Monday, November 12, 2007

Praha

Prague was beautiful! I was there from 1-5 November, and met up with my good friends, Olivia and Meaghan, from Toronto. As beautiful (and refreshingly typically European compared to Berlin) as Prague was, it was wonderful to see my friends again.

Olivia and I stayed in a hostel in the neighborhood of Zizkov. After initially being a little worried that the hostel would prove to be too far out of the city center, we soon learned that pretty much all of Prague is very walkable. The entire time, I used the subway probably four times, and two of those were because I had luggage. Olivia and I spent a lot of time walking from one place to another, taking in the impossibly narrow streets and the oh-so-pretty buildings. Olivia is convinced that Disneyland was modeled after Prague. We walked up to the top of the hill in the old city where the castle and main church are, but were too tired to be interested in paying more than the cost of dinner to go in. That's one thing I really liked about Prague-- it's so cheap! It manages to make Berlin look expensive, which is very hard to do. One night, five of us (Meaghan knew some other people in Prague from Paris) ate dinner for the equivalent of about 18€, including a beer or two per person. Speaking of which, beer is the cost of bottled water there. No joke.

One sight that I did see was the Jewish cemetary. Well, we peered in through a door (it is walled), and couldn't figure out if it is possible to actually go in. At any rate, it was sufficiently creepy, as it was Sunday, so the city was fairly empty, dark, and you knew some of those graves are super-old. It was cool. We also saw the astronomical clock (smaller than you think it's going to be) and peeked into St Jacob's Basilica, but couldn't figure out how to get in there, either.

During the train ride home, I realized how excited I was to be coming back to Berlin. It's nice to like your home base!
Next stops: Istanbul, Bratislava

No comments: