Now theoretically, I was supposed to fly into Prague Thursday night, stay one night in a hostel by myself, and then by the time I woke up the next morning, Erica and her roommate Larissa should have been in the city and we were going to meet up at a new hostel and start touring. Instead, just as I went to buy a Metro ticket at the airport on Thursday, I received a phone call from Erica telling me that some crazy Icelandic volcano has halted her flight and that’s when things started getting a little wacky **cue Twilight Zone music**….
Instead of getting into Prague on a later flight, like I’d hoped and thought they would, of course Erica and Larissa weren’t able to come to Prague at all because the entire European airspace shut down. So that left me with three nights and two days (which turned into four nights and three days) in Prague by myself. Not at all what I’d expected my weekend to be, but I really tried to make the best of it. People had told me Prague ranked up there as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and so even if I wasn’t able to explore it with my friends, I felt lucky to be there at all.
What did I do during my stay, you may be wondering? Well thankfully, I’d done a little research before I left Perugia and printed out a couple restaurant suggestions and “Top 10 sights in Prague” type-things. These in combination with the advice of friends who had previously been there was enough to keep me happily occupied (if a bit lonely, especially by the end) during my visit.
On Melissa’s suggestion (and also based off what Ilana mentioned in Brussels about her Amsterdam tour) I took a “free” tour with the New Europe guides, basically a company that’s geared toward showing college students around European cities, with the assumption that you’ll tip your guide at the end. The guide really made the tour entertaining, because he was so young and would crack funny little jokes now and then, so it wasn’t all dull Czech history. But I still felt like I was able to look at the monuments and Cinderella architecture of the city within a context after having heard him talk about the history of the city, which made it a lot more meaningful to me. I wish I had gotten that kind of background on the history of every city I’ve visited this semester.
With this tour we walked through the Old Town Square, which kind of reminds me (along with most of Prague) of what Hershey Park or Busch Gardens attempt to be when you first walk into the park, with the gingerbread house, tudor-style shops all lined up next to each other. But, of course, this was the real deal. Technically speaking, the guide told us you can find Gothic and Art Nouveau architecture throughout the city’s churches and public buildings, and what these styles both share (if I remember correctly) is an emphasis on over-the-top, flashy details. Spires and cupolas and statues galore, burnt-sienna-colored sloping roofs and a river cutting through the center of everything—that’s Prague in a nutshell. Basically fairy-tale central, almost too beautiful to be real.
In a way, I think I felt less comfortable in Prague than in other cities I’ve visited because of this—it was almost too perfect, overdone. I say this just for argument’s sake, because who can complain about the beauty of Prague? But to me it was interesting to compare it to the beauty of a place like, for instance, Cinque Terre, which is a much more natural, rugged setting, but absolutely gorgeous without ever trying to be. Prague was almost like a house filled with such nice furniture, so well decorated that you feel like you can’t really use anything, can’t ever really settle down and feel as if it’s a home. You could stare at it all day, but it doesn’t bring you a sense of comfort. Or anyway, it didn’t bring me a sense of comfort. Maybe this is because I was alone—but I think I would have gotten that kind of feeling no matter what. It was a great city to visit, but not someplace I’d ever want to stay long-term.
The Czech language, completely alien to me, also made me feel wayyy out of my element. From my four days in the city, I came away with this handy knowledge:
Tricko= t-shirt (learned this from the shopping I did in Wenceslas Square, in the more “modern”, Times Square-ish part of the city)
Voda=water
Divadlo= theater
Karlovo= Charles
Namesty= square (I think…?)
There’s a basic Czech lesson for you. Just don’t ask me how to pronounce any of it.
Anywayyy I mentioned way back that I took a tour of the city… and besides going through Old Town Square, our group saw the famed Astronomical Clock and got to walk through the outside of the Jewish Quarter (unfortunately everything had already closed for Shabbat, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to ever go inside the museums… turns out I had plenty of time to see them once my flight was cancelled…).
