Prague madness

I am going to split up my posts about the Prague/Vienna MADNESS 2007 into a couple of posts, mainly because I want to post, but it is late and I have an econ test for which I have studied very little tomorrow. Yay school. Pictures came in the previous post, so scroll down.

Anyway, I took off on Wednesday afternoon trying to get to the Trastevere train station via bus 492 and tram 8, but I never caught the bus, so I ended up hopping on the train to Termini and took the Leonardo Express (2x as expensive as going to Trastevere) to Fiumicino. From there, our flight to Bratislava was delayed a bit, but no serious trouble. Here is slightly more serious trouble: my permesso di soggiorno was mistakenly stamped by the dude going out of Rome, so I'm not altogether sure it is valid now. Also, we had some excitement, because Elise, the girl who more or less put the thing together in terms of planning, left her folder in the airplane. That folder had our train ticket back to Rome, and that would have been an utter disaster.

Anyhoo, our plane to Prague was even more delayed (European discount airlines: you get what you pay for), so we got into Prague at about 10. It was a good 11 hours of travel. We then quickly hopped on some public transpo, and had no serious trouble finding the hostel, Emma Hostel. Dan and I were in a double, and it had a sweet loft area where I slept. What a deal for 15 euro a night.

It was chilly as we went out for a late evening stroll/ bite to eat. We hit a kebab place, where I grabbed a Czech beer and everyone else munched on some doner. We then strolled around in the cold up to some square that Dan wanted to go to. It was cold. Cold cold cold. That is my memory of that night: cold. We headed back to the hostel to rest up.

The next morning, we were up and out very early. Michelle and I split for the group, because we wanted to walk to the castle and everyone else thought the metro was a good idea. I actually lost Michelle along the way (she likes to wander), but we met back up later around the castle. It took us way longer to find the rest of the group, because they took a nice long meal and didn't bother to let me know. Michelle and I, however, got to see a sweet military demonstration/ changing of the guard type thing, and also got to hear some sweet Czech music from a four piece band outside the castle (accordion included! The Ryzners would have fit right in). After we finally met with the other 9 people (I haven't yet mentioned this, so I suppose I should: 9 girls, 2 guys. Good group, etc), we went up the basilica, which had a really bothersome winding staircase. It provided a nice view, so it was worth it.

After that we went to the Old Town quarter, and saw some cool sights. On the hour, every hour, the old clock in the square does this weird little thing where the 12 apostles pop out, and we got to see that. Also, we headed to the Jewish Quarter, which had lots of nice little things to buy. Holding true to the stereotype, however, they make you pay to go into the synagogues, so we didn't do that.

Our evening was fun, to say the least. We went to a Thai restaurant. The food was probably average Thai, but considering I haven't had any acceptable Asian food here yet, it tasted fantastic. Speaking of fantastic, I am not a big beer guy, but the Czech beers on tap were tasty tasty tasty. It went well with dinner. After that, Dan and I did a minor pub search, but we ended up at the bar across from the hostel. Excellent decision: it was really, really dirt cheap. I got some slivovitz, to make grandma proud. I built it up as the worst thing in the world, fire water to the nth degree (which it is up at the Lake), so Dan was somewhat surprised when it went down okay. The stuff we drank was weak sauce, because the stuff we have up north makes your throat want to die. Unweak sauce was the absinthe we may or may not have consumed (illegal in the States): 70% alcohol by volume.

After that, we went out to a dance club that Dan and Elise were talking about for a while before the trip. It is some huge, 5 story club that you can see from the Charles Bridge. It was fun. One story was like 60s and 70s dance music, another was bumping music. All in all, it was a very good time. It was funny, because if there was some sketchy European dude trying to get with one of the girls and they were uncomfortable, Dan or I would get grabbed and dragged right between them. Good times. At about 4:30, we dragged ourselves out of the club and back to the hostel.

Checkout was at 10, so we were up soon thereafter. The day began with an American-style bagel joint that was reccommended in some travel book. It even had American style coffee, which was so very welcome after all the espresso of the last 2+ months. We then split up to do our own things, with the understanding that we would meet back at the hostel at about 4, because our flight was at 7:15... or so we thought (attention: foreshadowing!). I ended up with a group of a few kids, and we headed to the Jewish area again for some browsing, and then we headed to the old square so Dan, Michelle, and I could go to a Dali exhibition. It was all right, I suppose. There was one really cool piece that was two things from different distances, and there is a picture in my facebook album. Anyway, we then went to a market, where I proceeded to blow all my remaining Czech krowns (or however that is spelled) on junk food. We got back to the hostel at around 4.

Being back early and all, I decided to hop online. A few seconds later, I hear a "ummm, Jamie, I think we're going to miss our flight". WHA' HAPPPENED? "It says 17:15 on the sheet here for our departure time". So, yeah, our flight was taking off two hours before we thought (actually, this is the one thing with getting somewhere that I had nothing to do with. I was pretty much the unofficial, self-appointed group leader of the trip the rest of the time, because I can do really impressive things like read a map and use a sense of direction as opposed to nearly everyone else in the group). So, yeah, we scrambled (and by we, I mean, well, me, pretty much. Emma helped, too, in calling the airlines, who proceeded to tell us "yeah, you're screwed") to find a solution, and we (royal we again) found that a train was taking off from one of the stations at 5:35, so Dan and I rounded up everyone, and we were off immediately (by that point everyone had arrived to hear the bad news). We did a death march to one of the metro lines, and then got off at the station the dude at the hostel said would be our train station. Dude at the hostel was dead wrong. We had some more metroing to go. Somehow, I was not frustrated. It was a total zen moment. Anyhoo, we got to the other station with plenty of time, luckily, and our tickets were only like 32 euro. We should have planned on that from the start, I believe.

Anyways, all is well that ends well, and we got into Vienna at about 10 that night.

Vienna post comes tomorrow, or Wednesday... or Thursday. I'm busy busy busy right now. I should have been asleep half an hour ago.