Czech it Out! PRAHA!
Okay, everybody get on a plane, leave stinkin' old NJ and come on over to Prague! I don't mean to dis NJ, but man that city's sweet!
Okay, let me start from the beginning. So, Thursday after class, I finished packing for the weekend, ate some lunch, and then me, Tru, and the Lambs (for those of you at home, the Love of the Lambs are a womens household at my school...there were like 11 of them here in Austria with me) headed for the bus stop, waited for the bus that we weren't sure about, but it picked us up and took us to the local train stop. Tru and I basically just followed everything they did, since they were heading for Prague for a retreat weekend. That made it a bit easier to travel, because I just followed, and got group discounts. So, after a while on a couple different trains and 2 passport stampers, we made it to Prague at like 10PM. Tru and I were able to find our hostel fairly easy, despite me freaking out in Wenceslaus Square at the scary hookers and people who I thought were all out to get me. We went into the hostel, and the guy said we couldn't pay with debit / credit card, so we had to walk around Wenceslaus Square looking for one, only finding people who change money or take it out of your Card for you. They were safe, so we took out a bunch of Koruns, and it felt so good to get inside our hostel and just sit down. It was a fairly nice room, one big bed and one single bed (which I slept on), and it wasn't small, and I felt safe. Thats a nice feeling in a foreign city. I think it was just the Square at night that freaked me out...and the old ugly hookers.
Anyway, Tru and I got up in the morning and were out of our hostel be 9am to hit Prague and all of its splendor. We walked out into W. Square, which is really like a long busy boulevard with all kinds of shops and stuff on it. The city felt alot safer in the daytime. It felt wonderful to just be walking around Prague with Trulie holding my arm. =) So, we walked around, found a Hard Rock Cafe that we decided we'd come back to later tonight, and found all kinds of shops, inside and outside, selling things that were fairly cheap. 30 Koruns are about 1 Euro, and you can get things fairly cheaply. I got a hat that says CZECH on it for like 5 Euro, and a T-shirt for 8 Euro, Tru bargained a shirt down to 7 Euro, and got a pink hat that says PRAHA on it for like 5 Euro. It was amazing. We also got some more shirts / jackety things, but there was just too much to mention right now.
We made it to Old Town Square, where there is this anatomical clock that people gather around to watch, because every hour the skeleton of death rings a bell and a procession of apostles go by. It was cool, kinda weird, but cool. And for like a Euro, we could go up to the top of the tower (we took the elevator, thank God) and you can look at the city, or just look down at all the people. That was amazing. After Old Town Square, we headed for the other side of town. On our way, we saw Creme and Dream, an ice cream / Gelati shop that we've been told was amazing...and it absolutely was. I can't wait till we get Gelati from Italy...that should be even more amazing.
So we found our way to Charles Bridge, which was a neat, big bradge with all these religious statues on either side. From the bridge you could see Prague castle, which we hit up later. Our primary goal in crossing the Charles Bridge was to find the Church of Our Lady Victorious. In this church is a famous wax figure, not too tall, of the Infant Child Jesus of Prague. It is a little wax figure of Jesus that is dressed in a glorious looking robe. He has over 70 robes that are changed periodically. There is supposed to be great stories that have come from devotion to the Infant Jesus of Prague. It was really wonderful to see it and pray in front of it. I mean, I know we're not worshipping the statue itself here, but we are honoring Jesus, a king as a child even, and we pray to him especially by this image of him in all his splendor. It was really amazing, He was so precious. It was a wonderful time. After the church, we walked uphill alot, not exactly sure what we were looking for, but we found an old monastary called Loreta which was pretty cool. Then we went the oposite direction and found the entrance to Prague Castle. It was really big and cool looking. Guarding the entrance on each side was one of those crazy guards who doesn't move. No emotion, no movement, nothing. So we took a picture of Trulie next to one of them. It was awesome. Inside the walls, there was a ginormus, beautiful looking church called St. Vitus's Cathedral. It had some really cool stained glass windows inside.
