Chocolate Cups for Moustache Wearers: Prague Day 1

I had heard so many, many good things about Prague before deciding to head there myself that I admit I had very high expectations going into the city. Were these expectations met?

Well, kind of.

Beautiful scenery?

Check.

Cheap?

Check.

Classy, high-brow museums?

Check. (I kid, I kid).

A lot of culture?

...Bueller, Bueller?

My basic judgment of Prague came down to this: It's like Disneyland. Pretty to see and some fun stuff to do, but it all just seems artificial, as if it was created for the sake of appeasing tourists.

There's also what I call the Prague Paradox: (ahem): Prague sucks when it's raining, but it's crazy touristy when the sun is out. Kind of lose-lose.

"Touristy?" you scoff.

Listen kids, I went to Rome FOR EASTER. I've been to New York, Paris, Rome, Berlin. I know touristy. There are definitely very touristy sections of each of those cities--the big tour buses, the shitty souvenir stores, the over-priced tourist meals. But there are also tons of locals who go about their own business. You see families in the Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris and old men drinking espresso in Rome. There's a sort of organic feeling to those places, as if they've grown up with the idea of a tourist and they're okay with the whole concept by now. I'm sad to say that it never seemed like that to me in Prague, and the feeling was really missed.

Nevertheless, I still managed to have a fun time there, with a little help from my friends :)

When we first got there, after a six or seven hour train ride from Berlin, it was raining and cloudy. That sentence should have said "When some of us got there." There are, in fact, two train stations called "Prague train station" and three of my friends got off on the wrong one, while two of us made it to the right one by accident. Long train rides, especially when they come very early after late nights out on the town in Berlin, are a recipe for fatigue. Most of us slept on the way there, but it's usually the type of sleep that leaves you more tired after you're done with it.

Getting out of the Prague train station was an ordeal in itself. There weren't any signs in English, and nothing was very well marked with the little universal symbols that are so common in Europe. After wandering for a bit, we met up with our friends who had gone to the other train station, and went to an ATM to get some Czech money.

It was the first time I've ever had a 1,000 bill in my hand. (Inset many, many high-roller jokes here).

And then ensued our first encounter with the inadequacies of Prague travel (it made working around strikes and two hour lunch-hour breaks in France look like a piece of cake). We were trying to buy a ticket for the metro, and there was only one woman in any of the ticket booths (note: this is the biggest station in Prague, at a peak travel time). After waiting in line, we found the lady didn't speak any English, so we tried desperately to communicate what type of ticket we wanted, even pointing on the map. My friend Laure paid with a 1,000 CKC bill, and boy, was the attendant pissed. After charging her too much for the ticket, it was my turn. Except that I couldn't buy one because she didn't have any change, and her attitude was souring by the second. Credit cards? No. Laure quickly thrust some of her change into the window, and I was given my ticket.

After the metro ride, the five of us got to our hostel (after first heading to the hostel office about a half mile away from it and waiting for someone to take us there). It overlooked the Vltava River and was a great price for a pretty good hostel. Unfortunately, the combination of the stormy weather and the sleeping-too-long-in-the-daytime lethargy left us all lagging, and it was only about 2 pm.

We decided on a trip to the Chocolate Museum (maybe with just a little prodding from me...)

We walked through an exhibit about the history of chocolate, which was actually pretty interesting.
For example, moustache-wearers sometimes had different hot cocoa drinking cups in the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe!

There was a chocolate-making demonstration along with a free chocolate sampling.

And there was a HUGE chocolate/candy store at the end, which I was pretty excited about (chocolate in Czech money?? Count me IN)

It was dinner time by then, and we decided to go for a traditional Czech dinner, which I honestly was not too excited about because I don't really consider Prague to be the culinary capital of the world, nor am I a big fan of goulash, thick slabs of meat, or dumplings (all without using any spices or flavorings other than more meat). And don't even think about finding any "Czech-style" vegetables except the potato.

We went to a really, really old brewery type restaurant, where we had to go downstairs to eat.
It was a pretty beautiful old place. The cigarette smoke was thick (French smokers have NOTHING on the Czech people. I swear the two guys next to us smoked a couple packs each during the meal). There were some pretzels and nuts on our table, but luckily we found out from our guidebooks that these are a sort of Czech booby trap, presented to unassuming customers who think they're free, and then are shocked to find a huge fee on their bill for eating the supposed gratuitous snacks. The pretzels and nuts were moved out of the way to avoid temptation. We soon came to realize that good Czech service is an oxymoron.

While everyone else ordered Czech-style food, I ordered a salad. Call me lame, it wouldn't be the first time :) We all ordered Czech beer with our food, the famous Pilsner-Urquell, as well as a darker one which I found to be far, far superior to the bitter-tasting Pilsner. It was incredibly cheap: about 30 euro-cents for a pint, which was a nice change to the 4 euro pints found in France.

After the meal, we decided to try some absinthe. The greenish liquid was brought to us in shot glasses, accompanied by spoons with sugar and a lighter.
We poured the absinthe on the sugar spoons and light them on fire, letting them burn until the fire went out and the sugar was caramelized.
As soon as the fire was out, we ate the sugar and down went the absinthe. Even though I'd had it before, I didn't remember it being as disgusting. Sort of a licorice-tasting mouthwash.

Getting our check took a lot of maneuvering, and when we scanned the bill, there was a bogus charge on it that they told us was because of the pretzels/nuts we ate. When we told them that we didn't eat any, they changed their answer to a "service charge", although there was already a gratuity fee at the bottom. However, we were unsuccessful in changing anything and eventually ended up paying the whole bill, dismissing it as "an American fee."

We walked around for a while longer, across the Charles Bridge and around Old Prague.

And then came one of the scariest experiences of spring break. We were crossing a street in Prague (after looking both ways, no cars), when two police officers apprehended my four friends. Clearly on a power-trip, the two police officers started yelling at them for crossing the street without a light and threatened to throw them in jail and give them a huge fine. They talked their way out of it, but it was a really scary encounter and we avoided prague police like the plague from then on.

After the harrowing incident of my friends almost getting thrown in a Czech prison, we decided some ice cream was in order and promptly went to the nearest Haagen-Dazs.