Prague: The Pearl of Cities

First, a Widdershinning Weiss PSA. Two updates here. First, better late than never, I finally downsized the videos and put my drive through the Swiss Alps up here. You can go back and see it in that post or see it direct on youtube. Second, I have heard from a couple of loyal readers that they have kept up with my travel posts but have not visited my other pages, including Food, Places, By the Numbers (my personal favorite), and/or The Best Of. There’s a decent amount of easy-to-digest content here, so czech it out!

Now onto the latest and greatest in travel. I spent the first 4 days of November in Prague. This post chronicles that, and thus will not be as geographically diverse as some of the others.

Pre-Czech, I didn’t do much in my one hour reprise of Munich. I walked from the rental car return to the bus station and hung out there for an hour. My bus ride into Prague went smoothly. That’s when things got rough. If you’d like to read about my difficult entry first, hop down here. I didn’t want to bog this blog post down with a detailed chronicling of my Friday night, so that is summarized at the way bottom. If you just keep reading you’ll see that my experience was overwhelmingly positive. Most of my posts have been chronological, taking you with me on my journey form place to place. I’m trying a different setup here, not sure if I like it yet. But I liked Prague, for sure. I’d only heard good things about it from Americans and it lived up to it’s reputation for me as well.

Prague Architecture

Prague is one of the few cities in this region that survived World War Two largely unscathed. As a result, there is rich history in the building stock and built environment. Just walking around is very pleasant, with ornate details on facades and a variety colors make each streetscape more interesting than the last. Sculptures are carved into reliefs with great consistency.

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And the roofs! Don’t get me started on the roofs. These things were beautiful and busy and included impressive engineering in some cases.

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Prague was fairly hilly, with some very steep spots. This made for some great vistas.

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Prague Sites

Prague had a number of spots worth czeching out. The Prague Castle is the largest castle complex in the world and is over 1,000 years old. It includes the residence and office of Prague’s president, a National Gallery, St Vitus Cathedral (reminiscent of Cologne’s Dom), the Golden Road, palaces, towers, gardens, and then some. Architectural styles ranged as structures have continued to be built here up until the 1900s. I spent two hours walking around here with a couple of guys I met from the hostel and we had to pick and choose what to skip as the sites could span days.

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Vysehrad is another castle/fortification, further south in Prague, and also a thousand years old or so. Vysehrad holds the unsubstantiated claim of the original Prague settlement. Less expansive and impressive than the Prague Castle, but with better city views, the crowning jewel of this site was also it’s castle

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Prague’s art wasn’t just incorporated into sculptures and architecture, but it also had quite a bit of graffiti around the city. The most famous spot is the Lennon Wall, a spot where anyone and everyone has been able to add their own contributions to a long wall with John Lennon’s face on it. As Prague’s people struggled with communism and politics this spot became an outlet for expression and symbol of peace. Sadly, it was being repaired/repainted by the city when I visited.

Old Town Square was the (approximate) geographic and (overwhelmingly) tourists’ center of the city.

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I took the tour of Old Town Hall with my fellow nightmare survivor, Karun. Our young tour guide seemed to at moments struggle with his translation. The tour began with him describing beautiful and historically rich components of the old town hall, now a museum. Each of these descriptions ended with a “and that was in the other wing, destroyed by the fire in World War 2.” I found it comical but I don’t think that was his intent. The most interesting part of the town hall for me was the cellar – built at ground level, but in the mid-millenium Prague raised its elevation a story or more to prevent flooding, so historic buildings all gained basements as the grade rose.

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Prague has a historic Jewish Quarter with a couple of synagogues, Jewish town hall, cemetery, kosher establishments, and foreigners trying to capitalize on the tourism here by selling judaica. The synagogues’ exteriors were nice, and it was an interesting part of town to stroll through, but not somewhere I lingered too long.

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One of the few spots I knew about ahead of time, the Charles Bridge (Karluv Most) was built around 1400 and while from afar didn’t look special, from up close had a number of beautiful statues and grand gates at either end.

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There was no shortage of statues in Prague, some playful, some serious. One of the most celebrated people of Prague is Franz Kafka. Statues, museums, shrines of sorts, and other acknowledgements of his legacy can be found throughout the city. My favorite was the modern and dynamic sculpture of his head.

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Prague Nightlife

I had one big night out in Prague. November 2nd, the Saturday after Halloween, remained cause for some residual partying around town. In fact, any night of any week is a good night to party in Prague. This city has plenty of things, but sleep doesn’t appear to be one of them. I wasn’t czeching into my hostel until Sunday, but I knew they had a group activity planned for Saturday night, so I headed there and joined in. I didn’t have a costume, so I threw some fake blood on my face. There was a pregame at the hostel bar, after which the plan was to attend Bloody Sexy Halloween, billed as Europe’s biggest Halloween party. Hosted by SaSaZu, Prague’s premiere venue for hepatitis C, this party had everything: rude bouncers, clowns, an empty VIP section, makeup artists, Kurt Cobain in a hospital gown, bad DJs, a power outage, and Daft Go Go Gagas, which is when women dressed like early Lady Gaga wearing Daft Punk helmets and spin laser lights whilst dancing around on stage.