Tru and I walked back towards our hostel, stopping for pizza on the way. We dropped our stuff off at the hostel and went back out. We stopped at The New Yorker, a store that I guess is American, but they had one here, and we got some cool stuff really cheap, then we went to Hard Rock Cafe, which was really small and sketchy, so I just bought a Hard Rock Cafe, Batallion Prague shirt and headed out. We went to McDonalds and got some fries, then got some hot wine on a street corner and headed in for the night. It was quite an amazing and exhausting day.
We had decided previously to come back on Saturday so we would have Sunday to relax and study for midterms. Well, we definitely got our share of adventures involving the trains. We took the 12noon train from Prague to Breclav, which is supposed to be on the border of Czech and Austria, where we were told we can activate these cards that give you discounts for traveling in Austria. Since we got group discounts on the way, we needed to activate this card on the way home for things to be cheaper. Well, we get off in Breclav, ran to the info booth, where nobody spoke English. They told us to go to Vienna to activate the card, so we ran back to train we just got off, barely made it on before it left, and bought a ticket to Vienna on the train. In Vienna, we were able to activate the cards and bought tickets to the station closest to our home station. However, to get to the Vienna stationwe had to leave from, we had to take some sort of metro thing into some other Vienna station, where we went to St. Polten, the connection to Pochlorn, where we couldn't find the right train to get on, but we finally did and it was late, and when we got to Pochlorn, we had to run to the other platform to get on the train to go to the Kienberg-Gaming stop. We made it back at 9:30, the only ones left on the train, and since we were still a good 8 minute bus ride from campus. However, the busses don't run at 9:30 at night. So that meant we had a 40 minute walk in the coldness with our stuff. UNLESS!!! HITCH-HIKING! The safest place to hitchhike isn't here, but it's definitely safe to do it in Austria. After walking for like 15 minutes, and being passed by 10 cars, we finally got picked up by 2 twenty-year-olds who spoke German, so we just pointed and said the name of the place and they drove us home. It was AMAZING! Makes me want to hitchhike more. Anyway, I made it home safe, so YAY!!!
And now, I leave on Friday for a 10-day pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi. Catch ya later.
Italia, right Adam H?
Okay, let me start from the beginning. So, Thursday after class, I finished packing for the weekend, ate some lunch, and then me, Tru, and the Lambs (for those of you at home, the Love of the Lambs are a womens household at my school...there were like 11 of them here in Austria with me) headed for the bus stop, waited for the bus that we weren't sure about, but it picked us up and took us to the local train stop. Tru and I basically just followed everything they did, since they were heading for Prague for a retreat weekend. That made it a bit easier to travel, because I just followed, and got group discounts. So, after a while on a couple different trains and 2 passport stampers, we made it to Prague at like 10PM. Tru and I were able to find our hostel fairly easy, despite me freaking out in Wenceslaus Square at the scary hookers and people who I thought were all out to get me. We went into the hostel, and the guy said we couldn't pay with debit / credit card, so we had to walk around Wenceslaus Square looking for one, only finding people who change money or take it out of your Card for you. They were safe, so we took out a bunch of Koruns, and it felt so good to get inside our hostel and just sit down. It was a fairly nice room, one big bed and one single bed (which I slept on), and it wasn't small, and I felt safe. Thats a nice feeling in a foreign city. I think it was just the Square at night that freaked me out...and the old ugly hookers.
Anyway, Tru and I got up in the morning and were out of our hostel be 9am to hit Prague and all of its splendor. We walked out into W. Square, which is really like a long busy boulevard with all kinds of shops and stuff on it. The city felt alot safer in the daytime. It felt wonderful to just be walking around Prague with Trulie holding my arm. =) So, we walked around, found a Hard Rock Cafe that we decided we'd come back to later tonight, and found all kinds of shops, inside and outside, selling things that were fairly cheap. 30 Koruns are about 1 Euro, and you can get things fairly cheaply. I got a hat that says CZECH on it for like 5 Euro, and a T-shirt for 8 Euro, Tru bargained a shirt down to 7 Euro, and got a pink hat that says PRAHA on it for like 5 Euro. It was amazing. We also got some more shirts / jackety things, but there was just too much to mention right now.
