Moving right along to our second day in Prague, which was actually supposed to be our first and only day in Vienna.
When I met up with Sarah and Julie in Munich, they mentioned that they were thinking of doing a day trip to Vienna from Prague. The theory was that Prague is all well and good, but there's no real tourist attractions. Yes, they have the astronomical clock...
Behold. Astronomy.
But otherwise, the idea of touring Prague is just to simply see buildings that have been around for up to a thousand years. So we figured one day was enough. Plus Sarah wanted to see the UN Headquarters in Vienna.
And that people, is where it all went downhill. You see, apparently Sarah has a curse upon her. The universe does not want her to see the UN. She tried in Switzerland and was shut-out by construction. And so naturally, because she wanted to see it in Vienna, the universe was not going to have this.
We found out (at 5am in the morning before we were about to leave, no less) that our Eurail passes would not take us to Austria. That they only worked for Germany and Czech Republic. So we all went back to our respective beds and woke up five hours later wondering what the hell to do with ourselves.
So we went and got breakfast and then walked around the shopping area for a while before getting bored and literally standing on a street corner wondering what to do next. I cringe as I write this. In Prague, and no idea what to do. God, I'm getting spoiled by Euro life.
Anyway, we decided we would head over to the castle and explore that. On the way there however, we happened upon a free castle tour guide. How convenient.
Our tour guide's name was Keith and he was from Seattle/all over the place. Apparently he had come to Prague on holiday and had met someone and decided to move his life over there. Pretty crazy.
Keith was the epitome of American stereotypes. He was loud and obnoxious. Called out people around him, taunted the other tour guides and was arrogant as hell. But some reason, I just thought he was awesome. His tour was really casual and he explained historical events in a way that made it easy to understand. Oh and he also took us to monastery to drink monk beer. My judgement might be clouded.
brewz.
Up by the monastery we also one of the best views of the city. Pictures will not do it justice.
And that's only one angle.
One side-note. When we were on our way up to monastery, we had to take a tram. Keith had warned us that if we were going to get pick-pocketed (which is very common in Prague) it would happen on the tram. So we're waiting at the station and this old-ish man starts to walk up to me and is kind of looking at me funny. Like almost like he's examining me. Anyway, he comes to stand right in front of me, seven feet away, and just stares. It occurred to me then, that, maybe he's a pick-pocketer. So a swung my purse in front of me and turned away from him. Then he starts circling our group, stopping to stare at people every so often. Finally, Keith catches on to him and start yelling at him, "I know what you're doing! Get away from my group!" The man kind of acts like he can't understand Keith. "I know you understand what I'm saying!! Get away from my group now!" Finally the man walks away. Keith explained that he was definitely a pick-pocketer, albeit, not a very good one.
Another funny story. When we were up in the castle, we were looking at a mural that was on the side of the church. Keith was explaining that the mural kept getting dirty and so the Czechs asked NASA if they had any kind of material that would protect it. Turns out NASA did, but they wanted a large sum of money for it. As Keith is explaining this, he says "They agreed. So the Czechs got out their chequebooks and they wrote a cheque..." and Julie and I just burst out laughing. Full-on, tears running down our faces. And we laughed for the next five minutes. And then later on that night when we were drunk, we thought of it again and started laughing again. I have no idea why it was so funny. I don't even think puns are that funny, but I was dying.
Anyway, after almost four hours of touring, we bid farewell to Keith, went to an Italian restaurant, on his recommendation and then got ready for the night. Pub Crawl #2. And the pub crawl that the American guy from the other day had tried to convince us to go on.
So we met up in the square at 8:30 and were then lead to the Drunken Monkey pub. The best way I can describe this pub is, frat house. There was an all-you-can-drink two hour period where the beer tasted like shit and the shots were watered down with lemon juice, but it was awesome. There were beer pong tables and we played flip cup and met some American Airforce guys who were stationed in London, but come to Prague every year. This is where things got interesting.
There must've been seven or eight of them. One of them was super young and reminded me of Justin Bieber. There was another one who I swear to God, looked exactly like Will Smith. In my drunken state, I told him this and he was henceforth dubbed Will. Another guy was called Romaine ("like the lettuce" he said) Romaine was especially drunk. He smelled Julie's hair and started yelling Herbal Essences. He said he really liked my nose ring. He challenged Sarah to a push-up contest.
Sarah accepted.
"To make things fair" Romaine insisted that Julie sit on his back while he did the push-ups. Romaine did seem pretty built, so he got to 12. Then Sarah got to 20. (Keep in mind, we're doing this in the middle of a bar). Not one to be beat, Romaine then insisted on Round 2. He once again did 12, with Julie on his back. Sarah pulled off 19 and half and then told Romaine he won. But seriously, Sarah obviously killed it. Even the Airforce guys were impressed that a girl could pull that off.
Moving on from our push-up battle, we went on to the next bar on the crawl. This bar was kind of weird. It seemed like it was literally built into a cave. The ceiling were extremely low and the air was really dry. However, the beer was much better at this bar and so I was happier. We hung out a little longer with the Airforce guys before we decided we had to go. We were officially out of money and we had to get up early the morning to leave Prague.
The next morning, I said bye to Sarah and Julie on a street corner and then we headed in opposite directions, me back to Sonderborg and the girls off to Poland. I really had an amazing week and I was so happy to reconnect with Sarah and to meet Julie. Big shout-out goes to them for letting me tag along.
Julie took some awesome pictures of the three of us, so I'll add those in once she uploads them to Facebook.
I never break a promise.
PS. After coming home and vowing to be done travelling, I got a message from Kosta, a high school friend. Apparently, I might be going to London in two weeks. God help my Visa.
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