Friday October 2 to Sunday October 4 - Prague

The places I have been staying have been small private hotels with the exception of Prague where I stayed at a Courtyard Marriott a little out of the city center. I had points for free rooms and decided to save a little money in Prague. The hotel was typically used by business travelers so I think I, with my backpack, was probably a little out of the ordinary for them and on my last day I ate breakfast and suspect they thought I wandered in off the street. But they were very nice about it.

On my first day in the city I had to take my rental car back to the airport, which was more challenging than I figured. There seem to be no highway around Prague and the entire thing was on side streets that seem to have a speed camera every block or two. In fact I will consider it a real accomplishment and a lot of luck if I did not get busted in my rental car somewhere as they were also on the highways in Hungry, Slovakia and Prague. At the airport they went over the rental car very closely and the guy took a bunch of pictures when I turned it in. Usually in the U.S. I don’t think they even check it but here the guy took probably 4-5 pictures! Scratches thanks to that old man, good that I took out the insurance.

 

Once that was taken care of, I worked my way into the city and mostly just walked around getting myself orientated. The streets here follow no pattern and some of the corners don’t have street names on them. But when they do I can’t really understand them anyway, so getting around was definitely a challenge and I learned to look for landmarks. I tried to find the Beer Museum but never managed too. I found the Beer Museum Pub and you would think they would know where it is but when I asked two bartenders, they had heard of it but did not know where it was?! I did point out the name of their bar and eventually I gave up and moved on.

There are thousands of tours in Prague and that evening went on the Underground Prague tour as well as climbed to the top of the Town Hall. The tour was not the most polished thing but I did learn some things about Prague I would not have known otherwise.

• The Old Town section of the city is not the oldest that would be the Prague Castle and buildings around it. But Old Town is older than New Town and the original structures are around 900 years old. Newer structures in Old Town are around 600 years old.
• The Old Town section is prone to flooding, the most recent really bad floods were 2002 and 2013. So around 600 years ago they raised all the streets 3-7 meters and took out the hills so it was flat. What they did was burry the first floors of the houses so the Prague you see in Old Town is the second floor of the newer structures built above the old ones around 500-600 years ago on. My tour was the older structures now buried underground.
• The Charles Bridge, the city icon, was actually partially destroyed by flooding in the late 1800’s and has been rebuilt. Additionally none of the statues on the bridge are original but all are copies. Not due to the flood of the 1800’s, although I saw the pictures and they probably lost a few then. But because after the fall of the Soviet Union the statues were not in the best shape and tourists had a tendency to climb on them and break a finger or an arm off. So they removed them all and made copies for the bridge.
• The old homes were built with the doorways on the left side so they could defend against attackers using their right hands. Attackers had to use their left hand or reach across when trying to enter a structure. Makes sense.
• Hitler is why they drive on the right side in Europe. Before the 1930’s the rest of Europe had left hand drive like the UK but Hitler changed it to drive on the right side. Don’t know why but it would explain why the UK still has left hand drive. A theory of why left hand drive is in the medieval times when people would fight it would be with their right hand. As such if you rode your horse on the right side you would have to reach across so they rode on the left side and this carried over when cars were invented at the start of the 20^th century. Don’t know if this is true but copies the doorway construction and it does make logical sense.

Old Town square

 

After the tour I climbed the steps of the Town Hall bell tower to get a good view of the city. The Town Hall itself was actually destroyed by the Nazi’s in the closing days of WWII during a Czech uprising in 1945. The rebellion took over the Town Hall and raised the Czech flag and when they would not leave the Nazi’s brought in tanks and shelled the building, burning most of it down and destroying all sorts of city and historical records and artwork. After the tower was just a shell and the famous astronomical clock was ruined and needed to be reconstructed after the war. Only a small section of the original façade was saved and on my tour I saw pictures of that the communist ideas to build there were. They were strange, stark and very commie looking and including some strange bridge like structure. So what they wound up with is not so bad.

