but supposedly not so with un-pasteurized. There were only a few pubs in Prague that serve un-pasteurized beer because it is more difficult to store requiring special tanks to keep it from going bad.

Another stop on our tour included dinner. We were encouraged to get the fried cheese…yes, just a big piece of cheese breaded and fried served with fries and tartar sauce. A heart attack on a plate. But of course we tried it…split one serving and that was plenty. It was terribly delicious!

Our favorite stop on the tour was at the Communist bar. It was set up in what looked like a cave with rock walls and curved ceilings and doorways. Each room in the winding cave was dimly lit, some with red lights and themed for a different phase of their communist rule from communism to freedom. Did you know they were a communist country until 1989? Each room also had interesting wall hangings, like motorbikes on the walls. In the room with live music and dancing there was a huge statue of Joker from Batman. It was hanging from floor to ceiling…remember the walls are curved so its head was hanging over the dance floor. Super creepy! We actually noticed a lot of weird wall and ceiling hangings at other bars in Prague as well. Definitely unique!

After the communist bar we decided to try to break away from annoying, overly talkative Australia. We didn’t think we could just bail because she was our roommate, she told us about the tour, and she had mentioned still hanging out with us after the tour. So we said to the group that we were heading to another bar and asked if anyone wanted to go…assuming they would all say no and stay where they were all seated since it took forever to get a table. However, D was the class clown and had won over many fans. They all decided to come with us…including Australia.

We didn’t know where to go so we decided to just go into the next club. It was also dimly lit and cave-like. We went into the room with the dance floor, but no one was dancing even though it was the kind of music we would typically dance to back in America. However, as soon as La Bamba came on, everyone really got down. They continued to dance to American oldies, like “Hit the Road Jack” and “Everybody Let’s Rock.” They also really liked “Grease Lightening,” and I had to join in. So funny!

Finally we escaped on our own.  First night in Prague was a success!!