Czech It Out

I arrived in Prague after pulling an all-nighter, with only a few measly hours of plane sleep in me. My wonderful friend Alana was waiting for me outside of customs, just arrived from Dublin. We navigated our way to the hostel, which looks like it could be in Animal Kingdom in Disney World. As we speak I'm staring at a grinning giraffe painted above my bed. It took us about a day to get our bearings, since old town of Prague was apparently designed before the invention of straight lines. The windy cobblestone roads, while not conducive to efficient navigation, create the charming European feel of rich history and architecture.



Juxtaposed onto the old city is graffiti of all shapes, color, and sizes. Most notable of the graffitis would be the John Lennon wall. During the communist rule, civilians would paint Lennon quotes on the wall each day, and officials would paint over them each night. This back-and-forth created a space for silent, peaceful protest until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Today the wall flourishes with layers of John Lennon-themed graffiti art.

Alana and I took both the general walking tour and the castle walking tour, getting a pretty solid overview of Prague's major sites. It houses the world's largest ancient castle, an impressively huge astronomical clock, and an extremely well-preserved Jewish quarter. Apparently Hitler was very fond of Prague and had intended to retire here. He forbade destruction of the major synagogues, planning to use them to house a museum of an extinct people. I know, freaky, right?!

The other thing one must note about Prague is the beer. People love to shoot out the statistic that the people of Prague drink the most beer per capita of any city in the world, averaging over a liter of beer per person per day (this includes babies). Beer is cheaper than water in most places, and I'm starting to wonder how Czech people don't all suffer from dehydration. There's also this...I don't know what it is but it can't be bad.

Alana and I took advantage of this on a pub crawl on our second night and met a mob of drunken Irish students along the way. Our night out was a blast and involved a burrito, which is all a girl could ever want.

For our last night we went to a Black Light Theater show, recommended to me by a guy on the plane. Apparently very Czech, this type of theater involves very strange effects and very little plot. I'm not sure what else to say about it except that we left at intermission and will probably never attend another one of these shows.

All in all Prague seems like a great city with much beauty, color, and alcoholism. Hopefully I'll come back some day to spend more than three days, but we're off to Dresden in the morning. Czech-out is at 11:00!