Prague Report
We just came back from Prague yesterday. It was a great holiday, though not entirely without setbacks.
The night before we left I wanted to put the address of the hotel in the GPS and started putting down "Tsjechie" for Czech Republic. But as soon as I put down the T it said: Destination not found. Turns out my GPS only had Western Europe. Now I wanted to download Eastern Europe as well, but then that didn't fit, because my GPS only has 1GB in memory and the maps of Western Europe were already over 800MB. So I had to delete the map of Western Europe, so I could get the map of Eastern Europe on there. Lot of trouble, but it still beats having to try and find your way with a map.
So the next day we get in the car, you know, the one I got the day before that. I plug int he power cable for the GPS into the 12V Lighterplug and I notice the light doesn't come on. I twist it around a bit, but to no avail. I put the lighter back in and press the button and it just doesn't pop up. Yay, no power for the GPS! But we managed to make due by just turning it off a lot. Luckily most of the instructions still included: drive straight on this road for 250 km. I'd just turn it off, turn it back on after 245km and this way we managed to still have enough battery power to get around in Prague. And we could still make out planned detour at Castle Weissenstein in Pommersfelden, Germany!
Castle Weissenstein was really pretty, but we could not get inside, as there was only 1 tour a day and that was at noon or something. But then again we didn't really want to go inside anyway. But it was nice to walk around the castle a bit. There wa also a garden where you have to pay 1 euro to get in and we decided to go for it. At the gate was a sign saying: "Careful, free roaming animals. No dogs allowed". We scoffed it off, thinking there would be some bunnies. Anyway, the gardens were gorgeous, nice outstretched fields with trees, a lake, cute little groundskeeper houses. And then out of nowhere a deer bounded across the little path in front of us. We decided to follow it for a while trying to get some pictures in, and found another 3 deers as this one re-united with it's herd. So we learned the lesson that when Germans say there's free roaming animals, to not underestimate them.
After this refreshing break we continued on to the Czech Republic and got to Prague no problem. Had a bit of a hard time finding a parking spot for the receptionist at our hostel told us that if we continued down the same street for a few minutes there was some parking there that was free for the entire weekend. After some looking around and checking the Lonely Planet we found out that Po-Pa actually meant Mon-Fri (as in whi
ch days it was paid parking) and so we found the area the receptionist meant. We went to have some dinner at a place that serves typical Czech food, and we had stewed pork, sauerkraut and potato and bread dumplings. Not world shockingly good food, but nice enough really. Also we found out that the Lonely Planet LIED to us! It said that the Czech words in there were basically pronounced as written (with some exceptions listed). So we tried to thank our waiter in Czech, "Dekuji!" We said this as written, so de-ku-ji. The waiter looked as us funny and said: "You must mean Dekuji". Feeling thoroughly shamed, we took his kind language lesson to mind and wrote down the word in as you'd spell it in French (Descuit). We ended the day with a walk to the river to have a look at view over the bridges and Prague Castle.
The next day we were going to Prague Castle, but before we went there I wanted to check on the car. I was a bit paranoid that we'd misunderstood the parking meters or that they'd just give me a ticket anyway cause I'm a tourist or that the car had been broken in to. You never know. But walking through the street there there was one distinct thing missing:
MY CAR WAS GONE!!
We quickly found a police officer (there is by the way a great number of police in the streets of Prague) who spoke hardly a word of English but he seemed to understand my car was gone. And he radioed in to ask. And thank god my car was indeed impounded by the police. When asked why the man didn't know what to say really and with help from the maps we had in out Lonely Planet he managed to explain where the car as taken. The receptionist did speak English and she called for us to check what had happened (she was feeling very guilty because she was the one who pointed out that car park to us). They'd explained to her that my car had been towed because the streets had been cleaned. Apparently there had been signs. Of course, we never saw any signs, and if there were signs we never would have been able to read them, and considering that all the parking spots were filled it seemed like no other cars had been towed, so it did feel a bit like we were being screwed over. But we made our way to the station, got the car and 'only' had to pay 1450 Ckr (+/- €60) in stead of 2000+ Ckr (+/- €80+). The experience was totally weird by the police's entire lack of English or German and the fact that they had this little teller window where you could not see the face of the person on the other side. This all of course ensures that there's the least possible amount of argument while they try to rip tourists off and it worked. Yes I'd been screwed, but there's no way to do anything about it when they have your car behind bars and they pretend to not speak any other language. At least I got my car back.
