Pretty Prague

So I spent my last day in Germany rallying my spirits for The Great Tourist Surge. Between October 21 and 27 I was in 6 countries. It was crazy. But it was fun and interesting and good too, and I walked around a lot and saw a lot of cool stuff.

In Prague, I officially couchsurfed for the first time. This was one of the sources of my stress while I was at the Wards', because I wasn't sure how much time I needed to spend looking for hosts, or if I would actually find one, or what it would be like when I did.

But I did find this guy Phil who hosts people ALL the time at his apartment in Prague, along with his roommates. They are all studying at the Film School and they are a very international bunch (American foreign service brat, Ukrainian, Swedish, Colombian). However, they were working on a film the day I arrived, from 3 until "the evening", so I had to make sure I got there in time to get let in, and nab one of their phone numbers, and then I had to keep myself busy in the city until 10, when they said they would be back.

It turned out that they were still filming when I called them at 11:30, and had lost track of time and forgotten about me. They told me to wait outside the flat until Phil showed up, which was a little after midnight. I was pretty disgruntled about that. But other than that, they were really great and we "chilled out" together a bit, which was really nice. Then I crashed, exhausted from getting up at 4 am or whenever it was, and wandering the city for 8 hours.

I just remembered I already wrote my post for Prague in my journal. Hurray! Here it is:

I think Prague is my favorite place of all time. I spent years resenting my parents for coming here with Adam and not me, and the last few days expecting the city's splendor to snap me out of my slump, and my expectations of how cool it would be were not disappointed. I might have been expecting it to be more foreign or Russian or something--it feels very European, but it is totally unique. The varied and lovely color schemes of buildings- incorporating all colors, but always complementing each other, often in soft subtle pastels, make the city unrelentingly beautiful. The river and its bridges and the buildings that line it are stunning and breathtaking. And the PALACE overlooking the city is the most beautiful building I have ever seen--better than Notre Dame, Versailles, anything I can think of. Move over Montezuma (and AC), I've found a new dream castle for me.

I finally saw a changing of the palace guard (after about 4 other missed opportunities in other cities). It probably would have been anticlimactic after the castle if I hadn't accidentally become part of it by trailing the guards from their post to the place they swap instead of waiting for them from an outside vantage point. It was around the hour and I saw them start to march, and I didn't want to miss it! It was awkward but hilarious, for me.

Except for the language, I may have found my new home. It's calm, it feels clean and safe, it's bohemian, artsy, intellectual, lovely, old, romantic. I want to come back and see the castle again, and the inside too if possible.

I also found the Jewish quarter, and though I didn't tour or learn anything, it was nice to at least see these old buildings. It's cool they're still around.

I've lately been annoyed with myself because I can't work up the courage or resolve to go into random bars by myself to meet people and make friends. It's just hard to know which bars it would even work in! Especially since I don't speak the language in these places. I would feel like a real tool going into a bar and ordering a drink and sitting by myself. (Which I actually did in Prague, while waiting for my hosts to surface!) But maybe this will be resolved eventually...

Before I left for my trip I talked to Jon Cannon about Rules for Wandering. When he first asked me what mine were, I didn't think I had any. But then I thought about it more, and realized that if at all possible, I like to take a different route back than I take first, so I cover twice as much ground and don't go over the same streets twice. I also look for water. If I'm feeling really aimless, I get a map and try to find all the things on it that are labeled and/or look interesting.

On the big Charles bridge in Prague there were three street musicians playing. The first was a woman singing opera accompanied by a boombox. The second was this guy with a crazy array of percussion instruments, singing and drumming, and doing the didgeredoo. Kind of hard to explain...And the last was a jazz group, performing/singing Hello Dolly with their Czech accents. I just thought this mix was very funny.

OK, that's enough about Prague. It only covers my first day, and not my epic search for the secret Mecca known as "Bohemian Bagels." The end of the saga is that I found it, within 2 hours of needing to get back to my flat and get all my shit together to get back to the train station and catch my train to Vienna, and I had 55 Czech marks left in my wallet. A bagel with cream cheese cost 60. I asked a woman if she had an extra 5, and she didn't, so I scooped one out of the tip jar. I know it was wrong, but it's like a quarter, and I needed that damn bagel!

I also ended up in the REALLY touristy part of the city the second day, and I didn't think it was quite as cool as the rest, but all in all, it was pretty sweet.