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Was this the best Halloween party in all of Europe? I think with any sample size I’d struggle to award it that title. But did it fulfill my desire to go to an eastern European club? Certainly. I had more than my fill to drink, and sometime after 3am came to the realization that it was time for me to go home. The following day I learned that a handful of folks stayed until the club closed at 6.

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My one other night out was to Barfud, a Packers bar, where I watched some football and chatted with the Americans that comprised the staff and regulars.

Prague Culture, Food, and People

The people of Prague, along with the food, provided some confirmation that I had slipped further east into Europe. Appearances, accents, dress all seemed a little more foreign. Attitudes were maybe a little less pleasant – I can’t say if this was a cultural coldness or just disdain for English speaking tourists, but I experienced it somewhat.

I think had goulash 3 times. Also a baba ganoush, a steak, and some other stewed stuff. But nothing is more critical to Prague’s food culture than beer. Pilsner reigns supreme here (pilsner’s name comes from Czech’s nearby Pilzen). Similarly to the reverence Germans have for beer, Czech life revolves around it. No time of day is a bad time for beer (breakfast included). The first (and more than once only) thing many waiters and waitresses would utter when coming over is “beer?” While pilsner’s not generally my first choice, I appreciated it and it’s ubiquitousness.

I met a decent number of Americans living there – it appeared that getting a working visa (up to 2 years) was pretty easy, so lots of people rotate in and out of Prague, working odd jobs, enjoying a hedonistic lifestyle, benefitting from cheap rents, and figuring out life.

Wrapped up in the people of Prague were a ton of tourists. I met a handful of good people in this category. My first day was spent with Karun, an engineer native to Bangalore, India, working in Germany for the year. You can learn about how we met by reading the nightmare story at the bottom of this post. While spending Saturday day together Karun gave me good tips and preparation on traveling in India along with insight into the politics and history that we Americans don’t get much exposure to.

When I went out to the club with fellow hostelers Saturday night, I spoke the most to two Louisiana Tech architecture students who I gave some career advice to. The following day I latched on to Graham’s (Michigan) and Josh’s (Melbourne) plans to tour the Prague Castle. My last night in Prague I finally opened a bottle of wine I had bought in Switzerland which I was happy to finally liquidate, and played uno and drinking games with a crew that whittled down to myself and two Danes, Paula and Maria, while we bonded over being (probably) the only people over 30 in the hostel and opted to skip the Monday night pub crawl the hostel had organized.

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Prague.

Every place will have a lot of history, but the depth of it in Prague impressed me. Outside of Rome, what I saw and learned here was the oldest. Said and done, Prague was special, beautiful, fun, interesting, yada yada. Would visit again.

This song of the moment goes out to Prague’s Patron Saint Wenceslas, murdered by his brother, and represented in probably half of the older statues around town. He was a regular topic in my tour of the Old Town Hall.

Prague Nightmare (sorry it’s wordy, but writing it out was quite cathartic. If that’s a problem for you, skip to the way bottom where you can read the abridged version)

Up until my arrival in Prague, I had done a mix of prebooking activities and accommodations versus doing it as I go. I had over-planned (maybe even overcommitted myself) somewhat, but opportunities for flexibility had proven a nice luxury. Prague was one of the places where I expected to just walk into my hostel and get a bed. I had picked a hostel about a 10 minute walk from my bus station. When I arrived, I learned that they were full. Not unusual for. Friday night, I was told. Bummer. But I had passed 2 hostels and a few hotels on my walk there, so I worked my way back and czeched all of them out. All full. Awful. I started to worry. Having hit the nearby hostels, I moved onto the hotels. Fortunately there were many here in the Zizkov neighborhood, so even if I had to pay more than I budgeted, it would be fine. A night or two in a hotel, and then cheap out with a hostel, and skimp on a couple of meals and my bank account wouldn’t be the wiser. Hotel 1: strike one. Hotel 2: strike two. Onto strikes three, four, five, and on and on. I list count if how many hotels I popped into. Well shit. Some staff I spoke to took it for granted that this would be the case, as many Europeans come to Prague to party for the weekend (especially Halloween… this all occurred on November 1). One receptionist suggested I head out of the city about 20 kilometers to find housing, but I wasn’t ready to do that. I czeched my go-to apps, hostelworld, kayak, and airbnb. Things were expensive and sparse within the city, but I was now desperate. I booked an airbnb above my price range, biting the bullet and figuring beggars can’t be choosers.

My airbnb was an instant book, so there was no wait time because the host didn’t have to approve it. I had now been on my feet wearing my two backpacks for over an hour, was hangry, tired, and sore. I walked about 20 minutes over to the airbnb. The czech-in instructions said that the building staff would get me in. I found the place after some difficulty. There wasn’t any building staff. And it was a dump. I called airbnb. They asked me to wait at a nearby cafe and said they’d call the host and get it settled, and call me back within an hour. “What if I don’t hear from you within an hour?” I asked? The agent promised I’d hear from her.