The rest of the day we just did some of the walking tours in the Lonely Planet. Prague is really beautiful with all the elaborate architecture. It would look completely like a city of over 200 years ago, if it was not on the fact that capitalism literally exploded there. There's more signs for McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks and other big chains then you can count. All the beautiful buildings are littered with neon lights. It's still delightful to walk around though as long as you manage to avoid the throngs of tourists, which we managed to do due to the help of the Lonely Planet. It always helped us to find the little gems behind the big tourist attractions and the quiet little squares just behind the street filled with 100's of people. Of course sometimes you can't avoid the tourists, like when you go to see the Astronomical Clock, but you're quickly led away from their main routes again.
We had dinner in an Afghan restaurant (never seen one before, but it's a lot like many other Middle Eastern restaurants) and had drinks in a nice, typically Czech, bar for the rest of the evening. On the way back passing by the car again. Caranoia had struck me. Luckily it was still there.
The next day we went to Prague Castle (after having checked ont he car of course). This is the largest ancient castle in the world. This is a great claim and no doubt true, but sadly you don't really get this feeling walking around in it. The castle's foundation are from the 9th century and in some things on the castle grounds you can really tell, like the inside of the small Basilica of St George. This little building is really where you can see what has happened with the castle. The inside is really ancient Romanesque style, with graves from the 10th century and remains of a 12th century fresco. The outside however shows nothing of this. And this goes for most of the castle really. It's all gone along with it's time, now showing more Renaissance style, some Baroque, but over the years it's always been renovated to fit the current tastes of the rulers of the castle. And this is what sort off takes some of the glory of the castle. The buildings inside look a lot like the regular buildings in the streets of Prague. And if you've seen a McDonalds in a prettier building just the day before, it sort of steals the glory of such a grand castle. But at least having done the tour in the basements of the castle, you can still appreciate the numerous layers of history underneath the visible layers of the castle. That's were I appreciated it most, in what I could NOT see.
And with that in only 2 days, we had pretty much sen most of what there was to see in Prague. Granted we didn't go inside any museums, other then Prague Castle itself, but the city itself is a museum enough already. You can see something beautiful on every street in the city.
The night before we left I wanted to put the address of the hotel in the GPS and started putting down "Tsjechie" for Czech Republic. But as soon as I put down the T it said: Destination not found. Turns out my GPS only had Western Europe. Now I wanted to download Eastern Europe as well, but then that didn't fit, because my GPS only has 1GB in memory and the maps of Western Europe were already over 800MB. So I had to delete the map of Western Europe, so I could get the map of Eastern Europe on there. Lot of trouble, but it still beats having to try and find your way with a map.
So the next day we get in the car, you know, the one I got the day before that. I plug int he power cable for the GPS into the 12V Lighterplug and I notice the light doesn't come on. I twist it around a bit, but to no avail. I put the lighter back in and press the button and it just doesn't pop up. Yay, no power for the GPS! But we managed to make due by just turning it off a lot. Luckily most of the instructions still included: drive straight on this road for 250 km. I'd just turn it off, turn it back on after 245km and this way we managed to still have enough battery power to get around in Prague. And we could still make out planned detour at Castle Weissenstein in Pommersfelden, Germany!
Castle Weissenstein was really pretty, but we could not get inside, as there was only 1 tour a day and that was at noon or something. But then again we didn't really want to go inside anyway. But it was nice to walk around the castle a bit. There wa also a garden where you have to pay 1 euro to get in and we decided to go for it. At the gate was a sign saying: "Careful, free roaming animals. No dogs allowed". We scoffed it off, thinking there would be some bunnies. Anyway, the gardens were gorgeous, nice outstretched fields with trees, a lake, cute little groundskeeper houses. And then out of nowhere a deer bounded across the little path in front of us. We decided to follow it for a while trying to get some pictures in, and found another 3 deers as this one re-united with it's herd. So we learned the lesson that when Germans say there's free roaming animals, to not underestimate them.
