Semana Santa Part 1: Prague?!...Czech!

Hi! I'm actually sitting on a train right now traveling from Prague to Berlin. I figured that I'm going to be posting 3 blogs about 3 big things I'm doing this week, so I might as well start writing. The train is pretty amazing.  It is so quiet and peaceful and definitely the way to travel. You don't have to go through the hassle of security in the airport and have your own little compartment of 6 people the entire way there (just like in HP!). I'm definitely a fan. Next time I travel in Europe, I'm just going to do a Eurorail pass to get me everywhere.

So did you like my title?! I hope so! Unlike Madrid, this one wasn't too hard to think up because all weekend, Brittany, Attie and I have been cheesing it up saying, lets... check it out (you know since Prague is in the "Czech" Republic?!).

We're on a week break for Easter Week, better known here as Semana Santa, or Holy Week, which is HUGE in Sevilla. It's probably what Sevilla is known best for along with Feria, or something along the lines of festival (which we get a week break again in another week!). During Semana Santa, no one has to work for the whole week and no one has school. It's pretty awesome. Anyways, lets czech out all the cool things I did in Prague this past weekend!

Extensive Hours of Traveling?!...Triple Czech!
Unfortunately, as Brittany likes to say, we were "nubes" (newbies) when it came to planning this trip. We planned Prague the 2nd week in Sevilla and had no idea the toll traveling takes on you. We were only interested in the cheapest routes possible, and because of this, most of our flights are out of the bigger, international airport, Madrid, not Sevilla. We take a really cheap bus to get there. The catch however, is that it's a 6 1/2 hour buss ride. So with that said, let me give you a briefing of our schedule for getting to Prague::  We left our houses at 7am with 6 days of clothes stuffed into our Northface backbacks (at the airport they weighed 20lbs!) Then we got on 8am bus to arrive in Madrid by 2:30. Take hour long metro ride to get to airport by 3:30. Fly our of Madrid to Brussels, Belgium from 5-8pm, then fly from 9pm-11pm to get to Prague. Once we got to Prague, we had to take 2 busses and a metro to get to our hostel. Although the traveling was tiring, we got pretty lucky on the place. Somehow, we were considered business class (maybe because we scheduled so early?) and got great meals on both planes. After this week of traveling, I've decided that paying a little extra money to get to the destination quicker and more comfortably is definitely the way to go.

Siteseeing?!...Czech!
Saturday we got up bright and early to hit the town. The weather was perfect too. It was nippy at times, but in the sun it was delightfully crisp and refreshing! It reminded me of a Saturday in the fall: perfect football weather. The main area that has all the main sites is the Old Town which is where we were most of the weekend. Seriously, for all of my talk about Prague, I just want to put exclamation marks!!!!!! It was such a cool city. We got really lucky because Prague celebrates Easter Week as well, which we did not know. In the Old Town was a huge festival with tons of adorable red tents set up decorated with eggs and flowers. I wish I could bring back the delicious smells that came from the tents. They had all kinds of yummy traditional Czech foods and we were able to try a bunch of them. They even had a stage with performers and vending areas that sold handmade crafts. It was just a great, happy atmosphere that really let you experience part of their culture.

Cute handpainted easter eggs!

Me in the midst of the festival with the famous clock tower behind me

For the first time out of the many trips Attie, Brittany and I have done together, we took a free walking tour. Prague doesn't have famous museums or anything of that nature, so we were able to take the 2 1/2 hour tour, see most the sites and learn some really cool things about the history of Prague and the monuments that we wouldn't have known otherwise. I'll post the main sites we saw on our tour and tell you a bit about them!

Called the Powder Tower because thats where they used to keep the gun tower, this is the first site you see before walking into the Old Town.

The famous astronomical clock. Every hour on the hour two little figurines come out of the doors above the clocks and go around while a trumpeter is playing on the top of the tower

The gothic steeples of Tyn Church. They're called the Adam and Eve steeples because the one on the left is skinnier (Eve) than the one on the right (Adam)

The Jewish Cemetary in the Jewish Quarters of Old Town. There are thousands of people buried here and most graves are  10 people deep because the Jews were only given a small piece of land to bury their dead. 

