As I lay here relaxing after a long day of class, I realized I had yet to blog about my tourist adventures this past weekend and class this week. It was a lot of fun exploring Prague more and seeing some of the sights!
On Saturday, Sari and I decided to head to the Old Town and see the square with its Astronomical Clock and beautiful church as well as some famous buildings in the area like the Municipal Building, a gorgeous concert hall. As well as being famous for beer and ice hockey, Prague is know for Astronomy [Kepler lived here], Kafka, and classical music. It's such a diverse city with so much to offer!
After climbing the clock tower, I was greeted with the following dizzying view of Prague sprawled below:
In the distance, old Prague Castle watched from its perch on the hill:
The view was absolutely intoxicating and worth the climb and being squashed to pieces by everyone else. According to the gentleman working who played the bugle to announce the hour (and clock show), it it always that busy. On the bright side, as a college student I got a 50% off discount on my ticket [this is common everywhere here] so it only cost 50 kc, or about $3.40. I have so many pictures and let me tell you, I did not want to come back down!
Our next step was to wander around the tower to find the clock itself. A giant beauty that told a morality play and the month with its astrology sign instead of time stood before us. The picture below captures only the bottom half, which was filled with beautiful script. Rumor has it that the clock's designer was blinded so he could never make a more beautiful clock.
My face says: Henchman was forever inspired my obsession with clocks and time.
The heat was starting to get to us, so we found a small (and expensive!) garden cafe. It was tucked away such that the noise right outside in the square's surrounding streets didn't touch it over the lightly playing Coldplay and Keane. I had an incredible berry mousse (which was topped with a giant cherry that appear to be grown in the Czech republic) and had my first taste of Pilsner Urquell. It was very refreshing! We were able to relax for quite a while in the shade and regain our energy.
We ended our long day of walking with a trip through the Jewish Quarter and a walk up the Vlatava river and back and forth across the famous Charles Bridge. I took the following cheesy and iconic photograph:
We actually stumbled upon a market today in the Old Town that was filled not only with fresh fruit and veggies at good prices but tons of gifts and handicrafts. We think it's open Tuesdays and Sundays as Sari stumbled upon it on Sunday as well. I know where I will be doing some shopping!
After a bit of rest (read: doing my homework) and grocery shopping (right, I needed to buy food so I could have lunch this week...), Sari and I met up for another beautiful walk around Vyserhard. I have so far walked around and through the castle grounds 4 times and have always found something new. It's secretly endless and unabashedly beautiful. I sincerely enjoy having a castle 15 minutes from my house. It's views over Prague and perfect placement for an extraordinary sunset have it contending as my favorite spot.
Sunday morning I woke up fairly early again and prepared for another day of wandering through the tangled streets. Today I felt excitement in my bones: I was going to the castle! Prague Castle is phenomenally old, with original parts dating to 800, and is, with all of its surrounding buildings and gardens, the largest castle complex in the world. It is also the seat of the President of the Czech Republic. I would finally be sating my love of Ancient history and seeing what those imposing spires staring down at me were all about.
The answer was, actually, rather unconventional. The palace is a large, rather simple building outside with gorgeous, tastefully modest rooms inside and a fantastic museum about its history [as the castle was added onto and changed throughout its long life]. Within the castle complex, the cobblestone streets twist in and out between government buildings, shops, art museums, and displays of countless coats of armor and weaponry. You could on some spears still see the lines of dried blood from the battle of 1142.
This impressive display lay above the handicraft shops, historically restored display "pub" and "goldsmith," and a house that Franz Kafka once lived in. These cute houses were repainted in bright colors, showing the commitment to restore Prague to its past glory, along the Golden Lane.
I continued along and suddenly rising up were those spires that taunted me. It was not the palace, which sat simply off to the left or St. George's basilica which was modestly nestled to my right, but the imposing and gothic St. Vitus Cathedral. It dominated the third courtyard with the sharp spikes that shot into the blue sky. Its commading presence and startling size make it almost too impossibly beautiful to truly describe.
This picture doesn't do it justice. And the inside? Too beautiful for words. Go here before you die.
Among other things, Prague Castle offers an incredible view over the city. From what I can tell, the top of the church (which I did not climb as it wasn't actually included in the full price ticket), is the 2nd highest spot in Prague. The highest appears to be the mini-Eiffel Tower atop Petrin Hill, where I will go this weekend, weather permitting. Whilst looking out from the balcony on the castle that opens out from the beautiful hall where Czech presidents are now inaugurated, I saw this tiny little flag in the distance...
...and thought fondly of home.
I dragged my tired and hungry self to the metro and had some delicious Thai food and Stella [which still reigns as my favorite beer, sorry Czechs] at Yam Yam up the street from my apartment. I had a chicken curry with onions and carrots with perfectly sticky rice. Every time I walked past, I craved Thai. It was nice to feed that craving and relax in the shade. The service here is such that, if you have finished they will clean it and ask if you want anything else, but other than that, they leave you alone to slowly eat your meal, people watch, and browse through your tour book.
The evening ended with laundry and another long walk about Vyserhard where Sari and I swapped tales of our adventures and stories of our tired bodies. It's a beautifully exhausting city and it is easy to imagine never having enough of it.
The past two days can be summed up fairly quickly, in a somewhat, I hope, humorous fashion. It falls best into the following list:
- No matter how well you teach it, Jeremy, I will still hate IPA with all of my heart and soul thanks to Professor Greene and that wretched excuse for the midterm. When you have to memorize a chart while frantically downing Red Bull and running around a white board in Mugar at 1 am, you do not like the phonetic alphabet. [Though I admit, the song lyric activity where I got to write out part of Eleanor Rigby was fun. See, I can do IPA. I cooperate. Mostly.]
- To make up for it, I LOVE grammar, a lot. I think fixing sentences is super fun and I was quite eager to know about tenses and hear someone who knew what he was talking about really clear up that passive and active voice mess and say why I could and SHOULD teach my students both.
- To prove I'm not kidding, I own the following mug [thank you, roomie]:
- Teaching writing seems like it will be fun, so I'm looking forward to combining that with some contextual grammar this week.
So, in summary, these past two days of class have been very intense! We are really getting into the nit picky details and learning how to be better teacher. After learning how to work with the course books we did impromptu grammar lessons and learned about time lines and how it's a lot harder than watching Jeremy do it. We keep talking about how it's a learning process over our coffees and waiting for Friday and our trip to the beer garden if the three upcoming teaching lessons don't kill us first...haha.
Nasledanou!
Fallon
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