After this refreshing break we continued on to the Czech Republic and got to Prague no problem. Had a bit of a hard time finding a parking spot for the receptionist at our hostel told us that if we continued down the same street for a few minutes there was some parking there that was free for the entire weekend. After some looking around and checking the Lonely Planet we found out that Po-Pa actually meant Mon-Fri (as in whi
ch days it was paid parking) and so we found the area the receptionist meant. We went to have some dinner at a place that serves typical Czech food, and we had stewed pork, sauerkraut and potato and bread dumplings. Not world shockingly good food, but nice enough really. Also we found out that the Lonely Planet LIED to us! It said that the Czech words in there were basically pronounced as written (with some exceptions listed). So we tried to thank our waiter in Czech, "Dekuji!" We said this as written, so de-ku-ji. The waiter looked as us funny and said: "You must mean Dekuji". Feeling thoroughly shamed, we took his kind language lesson to mind and wrote down the word in as you'd spell it in French (Descuit). We ended the day with a walk to the river to have a look at view over the bridges and Prague Castle.
The next day we were going to Prague Castle, but before we went there I wanted to check on the car. I was a bit paranoid that we'd misunderstood the parking meters or that they'd just give me a ticket anyway cause I'm a tourist or that the car had been broken in to. You never know. But walking through the street there there was one distinct thing missing:
MY CAR WAS GONE!!
We quickly found a police officer (there is by the way a great number of police in the streets of Prague) who spoke hardly a word of English but he seemed to understand my car was gone. And he radioed in to ask. And thank god my car was indeed impounded by the police. When asked why the man didn't know what to say really and with help from the maps we had in out Lonely Planet he managed to explain where the car as taken. The receptionist did speak English and she called for us to check what had happened (she was feeling very guilty because she was the one who pointed out that car park to us). They'd explained to her that my car had been towed because the streets had been cleaned. Apparently there had been signs. Of course, we never saw any signs, and if there were signs we never would have been able to read them, and considering that all the parking spots were filled it seemed like no other cars had been towed, so it did feel a bit like we were being screwed over. But we made our way to the station, got the car and 'only' had to pay 1450 Ckr (+/- €60) in stead of 2000+ Ckr (+/- €80+). The experience was totally weird by the police's entire lack of English or German and the fact that they had this little teller window where you could not see the face of the person on the other side. This all of course ensures that there's the least possible amount of argument while they try to rip tourists off and it worked. Yes I'd been screwed, but there's no way to do anything about it when they have your car behind bars and they pretend to not speak any other language. At least I got my car back.
The rest of the day we just did some of the walking tours in the Lonely Planet. Prague is really beautiful with all the elaborate architecture. It would look completely like a city of over 200 years ago, if it was not on the fact that capitalism literally exploded there. There's more signs for McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks and other big chains then you can count. All the beautiful buildings are littered with neon lights. It's still delightful to walk around though as long as you manage to avoid the throngs of tourists, which we managed to do due to the help of the Lonely Planet. It always helped us to find the little gems behind the big tourist attractions and the quiet little squares just behind the street filled with 100's of people. Of course sometimes you can't avoid the tourists, like when you go to see the Astronomical Clock, but you're quickly led away from their main routes again.
We had dinner in an Afghan restaurant (never seen one before, but it's a lot like many other Middle Eastern restaurants) and had drinks in a nice, typically Czech, bar for the rest of the evening. On the way back passing by the car again. Caranoia had struck me. Luckily it was still there.
The next day we went to Prague Castle (after having checked ont he car of course). This is the largest ancient castle in the world. This is a great claim and no doubt true, but sadly you don't really get this feeling walking around in it. The castle's foundation are from the 9th century and in some things on the castle grounds you can really tell, like the inside of the small Basilica of St George. This little building is really where you can see what has happened with the castle. The inside is really ancient Romanesque style, with graves from the 10th century and remains of a 12th century fresco. The outside however shows nothing of this. And this goes for most of the castle really. It's all gone along with it's time, now showing more Renaissance style, some Baroque, but over the years it's always been renovated to fit the current tastes of the rulers of the castle. And this is what sort off takes some of the glory of the castle. The buildings inside look a lot like the regular buildings in the streets of Prague. And if you've seen a McDonalds in a prettier building just the day before, it sort of steals the glory of such a grand castle. But at least having done the tour in the basements of the castle, you can still appreciate the numerous layers of history underneath the visible layers of the castle. That's were I appreciated it most, in what I could NOT see.
And with that in only 2 days, we had pretty much sen most of what there was to see in Prague. Granted we didn't go inside any museums, other then Prague Castle itself, but the city itself is a museum enough already. You can see something beautiful on every street in the city.