Weekend in Praha!

We had one day in Prague, and to be honest, it wasn’t comparable to any city in Germany. It’s pretty tourist-filled, so instead of trying to assimilate and blend in, everyone seemed to disregard the culture… we met hardly any locals, except for those on the pub crawl. It weirdly reminded me of visiting Disney World, with shops full of fake antiques and tons of people. We did learn a lot as a group though, and we managed to make the most of it! After an interesting search for food on Friday night involving witnessing an arrest (we eventually found some gas station hot dogs- quite impressive), Saturday morning we climbed up to the Strahov Monastery across the Vltava River. The monastery was unfortunately closed, but the view was beautiful! We could see all of Prague from this hilltop, the cathedral spires jutting out above the red roofs, and everything was so green! We trekked down to St. Vitus’ Cathedral next, stopping at a porcelain shop on the way, and we also visited the Prague Castle. This medieval castle is the largest of its kind in the world, and was decked out with a huge, arched ceiling ballroom, spiral staircases, the Diet hall, and the Czech crown jewels. The cathedral had more intricate stained glass than the Cologne Cathedral, and beautiful representations of the Passion as well. We made our way to the old town for lunch (goulash and dumplings) and managed to give an impromptu dance lesson to a czeck family. We were waiting for the train and randomly decided to start dancing “the jerk”, and when we looked over we saw a kid and her mom doing it with us (mocking us probably?). It was hilarious. I’ve noticed we tend to draw a lot of attention to ourselves whenever we start dancing. Next we backtracked to the Lennon wall, a huge graffiti wall started as a type of passive resistance when the Soviets still had power, and then headed back to our hostel for the pub crawl!

The pub crawl was probably the most fun I’ve had going out, which was mostly because we got to meet so many people! Three hostels got together for this, so I met a young Australian couple on vacation from school, and three Americans who moved to Prague ten days before to teach English, among other Poles, Brazilians, Brits, and Hungarians. I also met an Australian who wanted to work for the UN and was in the process of learning 6 languages (Americans really are the most lazy people on earth, we learn English and then complain our brains hurt). It was so fun to hear everyone’s stories and goals, with some dancing in between, of course, and I would do this again in a heartbeat! It was definitely a memorable night.

Top this off with a great conversation with a professional ballet dancer on the train to Hannover, and I had a fantastic weekend!