Happy Snaps

Photos in which some of the more camera-shy individuals (aka those who spent the month of the course holed up studying rather than partying with the cool kids) come out to play...

Me and Dan



Zoe, Kim and Deborah, plus a good-looking bottle of wine

Deborah and Rosie - I don't know who's cruising for a bruising...

Elishka, Mark and Dan


Jo, Dan, and Deborah

Deborah, Greg, Grace, Zoe and Alasdair

I make a new friend at a weird restaurant where these guys were everywhere


Scott, Greg & Laurie

Auf Wiedersehen, Vienna

Definitely the campest baby Jesus I've ever seen... How much do I love this painting? Zoom in for full effect!

A liffant in front of the natural history museum. Just for my Dad.

Looks like we're not in Kansas anymore...

Back in Prague, without much else to report. Friday I spent at the Kunsthistorischesmuseum (which is what I shoulda called it last time, sorry) which had a great collection of Old Masters plus Greek, Egyptian and Roman art. Unfortunately the decorative arts and sculpture wing was closed, but since I spent 5 hours in the paintings part, I wasn't too upset to call it a day. Oh, best thing is they let you take photos in there - go the Kunst! Lots of good Brueghels, a couple of Durer paintings, some Caravaggios, plenty of Rubens as per every blooming gallery in the known world, a couple of Raphaels, one or two Van Eycks, a Bosch, some Rembrandts (have never actually warmed to Rembrandt, but oh well), a Vermeer, some Jordaens, some Canalettos etc. etc. etc. - a really good collection.
Today I spent the morning at the Leopold Museum, which is (I think?) a gallery of Austrian art (I was going to go to the Museum of Modern Art, but the girl selling tickets said "there's not much in there at the moment, tickets are half price" so I thought better of it). There were actually surprisingly few Klimts, and they were mostly early works without that distinctive style. Of course The Kiss is gone, but I think that was in a different gallery to begin with anyway. There were lots of Schieles, which I found alternatively boring and disturbing... There were also two exhibitions, which were included in the ticket price (yay), one on German Expressionism, which included some paintings by Der Blaue Reiter (sp?) school, including Kandinsky, so naturally I enjoyed those, as attentive blog readers will realise. The other exhibition was photographs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, to mark the 50th anniversary. This is something I know nothing about, so it was really interesting to see them. Plus they had English explanations, unlike in the Kunsthistorischesmuseum (where I did, however, get a free audioguide with a coupon, so I at least knew what the paintings covered in the audioguide were called..).
Then it was, sadly, time to leave Vienna and head back to Prague - in the nick of time, as I was down to my last few euro cents in cash, and Vienna appears to be a city determined to resist the onslaught of credit cards. Unfortunately, I feel like I really didn't get to know Vienna, but I suppose that's to be expected in a stay of only 3 days - don't want to be one of those people who fly through a city and think they know it like a local, anyway. Sad as I was to leave, coming back into CZ felt like home - strangely reassuring to pull into the border town of Breclav and hear the train referred to as number 'sedmnast' instead of 'siebzehn' - I'm back in a country where I know the words for 'please' and 'excuse me', and where I can now understand such exchanges as 'do you have two crowns' when trying to pay for a small purchase with a note (okay, maybe because I was expecting her to ask me, but there you go). On leaving the metro I even ran the gauntlet of a ticket inspector on either side. I had a ticket, but amongst us expats it's a little sign that you've 'passed' as Czech if you can pull off a trip without drawing the beady eye of the ticket man.
Now to go and find my friends - cell's dead and I have no clue where I'm staying tonight, just hope somebody's home at Caroyln's where I left me suitcase...

A Viennese Affair

Who ya gonna call? Only in Vienna...

The facade of St Stephansdom

The roof of St Stephansdom - rebuilt after the war

The Schoenbrunn Palace

These were everywhere, not entirely sure what it is

Fountain at Parliament with the Rathaus in the background

The Rathaus at night, with the carnival in front (just figured out how to take night shots with my camera, woohoo)

