Prague!

So by this point I am halfway through with my “after program” travels. Amsterdam and Copenhagen down, Prague and Budapest to go. I can’t believe that I loved the cities I have been to as much as I have, and wish I had more time in each place. But everyone I talk to keeps telling me to wait for Prague, “just wait till you get to Prague”, “you’re gonna love Prague”, “Prague is the prettiest city in Europe”. Things like that. But I tried to go in with no expectations, cause knowing me, when my expectations are too high I am always let down. So I wake up early to leave Copenhagen and head to Prague, my first trip to “central” Europe. I get in and take public transportation to the center of the city where my bestie from home, yes once again, Cara Ladd picks me up from the metro! I am lucky enough to have seen her 4 times this semester, and 2 times were complete chance that we ended up in the same city at the same time. We go to get coffee and catch up, then I go to her hostel to store my bags for the day. I get to meet her friend from her Seville program and the 3 of us get lunch and walk across the Charles bridge in search of the Lennon Wall.

I am truly in astonishment walking around the city. I can’t pinpoint what it is about it. I’ve seen beautiful architecture, I’ve walked across tons of intricate bridges, I’ve seen colored buildings and cobblestone streets all before. But for some reason, Prague was different. Maybe it was because it was my first time out of Western Europe? Maybe because their recent history was centered around WWII, which I am most interested in learning about? Maybe because I went in with no expectations? Whatever it is, I agree with what everyone had told me, this is THE city I would not have wanted to miss out on.

One end of the Charles Bridge

View from Charles Bridge

View from a cute bridge somewhere in Prague

Cara and me grabbing a mid-day beer

The Charles bridge is a looong bridge connecting the two sides of the city (go figure) and on it there are some pretty good musicians, jewelry stands, art stands, and more. I could have spent hours on it, shopping and taking pictures of the views. As a matter of fact, over the course of 3 days I think I did! Across the river we searched and searched for the so called “lennon wall” which is a huge brick wall that is covered in graffiti about John Lennon and the Beatles. Supposedly it looks different everyday because people come at night and draw different things on it, and even people who visit write with marker or just spray paint anything they want on it. I don’t know how or why it began, but it's turned into something pretty famous. But its more hidden than we thought and it took 3 hours of walking around, finally grabbing a beer in defeat, and then looking around even more to eventually find it. I definitely think I got my fill of pictures for the day.

View of the entire wall

"I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one"

"All you need it Love"

me and cara

me!

By this point its about 5pm and its time for me to meet up with Cara Levinson! (my friend from Wisconsin who is studying abroad in Prague, also my host for the weekend). So I meet up with cara (yes, it did get confusing with two caras), go to her apartment, and eventually make it to a rather late dinner to a cute neighborhood restaurant. The next day I woke up and while Cara Levinson was in class, I met up with Cara Ladd for a walking tour of the city. This time our tour guide was actually from … WISCONSIN! And he had just moved to Prague a few years before. We didn’t walk around as much of the city as I thought we could have, and it was a shorter tour than the usual city tour, but still worth it. We walked through the entire jewish quarter where I got to see about 5 different synagogues (from the outside) and learn more about the Jewish ghetto from WWII. They chose that specific location for the ghetto because since it was right next to the water, the area tended to flood a lot, and so the neighborhood was constantly flooded and no one else wanted to live there. After the war most of it was destroyed, and today it’s rebuilt to be a little nicer than it was, but a few of the synagogues still stand. What’s really sad, is that the reason some of these synagogues were not destroyed during the war was because the Nazi’s wanted to keep a “souvenir” or a “museum” of the "extinct race". That’s what the tour guide told us at least. And khjdfkasifgdalx it makes me sick. But anyway, we also passed a theater that is super famous because it is the oldest theater, which is still acting as a theater today, that Mozart played out during his life. Pretty cool. We also got to see the only watch tower thats still standing today from the original city walls hundreds of years ago. And that afternoon we did even more sightseeing:

-       - we went back to the Lennon wall (yes, again)

 

-       - walked up to the castle district! The castle in Prague was different from other castles I’d seen because it wasn’t just one bit castle, it was a complex if building all along the hill

-       - took the tram to the dancing building. This building was built to reflect Ginger Rogers and Fred Astair because the curve in the glass building is supposed to be the curve of Ginger’s skirt as she twirls

-       - got a traditional czech dinner: roast ham, czech dumplings, and sauerkraut. Yeah, it actually doesn’t sound good at all. But you know me, I pretty much like everything, so it wasn’t bad.

The oldest synagogue in Prague (that's still being used as a synagogue today)

Me and the view from the castle district

The dancing building (see how it resembles the shape of Ginger's skirt??)

My Czech dinner

The last day in Prague I was basically on my own during the day. Cara Ladd had gone back to Seville and Cara Levinson had class all day, so I went out and ventured into the city on my own. I went back to the Jewish quarter and this time I went into the synagogues and Jewish museums. The Spanish synagogue was by far the most beautiful synagogue I’ve seen thus far. I stayed for a while just admiring the design and architecture.  In this synagogue is also where the silver menorah stands that Obama actually used in the Whitehouse in 2009 to light the Channukah candles. I also got to go into the Jewish cemetery, which is so small that they had to dig people down, instead of over. So there are up to 120,000 people buried and they are all on top of one another, with some areas up to 12 people deep. It was heart wrenching to walk through this, and see the chaos in the placement of the tombstones.

The rest of the day I just walked around the city and next to the river and for the first time …  a bird pooped on me!! It got all over my hair, my shirt, and my purse ... grosssss. So I had to go into this really fancy hotel which I was very underdressed for, and eventually found a bathroom to clean up. Gross, but I got over it, and continued to walk around for the rest of the day. That night I met a bunch of people on Cara’s program and we went out to some Prague nightclubs. It was a lot of fun! But I gotta say, after going out in other cities I appreciate Barcelona’s night life a lot more now. Cause these clubs in Prague, though I loved them, couldn’t compare to ones in Barcelona.

The next day I had only half a day to walk around and see last minute things in Prague that I wanted to see, while all the while lugging my stupid suitcase around with me. But I finally got to the bus station where I waiting for my bus to Budapest to arrive!

I have to say that I was sad to leave Prague. 3.5 days was enough time there to see everything I wanted to see, and really get a good feel for the city. But even still, I wanted to stay longer, and I left thinking, “it would have been cool to study here, this place is amazing”