Czech Please!

As I said earlier, I did spend a little bit more time in Vienna before moving on. While on this trip, I've turned into a bit of a cheap(er) bastard and it hurt me a bit to stay in Austria for even those 3 days. What good is it to visit a country when I feel that I can't afford to visit the museums OR drink the beer. Thankfully, Jowen threw me the idea of going to the Czech Republic which turns out to be super affordable. So, one more day in Vienna.

In the morning I went out to visit the Schonbrunn Castle just a few metro stops from the hostel. A long time ago, this area was the countryside outside of Vienna and this was the Habsburg's summer retreat. The palace was built about 3 or 4 centuries ago by Maria Theresa, one of the more famous ruler of Austria. All of her decedents made good use of it, and a couple of times the invader Napoleon lived there for some lengths of time. The place was truly awesome, but probably not as good as I remember Versailles in Paris to be, which many people compare it to.

The palace has 1441 rooms and the tour that I paid for only visited 40 of them. Actually, the palace is so damn big that a couple wings of it have been gated off and turned into luxury apartments with private entries and underground parking. I think that makes a lot of sense since the whole place is way too big to keep in good repair without privatizing it.

On the tour I heard a lot about the history of the royal family, but most of it wasn't interesting to remember because here I am a week later and I just remember a bit of it. There was a nice garden too, and I took way too many pictures of the place to include it all.

For the rest of the afternoon, I wandered around downtown Vienna taking the metro to various parts since I had purchased the 24 hour pass ($6, $2.5 for a single ride) and I saw the biggest and most popular shopping street. Nothing much to say about that. I also went to the Museum district where they have dozens of them in lavish buildings, but at 10 euros each I didn't enter any. I just took some pictures of the national gallery and the natural history museum that face each other.

In the morning I took the train out to see Jowen in the Czech town of Olomouc. It's in the East of the country, closer to me, and known as being a beauty without many tourists. You see, it's easy for the Czech Republic to be overrun with tourists because it's so very cheap, and closer to Western Europe than most other super cheap places. It was under the Soviets thumb until 89 and though being the most prosperous of the post communist states, it's still relatively poor. Despite all that, it's a very popular place to visit because of its great capitol Prague, fine dining, epically good beer, legalish weed, and prostitution. Apparently English stag parties (bachelor parties) come here and make a mess of Prague on weekends. I don't intend on sampling all those things, but I'm sure that I'll have a nice time.

Jowen and I ended up running into each other at the train station in Olomouc (just like old times) and he showed me to the 'Poet's Corner' Hostel that he was checked into. This place was great... like a comfy old apartment with big sofas, board games, no IKEA crap, and a fantastic kitchen with window sill herb garden. That night it rained so we cooked beef stew, played some Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan with one of the hostel workers Yana, and had some beers from the store. Not so exciting, but it's relaxing to be in familiar company again.

The next day it rained constantly but that's no reason not to go out for at least a little while. The town is famous for its chocolate pie so we got one of those at a small cafe. It was really hard and heavy chocolate and though it was rich and good, I didn't love it. Also, Jowen's hot chocolate was as thick as pudding and not so refreshing. At least the cafe americano was good. We also got to see the town square and it's famous astronomical clock. We happened upon it right at noon and it had some gears that made statues of workers spin around and finally a brass rooster crowed. The unusual column like statue in the foreground of the city hall tower was built in 1716 (a couple hundred years after the tower behind it) but the nun that normally explains its significance was gone for the rain.

We played more games in the afternoon, I made curry stew, and later that night we went out to a couple different pubs. The company was good... Jowen of course, Yana from hostel, Ben (an Englishman with a shaved head) and an Australian. Yana was cool, practices karate, guitar, and loves to watch ice hockey (very popular with Czechs). Also, I particularly liked Ben. He's on a trip for a month or so and plans on teaching English in Korea soon. I hope that he makes a fortune.

After a brunch out with the same people the next morning, Ben, Jowen, and I headed to the train station to go to Prague. Not much to say about the ride out but the city seemed a bit grimy and forlorn in this cloudy weather and I was glad to be back indoors at the hostel as the weather was not getting better any time soon. This hostel has some activities each night, and that night was a trivia challenge in the on site pub. My team tied with another team of Australians but crushed two teams of Scottish girls so we won some free shots.

Afterward we had some more beers with them and then went to a club up the road that had live music. It was a really cool place... decorated with animatronic auto parts and lots of twisted metal and divided up into 3 floors, a dozen rooms, and a few different bars. There was a great German ska band playing and the whole place reeked of pot. We danced and drank for a few hours and then called it a night at 2 am, but not before I finished a total of 5 liters of beer in 6 hours. Ouch.

This day was productive. The three of us went out to the castle and saw the changing of the guards. A lot of marching and bugles. Yawn. The castle didn't look much like I had expected, but more like a government building that happened to be next to a massive gothic church. I hear the Czech president works in the palace actually. The church is the St Vitus and it was begun in 1344 but not completed until 1929 for whatever reason. I really liked the stained glass. Colorful stuff. From there we walked down into a very scenic neighborhood and towards the Charles Bridge.

The bridge was built in 1357 and was the only bridge in town for about 500 years. It's graced with several dozen religious statues including one of St Nepomuk who was thrown to his death after refusing to reveal the confessions of the queen. From this point on, I was entering the old City and it was a thick swarm of tourists snapping shots of everything in sight. I guess I wasn't much different... this town is so photogenic!

We wandered all over the old town and made it out to the main square that featured yet another astronomical clock and some church towers that looked pretty menacing. I dunno what more to say about it, but damn is this town good looking. We also went to the Staropramen brewery to try and get a tour but their visitor center is under renovation so we just went to the factory pub and had the finest light beer (their newest creation) that I probably will ever drink. Later that night we were dead tired from all the walking but went out to 2 different bars, danced for 10 minutes, had a beer, all just so that we could say that we did.

The next day we slept in a bit later and then went to see the John Lennon wall near the river. It's a constantly changing mash of graffiti art that's supposed to support peace and decry communism. After that we made it out to the National Museum that was letting people in for free that day, but it wasn't very inspiring so we did a quick run through of the archeology, paleontology, zoology, and geology wings without stopping to see too much in particular.

Jowen and Ben went back to take a nap but I stayed so that i could see the Mucha museum by myself since I'm a fan of his work. He was a graphic artist, born in 1875, and his work came to define Art Neuvo style. His work is generally pretty girly, but I think that it's fantastic and I bought a few full size posters and mailed them home. He found his fame making theater advertisements for a French actress Sarah Bernhardt, but later he branched out and worked mostly in oil making patriotic works depicting Czech and Slavic history. After becoming famous, he also designed a lot of things around Prague, including the entry and interior of the municipal building, one of the stained glass windows at St Vitus, and the old Czechoslovakian currency. The new currency has some inspiration from him certainly.

That night we joined up with about 10 people and walked around the old town hitting up bars and clubs. This was a loud and crazy night that made me sleep in until noon the next day. Too bad I got no pictures. On well. The next morning I got up, went to the weekend market with the guys for some food, and then went off to write this blog while they went to the zoo. I think that later tonight I'm going swing dancing with Beth, one of the girls from last night, and hopefully my old dance moves come back to me.