I sat in a bar next door and ordered a black russian. Then a second. They had too much ice and thus went down easy. Getting a little tipsy helped me express my dissatisfcation, when after an hour later (to the minute) I hadn’t heard back and I called again. The next person I spoke with said that the host was non-responsive and they would cancel my stay and rebook me somewhere else. She said she’d send a message to my case manager (the initial woman I spoke to) to call me back. I expressed frustration and concern and she promised I wouldn’t have to sleep on the street.

15 minutes later my patience was near non-existent and I called again. This time Scott took over the case manager duties from the original woman I hadn’t heard back from. Scott recommended I book a hotel, and airbnb would cover the cost. He asked that I find a hotel comparable in price to the airbnb. I was able to find only one similarly priced, a shared dorm room in a hotel. I booked my bed and took an uber over, only to wander around looking for the entrance. A Scottish woman, Amanda, was in the same boat as me. We were in something of an alley, with a different hotel at the end. The last sign for our spot was near a locked residential door, a crappy nightclub, and behind door number 3, the locked door of a restaurant, we finally found our destination. Here a creepy non-English speaker czeched us in.

An Indian guy, Karun, showed up just as we finished filling out our information. Karun was the third roommate in our shared dorm and had already been there. The creepy host proceeded to walk us into the half-full nightclub, along the bar, and to the stage where the speakers were located. He pulled back a large curtain on the wall to reveal a door, through which was our room. Six beds (where only two had pillows) and a shower were all that populated the dank and musty room. Our bathroom (with exception of the shower which was literally just in the corner of our room) was across the nightclub. What on earth? He then left us to wallow in fear and misery and frustration in this torture chamber. I was exasperated and stunned. I laughed to not cry. This room and situation was unbelievable, and untenable. Karun shared that the previous staff person who czeched him in told him he could get a refund if he didn’t want to stay. It didn’t take long for Amanda to rebook an expensive hostel in another part of the city.

Karun and I talked about our options. Could we sleep there? No chance, we concurred – it was 9pm now and the thumping bass, filling the club from speakers immediately outside our door, was set to continue until 2am (or later into the morning, if the party was good, they said). I frantically began texting Scott at airbnb. He still seemed helpful, but told me he was leaving the office for an hour and someone else would take over. Without some immediate contact via text I called, spoke to my 4th agent. They weren’t helpful. When I called my now 5th agent they and I picked a more expensive airbnb nearby, and they said they’s follow up with the host to see if they can expedite my booking and approval, because it was now 10pm.

I messaged a number of other hosts, casting a wide net in case one could accommodate a late czech in. One got back to around 10:30. The cost for two nights was about $800. He was headed to a Halloween party shortly and said if I can get there by 11 I could stay, but I only had a few minutes to confirm. It was a 10 minute walk. I called a now 6th airbnb representative. He was the first to speak truly poor English. My only goal was to confirm that they would cover the costs (me absorbing a $400/night stay would be the equivalent of a few weeks in Southeast Asia, and I was terrified I’d have to eat this cost). This guy at airbnb used many words to convey little to no information. I cut him off multiple times to explain the urgency, and all I sought was a verbal confirmation that airbnb would take responsibility for the costs. He didn’t provide this, so I stated it one last time, hung up on him, and booked this overpriced studio.

Despite only having one bed I invited Karun to stay with me. We were in this together, refugees of this nightmare of an evening. We were able to book it, and dragged our bags through the club, everyone staring at us. We asked for a refund from the creep. He was pretty dismissive and went back behind his locked door. I almost put my fist through the glass knocking on it. He came back, pointed to a sign that said breakfast is from 7-10am, and said only “colleague.” So we would have to come back in the morning to get our refunds. An aside: we came back at 8am, were told by the kid there that he’s in training and his boss would be there at 2 and could take care of it. I went back at 3 or so, after Karun had left Prague. The next kid working called his boss and said I would need to come in and talk to his boss at 7am the next day. A consistent pattern was emerging. I gave up this effort and disputed the charge with Visa.

Now, back to Friday night. We walked over to the airbnb. It was now raining, adding insult to injury. Maybe we could get mugged too, to complete worst-night-ever Bingo (we didn’t get mugged). Karun waited down the block while Edward from Twilight czeched me in. Once this aspiring Robert Patinson left, I went down and let Karun in. We excitedly went to sleep in a clean, comfortable, quiet queen bed, getting situated just before midnight. I czeched my phone before bed. Scott had returned to his airbnb duties, and confirmed that they would wipe out the charges. The near 8-hour ordeal was finally done, happy ending and all.

NIGHTMARE SHORT VERSION: If the minutia of each moment of my nightmare is too much to read, I arrived without a reservation and was completely unable to find a spot in a hostel or hotel after walking around for nearly an hour. I booked an airbnb, but I couldn’t get into the apartment and after waiting they cancelled on me. I then booked a crappy overpriced hotel, which was actually a converted backroom in a nightclub. Calling it a shit hole isn’t fair to shit holes. I couldn’t stay here. Airbnb wound up coming through and I wound up in an overpriced studio for 2 nights. I arrived in Prague at 4pm Friday and got situated in this studio close to midnight.