Day 4: April 15 - Prague

The hotel where I stayed served breakfast in the room. When they asked yesterday, they said it could come as early as 7:00, and that's what I requested. I'm pretty sure they had it out there by around 6:00 or so. I picked up the tray; it weighed something like 20 pounds..

It was loaded with a giant carton of orange juice, one of milk, plus cold cuts, cheese, bread, rolls, butter, jam, granola, corn flakes, snack cakes, nutella, a giant jug of hot water for coffee/tee, and more. Not wanting to be wasteful (and knowing I'd need the calories), I ate as much as I could, which wasn't even half probably.

I walked around early and was surprised to find the town as empty as it was. It was very different from yesterday. As part of the walk, I wanted to find out where the minibus to the airport would be picking people up. The guidbooks mentioned a particular metro stop, but there were lots of places a minibus could show up. There was lots of construction nearby, so I couldn't really tell. I wandered around for maybe a half-hour too long before giving up. The option would either be to (a) ask the hotel or look up on the internet where the bus departs or (b) take a taxi tomorrow morning. Prague is notorious for rip-off cabs, but the hotel had a sign that said they could call one for a 600 crown (about $25) flat fee. I still don't like to pay that much for a cab, but would if needed.

I think the first time I ever hired a cab while traveling was in Sevilla last year; and then in Lisbon, the first to the train station and the second to the airport. Lisbon was a really good deal at only about 6 euro. It's all a trade-off.

I wanted to do the castle first today. Castles are always jammed no matter where you go; I am typically disappointed, at least relative to their popularity. Prague is no exception; its castle is the most-visited site. But it's a "must-see" so I headed toward the Charles Bridge to go over there, with a planned stop at St. Nicholas church on the way.

The town was very empty. This little pedestrian street is normally a choke point for hordes of people, but it's really cool to see all the architecture and charm without running into people.

The bridge is the same way. I have trouble reading the guidebook while walking, but I stopped a couple times on the bridge to read about the various statues. I remember these from watching Rick Steves and (Passport to Europe with) Samantha Brown on PBS and the Travel Channel, respectively.

St. Nicholas (the one on the way to the castle, not in the Old Town Square) opened about 10 minutes late. It was pretty cool. Before this trip I don't think I had every seen a baroque church but this is at least the second. This wasn't as bright and crazy as St. Peter's in Vienna but it was still pretty nuts.

Pretty soon it became crowded with tourists.

I went onwards toward the castle. In the back of my mind I knew that St. Vitus (the cathedral at the castle) would be closed for Mass but thought maybe I'd be able to at least see inside. Wrong. There were two guys at the door the whole time.

I bought the full ticket which lets you see six sights in addition to all the free sights in the castle. The first one was a basilica. It was an old medieval one, kind of plain but obviously lots of history in it.

The second was some art museum. I decided to run through just to get the ticket stamped. Well, first they made me check my backpack...I hate that! Not because it's a huge hassle, but because I know that I'll be back in 15 minutes to get my back and the coat check lady will think I'm an art idiot for going through so quickly. They'd be right.

So I checked the bag, and started through the museum. Rick Steves was right! There are matronly old ladies in Eastern European museums who absolutely insist that you follow the prescribed course through the entire museum! I started to head back to the coat check halfway through the first floor, but a lady stopped me and yammered (in Czech) and gesticulated that I need to go up a floor, around the course, and then up again, around the floor, and then back down.

I was the only one in the museum! But around every corner was an old lady that I probably shouldn't argue with. So I went allll the way around the entire thing, stopping not even once....and then retrieved my bag. There wasn't a soul in the museum.

The next area that my ticket provided passage to was the "golden lane" which is a strip of touristy souvenir shops.

Then there was a short little tower with a dungeon exhibit. The guy was waving anybody in and didn't care about the ticket, probably because the only way to access it was via this "golden lane". The dungeon things were kind of creepy. They all look so clumsy and awkward with their crude iron straps and so forth, but I guess they did the trick. How awful.

Then I went back out to the front gates. The Prague Castle Band was playing (Video). I recognized them from a Rick Steves show. It was funny because he talked about the band being a fixture in the castle and showed them playing a little bit. Then later, his tour guide took him to a restaurant where the same band was playing. At night, the guide too him to a bar to see...the same band! Rick was probably thinking, enough of these jerks already!

There was an open post office in the castle. By this time, I figured I may as well kill the 45 minutes or so before St. Vitus opened, by writing postcards. I got the stamps, then got some postcards, and started writing. Then the ceremonial guard passed to do the changing of the guard at the front gate. I followed them along with about 20,000 other people. But there was going to be a lot of pomp and circumstance and I didn't really care to watch....so I went back to writing postcards.

The bane of travellers, or at least to me, is the tour group. I know it may be nice to have someone do all the work, but there are so many of these clogging up narrow passages and gumming up ticket lines and lumbering giant buses through narrow streets that I figure...you know what...if you can't visit a place without a gaggle of other people, then maybe you should consider not going to begin with. Here is one with the ridiculous umbrella handle poking out above the crowd. It would be funny to start a tour company called "Umbrella Hook Tours".

