When I last left off, it was in the midst of a 4 AM somewhat drunken
night in freezing-cold Prague. 4
AM bedtime of course made for a late morning. Nic, Jason (Kansas guy), a guy
from Hawaii, and I went for a huge American breakfast – I had 3 eggs over easy,
with bacon, potatoes, a mini bagel (it was a bagel place, after all) and hot
chocolate. The location was conveniently at the food of Prague Castle – my
sightseeing destination for the afternoon.
NOM:
The student discount for the full Prague Castle tour was 50%
off, so I opted for the full tour. At the art museum, some landscape works of
Pieter Stevens caught my eye. The second stop was the iconic St. Vitus
Cathedral – the stained glass was breathtaking. My other favorite spot was
Saint George’s Basilica, which had a very mysterious vibe.
Stained Glass:
I decided to walk all the way back to the hostel – this proved
to be more work than I’d bargained for. I walked down by the river, and decided
I’d take the scenic route over the rock barrier to the river. It went for a
while then dead-ended. Oops. I finally made it back near the hostel, then took
a wrong turn, and ended up over a km from the place. Aargh. I did find it
eventually, and collapsed into a chair with some water.
The same 4 of us + an Aussie decided to try the other Czech
restaurant we’d been recommended to visit. The place had been brewing for like
600 years or something, and their dark beer was delicious. I finally had GARLIC
SOUP (it is as amazing as it sounds!), then Aussie guy and I shared a big plate
of duck, sausage, chicken, beef, pork. One of those meals I’ll never forget.
Hawaiian guy ordered the 3.3 lbs of meat plate. He didn’t finish it, but made
it through a good two pounds of ribs.
Ribs:
Nic and I planned to visit the Bone Chapel in Kutna Hora the
next morning (in time for me to hit my train to Berlin), so coupled with the
fact that most of us were already hungover or just dead tired (I was in the
latter category), we didn’t go out partying that night (others did, of course).
We watched Pulp Fiction in the lounge, instead.
We did somehow wake up in time to get the train to Kutna
Hora. It was the first day I experienced snow in Europe, and it was definitely
colder than the previous days. We trudged down the road to the cathedral, and
were pretty blown away by how eerily amazing this place was. There were
THOUSANDS of skulls, and thousands more bones (I want to say 40,000 bones, or
so maybe?). Just think, every one of those skulls was a person at some point.
Each one of them had some story, from a different time, and I just wanted to
sit and have a conversation with a few of them (I made some funny faces
instead, oops). The main chandelier was made up of at least one of each bone in
the human body. We even had the whole place to ourselves for 20 minutes before
a big tour showed up – which was just enough time to take in the energy, and
maybe make some silly faces with the skulls. I might be going to Hell now…anyway,
I’ll leave you with a couple pictures to try and recreate a bit of the
awe-inspiring environment by which I was enveloped.
Chandelier:
O hai thur:
Freezing our asses off, we stumbled into a church nearby,
and found out we could walk upstairs. Upon further inspection, we realized
“upstairs” included walking inside the roof of the castle – unreal!
Unfortunately, I had to make it back to Prague to catch my
train, so we headed back to get the train, stopping at a market on the way,
where we had to communicate with the butcher via the weighing scale – ha! I
hope the Czech Republic isn’t the European country where if you give the
thumbs-up it means something akin to ‘screw you.’ But there was of course time
for hot chocolate at the Prague equivalent of Starbucks.
Cool ceiling:
Then it was time to say goodbye to Prague (I could’ve stayed
at MadHouse for weeks, and will likely go back one day), and onto an
unremarkable train ride to Berlin. I hope to run into Nic again either when he
visits the West Coast one day, or when I finally make it to Montreal one year
(I’m thinking Toronto/Quebec trip after the [mid-August] 2014 Scrabble
Nationals in Buffalo, NY. We got along really well, and both being on our first
Europe trips, and first solo trips, we were both learning to adapt to new
environments, so we had that in common, too. A cool guy, for sure.
Felix randomly walked by me at Berlin Hbf. We had train
station currywurst, and then stopped to get beer in a supermarket. There, we
ran into a Hamburger, who started telling us what beer to buy. We soon realized
we were on the same train to Hamburg, so he decided to join us for some beer on
the train. He was a fun guy, laughed a lot, and gave us a whole list of things
to do in Hamburg. I think Felix and I caught about half of what he said, but
his ideas were very good.
Results of the train ride. We tried to at least organize our debris:
Our hotel was right by the station, and upon arriving at 1
AM, passed the heck out.
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