Bratislava? Are We in Slovakia?: Part One of The Praha Chronicles

As the title so subtly suggests, what follows in a chronicle of my recent trip to Praha (Prague for those who may not recognize it by it's true name), Czech Republic. I have been rather busy this week due to various assignments for midterms, ahh!, so I am somewhat behind on my blog. I have decided to take time away from studying and homework to finally put my trip into words.

Last Friday after class, I, and six of my friends, hopped on a train and headed for the Czech Republic. It is about a seven hour train ride from Budapest, which is manageable for a weekend getaway. I enjoy the train. It's lovely to sit and look out of the window as unfamiliar lands whiz by with the knowledge that I am speeding off to an exciting new place. The scenery on this ride was especially spectacular because of the changing foliage. The hills were spotted with blasts of orange, yellow, and red among the blanket of green. It happened to be a good day to be on a train. The sky was overcast and gray, adding to the mystique of an unknown landscape.

As the train glided out of Hungary I resigned myself to split my time between gazing out of the window and reading my fantastic book about famous Hungarian Jews who were forced to flee Budapest after Budapest's Golden Age came to an abrupt end in the 1920's, and changed the world.

I need to interrupt this recounting of my train ride to bring you a breaking news bulletin: I just succeeded in lighting my oven for the first time! I am ecstatic to finally be able to bake! I have been ovenless for the past six weeks because I was unable to figure out how to light my gas oven. My land lady finally showed me how to light it. Previously, all I could get it to do was billow gas into my flat, but I couldn't figure out where exactly I was supposed to stick the flame to get it to ignite. Not wanting to blow up my flat, I abandoned the effort. After being instructed on where to put the flame I discovered that the ridiculous shark lighter that I have doesn't fit, so I've been searching for matches for a couple of weeks now. Oh, how I miss electric ovens! Anyway, back to the train ride...

Many crumbling, neglected buildings lined the railway or were visible from the train car in which I sat. Those buildings, added with the bleak, gray sky and my exposure to the history of communism in Hungary, made me feel as if I had been transported to another time. This may reveal the extent to which I have been "Americanized" because I associate desolation and wreckage with communism, but from what I have learned about Hungarian history during the communist regime, it wasn't a great time in the country's history.

Somewhere in my daydreams of other times, I noticed that the alphabet on signs along the railway had changed. Letters were now adorned with a wide variety of unusual accents and symbols that had no place in Hungarian. My immediate thought, proving my complete geographical ignorance, was that we had crossed the Hungarian border into the Czech Republic. It wasn't until we pulled up in Bratislava (which I knew wasn't in the Czech Republic) that I call out, "Are we in Slovakia?" Everyone else, having even less of a clue about the geography of Eastern Europe than I did, just shrugged. I quickly pulled out a map and discovered that Hungary does NOT border the Czech Republic, and that we had been in Slovakia for quite some time. Oh, the ignorance of youth.

After an uneventful train ride spent alternating between looking out of the window, reading, sleeping, and talking to my companions, we finally arrived in Praha. It took us a ridiculously long time to locate an ATM in the train station so we could get Czech koruna (crowns). I finally found it in the most logical of places, right next to the ticket counters, duh. Oh well, after getting some money we finally managed to get on the metro and take yet another train to our hostel. Our hostel was fabulous. It was called Plus Prague and was fantastically cheap (only $12 a night) with clean rooms, free WiFi, free breakfast, a pool, and keycard access. The only downside was that it was located a little outside of the city center, but it's easy access to a tram stop made getting to it easy. I found the hostel on hostelworld.com which is a great site if you're ever in need of booking a hostel.

Once checked-in and unloaded, we went in search of food to please our growling stomachs. We found a Mexican restaurant just around the corner and happily walked in. It's a good thing it didn't take us the usual five years to make up our minds because when we came in we were told that the kitchen would be closing in five minutes, so we just made the cut. The most remarkable thing at dinner was when we ordered chips and guacamole, we were served guacamole with french fries. Of all places to adopt the Brittish meaning for chips, a Mexican restaurant! When we pointed out the error, we were confused as to why we were receiving french fries, our waitress just said she "you said chips," and left. We never did get real tortilla chips. I guess I'll just have to wait for the real thing when I get home. Los Loros here I come!

After dinner we decided to go down by the river and see Praha at night, big mistake. We got down to the river, which was very beautiful. I was continually impressed by Praha, besides the large number of fellow tourists. Praha's many gorgeous and historic buildings suffered little damage during WWII, unlike Budapest, who's buildings still bear marks of past horrors (i.e. bullet holes). The price for choosing to see this wonderful city at night was that the metro closed during our escapades, which included stumbling upon some animated peeing statues outside of the Franz Kafka Museum. We had a good laugh at those statues with their moving appendages to put it discretely. We ended up walking most of the 4 km back to our hostel on a very chilly night before we finally found the right tram to take us the rest of the way. As self appointed lead navigator, I was exceedingly cranky by the end of the night. At one tram stop, after confirming that it was a stop on the tram line that we wanted, we were passed by the oncoming tram with a small wave from the driver as he passed us without even stopping. They have different stops for different directions of the same tram line. We were at a stop for the tram going the opposite way. We finally found the stop for the tram going in our desired direction several blocks away and had to wait another 15 minutes because the trams only run every half hour after midnight.

But, in the end we finally made it back by 2 a.m. or so, and all fell, totally drained, into bed. The next day would prove far more exhausting.