But sticking with my theme to take a positive attitude during the whole trip, I smiled and took a picture.

St. Vitus finally opened to the thousand or so people waiting outside the gate. It was a Gothic place, neat but just barely worth the wait and crowd to get in.

The next stop was back in the Old Town. Each trip I try to get a "signature" picture, and from wandering around last night, I think I knew what it was going to be. There was a marionette-making shop that had a bunch of them hanging up. I knew it would make a good pic. But it was closed last night, so I went back to take the pics. I'm not sure which of the dozen or so I'll finally use and frame, but I think it turned out fairly well.

I also went to the aforementioned Museum of Communism. The self-guided tour (or guided, if you wish) walks through early communist thinkers, and segues to the Czech experience under Soviet rule. Signs are multi-lingual and very interesting. A number of artifacts and loads of photos, newspaper clippings, and other paraphernalia guide you through the decades as Czechs suffered a system that was chronically unable to deliver even the most basic goods and services to the average citizen, while employing secret police, propaganda, and brutal interrogation against dissent.

A 15-minute film (subtitled in English) showed news and amateur footage of the riots in Wenceslas Square leading up to the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when the Soviet regime peacefully surrendered control of Czechoslovakia. This area of history is particularly fascinating to me because it occurred well within my lifetime, although I don't remember very many details of what was going on at the time. People only a few years older than me heroically stood up to the brutality of the government and rallied with their countrymen in a show of incredible solidarity and shared suffering, finally leading to a free republic. It's hard to imagine so many people in our country coming together in the same wayfor any reason, in these times.

A quick look at the separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia (the "Velvet Divorce") rounded out the museum. I highly recommend this museum to give some perspective on the city and country.

Two final things on the agenda to round out the Prague experience. Three, really. The third and least important was to mail home some gifts as well as my Vienna guidebook that I didn't need anymore, and some extra papers and miscellany. I probably spent too long wandering around trying to find a box. Finally, I happened across a department store which had an office supply section with carboard tubes. I grabbed a bigger one. This solved the problem of how to seal it up (it had plastic caps), as well as how to label it (just write on it). I filled it up and wrote my address....then went to the main post office.

U.S.A., take note! European post offices are open very late -- at least the main ones are. And it is a Sunday! Can't beat that.

They're also a good local cultural experience, as civil servants typically speak no English and they're filled with locals. After trying the ticketing system (they usually call numbers), I grabbed the wrong type of ticket (for letters rather than parcels, whose ticket I couldn't decipher) and went to the window. I did my Dobry den and prosim and pointed to the U.S.A. and asked if I could send it from here. The lady blathered something to an associate behind her and shrugged and rang it up. It was a bit less than $10, worth it for the experience, and possibly seeing my items again someday.

Next I knew there was a concert on the St. Nicholas chuch on the old town square at 5:00. It was a good time, as most were either earlier or later, and I had plans for later. I bought the ticket ( $12 or $15 or so). It was a nice enough church, and the concert was the organist and two trumpets.

It was decent, though tourists got a bit antsy after the first half-hour (it was about an hour). Nobody knew where one piece ended and others began...as there were several movements and I think everyone lost count. So there was random applause at wrong times. Still, you could tell the musicians were really talented. The finale was pretty good as well.

I had a little more walking around to do. There was a festival or something going on the whole time, on the old town square. I listened to the band and ate some bratwurst or something. Then it was time for Black Light theater. This is a pretty popular thing in Prague. It's sort of like a Cirque du Soleil, but performed under black lights to give various illusions. The Image Theater was recommended in the Rick Steves book, and I knew right where it was. The lady at the ticket desk said it wasn't going to be crowded because it was Sunday, so I went in and took a seat.

The theater held maybe a couple hundred. The basic idea was that this turn-of-the-centry wacky inventor guy tries out some of his gadgets on the audience. Then he gets a "volunteer" (soon obvious that it's an actor as well) to try out this cabinet that's something of a time machine. It has a bunch of levers and cranks and a horn on top. Anyway, the cabinet transports the guy to this dream world (this is where the black lights come on), when all the acrobatics and illusions happen. Then he snaps out of it and comes back to the real world, in the cabinet.

The 'audience member' becomes obsessed with getting into this dream world that he keeps tricking his way back in....and toward the end of the show it's mostly black light stuff.

It was really cool. The trick was that there are people dressed in black and black curtains and such that are invisible under the black light...and they are causing things to float around, appear from nowhere, and move.

I was way in the back and I couldn't even tell. Supposedly you're not supposed to sit close because it will kind of give away the illusion. It was a really neat show, surpassing anythign I had expected---a must-see (and a good evening activity!). Plus, it's all in gestures so there's no language barrier.

Also, I found out that the airport minibus picks up near a hotel near the metro stop. I found the sign for it, so will try to make that tomorrow for the trip to Krakow.