Day 6,7 & 8 - Prague

We arrive at Prague around lunchtime on March 19. It’s obviously snowed fairly recently around here, and I can honestly say I’ve seen snow, but it was old snow iced and congealed at the side of the road. My Winter Olympics career still goes wanting.


The drive into Prague was less terrifying than the drive into Istanbul, but drivers still turn around corners when they feel like it, and stopping at pedestrian crossings sometimes happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Our hotel, the 987 Prague Hotel, is just on the outskirts of the old town, in the new town. Of course, the new town is over 600 years old, for Australians here the irony is thick. It doesn’t end there.

• The town square isn’t square.

• The old Charles Bridge is being renewed, so the bridge will effectively be entirely new.

• One of the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter is the Old New Synagogue.

On our first afternoon in Prague I am majorly frustrated by the inability to get the internet on my computer. The wireless network provided (and promoted) by the hotel is unsecured, and Windows 7 doesn’t seem to like to connect to unsecured networks for obvious reasons. That is the main reason there has been no update on my blogs since our first few days in Turkey.

Eventually we walk towards the river and encounter a couple of beautiful white swans. In Melbourne one only encounters black swans on Albert Park Lake, and those encounters make me wary of the swans much talked about temper, but the wall of the river is too high for the swans to attack, although they eye me suspiciously.

Only a cursory walk through Prague reveals that they love Casinos, Pizza & Thai Massages. Places for getting these things abound like 7/11s abound in metropolitan Melbourne. Rose and I agree that Thai Massage may somewhat be code for something else. Either way, at first appearances Prague looks like a young single man’s paradise.

We visit the old town square for the first of many times, and marvel at the towers and decorations on the buildings. They love gold adornments on their buildings too, and glorious domes and spires on the top of the churches. One could go to Prague, look up the entire time, and never be disappointed. Sort of the opposite of the Gold Coast.

Night is falling and hunger is growing, so we begin to look for somewhere to eat.

Firstly, a bit of background. Rose is a notoriously fussy eater, caused by her fantastic ability in the kitchen, an incredibly keen sense for identifying ingredients in food she is eating, and an insistence that any food she eats be as good as the cuisine she would produce.

Couple that with my tendency to select places to eat where almost invariably something goes wrong: the food isn’t cooked, they bring Rose a different dish to the one she ordered, or something even more catastrophic. There has only been one real exception to this rule, when we found Bottega in Bourke St the night I proposed.

That has begun to change in the Northern Hemisphere, giving both of us a Bizarro Food World vibe. This continues on our first night in Prague when we go into a restaurant that serves the best Carbonara I’ve had, on a par with the Carbonara that I had when I was 16 in, of all places, Swan Hill.

The other thing to mention about our dinner is the quality of the beer. The Czech Republic is famous for its beer, and this is reflected in most of the souvenir t-shirts and pullovers you can buy here, which refer to the country as the “Beer Republic”. That would probably make Australia the Commonwealth of Beer.

Prague is a little cheaper than Melbourne, but probably even cheaper outside of the tourist area. Of course, the city is so touristy that it is almost impossible for someone to get outside of the tourist area to see for oneself.

Our visit to Prague coincided with a weekend, and we decided on an all-day tour for the Saturday. The meeting place is Wenceslas Square, which is in the new city. Think of it like the Bourke St Mall. It contains, predictably, a statue of St Wenceslas, whose Christmas Carol is known all over the world except in the Czech Republic, and a monument to the two students who immolated themselves after the Prague Spring in 1969. It also contains the balcony where the speeches were made during the Velvet Revolution in 1990, when Communism was finally defeated in what was then Czechoslovakia. The building now contains a Marks and Spencers which our guide assures us is more expensive than the Marks and Sparks one would find in the UK.

Our guide is a Czech lady who seems to revels in irony and bad jokes. Her English is very good, which it should be considering she also teaches it. It seems no one earns much money here, and she is grateful when a South African couple give her a very generous tip at the end of the day.

The other ancient hero here in Prague, other than Good King Wenceslas, is Charles IV, who built the bridge and the university. The bridge contains a statue of him that, if you approach the statue from a certain direction, looks like he has his willy in his hand. It is in fact a document, and the bridge is filled with food stalls and many, many artists offering to draw caricatures of the passing tourists.

