"Czech me out" was the wordplay that someone really clever : ) came up with for nearly half the Czech Republic's tourist wear.
These sweatshirts read: "Czech drinking team"
I have to put this last week up in two entries ... mainly because Prague was just too beautiful to not have its own entry. I took sooo many pictures that I cannot believe we were only in Prague for just two days! Well, we should have had three days in Prague but there was a miscommunication with our bus. Instead of leaving Saturday evening and driving through the night we got on the bus at 7:00am after having spent the night in a Copenhagen hotel. Sunday turned into one extremely long day of sitting on the bus. Which was a bit of a reoccurring trend as the week went on. We watched some really good movies on the bus which helped the time pass. A danish movie, Prag, set in Prague about a marriage in trouble. We also watched The Lives of Others, a German movie set in East Berlin in the late 80's. Last year this movie won the Academy award for best foreign film. I thought it was really great and a good prelude to traveling to Berlin.
When we arrived in Prague that evening we went straight to dinner and had our first taste of traditional Czech food and drink. Yum! There was plenty of meat as well as a type of potato dumpling. We were all just so happy to get off the bus!!
The next day we were extremely fortunate to have a beautiful blue sky and sunshine! I guess we really did leave Northern Europe : ) The first stop of the day was at the Czech National Bank where we had our first academic visit. We have a group assignment associated with the three academic visits that we made during the week (14 page strategic analysis ... eeeh). It was interesting to hear from the bank about the Czech Republic's future adoption of the Euro and how they were affected with entrance into the EU.
After our visit we had an amazing lunch, or should I say feast. It was maybe the touristy version of a really traditional meal but it was amazing nonetheless. We basically went down into this dungeon and had HUGE platters of food come out to share around the table. The platters included every type of meat that you could imagine, seriously. There were even dessert platters which came out ... of course with these the food went much quicker : )
This was seriously LUNCH!
The menu - please note the whole turkey.
Once we had digested ... a little ... we had a guided walking tour of the city. What is so great about Prague is that its beauty is very concentrated. Maybe that sounds strange ... I mean that you could literally walk for thirty minutes and have seen all of the beautiful sites. Especially once you are looking across the Charles Bridge, WOW.
Prague has been very wonderfully restored as well. It hadn't sustained much damage during the wars and has been able to maintain most of its beauty. Some arguing that it is the most beautiful city in Europe. I was thinking that if you were to consider only aesthetics that Prague is more beautiful than Paris ... but of course, I was in Paris in January which isn't exactly the most beautiful Paris can be.
After the tour we we had the rest of the evening on our own. A group of friends and I walked around the old Jewish quarter, took a stroll along the bridges and explored a bit outside the tourist zone. That evening we found a microbrewery and enjoyed a glass of excellent Czech beer. I was really surprised by the number of tourists in Prague. I guess because in Copenhagen you hardly ever see tourists and it seems so early but with the Easter holiday there were a lot of young school groups and the streets were very crowded at times.
Cemetery - The old Jewish quarter -- from a peephole
The bridge - Joe & Tim
The trolley
On the Charles Bridge
Easter decorations
On our second day we had a visit to the Czech subsidiary of Skanska, which is a Swedish construction company. I liked the visit and thought they seemed like a really great organization working very hard to be sustainable and green in an industry which is anything but.
We had a bit of free time and I decided to check (Czech : )) out a Salvador Dali exhibition that was happening. I learned about his range as an artist and saw a collection of photographs taken by a Czech photographer in the late 1970's.
We spent the afternoon at the Prague castle, apparently the biggest ancient castle in the world (says the Guiness book of world records). It felt more like its own village. It also gave an absolutely beautiful view of the city.
Part of the Castle & a beautiful sky
Our group - waiting
View from the top
cool reflection : )
Interesting Czech art - integrated into the city
For our last evening we had a final Czech meal which included a show! Dancing, costumes, singing and amazing instruments were a great way to be fully immersed in the Czech culture. During the final number the two performers started getting students out to dance with them ... for whatever reason my friend Andrew turned to me and said, "Well, should we go up before they pick us" ... of course with 40+ people it wasn't a sure thing we'd be picked out but I said yes anyways and considering that neither of us knew the steps we did a pretty good job. Of course when I said "OK, now we are going to spin ... " and then he spun right along with me ... I couldn't help but laugh. I had meant that he should spin me : )
Where we had our finale dinner
The main course- dumplings & sausage
That night a group of us found a really great place to hang out and enjoy a few hours before the next bus ride. It was a bit of a cave, extremely smoky and really fun. Most of us took for granted the fact that Copenhagen has a smoking ban in nearly all of its establishments ... wow, the smoking in restaurants seems so horrible now.
Right, so the next morning meant a six hour drive to Berlin (more movies) and unfortunately when we got there the blue sky had vanished ... but more about Berlin in the next entry!!
Read more about the city of Prague here
Ciao!
