A Taste of Russians...in the Czech Republic

Onto the adventures of the Czech Republic!

Prague is about a four hour drive from Vienna, so all of us threw a few things in a bag and headed out! We got there at night, which was an “adventure” within itself. And here’s why:

-          Getting anywhere in a big city, with the Czech language, which is nothing like anything except Russian (I know more Finnish words than Czech words! Haha.), in the dark is frustrating beyond belief.

We finally made it to our hotel! When we booked it we noticed it was a four star hotel for a seriously reasonable price. Thank you Czech Republic for being so cheap, it’s refreshing coming from Finland. J The hotel was an episode of The Twilight Zone…

Five Americans and two Austrians enter ‘The Gorbochov Palace’ expecting a comfortable four star hotel in Prague. Nobody was in sight, they were alone…or so they thought. There was one cashier who was not inclined to speak much English. Dinner was the same atmosphere: alone in a giant restaurant which was meant to serve unexplainable amounts of Russians during World War Two. The waiter arrives and proceeds to tell the group there is only a buffet, that has been there for ‘a while,’ we get one free drink and it costs 200 crowns per person. He was unhappy about serving these aliens who order milk with dinner.

Bedtime finally came, still not a person to be seen. While sleeping soundly there is a bang! Twenty (not an exaggeration) Russian children, all with mullets, running through the hallways banging on doors and screaming awake the aliens! Where did these people come from?! Nobody knows. They’re adults, however, were in the bar area drinking their own Russian-made vodka while the children ran and screamed as they pleased.

The Gorbochov Palace = Annoyed Aliens.

That is the episode of The Twilight Zone.

It really did feel like an episode of The Twilight Zone. The Russians are everywhere in the Czech Republic. They’re ideas of what is acceptable in society is much different than what we consider- hence, the screaming, running around children and parents nonchalantly drinking vodka in the bar.

We finally get out into the city after our Russian introduction. Prague is quite breathtaking. It has so much to see! The Old Town Square has two very, very old churches with one being able to climb to the top of the tower and see the entire city. Also, there are more Christmas markets to look at! One really can’t get tired of Christmas markets. Everywhere we walked was old cobblestone. There’s a very famous bridge, if you google pictures of Prague this bridge shows up, St. Charles Bridge and it is gorgeous. There are old statues all along the bridge with a killer view of Prague’s castle. Also there are many street vendors and talented musicians, this bridge is really long!

We cross the bridge, eat Czech goulash for lunch, and head up to the castle! The castle is mainly based on this GIANT and intricate church! I love how we get to go inside all these neat things. The castle itself wasn’t as amazing, in my opinion, to the one in Germany but still a wonderful sight to see.

The thing I loved most about Prague, other than being extremely cheap, was the Jewish Cemetery! A bit creepy, but totally awesome. There are 200,000 graves there and we can only see 12,000 due to graves being piled on top of each other. And the graves aren’t nicely laid out like pretty much every other cemetery I’ve seen; they’re only inches away from each other! The entire cemetery was about the size of two Avon, MT cemeteries. The oldest graves were from about the 1400’s. One of Ian’s great quotes: “This is definitely where the zombie apocalypse would happen. All those Jews getting revenge…” Cute, Ian.

That night we ate at a good Czech restaurant, drank traditional Budweiser, and Ian and I found a grunge bar with a Led Zeppelin cover band.

Next day! We headed to a small town, Czesky Krumlov. This town was incredible. Although Ian and I stayed in a hostel with a high creep factor, it turned out alright. We just didn’t shower. J This town was such an old and medieval place to be. Everything is cobblestone and all the buildings are still made out of rock. The castle was built out of the cliff it is on! You can see where there is the rocky part and the part that is smooth and painted for the castle. The tower is even painted! Inside the ceilings and courtyards are painted. My camera died so I’ll have to steal pictures from Ian because this place was incredible.

After checking out the castle we headed back to Vienna! And that’s a whole new blog in itself.

Sprechen sie englisch?

Okay, finally here are the Christmas vacation blogs! I decided it was a good time to stimulate my brain and write something relatively interesting.

