Checking Out Czech!

So! My first official European trip whilst being at TU-Dresden was to Prague with my "new friends". I hate using that term- I feel like I'm ten years old and we all hold hands when we cross the road...anyway, my new friends and I took a trip across the border to Czech Republic. A quick geography lesson- Czech Republic borders Germany with Dresden being pretty close to the border. It's only about a 3 hour train ride from Dresden to Prague. So my new friends and I (who do have names - Alice and Richard from England and Ronald from The Netherlands) set off to Prague. I don't know about you fellow Australians, but I was SUPER excited about the thought of crossing borders of countries! This was my first time for me and my European buddies got a fair kick out if it. I was hoping for a guard of honour or party balloons or streamers and I crossed in the train... but no.. nothing...nada... null... zip... not even a sign... Laaaaame... But we changed trains at the border and got our train ticket which made me realise I was in Czech...

So, Kc 570 is 570 Koruna. Exchange rate is about 25 Kc to 1 Euro. Therefore it cost all four of us a total 22.80 Euro to get to Prague... Us- 1  Bank- 0  

We arrived in Prague at around 6 at night and got checked in at the Hostel Tyn. On the way we found an Australian Bar so after dumping our stuff, we checked it ouy...I couldn't have been more disappointed when I found out they didn't serve ANY Australian Beers...Not even Fosters... But we stayed, had dinner and drank our first (of many) Czech Beer's "Pilsner Urquell". We had a good night of walking around the city and drinking at any bars we found along the way....

A few of you said how beautiful Prague is... And these pictures really don't do it justice... I could put about 50 photos of Prague but a) I cant be bothered and b) you need to just go and see it for yourself. But here is a teaser...

Clearly... A-MAY-ZING... 

(Also notice the great blue skies)

I had an awesome time with my buddies :o) We had an awesome Czech food experience that went something like this:

Hello Beef Goulash... 

Duck with Bread Dumplings and Red Cabbage 

 

Haha, this WAS a pancake... but I forgot to get a picture... It had hazelnut ice-cream in it...

P.S This entire meal cost AU $ 9.85... another win....

Like I said, I could seriously talk about this weekend forever, I had so much fun and thought Prague was beautiful... I'm going to leave this blog with my favourite moments (in no particular order):

So much good and cheap food here... my favorite was the jacket potatoes.  

Bahaha- best ever... soooo maNy types of Absinth... My favorite though...

ABSINTH ICE-CREAM...well, more like Gelati and it kinda tasted like aniseed but still awesome haha.  I felt so hardcore... 

This was cool. There was an entire wall devoted to John Lennon that you could go and write on... Heaps of people had written cool lyrics and stuff...  

The Charles Bridge was lined with these statues... I liked them because it shows how passionate they were about their faith... 

Haha, definitely a highlight was meeting "Mr. Bugle Boy" (probably not his real name). From the top of this clock tower a "bugle boy" as we named them, would play a tune on the hour every hour from 9am -9pm... This clock tower was built in 1410 and is a super tourist attraction. Thousands of people come to the square every day on the hour to see the bugle boy... 

Czech beer!! Yewww! 0.5L for 29 Kc = 1.20 Euro = 1.60 Australian.... I love this town...

New Friends!!

I had to leave you with this... Doesn't it look simply mouth watering... 

And it tasted even better then it looked!!!

I will definitely be visiting Prague again. It was so cheap to spend the weekend there and the buildings are beautiful... Certainly making a trip when it starts snowing because snow on the bridge would look awesome... and the scenery along the Elbe River (where I went hiking a few weeks ago) would look great with snow as well!

Stay tuned... Next Blog... PARIS!