last thursday night ezra and i left for prague....getting there however, was more difficult than planned since our train ended up not going to Prague...somehow it ended up going direction Moscow rather than direction Berlin so all the people traveling with us (trying to get to poland etc) had to figure out other ways to get there...So we ended up in Prerov for a couple hours....needless to say we made it to Prague but 3.5hrs later than desired and a couple more trains than originally planned....
arriving in Prague at 7:30am friday we checked into our hostel and then full of energy (haha) we set out to check out the town. it was colder and windier than i had packed for but the city was very pretty. I think there were way too many tourists in the city and the language i heard most was english. we headed into the center of the town, seeing a number of the highlight buildings and then joining up with a free tour or the old town area. Apparently, the Israeli President was in the town center when we were there because we saw a bunch of police. The center square was also filled with easter market stands very similar to the christmas stands you see all around Graz in the winter. We spent the day walking around the city, seeing the sites and checking out the beautiful park and castle before heading back to the center for a classical concert that was performed in a church. After the concert we headed straight to bed (having not gotten any sleep on our night train to who knows where).
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| picture courtesy of ezra |
day 2 we set out to find a bunch of galleries ezra had googled....i guess google and the czech republic haven't really joined forces yet because we didn't find ANY of them...we did see more of the city though and then found an info office that directed us to a cool photography gallery and then the modern art museum. In the middle of that, we checked out the famous charles bridge and saw some pretty graffiti, sat on the island in the vltava river for a little. The modern art museum took us out of the main city a ways but it was nice to see the "normal" streets where people live. we finished off our evening with a concert in the famed rudolphinium performed by the czech philharmonic orchestra. one piece was ~1hr long! but very well done. we had a little bit of time to kill before catching our midnight train back to austria (hopefully) so we ended up going to a bar that had live music performed by a trio (singer was from boston and said he had been living in prague for ~20years).
overall, prague is a beautiful city, luckily protected from all the bombings, but i think 2 days was enough to see the sites and experience some of the wonderful music (the concerts were only ~13euros with student tickets, which was great!!)
check out some of our pictures: PRAGUE (and Vienna)
the train made it back to vienna without much trouble. i had sunday free so decided to check out the vienna since i realize that i have hardly seen it. though 6:30am on a sunday morning in Austria...almost nothing is happening/open. It was very pretty with the morning light. saw the austrian parliament and some pretty churches but since i was exhausted i found a nice bench in the sun and just relaxed a while ;) when it got late enough for the city to be a little more alive, i met up with a friend of mine for lunch and then later for coffee and cake. oh austrians and their coffee shops ;) vienna was wonderful in the afternoon (once the sun warmed it up enough that the ever-present wind wasn't so biting!) but i headed back to graz ready for another week to start :)
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| austrian parliament building |
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