Spring Break: Prague/Praga/Praha

The morning bus from Vienna was not bad at all. I wasn’t tired, but found that I was able to sleep on the bus a little bit. Prague I found to be a bit dirtier than Vienna and not entirely enjoyable at first. After a day I got used to it and didn’t mind the filthy look so much. On a good note, the weather was better. Sure it would hail randomly while it was sunny out, but it was a good contrast to Vienna where we got soaked in the cold. I think the highlight of Prague could only be one of two things: the hostel or the prices. We began our stay with a nice lunch at a local place and wow was it delicious. I had a traditional dish for less than 10 dollars with a beer that was only 1 dollar (about 22 crowns). After that we returned to the hostel that had an absolutely amazing layout. The Internet did not work, but that didn’t matter because we basically had an awesome flat to ourselves. The first room had 3 beds, a kitchen table and a kitchen with a huge bathroom off to one side. Through a doorway near the kitchen there were two other bedrooms with two beds each. The whole place was absolutely wonderful and the best part was we were able to have a great time without breaking the bank. Sure I ended up spending a decent amount, but how else are you going to live? The two nights we were there we cooked dinner. I didn’t have much of a hand in the process (a very good thing too), but most of the group lent a hand to preparing the dinner. We all went to this supermarket called tesco that was in a mall. It had everything, and very cheap. We had pasta both nights, but also had crisped bread with tomato and cheese one night that I absolutely fell in love with. Rather than trying to find the nightlife of Prague, we relaxed at the hostel and drank and were merry. Since we were in Prague, we went out on a limb and decided to try the much-hyped absinth. Now I can say from experience that there are no hallucinations and it tastes like black licorice. I know I will not be going out of my way to find that again. I am disappointed that I didn’t try it, but there was this other drink called grog that Matt bought. We spent three days in Prague and walking around it was nice, but I wasn’t really impressed by anything. It felt like everything we did was just look at an old building and move on. Even if there was a history to the places we went, we didn’t know it. The St. Charles Bridge was beautiful and the town square was nice, but honestly I had the best times at the hostel living it up and chatting with everyone. Another highlight of Prague was the McDonald’s, easily the best in Europe that I have tasted. I bought a sandwich called the cheese and fresh (which doesn’t make much sense, but whatever) that came with fries, cheese curds, a drink and a muffin. I guess I paid for the amount of food (almost 9 dollars for the meal) but it was absolutely delicious and I was stuffed (without even getting my fries because I left the counter without them). The worst part of Prague was trying to get to Berlin. We had to take a night bus that left at 12 and arrived in Berlin at 430. What a pain. Not only was the bus station awful (no inside seating and it was in a shady area of town) but also it was almost impossible to sleep on the bus. There were several stops, including one in which a police officer looked at all our passports and searched some of the bags. I got enough sleep, but some people were slightly sick at this point, so they were unable to survive in Berlin. Since we arrived so early, there was no way to enter the hostel until about 8. Therefore, we waited in the bus station for hours until we could hop on the metro and arrive at the hostel. Once we arrived we could not move into our room because it was unavailable for check in until 2, which makes sense since check out is at 12. If we wanted to crash there we would have had to pay another night which I was like, uh no. Also the hostel misplaced our reservation. Our reservation was placed for Wednesday night rather than Thursday, so we technically had no reservation. However there was really no problem and after that the hostel became possibly the best in Europe.