Saket Vora

We arrived in Praha on August 12 at around 3pm at the Praha-Holesvice station. This train station was the most poorly laid out station of all the cities we visted. Perhaps it was just due to our platform of arrival, but it seems strange to have the information desk located what appeared to be a quarter of a mile from the platform. There were the small, unkept cobblestones that proved irritating for rolling bags, and I definitely think my nice rolling suitcase got a bit mis-aligned due to it. A travel tip for Praha: the taxi drivers can cheat you pretty bad, so agree on a price before even getting in the cab and have it written down. We kept a sheet with the address of our hotel and the Czech words (from a travel guide) “How much is the fare” written on it. The taxi drivers should know a bit of English or German, but get the agreed upon fare written down on the paper. Our taxi driver took euros. The currency in Czech is the Czech koruna (or crown), and during our visit it was 23 koruna to $1, which we approximated to 25. For every 100 koruna something was priced, we multiplied by 4 to get the USD amount. Much of the streets are cobblestone, which must do an incredible amount of wear on those tires. Even during the ride to the hotel, we were struck at how many pure tourists we saw. This observation was repeated nearly everywhere we went. It is said that during the high season, tourists outnumber local Praguers by nearly 2 to 1. As Brandyn warned me accurately: Prague is touristy! Our gameplan for Prague was light compared to Budapest and Vienna. There were no museums we were pressing to see, and a day trip to the Karlstejn was an afterthought. We took it easy in Prague, and spent most of the time touring the city and enjoying its feel. Out of the three big cities we visited, Prague had the ‘old Europe’ atmosphere that many people visualize in their minds. Narrow one way cobblestoned and windy streets, old architecture with vivid red roofs everywhere, and several squares. Beer is a true Czech tradition, and I was interested to see that the original Budweiser was Czech. No, this is not the Budweiser that we get in America (Anheuser-Busch got into a big naming battle when they tried to sell their stuff here). This is brewed in a Czech town that has the German name of Budweis. The Pilsner brand is also brewed in Czech in the town of Plzen, and both of these are displayed prominently on every block in front of the numerous pubs and cafes. Food wise, one finds many Czech and Italian food, but little else. If you look though, you can find some gems. The food, while decent, was nothing too remarkable. We were reminded again about European service style though. After seating you and giving menus, it can be 7 minutes before the waiter comes by to take your drinks. Alas, no re-fills were to be found in Praha. I tried sneaking one in, but they slapped a $2.10 extra charge to the bill. Again, this is perhaps the largest disparity between dining here and in America, another one being that most people pay cash.

One day we visited the the castle on the other side of the river. There St. Vithus Cathedral is located and it is a great example of gothic architecture. It was more ornamental and not as oppressive as the high gothic church in Vienna, and had very intricate stained glass. A side façade of the castle was also very nicely designed. At the cathedral, Sachi and I climbed 287 steps of this small circular staircase to get to an observation tower. The views of the city were spectacular, with a sea of red roofs and the bridges crossing the Vltava river. In the Old Town section of Praha, where our hotel was, we went to the large square where the famous astronomical clock is located. This clock does not tell the time; instead it shows information about the solstices, sun and moon info, etc. It is an elegant structure. At each hour the masses gather to see a little show when some small statues placed by the clock move and dance. I’m expecting a neat show, but the end result was actually rather laughable. I thought: the masses gather to see that? Oh well. Charles Bridge is a tourist haven, and there are hawkers selling their wares all over this pedestrian river crossing. There are also musicians, and one in particular was very cool. He had a dozen crystal wine glasses filled with water, and he would dip his fingers in a water-oil solution then move them around the rims of the glasses, causing them to resonate and create sounds. It is hard to describe, but it was really quite amazing to hear it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any sound clips. He wasn’t playing just one glass at a time, it looked as if he was playing the piano with his fingers of both hands over many glasses and at different speeds and motions. Karlov street, which is a continuation of the Charles Bridge as it gets to the city center, is always full of people and a thousand souvenir shops line it. This country definitely plays up its Communist past, and you can get KGB and CCCP shirts, pins, even old style Soviet military hats.

The last major thing I saw was the Jewish quarter. There is some history with it; Hitler had apparently spared this quarter of Praha to make it a museum to the ‘extinct race’. During the war, the exiled ruler of the Czech organized an assassination attempt on the Nazi ruler of Czechoslovakia and two Czech paratroopers ambused the guy’s car and killed him. They were chased into a church before taking their lives to avoid capture. It was rumored that the paratroopers came from a town called Lidnice, and in revenge Hitler ordered all the men in the town killed and sent all the women and children to concentration camps before bulldozing every single structure to the ground. The Czech people have gone through a lot of painful times. What I really wanted to see in the quarter was the Jewish cemetery. I don’t have all the details, but the cemetery ran out of space so they put another layer of dirt and then added names to the tombstones. It is more than 6 or 7 people deep now. The tombstones are not neatly laid out either, they are more crude than one often sees in American cemeteries and they jut out of the ground. Seeing it produces a strange feeling indeed.

We might have approached Prague differently had it been the first city of our trip. But even though we took it slowly, it was still interesting to experience.