Day 74: Prague, Czech Republic - All Good Things Must Come to an End

Look closely. It's not fake.

Since I was done with Prague, I decided to take a day trip to Kutna Hora. It's about an hour outside of Prague and known for its bone chapel. In the 16th century, some inventive person decided to decorate the inside of a chapel with the remains of over 40,000 human bodies. It was supposed to represent the connection between life and death. Or it was just supposed to be creepy. In the 19th century, a carpenter renovated the place. I'm not exactly sure how you renovate a bunch of bones. Bleach?

Skulls.

A bone shield.

Um... yeah.

After freaking myself out sufficiently, I wandered into the village to have a peak. It was Sunday, and was very sleepy. There was a little tavern open where I had a lunch of beer, goose breast, mashed potatoes, and lard dumplings. I headed back to Prague in the afternoon to make it in time for Swan Lake, also at the opera house. The performance was good, and my first ballet. I wish I had known a little bit about the plot before watching, though.

After the ballet, I wandered up and down the river for a little bit, and smoked a Cuban I had bought earlier. It was a fitting end to a wonderful trip. I'll have to do it again some time. 

Day 73: Prague, Czech Republic - Getting My Fancy On

Some stuff near the river.

I woke up and realized that I had nothing to do today. Every sight in Prague had been seen, and I still had two days left. In Budapest, I made a concerted effort to see an opera, but realized I couldn't because for some reason operas are off-season in July and August. Now that I was in Prague, and it was September, and I had nothing to do, I figured I might as well see an opera. 

The big obstacle in my way was not having any clothes to wear. I mean, I had been backpacking for over 70 days. I had 5 t-shirts, a pair of shorts, and one pair of pants. Everything was a different color than what it was originally, and nothing even remotely resembled formal opera wear. I needed to shop. Wonderful.

Two minutes after I set out the door, I saw a pair of shoes for $20. Not believing my luck, I picked it up right away and thought I might be able to buy what I need in a relatively short amount of time. Nope. It took me over an hour to find a pair of pants. The receptionist at my hostel insisted that I not wear jeans to the opera. I bought brown colored jeans, hoping that people might not notice I was wearing jeans.

Have a view.

The opera was, frankly, awesome. I saw Carmen, which was cool because it had some songs I recognized. My only previous experience with opera was Parsifal, and I fell asleep. This one was great. Prague's opera house is awesome, and I could watch anything in there and enjoy it. More importantly, I was probably better dressed than 2/3 of the people there. Take heed, backpackers don't have very much couth. Unless it's me. 

Day 72: Prague, Czech Republic - Defenestrated

Entrance to Prague's castle. 

Prague has the largest castle complex in the world. Therefore, I wanted to see it. I walked across the Charles Bridge and found myself looking at what resembled a village as opposed to a castle. Apparently Prague's castle complex includes the surrounding residential area, which is why it's so big. Cheaters.

View from the castle. 

Entrance to the actual castle, inside of the castle complex.

Like Budapest's castle, Prague's has been renovated several times over and looks more like a large estate than a medieval castle. There were separate parts of the castle, but only one ticket that allows entry into all of the parts was sold for a rather expensive price. I wasn't interested in walking through the entire estate, so I just walked around the courtyards, which was free. One interesting memory from AP European History did arise...

The window of defenestration!

Having properly geeked out that day, I headed out with my hostel mates in the evening, four British guys and a Canadian powerlifter. The four British guys were nice, but man they were the absolute epitome of what Americans would call meathead frat boys. Their goal was to party hard every single night of their trip (1 month), and on this particular night we were participating in their 4th straight pub crawl night. They even took caffeine pills before they left to make sure they could party hard. I'm too old for this stuff. 

Day 71: Prague, Czech Republic - Last City

Nove Mesto.

Prague has quickly gone from being Europe's little darling to an overblown tourist attraction. Now, I should qualify this statement. First, I absolutely loathe tourists who hate other tourists, i.e. the ones that go somewhere and say "it's too touristy" or "its too crowded." Um... so what are you doing there? How are you different? Were you not drawn to the place for the same reasons everybody else was? Are you not contributing to the touristiness and the crowds? 

How I try to distinguish myself when I make this statement is by (at least in my opinion) approaching tourism and the tourist experience from a slightly different perspective. To me, tourists represent neutral culture. They're displaced and, more importantly, they're trying to experience something else. Imagine a city composed 100% of tourists. What would the culture be? There wouldn't be one. It would be a zero sum location. And that's the reason that I don't enjoy "very touristy" places, because with enough neutral cultural entities, the culture of the place itself slowly begins gravitating toward neutral. In other words, if there are only 100 people in a city, and there are 500 tourists visiting, the cultural neutrality of the tourists will overwhelm the extant cultural of the local population, at least from the experience of a tourist. The locals themselves would likely bunch together and continue living as they always do, and the tourists will never see them as part of their vanilla experience. 

