Prague: Czech!

Time for another really long blog post about my amazing weekend in Prague! Before I do that I have to go back to last Wednesday when we went to our director’s house for dinner. We all got there around 6 and hung out in their living room. I was surprised their place could hold us all because it is just an apartment but it was a lot bigger than I thought. Then we had dinner and it was absolutely amazing! It was so nice to have a home cooked meal. We had turkey schnitzel, cooked vegetables and mashed potatoes! It was soo good! Then we had cake and ice cream for dessert. It was so nice of them to do that for us and we all appreciated not having to cook noodles anymore. It was a very nice night!

Then on Thursday I packed all of my last minute things and we headed out around 12:45. Some people had class until 12:00 so we waited until they got all of their things and headed to the train station. Our group was Kevin, Aimee, Brady, Jake, Kolby, Dan, Sean and me. We had to get to the train station a little early because the night before I noticed that the tickets had the wrong date on them. We got there and everything was fine. It did not take any time at all to fix the date. So we got to the platform and were off to Prague! We had to switch trains in Linz and man it was close! We had two minutes to get to the next train and we were definitely booking it down the platform. Luckily we made it! We got on the train which was our longest leg. The train was about one hour to Linz. The train went for about three hours and then someone came around to each compartment and said we had to get on another train. We stopped in some Czech town in who knows where. It was the tiniest train station. We got on a really rickety train. We then had another two hours before we got to Prague. As we were going, all of a sudden every light in the train went out and the train slowly came to a stop. It was the freakiest thing! We have no idea why it did that. We were sitting in pitch black for a good ten minutes. I was happy to finally get off the sketchy train and ready to find our hostel. We got to the train station and exchanged some money. It was ridiculous because they charged me 16%. After that I just withdrew money from the ATM. Next task was to find our hostel. I was a little nervous about finding it because we had an hour to get there and it was dark out. Luckily, we talked to a lady who gave us a map which was really helpful because the other maps they had you had to pay for. I had written down directions from the train station to our hostel so that along with the map really helped. We didn’t have any problems finding it which made me relax. Now that we know the streets better it probably wasn’t the fastest way but atleast we got there! We checked in to the hostel and at first I have to say it looked pretty sketchy. The guy at the desk was really rude and the place where you entered the building looked like a dark alley. Once we got up to our room it was fine. The room was actually really nice. We had a room with ten beds and there were 8 of us. The first night we had two old men in our room which was weird but luckily they weren’t there the whole weekend. That night we ended up going to the bar which was connected to our hostel. It was actually right down our hall. We had a beer and played foosball which was fun! We did a little tournament which I lost of course but it was still really fun. We then went back to our room and went to bed since we were all so tired from traveling.



Group at the Pub Crawl



Then on Friday we got up at 9am and got breakfast at the hostel. It was nice that it is included in the price. I mean it wasn’t the greatest but it was fine. We got ready and then went on a free walking tour of Prague. The tour met at our hostel which was really nice. We then met another group of people and went on the tour. Our guide was really cool! He knew a lot about Prague and was really animated so it was great! He showed us a lot of the sites in Prague. We didn’t go in anything but he showed us things like the Astronomical Clock (which is really nothing…haha), Charles Bridge and the Prague Castle. The tour was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I thought because it was a free one it would be really short or something but it was awesome! The weather was great too so it was a perfect way to see the city. The only problem was right before the tour started my camera didn’t work. I was so mad! It kept saying “Card Error” and wouldn’t take pictures. Luckily, Brady let me take pictures with his camera. When the tour was over, the guide told us about the Prague Pub Crawl and we all decided to do it so we went and registered. After the tour we got lunch at a little restaurant right next to our hostel called Fasty’s. Then the group went back to the hostel to take a little nap but I decided to go and try and find a new memory card for my camera. I could not be in Prague a whole weekend without a camera. Luckily Kevin and Sean wanted to go to the mall too. We found a memory card and it worked so I was happy! We walked around the mall a bit but it was crazy because every store was really expensive. We went back to the hostel and got ready for the Pub Crawl. We all put on our free tshirts and we all looked awesome! We met up with Megan B. and Megan P who were in Prague too but they went with Megan P’s mom. We headed to the first bar at 8:00pm. It was the Pub Crawl bar where they gave you free drinks for the first hour. It was kind of crazy because they gave free beer, wine, vodka and absinthe. I only had a beer but the other people were drinking all of it. Then after an hour we went to another bar and started dancing. They didn’t have the free drinks but they gave you a shot as you walked in. There were about 30 people who were apart of the Pub Crawl and we talked to some of them. They all knew we were Americans. It was really weird because I

