Praha Round Two. City so nice we went there twice

Prepare yourself for a long-winded account of several long trips. I'm about to bust out mad blog posts. This trip occurred about two weeks ago. Again, I'm just lazy.

So the blessing and the curse of our program, if you haven't already guessed, is that we have a ton of time to travel on our own and a central location to do it from. Downside is that this is damn expensive. However, I have convinced myself that "I will never get an opportunity like this again" and that I should blow my life savings on traveling around Europe. So why the hell did Rachel and I decide to return to Prague again? We pretty much fell in love with the city the first time. A bunch of our friends live there, not to mention our favorite Czech boy Stephan!

We were smarter about our travel plans this time, no more 6 am flights requiring all night adventures through the Brussels brazil district. We arrived in Prague in the evening. It was quite refreshing having done this before and knowing what to do. This saved us some crowns (aka Czech monopoly money) because we now know you dont have to pay for public transport. Upon arrival at my friends Jon and Ari's apartment, we realized that about 20 other AU kids were also visiting Prague, staying in other various places around the city. However, our apartment complex was a nexus of raging over the five days that we spent there. Thank god we had our own space though, we might have gone crazy if we had to be around all those biddies, all the time.

Prague biddy patrol

Because I've been so lazy and did not immediately write this blog, my following account is going to be more like word vomit from the few notes that I wrote down. It's gonna end up being a long and wild ride, so hold on.

Our first night there we were convinced to go out to the bar. It was real nice seeing a bunch of my friends. We ended up at this bar called Crossbar, a very Czech establishment. By very Czech I mean a lot of slavic looking dudes drinking Pilsners and dancing to hardcore electronic music in a dark room. Basically I loved it.

Our next day was spent doing mostly tourist stuff, some things that we had already hit up in our previous trip, like the lenin wall. One thing that we did not see the last time that we wanted to was the babies. We had heard a lot about David Cerny who was an anti-communist artist who designed these "babies" and even affixed them to a Soviet broadcast tower in protest against communism.

Babies on the ground

Babies on the tower

Onto more Czech attractions. This thing called a train bar. Now use your imagine as to what a train bar could be. Here's the answer. It's a bar where your drinks are delivered by train. Boom.

Choo Choo! Pilsner coming through!

As was previously mentioned, fried cheese is one of the most amazing things about Prague. I consumed four over the course of five days. Load that up with some saurkraut and curry ketchup. Explosion in my mouth.

Fried cheese 4/4

Now in the states, halloween is a special time for us college kids. Particularly girls. It is the one night where you can dress like a total whore and not get judged for it, in fact, it's encouraged. On the whole, I was disappointed that this trend has not made its way over to the Czech Republic. Women were relatively clad at this club we went to, despite the fact that the event was named "Bloody Sexy Halloween". We actually had a lot of fun, the DJ at the club played a lot of our favorite hits and we danced the night away.

We recovered the following morning with a great spot named Bohemian Bagels. Pretty much the only place to get Bagels in Prague and damn they were good. That day we visited the old jewish cemetery which was certainly a powerful experience. The jewish minority in Prague was given this plot of land for their cemetery and has been burying people there since the 15th century. Thus, the cemetery is many layers high with an estimated 100,000 people buried in this tiny plot of land. The density of the headstones is astonishing.

Another thing about the Jewish cemetery. Hitler did not destroy it (or any of Prague) during WWII because he wanted Prague to be his capitol and also a memorial to the Jews as the "race that used to be". Dick move.

Once my boys Jon and Ari returned from their wild weekend in Copenhagen, we had a great time just relaxing with them and catching up. Rachel got real domestic and cooked some delicious meals. In order to do some cooking, however, we needed to go grocery shopping. Never have I ever been grocery shopping where I cannot understand one word of food labeling. Now, this was fine when were buying pickles or chicken. But when it came to selecting a spice packet, we settled for the one with the word 'Mexico' in it.

Almost done, just a couple more things that I gotta tell yall about in Prague. Rachel, my boy James, and I visited this museum about controversial photography. While as some of you may know, this is not exactly right down my alley. However, it turned out to be awesome and I feel more cultured because of it. It illustrated the progression of legal issues in photography, allowing me to nerd out a little bit.

I mentioned my boy James. Well apparently he lived in Prague for a short time when he was a wee little boy and his babysitter from that era still lived in Prague. Not only did this babysitter still live in Prague, he opened up a successful restaurant and invited us there for dinner one night. But he went even further. Gave us discounts on our food, free drinks, including this shot of something that tasted like pure christmas. Amazing!

This one park that we visited was actually a highlight of this leg of the trip. Besides Rachel stepping in dog poop, it was great to get back into some resemblance of nature and shrubbery. Rachel took some nice senior portraits of me with her big fancy smancy camera. We played with some ducks and just walked around taking in all the fall colors. Am I gay? No, this park was just cool.

Questionable

All in all, a baller five days in Prague, doing it for the second time. We then struck out for Rome, where our trip seemed to take a turn for the worse...BUM BUM BUM