Prague + Munich = Beer

From the Jewish Quarter. (Made me miss my favorite old Jewish roommate.) 

Prague is a magical place. The streets are straight out of a fairy tale and beer is cheaper than water. Visiting that city was totally worth the stress and intense sleep deprivation that came with this weekend. First, though, let me apologize profusely for the lack of posts last week. I promise I'll be good again when I get my computer back next week.

As you've probably figured out, we did end up going on our trip to Prague and Munich. Alex and I agreed that we'd rather make the journey to Florence and go with that group than leave from Rome and spend the weekend camping at Oktoberfest. It was cold and raining in Munich all weekend, so I think we made the right choice, even if it meant sprinting across Rome's Termini Station to catch our train and then getting back at an ungodly hour and having to hail a cab in the middle of a thunderstorm. True story, but what can I say? Rome just loves screwing with me. All I can do is laugh at this point. And blog. At least I never have a shortage of material.

We arrived in Prague Friday morning after a 12-hour bus ride and had just enough time to shower and eat breakfast before we started our walking tour of the city. [Sidebar: I cannot describe how incredible that shower felt. Not only had I been on a bus all night, but our hot water heater in Rome had decided to take the day off on Thursday morning, so I could only wash my hair that morning. I wasn't lying when I said Rome likes messing with me.] Anyway, our hostel was really, really nice. It's called the Czech Inn. (No joke.) The walking tour was a lot of fun and I took some great pictures. Prague really is a fascinating place. It has this beautiful yet cold feel to it, and the buildings are so perfect that you feel like you're on a movie set or at Epcot Center rather than in a real city. The other striking thing is that Prague still feels sort of haunted by its history. You can easily see symbols of communism if you look for them, and it was eerie to walk around in a place that had actually experienced life behind the iron curtain.

After we finished our tour, Alex and I started retracing our steps back to our hostel, got lost (naturally) and decided to just spend the afternoon exploring a bit. We found a little shop with these gorgeous paintings, so we each bought one for 350 crowns, which comes out to about 14 dollars. Czech inflation may suck for them, but I really appreciated having a favorable exchange rate for once. Then Alex dragged me into this huge department store where we shopped a little and then decided to try and find the Pivovarsky Klub, one of the bars Anthony Bourdain visited in his Prague episode of No Reservations. This place was freaking amazing. We drank our Pilsner Urquell and I ate goulash with bacon dumplings. Heavenly. There is no other adjective to describe it. The walls were lined with shelf after shelf of beers from all over the world and they had six special beers on tap. If I ever got the opportunity, I would LOVE to go back there with all my favorite boys (dad, brother, boyfriend, adopted brothers ie Dan and Alex and the Hankies).

Saturday we got up, ate an awesome free breakfast at the hostel, and then went on a short walk with one of our guides from the tour company. He showed us the Lennon Wall, which is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. If you've never heard of it, the wall was a place where young Czechs would use graffiti to voice their grievances against the communist regime. Obviously most of it was Beatles-inspired, and now it's the coolest giant piece of evolving modern art. After that, Alex and I broke off to go on our tour of Prague castle, which is the largest medieval castle in Europe. The castle itself wasn't incredibly fascinating, but I'm glad we went if only for our tour guide, Christian. When he introduced himself, he told us he was Swedish, but by the end of the tour we had learned that his father was actually Czech, and only went to Sweden after escaping the communist regime. His family was only allowed to come back because his brother (our tour guide's uncle) had been an informer for the secret police. Absolutely crazy stuff.

Us in front of the Lennon Wall. 

After the tour, we followed our same tour guide back into the city to go on a sort of beer tour, where we were supposed to learn all about Czech beer and how it's made, etc. Basically it was just a bar crawl, and it turned out to be such a great time. At the first stop, I tried what I dubbed to be the Czech version of Sweetwater Blue. It was almost as good. At the next stop, a biergarten, we made friends with Carlos and Alejandro, a couple of Spaniards from Cadiz who kept quizzing us on the current soccer world champions ("SPAIN!"). Also, Alejandro studied abroad in Oklahoma, so his hatred for the University of Texas made us instant amigos. We ended the night at a place called the Iron Curtain, drank some beer called Demon, did work on Czech garlic bread (they actually give you cloves of garlic that you rub on the bread yourself), and then got ripped off by the cab driver, but we made it back to our hostel pretty early and went to bed after an incredible day in an incredible city.

Seriously. Doughnut. Size of my face.

On Sunday, we got up and were on the bus by 8am sharp and on our way to Munich. It was pouring rain and cold, so we literally ran to the biggest and rowdiest tent at Oktoberfest - Hofbrauhaus. I cannot tell you how much fun we had. After wandering around for about ten minutes, Alex, our friend Lauren and I made our way to the middle where a beer maid immediately asked "Beer?". Um, yes please. Ten euros later, I had a huge stein of HB in my hand. Ten minutes after that, the biggest soft pretzel you've ever seen, followed by a doughnut the size of my face. I LOVE OKTOBERFEST. The people were so much fun in that tent. One really great thing that Alex pointed out is how civilized it really was. Yes, people were drinking a lot, but nobody became really belligerent. The German guys were more respectful drunk than Italian men are sober. It was rather refreshing, let me tell you. We ate, we drank, we sang, we socialized with people from all over the world. I'm going back. Someday soon. And with more friends. Who's with me?