We made it to Old Town Square, where there is this anatomical clock that people gather around to watch, because every hour the skeleton of death rings a bell and a procession of apostles go by. It was cool, kinda weird, but cool. And for like a Euro, we could go up to the top of the tower (we took the elevator, thank God) and you can look at the city, or just look down at all the people. That was amazing. After Old Town Square, we headed for the other side of town. On our way, we saw Creme and Dream, an ice cream / Gelati shop that we've been told was amazing...and it absolutely was. I can't wait till we get Gelati from Italy...that should be even more amazing.
So we found our way to Charles Bridge, which was a neat, big bradge with all these religious statues on either side. From the bridge you could see Prague castle, which we hit up later. Our primary goal in crossing the Charles Bridge was to find the Church of Our Lady Victorious. In this church is a famous wax figure, not too tall, of the Infant Child Jesus of Prague. It is a little wax figure of Jesus that is dressed in a glorious looking robe. He has over 70 robes that are changed periodically. There is supposed to be great stories that have come from devotion to the Infant Jesus of Prague. It was really wonderful to see it and pray in front of it. I mean, I know we're not worshipping the statue itself here, but we are honoring Jesus, a king as a child even, and we pray to him especially by this image of him in all his splendor. It was really amazing, He was so precious. It was a wonderful time. After the church, we walked uphill alot, not exactly sure what we were looking for, but we found an old monastary called Loreta which was pretty cool. Then we went the oposite direction and found the entrance to Prague Castle. It was really big and cool looking. Guarding the entrance on each side was one of those crazy guards who doesn't move. No emotion, no movement, nothing. So we took a picture of Trulie next to one of them. It was awesome. Inside the walls, there was a ginormus, beautiful looking church called St. Vitus's Cathedral. It had some really cool stained glass windows inside.
Tru and I walked back towards our hostel, stopping for pizza on the way. We dropped our stuff off at the hostel and went back out. We stopped at The New Yorker, a store that I guess is American, but they had one here, and we got some cool stuff really cheap, then we went to Hard Rock Cafe, which was really small and sketchy, so I just bought a Hard Rock Cafe, Batallion Prague shirt and headed out. We went to McDonalds and got some fries, then got some hot wine on a street corner and headed in for the night. It was quite an amazing and exhausting day.
We had decided previously to come back on Saturday so we would have Sunday to relax and study for midterms. Well, we definitely got our share of adventures involving the trains. We took the 12noon train from Prague to Breclav, which is supposed to be on the border of Czech and Austria, where we were told we can activate these cards that give you discounts for traveling in Austria. Since we got group discounts on the way, we needed to activate this card on the way home for things to be cheaper. Well, we get off in Breclav, ran to the info booth, where nobody spoke English. They told us to go to Vienna to activate the card, so we ran back to train we just got off, barely made it on before it left, and bought a ticket to Vienna on the train. In Vienna, we were able to activate the cards and bought tickets to the station closest to our home station. However, to get to the Vienna stationwe had to leave from, we had to take some sort of metro thing into some other Vienna station, where we went to St. Polten, the connection to Pochlorn, where we couldn't find the right train to get on, but we finally did and it was late, and when we got to Pochlorn, we had to run to the other platform to get on the train to go to the Kienberg-Gaming stop. We made it back at 9:30, the only ones left on the train, and since we were still a good 8 minute bus ride from campus. However, the busses don't run at 9:30 at night. So that meant we had a 40 minute walk in the coldness with our stuff. UNLESS!!! HITCH-HIKING! The safest place to hitchhike isn't here, but it's definitely safe to do it in Austria. After walking for like 15 minutes, and being passed by 10 cars, we finally got picked up by 2 twenty-year-olds who spoke German, so we just pointed and said the name of the place and they drove us home. It was AMAZING! Makes me want to hitchhike more. Anyway, I made it home safe, so YAY!!!
And now, I leave on Friday for a 10-day pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi. Catch ya later.
Italia, right Adam H?