043 - mon 12 jun - prague

we made the controversial decision to skip the scheduled itinerary for the day, which was to head out to nearby kutna hora, famed for its bone church. we decided to stay in prague and try and figure out the bewildering, tourist-heavy, seemingly hollow (but is there something else going on) town. first we did our washing though. at the laundrette i saw a guy playing travel scrabble on his own. a deep need in me awakened to play scrabble. but for some reason all of the toy and games stores in prague seemed to only have the czech version of scrabble! who knew!

clothes washed, we of course had a beer by the river. then we retraced our steps from the previous day down into prague's jewish quarter to take a bit more of a look around the buildings and shops down there. we wandered off the beaten path and took in some other parts of the old town, like paris street which is the only evidence of a misguided plan that prague's powers that be once had to completely overhaul the town's districts to resemble paris. we found lunch at a cheap curry place under a hostel. yum.

after lunch we had a date with the museum of communism. this was an awesome place, slightly kitschy, heavy on information, and just generally really interesting. we learnt so much on our trip, about the rise and fall of communist governments, about hitler and nazis and stalin and the iron curtain, specifically about the czechs, about the slovaks, about the hungarians. we struggled to get it all into our brains and now its hard to get it back out, so i'm not going to get into it here. but its interesting stuff. europe has a recent history that is fascinating, and the events of the last fifty years are still kind of unfolding as you walk around. it makes australia seem like a very stable, safe and boring place.

we then had iced coffees had prague's grand municipal hall which is decked out in an art nouveau style. then we wandered up to wenceslas square, a packed-out long shopping strip which has in the past hosted most of prague's most important political demonstrations, including the one that brought the communist era to an end in prague. they call it 'the velvet revolution' because it happened so smoothly, with minimal violence and casualties, just people protesting for a week or so in 1989 until the russians just shrugged and left.

dinner was at a mexican restaurant called the cantina which served delicious enchiladas and some kick ass spanish wine. back home we played cards with our new buddies until 1 am. we hadn't noticed until this point that our apartment had a window looking out directly over the prague castle. at night it was lit up, and super pretty.

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