There is no real story to this. The statue is from a book written by an author from Prague. I just like the statue :)

Estates Theater where Mozart first premiered one of his works : Don Giovanni 

For lunch, we headed to Letna Park,  which is on a hill overlooking Prague, and went to a beer garden to get some cheap beer and really good hamburger with sauerkraut. While in Letna Park, I realized that Prague has an excessive amount of roller bladers! I have never seen so many! Afterwards, we trudged up more hills and stairs to get to the Prague Castle Complex which is the biggest castle complex in the world. It was a little confusing because the main castle wasn't big at all. It is the whole area around it with the church and other buildings that make it seem so big. (In fact, the big steeples I had seen from afar weren't the castle it was the church). I was expecting a princess fairytale castle and was a tad let down. Oh well! It was still really neat. We then made our way to the Charles Bridge which is about 750 years old and has 30 statues on it. The bridge was too overwhelming for me though. As my family and especially Alaina might know, I am not a fan of crowds because everyone is always in your way and moving too slow. It just frustrates me. The bridge had all kinds of street performers, caricature painters and venders that it probably took 20 minutes just to get across it. Arg! Although I was frustrated the whole time, it was still cool to see and some of the performers were pretty good.

View on on our way up to Letna Park with Brittany!

The castle complex

The Charles Bridge is the first of 3 bridges you see. (Bridge closest to us)

 Sunday was a really nice relaxing day.Since we had basically seen all the main sites on Saturday, we were able to mosey around the town and explore the different neighborhoods. We went to the "Little" neighborhood, which was across the river, and visited St. Nicholas Church, which quite possibly could be the prettiest church I've seen in Europe (which is saying something, considering every city in Europe has a bajillion churches). After the church, we climbed a hill to see the fake Eiffel Tower and then headed back down to see the Lenin wall which was soo neat!

writing for Purdue and Phi Mu!

After grabbing some delicious lunch at the Easter festival and watching the performers onstage, we hit our only museum we did all week, the Communist Museum. The museum kind of took you through the struggles of everyday communism the the Czech people had to deal with and had different artifacts from that time. They also had videos that you could watch. One was really powerful that showed live footage from the 1990's of peaceful protests to end communism and the police just being so brutal and beating the protesters. It kind of reminded me of a movie clip I've seen from the 1960's in the U.S. with black rights. After finishing our siteseeing, we ate dinner around 9:30 then headed back to begin our early morning train trip to Berlin!

Good Bars, Beer and Food?!...Czech!
Beer: Serioulsy, Prague recieves a 100% A++ in this category! I think the food and beer made Prague what it was. Our only akward bar was Friday night at midnight when we got in from traveling. We didn't realize that our hostel was in a sketchy area since we arrived in the dark, so we decided to go to a bar on the same street as our hostel. We walked by it and it had all types of cool wrting on the sign and we could see a DJ just rocking out. We had heard Prague is famous for their beers, so decided to go in and see what it was all about. Well, we go in there and it was kind of like the movies where everyone turns around and stares at you. We were the only girls and were outnumbered by men and dogs. Yes, dogs. Two dogs sleeping on a couch and one little dog trying to sit on my lap. We got a HUGE mug of one of many Prague specialty beers which was probably like 2 full beers for only 26 czech crown (It was really hard getting used to the money, but 23 crown= 1 euro, so 500 crown = around 20 euro. this made it very hard to gage how much you were spending). Now I'm not usually a fan of beer, butI raelly liked the Czech beer Gambrinis that we had. It didn't have that bitter aftertaste that I usually hate. During the whole weekend I had beer with all of my meals and when I was thirsty. In Prague, beer is cheaper than water (in Europe, they've never heard of free tap water, only expensive water from bottles). I tried Prague's Grambrinis, Hoegarden, which kind of had the color of lemonade but was amazing and Pilsner Urquell which I didn't really like. I also had hot wine from one of the tents at the Easter Festival, which tasted a little like apple cider.