Old Town Square

noticed that the four of us girls were almost the only girls. There were so many guys which I thought was really strange. We danced for the whole hour and then went to another bar. We kept dancing which was a lot of fun! We went to one other bar and then the last place we went to was called Karlovy Lazne which is the biggest club in central Europe. We got VIP entrance which was nice because some other guys we were talking to from Australia said they waited in line for an hour. The club had five different levels. We went to the oldies room which was awesome because they played the classics. We didn’t stay at that place for very long because people in our group were getting a little too drunk. Then we headed back to our hostel which was kind of a mess because people were not listening which was frustrating. I got us back to the hostel and almost everyone went right to bed. We got in bed around 3:30am so it was a long night but it was a lot of fun! Some things got a little out of hand but overall everything was ok.

The group on Charles Bridge

We got a pretty late start Saturday morning. I got up and ready and we headed out at about 12:00. It was a little later than I had hoped but people were moving pretty slowly. We walked around town and went back to some places we saw on the tour that we didn’t get to really see. We got some lunch first and we kind of split up. The boys wanted a big lunch but Aimee and I weren’t that hungry. So we went to a Kebab place and did a little shopping afterwards. We went to all the souvenir shops and this really cool store with crystal. We saw crystal everywhere so it must be a famous thing in Prague. We met up with the boys an hour later and headed to Charles Bridge. I don’t know how a bridge can be so popular but there were SO many people on it. The bridge had vendors and everything. There were people playing music so it was cool but I don’t understand how it became so popular. After walking across the bridge we split up again. Some of the guys were really tired and not feeling well (I wonder why…) so they went back to the hostel. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to go take a nap on such a beautiful day in such a beautiful city. So Aimee, Brady, Kevin, Jake and I went to the other side of the bridge to see how it was. We stopped at a little café and got hot chocolate which was really good! It was nice just sitting outside and enjoying the sights. Then we went to St. Nicholas Tower and decided to pay to go to the top and I am so glad we did! It had the most amazing view of the city! Absolutely gorgeous! It was weird because when we were up there we saw a protest going on. We asked a lady about what they were protesting about and she didn’t really give us an answer. Well, we soon figured out why when the protestors started shouting “USA go away!”. I didn’t like it at all. I all of a sudden got a really sick feeling in my stomach. I know people are unhappy with the US but I have never really seen it displayed like that. We came down from the tower and slowly made our way to our hostel. The sun was setting and everything looked beautiful. Then we went back to the hostel to get the rest of the guys and tried to figure out something for dinner. Kevin’s roommate is from Prague and he suggested a restaurant that was in the mall. It was a Lebanese restaurant and everyone said they wanted to try it. So we went there and it was weird eating in a mall. The food I had was not very good. It said chicken sandwich but it had this really strange creamy stuff. It was not my favorite. Megan B. and Megan P. met us again but they didn’t eat with us. After dinner Aimee, Megan P. and me split up from the guys and went back to the hostel. We just sat and talked until the boys got back which was really nice. I was pretty tired at that point so it was nice to just relax. When the guys got back we went to the bar at our hostel again. The beer there was pretty cheap and they had music so it was fun. We played a card game and then went to bed pretty early.

On Sunday we checked out of our hostel at 10:00am. I went to check our train time and found that we would have to change trains three times and take a bus so we decided to take the earlier train. Everyone was fine with it because we wouldn’t have been able to see much more in the extra hour or so anyways. So we headed to the train station and got on our train at 11:16. After being on the train for about 2 hours, we found out that they cancelled a leg of our train. We had to get off in some tiny Czech town and get on a bus. It was the craziest thing. I never thought I would be taking a bus around the Czech Republic. It took about 20 minutes to get to the train station we were supposed to stop at. Once we got there we found the train to Linz and got on. Everything went well after that. We had a connection in Linz and we luckily had more time than on the way to Prague. The train we took from Linz to Salzburg was really nice! It was a faster train which was nice but we couldn’t find seats next to each other. Aimee and I found a seat across the aisle so that was nice. Even though we all had a great weekend it was so nice to get back to Salzburg. We got in at about 6:00 which was nice because it gave us time to unpack and relax. This weekend was so great and for it being the first weekend we travelled by ourselves I would say it was a definite success!   

View from St. Nicholas Tower