My Trip to Prague
Created | Updated Apr 17, 2002
Prague is a beautiful city. From medieval street plans and clocks to glorious Hapsburg era baroque froth there is something around every corner to astound.
This is lucky as it was murder to get there. The little red haired girl is a member of the Camping Club and when she offered me the chance of going to Prague for their international rally I jumped at it. The facts that it was a youth rally and that we would be travelling by coach were outweighed by thoughts of copious cheep beer and I readily signed up. Thus, after 18 hours on a coach predominantly filled with hormonal teenagers (The club definition of youth being 14 to 30!) and not enough loo stops, we arrived at a campsite on the outskirts of Prague at lunchtime on the Thursday. The field was dry and lumpy but tents were quickly erected and sustenance was sought. Much beer and mangled Czech later an early night was sought, mostly due to the sub zero temperatures.
I awoke early on the Friday to a sheet of ice on the tent and frozen boots. Luckily the temperature quickly climbed and myself and Toc set of to take the tram into the centre of Prague. Now being a sensible sort I had acquired two guidebooks and a phrasebook, all of which agreed that you could buy a ticket on the tram. It would be cheaper from a newsagents but I expected my Czech to buy me three toilet rolls and a copy of Skoda monthly and so preferred to reduce the options for confusion. So, of course, it was not possible to buy anything from the driver. Luckily, after fifteen minutes of nervousness we arrived at the Metro stop we wanted without having our tickets checked and so avoided the four hundred crown fine. This is only eight pounds but when a ticket costs twelve crowns it is daft not to pay.
Anyhoo we changed to the Metro, bought a ticket, and headed to the castle. And there my astonishment began.
Prague Castle was begun in the Ninth Century and has been rebuilt on many occasions such that it has a vast collection of styles, from a medieval wall and turrets on one side to a classical Hapsburg palace on the other side. All this surrounds St. Vitus Cathedral in the centre.
So we wandered round the castle grounds, taking pictures, gawping and pointing like proper tourists. After a while of this we decided to get some lunch and followed the guidebook to a nearby square for lunch. Turned out we were eating pork and dumplings opposite the Foreign Ministry.
See, thats the thing about Prague. Round every corner is some grand building with a history. In this case the Cernin palace bankrupted more than one generation of the family that built it and was the scene of the Third Defenestration of Prague when the son of the first President of Czechoslovakia fell from a window in suspicious circumstances.
After lunch in these auspicious surroundings we wandered down through Mala Strana (The Little Quarter) beneath the castle and out onto Charles Bridge. This has been the scene of much history since its mortar was mixed with eggs (to make it strong) in the thirteenth century. The history ranges from martyrs (St. John of Nepomuk) to invasions (the Swedish in the Thirty Years War). Now it is subject to hordes of tourists, peddlers and, according to my guidebook, pickpockets. It is still lovely to see but sadly it is very difficult to take an interest in the 30 statues that line its edges due to the crush. I recommend climbing one of the defensive towers at either end and looking at it from there.
Anyhoo, we proceeded on thorough Stare Mesto (The Old Town), continuing to be astounded by the baroque buildings and the amount of effort put into the murals, statues and gilt on the most mundane of buildings. Into the Old Town Square to gape at the astronomical clock, which includes a list of every saints day, and then off for a seat in a pub. Sadly this pub was not at all friendly to a couple of tourists needing a rest so we quickly left for more wandering. By this point the shear grandeur of it all was getting too much for us. So we consulted the guide book and stopped in at the Konvict Bar for dinner. This turned out to be a great idea despite the name, although Toccata ate, according to the menu, Rabbi. We were of the opinion, and we so hope it is correct, that it was actually Rabbit, but the piece of meet did seem quite large. I stuck to chicken as it seemed safer. It was another huge and cheap meal so we took our fate in out hands and went back on the Metro and, much to our surprise, got back to the campsite safe and sound.
On the Saturday a trip to Pilsen was organised. Hence yet more time was spent on a bus with kiddies, but we were soon in the home of beer. For those who don't know Pilsner Lager, the archetypal European beer, is named after Pilsen. And indeed, in the town there are two breweries, Gambrinus (the best selling in the Czech Republic apparently) and Pilsner Urquell. We had time for a quick lunch in Pilsen before our brewery tour. Well, you can't very well go to Pilsen and not see a brewery. Pilsner Urquell is brewed by a triple mash process and, after it has bottom fermented, it is placed in giant barrels in the cellars which were hewn out of the rock underneath the brewery in the nineteenth century. I was extremely surprised, and very happy, when we were presented with a free sample pint, straight from one of these barrels. However, I was nowhere near as excited as Toccata who is an ex-brewer. However, we feel that the massive infusion of caffeine she got from trying the local energy drink, Semtex (no really!), may have also contributed to the massive grin she had.
After the brewery tour we took a quick trip to the town brewery museum, bought a couple of cheesy souvenir steins and then climbed the church tower which gave us some superb views across the town. And also of more hugely ornate buildings, including a chemist with angels and Hippocratic symbols all over it.
On the Sunday, our final full day, we went back into Prague, with the intention of doing the Castle. We piled in early, bought our tickets and promptly discovered that the Cathedral was closed for the morning for Easter Mass. I was a little confused as it appeared that the doors were being guarded by Harry Potter and his beefy mate but it turned out they worked for the church and that we would be let in after the services. So we went off to the Old Palace, with a hall big enough that they originally had jousts, horse and all, within it. There we saw the window from which the Second Defenestration (the one in which no one died, but the Thirty Years War was started) occurred. After the Old Palace was The Basilica of St. George, a rather bare church and then Golden Lane. Golden Lane runs along the outer wall of the castle and was originally lived in by sharpshooters defending said walls. Eventually they moved out and it became cheep housing for the poor of Prague. In the nineteenth century Franz Kafka stayed there. Rather oddly, I thought, this cheap housing was eventually emptied to make way for tourist shops by the communists. So now, today, it is just a pretty row of shops with a drop dead brilliant armoury at one end. Full suits of armour, some decent looking swords and a couple of pikes I would not have minded waving about were for sale. Sadly the actual shop area was crowded with tourists (a common complaint through out Prague) so I didn't fancy having an experimental swing.
By the time we had done all this the Cathedral was open and so in we went. For something that took 600 years to build it does look rather good. Some nice restrained chapels, the horrible, gaudy advert that is the Tombstone of St. John of Nepomuk (happily now devoid of his tongue) and the historical wonder that is St. Wenceslas Chapel. The Chapel of St. Wenceslas is where the Kings of Bohemia would pray before going through a small door with seven locks to where the crown jewels are kept and then up on to a balcony to be crowned in full view of the Cathedral. This is also where Reichsprotector Heydrich went to crown himself during the Second World War. We also went up the clock tower to see some breathtaking views of the city but, by the time we had come back down, we were exhausted from our three days of trogging. So we returned to the campsite.
The next morning we packed up our tent, boarded the bus and headed back home by another eighteen hour bus ride. Prague is a beautiful city. All the people we talked to were very helpful and friendly. The public transport system is clean, quick and cheap. The food is good, wholesome, tasty stuff. I am definitely going back again.