Warning: There will be multiple, long blogs. You have been warned. J

First of all, we had the glorious process of actually getting out of Finland. The two times that I’ve left Finland it’s been such a hassle! I guess this didn’t actually happen in Finland but still. After our train ride to Helsinki and our flight to Munich we had a few hours to kill to wait for our flight to Vienna. We were about to board our flight and our tickets scanned red! First thought: Oh, my god we’re in trouble. False. After eavesdropping on a group of French people in which the same thing happened and we weren’t told why our tickets scanned red. My French finally came in handy!  The stupid airline overbooked our flight and didn’t ask customers if they would wait, they just chose randomly who was to wait! As Americans, in which everything is run like a business and customers are always right, Ian and I were beyond peeved. Also because this was a forty five minute flight we were waiting for. We could have taken a train to get there faster. Finally we get our turn and we have to wait another hour and a half for the next flight to Vienna. We didn’t get anything free except a telephone call to Ian’s aunt, Jan. It didn’t go through but we somehow got a hold of Laura, Ian’s mom in the freaking United States. We were so frustrated and slightly panicking, now I don’t know why. We probably scared her calling from Munich and panicking just because we needed to get a hold of Jan to tell her we were going to be late. After fifteen hours of travel, we made it to Vienna safe and sound and bit irked.

The next day we immediately got on a train and went to Germany! It was only five hours and once we got there it was so nice. We were near the Czech border, in the Bayern region (Bavaria in English), in a town named Cham, Christoph’s hometown. If you have eyes that excel at reading microscopic letters, feel free to find the town on the map. :) The first night we got there Christoph insisted he takes us to an American bar. Our thoughts “Our first day in Germany and we’re going to an American bar to eat burgers?” They still don’t compare to American burgers, which can be so enormous, juicy, and purely delicious. These were pretty tasty though and we got a good German beer.

The next day we went to Christoph’s university town, Nuremberg, where he helps put on a huge party in their university. Just imagine on of the largest buildings on campus being rented out, a mock bar being thrown in, and a few deejays! So awesome. This would have never flown in the U.S. There was a DJ, MC Hollywood who is from the Bronx! Hahaha! He’s this hilarious black man who randomly lives in Germany now.

Before the party we went to the biggest Christmas market in Germany. There’s anything and every kind of food, knick-knack, or trinkets you could imagine. I had a sausage overdose in Germany. Eating a sausage a day keeps the doctor away?

Photo courtesy of Ian, who took pictures of the party.  

The next day, after about four hours of sleep, we got some cheap Chinese food and saw a castle!! They’re amazing. There was this well, and it takes seven seconds for water to hit the bottom. It took ten years just to build the well. The entire thing was build out of stone, and it’s almost like a little village since people who actually lived in castles never left them.

After we got back to Cham, Christoph took us to this sauna complex. And I don’t mean like the local gym with a sauna that fits five people. This was massive! For about an hour we did waterslides then we went to the sauna area. There are an unimaginable amount of saunas and they’re all themed with  a ‘sauna master.’ Therefore: somebody controls how much flavored water goes on the rocks and therefore controls how hot the sauna is (the more the water, the hotter the sauna). Ian and I were pretty nervous for our first mastered sauna that was eucalyptus flavored. It so unbelievably hot! Ian got sick and we both had to leave early. Apparently this is why: a) it was our first time, b) we sat in the worst place in the sauna in which Christoph failed to tell us, c) it was unusually hotter than normal. We could not get outside fast enough! Haha! We survived though and ventured to try it again. Christoph made me go with him to a “surprise sauna.” It’s the traditional Finnish sauna (they say it’s Russian, but now I think the Russians are trying to claim that everything is theirs) where they beat your back with wet branches and leaves. All Christoph said to me before we went in “Don’t worry, just remember it doesn’t hurt.” Thanks Christoph! It didn’t hurt, but I was the only female in a room of German men.

And last but not least about the saunas: everyone’s naked! Men and women go to the saunas together… completely naked. In fact, you’re not even allowed to go in with a swimsuit.

The next day was pretty laid back. We drove to a schnapps distillery near Cham. It’s very traditional Bavarian, all the schnapps are made with berries, herbs, and natural things that grow in that region. Take one shot after a fatty meal and it’s supposed to be good for your digestive system.

Our last full day in Germany, what did we do? Went to another, bigger, and more wonderful sauna complex! It’s funny we go to Germany and spend plenty of time in the sauna, something that is totally free  and encouraged in Finland. But they’re so much different than Finnish saunas! This one had about thirty waterslides and maybe forty saunas! There was a manmade lake you could swim in, indoor pools with bars you can swim up to, outdoor pools, anything you could imagine it was there. The slides included one where you go straight down, jump off (!) and land on a mat then into the water and one of the bowl slides where you go down the slide and into a big toilet bowl then back down another slide! These saunas were so amazing, I can’t even say everything about them. We did salt scrubs, yogurt facials, sugar scrubs with vanilla flavored water, honey peels, swam, a citrus flavored sauna, Celtic sauna, anything you could imagine! We ended up staying there fifteen hours and didn’t even do half the saunas.

If you feel like checking it out, here’s the link because this place was incredible. Oh, I forgot to mention that it’s the biggest in Europe!

http://www.therme-erding.de/

The next day we headed back to Vienna! Successful first five days of being a European traveler.