Prague - Days 1 and 2

We were glad to leave Bratislava. Despite our huge hotel room, the city just made us a little... uneasy. The historic center was very pretty and we're glad we saw it but we felt like the tourists were confined there, sort of like Slovakian Epcot Center. It also seemed like the locals (unlike Disney World employees) were not sure what to do with us.

The train ride to Prague took about 4 hours so we arrived in the late afternoon. It's cold here. In Budapest we were pulling off layers and trying to stay out of the sun. In Prague we are wearing hats and gloves.

Last night we took the recommendation of our friend Tom Gillespie and visited two very different spots in the Old Town. First, we went to "The Pub". The name isn't too creative but the concept is. Every table has six beer taps and a computer screen. Each person gets a mug. You pour your own beer and the screen tells you how many liter your table has had. Then you can compete with other tables in the pub and in branches of the pub in other cities, to see which table can drink the most beer. A big video screen on the wall keeps track of liters consumed at every table in Prague, Plzen, and Berlin. There were big tables of English people and a table of Germans, all breaking into song every so often. Our table of two decided not to enter the contest. We weren't sure we could compete. I don't know how the game ends or if there's a prize, but it's a fun concept. Why is it fun to pour your own beer at a restaurant when you can do it at home? I don't know. Maybe for the same reason we like salad bars, or choosing what ingredients to put on our pizza. I am pretty sure that a place like that couldn't legally exist in the U.S. Unless it was a college party of some kind.

Next we went to a basement jazz club to see some live music. The basement was probably several hundred years old and looked like it could have once been a wine cellar or maybe a dungeon. The band was really good except that when the singer did Ray Charles songs, he sounded a little like a European white guy. I guess he can't help it.

When we left there it was a little after midnight and we went to catch the metro. The doors were locked. They had shut it down before 12 on a Saturday night and we weren't sure what to do. On top of that, the metro stop nearest our hotel (this one is just a normal, unremarkable hotel without a huge breakfast selection) was closed for construction. After living in Germany our standards for public transportation are fairly high, but we couldn't believe that a city like Prague wouldn't do transit as well as Budapest does, or even as well as Hannover does. So we figured out the tram situation in the dark and eventually made it back.

This morning we went to Easter Mass at St Thomas church. We took the tram across the river into the Little Quarter area near Prague Castle. After trying the wrong church first (there are a lot of them), we figured out how to get to St. Thomas and walked in.. People were walking in behind the priest and a statue of Mary, then they said a prayer in Czech and they started to leave. I thought my research had failed us and the English language Mass was somewhere else or didn't exist. Then the priest came out and announced, in English, that at the end of the service, all the men would follow the priest out with the statue of Jesus and the Eucharist, and all the women would follow the server carrying a statue of Mary wrapped in black for her mourning. We would meet in the courtyard, Mary's black robes would come off, and we'd go back into the church. Apparently it's an Easter tradition at St. Thomas and we'd walked into the tail end of it from the previous service. I never really appreciated having going to Mass in my native language until this year. Even when we go to Spanish language church in Hannover, it's nice but not as familiar. This one was very American - even the song books were the same as the ones back home. It was a good way to celebrate Easter. Plus right next to Brian's right elbow was the dead body of a martyr encased in glass. You don't get that in the U.S. Here is a link to the church in case you want to see it - it was originally built in the 1300s and rebuilt in the 1700s: http://www.praguecityline.com/prague-monuments/st-thomas-church-in-the-lesser-town

We walked up to Prague castle through the winding streets, and it started to snow. The castle is really a complex that is now churches, monuments, and museums. And tourists. There are a lot of them here and they even include Americans. We are not used to running into so many Americans and their accents jump out at us as we overhear them.

Once we'd taken in the views and started to shiver, we crossed the river and had lunch at a restaurant that we chose because it was off of the tourist track, and because it had a pirate on the sign. You can't go wrong with a pirate-themed Czech restaurant. Even if it doesn't have beer taps on the tables.

Happy Easter!