Czech us out! Prague edition

August 29th- September 2nd 2012

We are great appreciators of life's adventure mostly due to our spontaneous nature and our inability to get anywhere on time. This holds true for the train part of our travel as well. We get to the station in Berlin with maybe 5 minutes to spare and have to take our bikes down to platform 1. We go to the first underground level only to find the platform 1 signs pointing to an escalator. We handle our bikes down it, and shout excuse me! in German to the closest attendant. She is impatient (with good reason) and we find that we are standing right next to the car that we put our bikes in. As soon as our bodies and bikes are in... the train pulls away. Phew.
Some hours later we arrive in Prague. It dawns on us that our German will be of no use, and we have yet to learn any Czech. Luckily my fathers cousin Donald connected us with a student from Prague that he had hosted in Tennessee. Jiri or Karbos and his girlfriend Alice picked us up from the train station right as it started to rain (it does this a lot in Prague) though we were lucky enough to see a rainbow. After a shower and a nap, they took us to a restaurant below his building with some traditional Czech dishes and they both helped us begin to learn a few key phrases in Czech.

Karbos and Alice (Thanks so much!)

We found Prague to be beautiful thanks to the full walking, less touristy (though surrounded by tourists) tour that Karbos gave us of the main district of the city. Praha 1 is where all the sights and tourists are, though we also had the chance to see down into the city from the outer edges that were higher up. Each place we went to we could see where we were headed to next and where we had just come from.

And Prague is all like ¨I heard you like great views of the city...¨

¨....so I got you this¨

Oldest working astronomical clock

this is what happens when cobblestone gets a facelift

We even wandered through the narrow streets to the old center in time to see the astronomical clock start to move at the hour. Prague is definitely not a city to bike in, but we appreciated the opportunity to see it at a walking pace (our feet and legs may have felt differently).

drinkin´and churchin´

gotta love a man in uniform

Did we mention the beer is great? And still cheap! We also tried a traditional Czech drink that is a moonshine equivalent (made in besements) made out of plums I believe. Europe just wouldn't let me rest (beer drinking really) and I eventually needed to take a break (not Alex). All this city living (and partying) got me ready to be back in the bike saddle once again.

this is my party face

Speaking of partying- we got to hang out with luca (who we met in hamburg) and his friend beny (partied with them both in Berlin) in Prague! We went to some club that had three levels- one above ground, two below, with different music going. We were there till late (or early) and may have stayed longer if all the indoor cigarette smoke hadnt been bothering me so much.

Beny, Luca, and Xray equals party time!

We got to spend some good time with Karbos, eating food, drinking, watching movies, and playing this dice game that he knows. We were completely hooked and he was kind enough to give us a set to take with us. They are being well used and if anyone reading this sees us in person any time soon, we will probably teach it to you.

stained glass at the church

peace of square

We stayed in Prague a few days and got the maps we needed to continue on to the next leg of our bike tour to Vienna.