Back to the Homelands (Weekend 5)

Prague was an exciting city to me for a number of reasons. Besides its own rich history, the city also had a special history for my ancestors. Being from Czechoslovakia, my great grandmother actually lived not far from the city and probably visited many times in her life. For me, however, this was an entirely new experience, and I wanted to take as much of the actual city in as reasonably possible. This is exactly what I did, and I quickly discovered that Prague is so much more than its party city stereotype first suggests (though this stereotype is certainly not untrue).

For me, the most important, and most enjoyable, part of the weekend was simply wandering through the city. The city was beautiful but not in a pushy or overbearing sort of way. Rather it was a more quaint and agreeable atmosphere altogether. This was seen especially in the old-style architecture which was most common in the city. It seemed almost as though I had stepped through time into an eighteenth century fairy tale. The town also offered a number of unique souvenirs. Especially interesting to me were the Bohemian crystals. Not only were they beautiful, but there were also a great buy. Up until this point I had been doubting the people who told me that Prague was a cheap city, but at least in this instance the price was great and I was able to get a nice gift for my girlfriend that I most likely wouldn't have been able to afford in the States.
To learn more about the history of the city, I decided to take a Ghost Tour of the city along with my small group. The advertisement promised a good time, and I was very excited to get started. When we found the tour waiting by the Astronomical Clock Tower after some slightly stressful searching, I could immediately tell that the ad hadn't lied. Our guide for the evening was a seven foot tall Grim Reaper. When he wasn't jokingly bashing us for being American, he was cracking jokes about the drunks in the streets or terrifying old women. He really made the tour enjoyable, and I would honestly considering paying to see the guy do standup even without the facade of the Ghost Tour. It wasn't ALL about the guide though, and many of the stories he told us on the walk were truly scary, though it was hard to be scared with such a light a atmosphere.
For my last day in Prague, I did what I like to call a museum circuit. Since all the small museums were in one area, it was very convenient to hop from one to the other. In total, my group did five of them: the Ice Age Museum, the Sex Machines Museum, the Torture Museum, the Chocolate Museum, and the Wax Museum. Without going into too much detail, I will say that all were very...interesting. Some were a bit more bizarre than I was used to, but this last weekend of the program was certainly a good time to make sure to open up my mind to new things. Though all of the museums were very small, I was still impressed with the fact that we saw so many in one dayand even had time to get to bed relatively early to get some sleep for our train to Berlin the next morning. We certainly concentrated on more of the small attractions in Prague, and I would like to come back to see some of the more famous sites like the Bone Church. I was more than happy with how the weekend turned out. At this point, all that's left in the program is the home stretch. The ending has a lot to live up to, but I'm confident that it will exceed my expectations in the same way this program has been doing for the past four weeks.