On Sunday I took a funicular ride to the top of Petrin Hill, a big city park where you get a great view of the Prague skyline. They have a mini Eiffel Tower up there, but I bypassed the line and opted to just take in the view while walking down the hill instead of taking the funicular. There was also a museum of astronomy up there, with two telescopes where you could view the sun and Venus, which was pretty cool. After the park I made sure to witness the “show” at the Astronomical Clock when it struck 2 p.m. Every hour the clock has little figures of medieval “sins” on it that move and twirl around, and people crowd around to see it happen. Then I joined up with a free tour group heading to the John Lennon “Imagine” Wall and Prague Castle, since hadn’t yet seen those important sights. At this point I FINALLY met other people!! The hostel I was staying at was more like a bed and breakfast, totally empty all day except for me and a retired couple. Not the ideal place to make friends. But a couple kids in the tour group were studying in Barcelona, and one girl was from Rockville, so we commiserated about the volcano situation and it was nice to not feel so alone!
Later I spent some time at the Franz Kafka Museum and then headed to an Internet Café to find out my plane situation.
But before I talk about that, I’ll fill you in on my three favorite Prague cafés. If you ever go to Prague, you MUST try these places!
Kava Kava Kava is like a quirky little coffee shop tucked back in a square off a big shopping street, Narodni Trida. They have TONS of house specialties, like the “Almond Dream” drink which I tried, and also a huge range of herbal teas and homemade desserts like the apple strudel and carrot cake. Bagels and cream cheese were also available, and I had my first since being in Europe this semester! I went there three times during my weekend and it was a great place to relax and start my day. Not to mention they had free Internet, and a really cheap printer I could use!
My first night in Prague I had dinner at Café Louvre, a really elegant restaurant with a billiard room/lounge attached, and full of history. Apparently it was established in 1902 and at one point frequented by the likes of Kafka and Albert Einstein. It was closed during the communist era for its “bourgeois” character and reopened in 1992. The restaurant side was a bit stuffy, and I felt kind of awkward eating there alone, but the amazing food more than made it up for it. I had a smoked salmon dish, a goat cheese salad and homemade whole-wheat carrot cake with coconut for dessert.
I ate dinner twice at Café Slavia, a spacious dining room overlooking the river. This place also has a really elegant feel to it, with chandeliers and an art deco” style, lots of paintings hanging on the walls, and a live pianist. Yet I still didn’t feel so weird being there by myself…despite being elegant, it was casual, still a “café.” It seemed like a place where Prague happy hours might take place, except that instead of ordering a beer you might order a coffee or one of their famous hot chocolate, and listen to piano. Very sophisticated, but then again Café Slavia used to play host to Prague artists and intellectuals, including the former president, who visited a lot during his “dissident years.” As for me, I enjoyed some amazing salty and sweet crepes, Swiss ice cream and banana hot chocolate (spread between two different days!!). I sat by the riverside windows and people-watched for like an hour while feeling like the quintessential Prague intellectual. Well, maybe not, but it was a great place to pass some time, eat delicious food and soak up the atmosphere.
So I soon found out that my flight on Sunday was not happening, and I scrambled to search for alternative ways to get back to Italy. Trains were too complicated and too expensive, and there didn’t seem to be any direct buses to Italy…until I found the Student Agency bus group, which sounded too good to be true. A bus pretty much directly to Florence, with movies playing during the whole ride, free tea/cappuccinos/newspapers, a bathroom on the bus…and I’d only have to wait one extra day/night before it left. The only downside: almost 20 hours on a bus.
I quickly booked the bus ticket and made a hostel reservation at the place where I’d stayed the first night, which was way cheaper, more convenient and more social than the place I stayed during the two middle nights of the trip. Then Sunday I got to explore the Jewish Quarter, go inside all the synagogues and museums that I wouldn’t have been able to see had my flight not been canceled. The exhibits were really interesting to me, especially because of my Eastern European Jewish heritage. The most moving part of it, by far, was seeing the pictures drawn by children from a concentration camp outside Prague. A woman had conducted art therapy sessions with kids in the camp, and they’d drawn pictures of their homes, their dreams, their fears, what they saw around them. Almost every single one of the kids died afterwards in Auschwitz, so it really gave me chills seeing these images—my tour guide said they are basically the only evidence that these children ever existed on Earth, because the Nazis did such a good job of destroying birth/death documentation. The other striking part of the Jewish Quarter was the cemetery, which my sister described in her blog. All the graves were piled on top of each other because the city wouldn’t allow the Jews to have another burial site.