Back to Prague. It is definitely headed in the direction of cultural neutrality -- again, from a tourist's perspective. The tourism industry is so popular that the importance of catering to tourists is surpassing the importance of being Prague. This is, of course, my opinion. Prague's beauty is still easy to admire, which is what draws so many visitors, but I was a bit sad that I had a hard time finding Prague's personality. 

On the Charles Bridge.

Stare Mesto.

Day 70: Prague, Czech Republic - There's A Lot of Idiots Who Travel

Last traveling day of the trip. I woke up, ate a waffle for breakfast, bid adieu to my Aussie friends, and took a bus to train to Prague. Like Cesky Krumlov, the weather in Prague sucked. It was cold and rainy, not exactly sightseeing weather.

I decided to spend a long time eating lunch, which was composed of fatty pork, cabbage, and dumplings, washed down with a few pilsners. Healthy, no. Delicious, yes. After lunch, I was sufficiently nourished enough to brave the rain and see the city. It was too cold and wet to take pictures, but I ended up walking into the town square and then by the Charles Bridge. Had I been able to see through the rain, and had I been warm, it might have been scenic.

For dinner I decided to grab a huge bowl of hot and sour soup from a Chinese restaurant near the hostel. At the other table were some very loud Brits who were having trouble communicating with the waitress. At one point one girl even grabbed the waitress's notepad and wrote down her order herself. They were quite aggressive and I felt bad for the waitress, so I went over to lend a hand. One British girl looked at me and asked me, very slowly and very loudly, "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" After confirming that I did, the entire table told me what they wanted to order and I started speaking to the waitress in Chinese. Meanwhile, the Brits decided to thank me by ching chonging in the background. Seriously?

I really wanted to say something, but was afraid I would drive away customers, which would not make the waitress's boss happy. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and told the waitress, in Chinese, that these customers were idiots. It's one thing to be like that in one's own country. After all, if I were to open a restaurant in London, the patrons would have a right to expect that I speak their language in order to cater to them. However, all of us were in Prague. Only the waitress spoke Czech. The Brits had no reason to expect that anyone should be able to speak their foreign language.

It's disgusting that those people will have more opportunities in their lives than the waitress they berated. They don't deserve them.

Day 69: Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic - Sigh, Guess I'll Go Outside

Cesky Krumlov.

Still cold. Still raining. Guess I have no choice but to sightsee while wet and cold. My companions were some Aussies, but not the rafting crew from the night before. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are dead now, actually. We headed to the castle, which is PAINTED. Let down! See that pretty looking spire up there in that picture? It's painted that way! At least the view was good.

View from the castle.

More views from the castle.

For lunch we went to the Eggerman's brewery, and sampled some hearty Czech food, meaning lots of meat, lots of potatoes, and lots of cabbage. I walked around the city a little bit more, while the rest went back to the hostel. There wasn't too much left to see -- it's a small village, after all.

Town center.

The same Aussies and I went out that night. I read somewhere that Czechs drink more beer per capita than anyone else in the world. I believe it. The beer culture is incredibly strong, but the dumb drunk culture is not, as far as I can tell. We ended up at a pub called the Gorilla, where we actually saw our bartender from an earlier bar drinking. That's always a good sign. Plus, it had the following amazing signs on the door.

Day 68: Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic - It's Cold

Cesky Krumlov is a little touristy village in the southern Czech Republic. Similar to Veliko Tarnovo in Bulgaria, it's constructed around a bend in a river, this time the Vltava. Also, it's crowned by a big castle on top of a hill overlooking the city. The river and the castle are what draw the tourists to Cesky Krumlov. Obviously, because it certainly isn't the weather.

The temperature in Cairo on the first day of my trip was 43 degrees. The temperature in Cesky Krumlov was 6 degrees. I was suffering a bit. I checked into my hostel... and didn't leave. There was no way I was going outside. One of the big activities in Cesky Krumlov, at least for the younger population, is a rafting pub crawl. Basically people hop on a raft and float down the river, stopping at various pubs, bars, and breweries along the way. Given the temperature outside, and the fact that it was raining, I was wondering if anyone could like drinking enough to even attempt that. Lo and behold, there were, and surprise, they were Aussies.

At around 7:00 PM, about 8 Aussies stormed into the hostel with the volume of a NASCAR race. The winner was a guy who would go down in backpacking lore as "the chicken guy." He was so intoxicated that he went to the fridge, grabbed a whole chicken that he had cooked the night before, and went to town on it like it was a candied apple. Everyone looked at him, not exactly knowing what to say. He then went over to the map and tried to convince three American girls that there exist two New Zealands on planet Earth (since New Zealand was at the edge, it appeared on both sides). His pointer was his partially gnawed chicken.