We enjoy a cruise of the river between the two man-made waterfalls (they are only about a foot high each, but you wouldn’t go over them) along with some more fine Czech beer. During the cruise we chat with a young American couple. The man is stationed in Germany, hasn’t seen his wife for eleven months, and has never seen his little boy. They are originally from Dallas, and seem to be enjoying the city as best one can dragging a baby walker around over some many stairs and cobbled streets. After this, it is back into the old city for lunch.

This is when both of us decide to partake of the traditional Czech cuisine. We had avoided it the night before, but there was no more avoiding it. Most meals seem to be some part of a cow or a pig, cooked but not fried, along with some cabbage creation and/or bread dumplings which seem to be bread without the best part (the crust).

After some nice light soup, we both have some pork with sauerkraut and bread dumplings. Everything about the dish was underwhelming except for the chest pains that come with eating such food. One needs a good walk after such a meal, but it was nice to come all the way to Prague to sit next to a man from Adelaide. I also talk sport with a man from County Kildare.

The post-lunch portion of the tour involves crossing the river and going to the Castle, which looks quite new except for more phenomenal churches included in the complex. From here, you get the second best view of Prague. The best view comes from the massive radio signal-jamming tower built by the Soviets across the other side of the new city, but that view is the best only because from there, you cannot see the massive radio signal-jamming tower built by the Soviets.

Included in our price for our all-day tour is a “ghost tour” in the evening, but our budget for the day only allows us the most rudimentary of meals for dinner on this Saturday night. I can now testify that the Big Macs in Prague taste roughly the same as the ones in Melbourne.

The Ghost Tour is quite simply absurd. Our new guide, unlike our acerbic friend from earlier in the day, isn’t quite as good with the English, and her emphasis, designed to build the clearly non-existent suspense, only makes her sound more ridiculous. She has an offsider who runs between stopping places with a backpack, and changes into a ludicrous costume for each place. If he isn’t dressed in a sheet he is dressed in a Goonies mask or a skeleton costume. As it was included free with the all-day tour, we feel like we got our money’s worth.

Sunday morning comes and the excitement of being on our honeymoon is replaced with the need for clean clothes. Unfortunately, it seems the only coin laundromat in Prague is a thirty minute walk away, but we get there and clean some clothes.

For the afternoon, we visit what maybe the silliest museum in the history of museums – the Prague Sex Machines Museum. We simply couldn’t resist. There is a movie theatre in the back showing old porn from Spain in the 1920s, commissioned by the then King (who is current King Carlos’ grandfather). Needless to say the buxom ladies in this film wouldn’t get a job in today’s porn industry.

After a good giggle looking at all the various contraptions built to enhance sexual pleasure, we wander down to the old town square for a birds of prey exhibition. Owls of various sizes are paraded through the crowd, including one who quickly devours two small dead chicks. They don’t eat much, but they shift a lot. We also visit the coldest church ever built. The other thing to note about this church is that it would not be the place to ease into Christianity, which some of the imagery about the church being quite confronting.

At the risk of sounding unadventurous, we went back to the restaurant from Friday night for dinner on Sunday night, only this time we both had carbonaras and drank quite a bit more quality Czech beer. We were serenaded by the great four piece strings and guitar band playing at the venue that Rose wanted desperately to hear more of after Friday night, and sitting closer to the “stage”, we were bound to get some more attention. The leader first asks for a suggestion for a romantic song to play, and then asks our nationality to which we respond honestly. He announces they will play a “Australian Happy Song”, and you know what comes next.

After a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda, a Slyvester Stallone lookalike sells me some roses, and we sit and talk some more.

Rose’s verdict on Prague is that it is a little too touristy, but after living behind the Iron Curtain for 45 years, they are only making up for lost time. It’s a fine city, filled with beautiful churches and landmarks. But in case you are not that way inclined, feel free to come for the beer and Thai Massages. Prague has at least a little something for everyone. Now we are off to Poland, for what will undoubtedly be the least “enjoyable” part of the trip.