After a pretty heavy day of sightseeing, I treated myself to some shopping around Wenceslas Square, drank a Czech beer, and had dinner at Café Slavia.
Of course, that night I met like ten people all at once, at my hostel, who were so nice and I could have been hanging out with the entire time I was in Prague! But I didn’t meet them right until I was about to leave. It was nice to be able to laugh/empathize with each other about the volcano and our transportation dilemmas, though! I even met a girl from Hong Kong who was traveling by herself and is a journalism major, and we had a great conversation and are going to keep in touch. I always love meeting people while traveling! And good thing, because I did a ton of that the next day on my bus ride…
I got to the Prague bus station like two hours early, because I was absolutely intent on NOT missing this bus. I was just sure some kind of fluke would happen, and I wouldn’t be able to get back to Italy! But somehow, to my surprise, everything went perfectly. When I first got to the station and was waiting around, a heard a group of kids around my age speaking Italian, and I got really excited. Finally a language I can understand! It felt like being home.
When we switched buses in this random Czech city called Brno, one of the guys in the group asked if I was Italian, and when I told him I was American but could speak Italian, he and his three friends welcomed me into their circle like I was a long lost relative. They immediately handed me a sandwich and slices of fruit that they’d brought for lunch, insisting that I eat with them, and then we all went to the bathroom across the street and linked arms while we crossed to get to the hotel. This older lady had also been tagging along with them, and she was such a character…actually she reminded me a lot of Grammy. She travels the world by herself speaking at conferences, and was saying how she always meets people, how she never could just stay at home and cook and clean but had to be independent…she was from Malta but also lives in Belgium. And she could speak English, Italian, Maltese and Arabic. It was the cutest thing, because everyone kept calling her the “nonna,” the grandmother of the group, and so it was 4 Italians (2 guys and 2 girls who hadn’t known each other before their flights were cancelled), me, the American girl, and the older Maltese grandmotherly lady. We stuck together though the whole bus ride, laughing and talking, they kept sharing their food with me and were just generally the sweetest people ever. Now I’m friends with them all on Facebook, and two of the girls who live near Salerno want to meet up when I’m there next week. As crazy as this might sound, I am almost happy I got stuck in Prague and had to take this bus…because I met these amazing people and went through an experience I will never, ever forget. The 18 hours actually passed by quickly because I was having so much fun talking to my new friends (and of course, talking in Italian! Still can’t believe how much I have learned, to the point that I can have conversations like that…). The scenery was mostly fields and hills, some Czech and Austrian countryside, which was nice to see. And I arrived in Florence two hours ahead of time…
Which would have been great if it hadn’t been 3:40 in the morning. Unfortunately my new friends were all getting off at Rome, so I stepped off the bus in the pitch black Florence night, completely disoriented, half-asleep, with a cell phone out of battery…by myself. And when I made my way to the train station, I found that it was closed, a few homeless people slumped against the walls sleeping. Before I could let myself freak out, I walked over to this couple who looked to be Italian and who I thought might have been on the same bus as me. They had the same confused/slightly freaked out expressions on their faces that I did. Before I knew it, I was sitting on a bench in the station (which finally opened) having a great conversation with the couple, who turned out to be from Russia and Greece. They were both really funny but also extremely intelligent, and they had lots of stories about studying in Paris and Italy, and plans to study in Barcelona in the future…
I had to wait until 5:50 for my train to Perugia, but I made it through somehow, and only had to wait alone for about a half hour. I am still recovering from exhaustion, but I’ve had no time to catch my breath because the International Journalism Festival began the day I arrived. But I’ll save my writing about that for later—because I know I will have a LOT to say. Preview: I might be meeting Al Gore on Saturday. I’ll keep you all posted.
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