Czeching Out

Ok, i know its a trite pun Anyway, we’re off to Rome in the morning, so i’ll leave you with some snaps from our time here in Praha:

Trumped By One

So there’s a stumpy little tower on the top of a hill in Prague which is modelled after a certain famous beret-toting nation’s heavenward erection. With the height of the hill included, the Prague tower beats the Paris one by a whopping 1000mm. Take that one, frenchy. Man it was cold up there, must have been close to minus 10, which made climbing the 373 (ish) outdoor steps a bit of a chore. When we got to the top, the viewing windows had frosted over, so there wasn’t a whole lot to see!

While we were up there, this is about as close as it’s got to snowing on our trip so far - a thin dusting of frost on the ground. Anyone in meterology want to explain how it can be below freezing for a week and not snow?? I’m baffled!

Cosmic.

We have laws about this back home.

For serious?

I can’t really decide which tragedy is the worst about this situation. Firstly, anything this small is a cat, and therefore has no soul. Clearly, it can’t survive in this climate on its own, the owner is intentionally perverting the course of nature to allow this silly little toy to trot around yelping incessantly at rocks and small children. Secondly, it saddens me that there’s an industry for absurd gimmicks like pet jackets. There’s half a billion people on earth without proper clothes, i’m sure this little runt would make a great pair of mittens.

The Prague List

Country: Czech Republic
Language: Czech, English, German, Italian, Klingon.
Beer: It’s the home of beer, but it seems they prefer Absinth.
Food: Pork Goulash with dumplings (Bowel Cement).
Currency: Crowns (Koruny).

• Absolutely everything is tagged. It was the first thing that struck me getting off the train, and it’s just everywhere. All the walls, subways, escalators, cars, trains, shops… Since the collapse of communism, people have really taken freedom of expression to the extreme.
• Its COLD! The day starts at about -3º and steadily chills down to -5º, and the sun doesn’t make it far above the horizon. Apparently they average one full hour of daylight, the rest is perpetual sunrise and sunset.
• The christmas markets are better than the ones in Vienna. They sell this awesome doughnut type thing that gets baked on a stick. Yummy.
• Dogs are commonplace in public here as well, but I haven’t seen any inside at shops. There’s plenty of frozen dog poo on the footpath though. Anyone for golf? Also, the street beggars (it seems to be a vocation for a few people) hug dogs to keep warm.
• Along with police there’s private security contractors with the blessing of the state. Apparently they’re all ex KGB, so we steered well clear. The sight of sub-machine guns first thing in the morning is sobering. In saying that, we never had any trouble, everyone we met was friendly and generally helpful.
• The original Czech Budweiser is much nicer than the knock-off American one.
• All the bread we found was tough and slightly stale, it seems to be how it’s eaten.
• Everything is flavoured with Caraway Seed. Great, if you like it.
• The city is a maze of tight alleyways, there’s a pub or bar or restaurant every 50 metres it seems. Pays to explore, we found some really quality little places tucked away.
• There’s a vibrant music scene, today we ate at a place where ‘Jazz for One’ was on the menu!
• People smile more here, but I wonder if they still walk with the weight of the socialist era on their shoulders…
• The architecture is truly stunning, Prague was never bombed in either of the little continental altercations last century, so there’s buildings here from 800 years ago and they’re all adorned with statues of naked people.

Sausaged as, bro!

Czech sausage (i know what some of you are thinking, so a sausage is heretofore defined as ‘a variety of meat and offal placed in an edible skin and cooked on a bbq’) is very good, and cheap too, try it if you’re ever in the region.

Today I found the first printed reference to New Zealand so far in our trip - lamb chops on a menu (served with potatoes and cabbage, for a price of Kc 349.00, if you were wondering). It appears as far as most places are concerned, we don’t even exist.

The Czech Republic, along with much of modern Europe, takes a somewhat different approach to booze, smokes, and drugs to New Zealand. There’s what they call a ‘china shop’ on almost every corner, which is basically like a dairy, run by people from Asia, and it sells everything from oranges to whiskey - they really dig their top-shelf stuff over here - especially Absinth, check out this window display from the ‘elf’market’ (no i’m not making it up)…

clearly, if you don’t see any elves in the above image, you need to try one of the below:

Next stop: Prague.

Our next stop is Prague in the lovely Cezch republic. I don’t speak a word of Czech, gulp. We’re leaving by train tomorrow morning, and are all secretly hoping that the ride we’ve organised to the train station decides to show up before the train leaves…We’ve exchanged some euros for a giant wad of czech korones (spelling?), will be interesting to see how far they go over there.

Right, i’m out of time on here - hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, will update soon!

- josh

Tor!

‘Tor’ is the German word for ‘goal’. Which you can score if you’re lucky enough to dine at this particular restaurant, and are of the male persuasion. Wouldn’t want to try a penalty shot from the nine yard box, though….

Irrefutable proof…

…  that at least one Austrian is funny.

Vienna Photos

Finally got a chance to get on the laptop and upload some shots!

You can find the whole lot in the gallery right here :