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.