Food: I am going to go out on a limb and say the best food I have eaten in Europe has been in Prague, hands down, fo sho. They just had everything under the sun and even their traditional, non touristy restaraunt had pasta, meat, fish, and other yummy stuff just like American restaraunts. From the red tents, I had amazing potatoes with sauerkraut, cabage and ham and this really good donut thing.

Saturday night for dinner, I ate an ENTIRE pizza by myself! In Sevilla, we usually have microwavable pizza for dinner with tuna on top 2-3 times a week. If we don't have that, we usually have fried croquetas, fried chicken nuggets or hamburgers. Even the pizza joints in Sevilla don't taste like real pizza, that is why I was so excited to see that Prague had so many pizzerias around. We figured we'd have to try one out, so chose a restaraunt with a great view of the astronomical clock and all got our own medium sized pizza. I got one with ham and pineapple and it was almost as good as my ham, pineapple, and BBQ sauce pizza I make at Wiley. It was to die for.

Since the breafast at the hostel was one of toast, which is what we have every morning for breakfast in Sevilla, we went to this Bohemian Bagel Place and I had my first bagel in 4 months. It was the best thing I have had for bfast here yet!

Brittany's boyfriend, Sam studied in Prague last spring so was able to tell us an amazing non touristy restaraunt called Atmosphere. It didn't even have a sign out front, you just had to find it by the street numbers. I got oven baked chicken with cheese, bacon and some delicious broccoli sauce. My side was the best green beans I have ever had with ham and onions cut up into it. After everything I've eaten this weekend, its safe to say I've gained about 20 lbs! (It was totally worth it though)
Bars: So i've already told you about one bar. Fortunately, we had better luck at the other ones. After our free tour on Saturday, we signed up for a bar crawl for 20 euro and got a free tshirt, free admission into 3 bars and a night club and 1 hour of free drinks. It was so cool and we met a lot of cool people. These 3 American guys we met were really refreshing. It must just be something about European men who seriously want to marry you the first time you talk to them. We spent our hour of free unlimited drinking with the American boys without getting hit on and thourghout the night they would come save us from the many creepers that came out way. For example, a Croatian guy that I had litteraly said five words to asked me if any of the American boys were my boyfriends. I knew where this was leading, so hesitated not wanted to tell the truth to the Croatian. Then he said good because I want to tell you that I love you. Well Steve, who was always at our rescue came up and said yeah, actually she is my girlfriend and with that the guy left. Basically moral of the story is that I miss my American boyysssssss! <3 <3.

Losers after a game of flip cup with shots instead of beers

Hostel?!..Not so much a Czech
The hostel wasn't the best I've been to and as I've already mentioned, it was in a shadypart of town about 20 minutes walk from the center. I guess I always am rating my hostel experience to the great Barcelona hostel I stayed at and none of the others yet have been able to compare. I must say that this was the first hostel I felt a little uncomfortable. We stayed in a feet smelling 11 person both sexes dorm room. It was the cheapest and we've done it before so no biggie. However, I've nver been in a hostel room with 5 large overgrown german boys (men? not sure) who only sleep in tighty whiteys that are too small, who snore and fart in their sleep. That night when we got there, I was a little scared to go to sleep. This was also the first time I've been in a hostel where the showers aren't in your rooms but in the hallways where you share them with the rest of the residents in the hostel. Once the boys left Sunday, it got better, However, it was replaced by 3 French doctorate students who were girls but slept in the smae bed and had very long noisy good night kisses together. Maybe it's just the culture to make out with your friends before going to bed? Yeah, thats it.

Great Time in Prague?!...Czech!
Seriously, Prague was one of my favorite cities I have visited. Although it was touristy, you still felt very included in the tranquil, happy life in Prague, very simliar to Sevilla. Brittany and I kept spirits high when fatigue overcame us by being portable Ipods. We belted out every song known to man I think during our trip and she and I had a great time walking through the cobblestone streets of Prague :) It was definitely a wonderful wonderful start to a great Semana Santa week!