Eurotrip: The Beer and the Beauty of Prague

I will only give a few brief historical points, afraid to smudge the truth too much...

The Czechs were largely ignored by much of the world, but somewhere along the way Prague gained some interest. Prague was a city that had been placed in the middle of some beautiful countryside, and it produced nothing of note besides good beer and some rowdy Protestants that really annoyed the Catholic Church well before Martin Luther and the English Reformation. Two Holy Roman Emperors (a Charles and some other guy) happened to place their center of government in Prague. As you can tell, Charles is the more remembered of the two - landmarks were given his name, including the Charles Bridge and the Charles University. The city is smack dab in a beautiful countryside, which may have been part of the emperors' decisions -- we had some great views on the train ride from Berlin.

We got arrived in the evening, so we did not have time for any touring the first night. So, we would party. As we walked towards a noted club, one of the center squares of town was scattered with workers from strip clubs and prostitution joints trying to take advantage of the tourists. We continued walking, though, and we saw the first glimpse of the city's beauty when we hit the river. Seeing a lit up Prague Castle on a clear night is a wonderful thing, and something our cameras were unfortunately unable to truly capture. Finally, we got to the club, which was a bit too ridiculous for us (~5 floors with different themes, but not worth the cover charge or the line), but we found out that once again, like Berlin, beer was available cheap.

The next day featured one of those great New Europe tours, where we had a good and brief Prague overview while also meeting a few other backpackers. From that tour, we went to see Pargue Castle. The castle itself was barely impressive when standing at it, but the church within was absolutely amazing. The church had enormously elaborate stained glass windows and some pretty cool statutes, too. (Prague happened to have a lot of statues, this place being just one example.) Perhaps the most interesting feature was that, since the church took about 1000 years to reach completion, some of the outside facade actually features people wearing suits - not something one would expect of a "Medieval" church.

With them were some fellow travelers we befriended at the earlier tour, and one of them in turn actually befriended the tour guide. That night, the tour guide and some of his friends showed us a cool bar, a beer garden, and a cool club which we would later return to. We had a wide variety of cheap beers that evening. I have had one of those beers in America, Pilsner Urquell: the Pilsner was invented by the Czechs, so this one was particularly well known. Another was Budweiser Budvar, a beer that is apparently in an ongoing lawsuit with the American Budweiser about some sort of marketing conflict. Well, the Budweiser there sold me in favor of the Czech version -- it was as smooth and cheap as Keystone Light and about ten times better tasting than the American Budweiser. Can't we have that in America, please?

The next day, we spent some time in the Jewish Quarter. A large number of Jews once lived in Prague, but they were greatly segregated. Even as their population boomed, they were not allowed to move away from their corner of town. But synagogues were erected, a cemetery was squeezed into what would become a beautiful site, and the Jews successfully lived there until one smart governor decided that the area was too crowded. Eventually, many of the buildings were demolished, but we still saw many synagogues and that one cemetery. Some of the synagogues had a quiet elegance of their own that was clearly different than the allure of old churches. One synagogue had transformed into a Holocaust memorial, where the names of every murdered Czech Jew was put on the walls, giving us one of the only clues that these people ever existed, and the walls were plastered with names, too. I had to step back and then remember that this endless list of names was only a fraction of those who actually perished. Then, we attended Friday night services at the oldest active synagogue in Europe, built in the 13th century, but by then I had begun to sniffle here and there, and the acoustics of the place were absolutely horrid.

As I became infected with a cold, I wearily enjoyed some more food and beer with our remaining time in Prague. We went out again that night, and the next day we simply walked around the city. Prague is a wonderfully beautiful place, but you can see the sites relatively quickly. We went to the top of a tower for a fabulous view, and we saw more great buildings. But our time was nearing an end. We were about to leave the cheap beer and extravagant architecture for something entirely different: the Alps of Switzerland!