Elevator shaft and stairs up to the Town Hall tower

The following day I visited the Prague Castle and climbed the bell tower at St. Vitus Cathedral as well. At the top you can see where people have been carving their names into the stone caps, which is rather obnoxious. But as I was looking closer at them I realized this is not a new phenomenon, although there clearly was some recent names carved in. But there are some old dates, the oldest I saw was 1918. I also saw a very clear 1945 date and name and other dates were from the 1960’s and 70’s. So apparently defacing the bell tower has been a habit for over 100 years and possibly much longer but those names have either worn away or the stones have been replaced.

 

By the time I got down the place was packed with tourists and it was becoming hard to get around. I went into the St. Vitus Chapel but there were so many people in there I did not stay too long. For that matter the narrow streets were getting so crowded with tour groups it was hard to walk around so I figured it was time to move on.

St. Vitus Chapel

Prague has totally become a tourist destination, like Times Square and it is a bit over the top. The crowds in the streets can get really thick and frankly there is so much hawking of tourist tchotchkes that it is somewhat ruining the city. For example the famous Charles Bridge, the one with all the fake statues, is littered with people selling paintings, bracelets, musicians asking for money, and even caricature drawings, which I thought went out of style in the 1980’s. They block the bridge, people gawk and block the bridge even more, and the stands even get in the way of the statues. Shops are one thing but the bridge is totally ruined by this in my opinion and I don’t think they should allow it.

 

 

There are also pan handlers here too that take the curios method of kneeling in a prayer like position with their hands outstretched and a cup or hat for money. They don’t actually ask for money and sometimes they have a dog with them, one guy had it siting on his back while he was kneeling. Everywhere I’ve gone thus far, Sarajevo, Mostar, Prague, they have people bugging the tourists for money. Michigan Avenue in Chicago is the same way but the cops in Chicago will run them out sometimes. Dubrovnik was the exception but I suspect they run them out of Old Town too.

The entire city in some ways is turning out this way and it is sad to me. I really like Prague but think it would have been a much more interesting place to visit in the years just after the collapse of the Soviet Union and before it became a tourist stop for Western Europe. It does have odd moments, however. Like all the Asian tourists walking around. They totally stick out because of the large groups that block everything, their selfie camera sticks, and they are the only people who walk around wearing surgical masks. Why who the hell knows but if you are that worried about germs perhaps you should stay home. They are also all wired in to one another, the first one in the group talks into a small mike and the rest listen in on portable headsets.

The UK and Irish 20 something guys also stick out sometimes as they are often loud and sometimes pissed (drunk) too. These guys can be entertaining in their stupid behavior but they can be a bit annoying too. I was told on my kayak trip by Jan and Adrian that Prague has become a big stag party destination for the UK, like Las Vegas for Americans, and it has become somewhat embarrassing on how bad people have acted in Prague so the city is trying to push some of it out. I did not see anything crazy but can understand how that would get out of hand.

There are also Thai Message studios that have fish tanks that you stick your feet in so the fish can eat the dead skin off. Very strange and funny to watch as some guy sits above a fish tank with dozens of fish eating bits of his feet.

The Czech people themselves are very nice and I am struck by how well they all speak English. I reactivated my South African cell phone here and then promptly lost it at restaurants, twice. Both times everybody I talked with was very concerned and looked around for it. The hotel I was staying at looked up restaurant names and started calling them till we found the one I ate at because all I could remember was it had Pizza in the name. And both times the phone was still there when I went back to get it.

They also go out of their way to help you and when riding the train I was surprised at how often younger people give up their seat on the subway when somebody older gets on. Hardly anybody does this in Chicago but it happens almost instantly in Prague. Hell in Chicago guys will spread their legs wide or sit on the outside to block anybody from using the seat next to them.

I am glad to say that I do not appear old enough where anybody would give me their seat!