Fountain in front of the Parliament

The Burgtheatre

Statue in front of what I think is the Hofburg Palace

The Maria Theresa monument

Fountain in MariaTheresienPlatz

Statue in front of the KunsthistorischesMuseum

Statue in MariaTheresienPlatz


Sorry Prague, I'm seeing someone else...
I arrived in Vienna probably feeling the most lost I've ever felt. I speak maybe half a dozen words of German (Ja, nien, guten tag, danke, schiesser kopf {spellling? sorry struggling with German keyboard setup], achtung and auf wiederschen) so although I had directions on what bus to take to the hostel, emerging from the train station and finding the bus (even with assistance from the information desk) was a major challenge. When I did finally find the bus, I was panicked the entire time because I had no ticket and no obvious means of procuring one, plus I had foolishely announced my touristy presence to the bus driver by asking if it was the right bus. But as the astute members of my little audience will have realised, it all turned out okay and I got to the hostel in the end.
The hostel is possibly the dodgiest place you've ever seen. I think it advertises itself as being in 'a romantic 19th century building' or something along those lines. Make that an unrenovated 19th century building - seriously, at least from the hallway-eye view it's the most unprepossessing place you'll ever be unlucky enough to wander into. From the inside it's not *too* bad, although I got landed with the middle bunk (yes, the middle of three stories) and there's no steps up into it, so I have to do an undignified clamber and then be trapped inside my narrow cot all night. The floor squeaks, the beds squeak, there's a beam of light conveniently located as to shine straight on to my bed, although the actual light in the room doesn't serve to illuminate my little corner, so no chance of reading there, and the traffic outside is noisy. But c'est la vie, it's close to everything and that's the main thing.

Anyway, it was about 4 pm yesterday before I was finally able to venture out and see a few of the sights of Vienna (please stop me if I write Venice, I'm always only one step away from doing it I swear), so I just elected to wander around the streets in MuseumsQuartier etc. And that's where I fell in love instantly. Seriously, Maria-Theresia Platz is so gorgeous I had to remind myself to keep breathing. Add in the fact that today and yesterday we've had the most amazing weather (20 degrees at c. 3 pm today, according to a thingy in the metro) and it's not surprising that I love the place. Much as I hate to be disloyal to Prague (where are your claws, indeed?) Vienna blew me away in a way Prague never quite did. I love Prague, but it's more a city of small surprises around every corner, whereas Vienna has that monumental, formal architecture that just takes your breath away. It seems a lot more planned and structured than Prague, which isn't necessarily a good thing - I suppose it takes away some of the charm - but it adds to the wow factor when everything's laid out just so.
So I wandered about, took in various buildings from the outside and mosied around some parks, then headed back up in the direction of the hostel when it was getting dark, stopped for a drink then decided to go back the way I came, since the guidebook said some of the buildings were lit up and looked pretty wicked by night. Which they did. The Rathaus (heh heh) - town hall - was particularly pretty, and it has some sort of a carnival set up in front of it at the moment, so there were all sorts of stalls selling food and stuff. The whole place smelt like donuts frying mmm, although I wasn't actually able to locate any donuts for sale, so I got some apple strudel instead. Shortly thereafter, I realised that it was actually Kaiserschmarrn - thick pancakes - that smelled so nice, so I actually went back and had some this evening, and they were mighty fine, too.

Today I had planned to go to the Kunstmuseum, which apparently has an amazing art collection, but one of the guys in the hostel waxed lyrical about the Schonbrunn Palace, so seeing as the weather was good, I thought I should take it in today, then if it all goes bad tomorrow I won't mind being inside. The palace was pretty amazing, although choked with tourists. It had a free audio guide as well, which was handy, although those things are always irritating when you're forced to hang around in a crowded room to try and finish listening to its long-winded explanations. Unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures inside, but check out www.schoenbrunn.at to get an idea. It also has wonderful gardens, with lovely views of the palace (finally somewhere where you can get enough perspective to take a decent photo) and the city, fountains, a maze (which was fun for about a minute, and then frustrating) and various other little things. Also there's the world's oldest zoo there, but I didn't go in. The ticket also covered the 'Applestrudel Show' - I had no idea what this entailed, turns out you get to watch someone make Apple strudels. Sound lame to you? Get out of town! It was great! They stretch the dough so thin you can (as the woman demonstrated) read a piece of paper through it. I was, however, thankful that I'd already eaten my free strudel sample before I learned that the dough is kept in a bath of oil for about 20 minutes before they start rolling it. Gross! The best part of it was the immortal line, "If you have any questions, please ask, or on your recipe pamphlet there's a phone number which will connect you to the strudel hotline". Ahahahahaha.

After that, I headed back into the city and went to Stephansdom, the cathedral. Amazingly, it's free to enter, but they managed to wily 8 euros out of me for a tour and to go up the tower. The tour was interesting, but brief and the guy spoke about a million miles a minute in heavily-accented English, so not quite sure I caught all of it. Turns out Mozart was married there though, interesting. The trip up the tower I would give a miss if I had my time again. Vienna, like Prague, is not her best from above. I think a city needs some proper water to really look good from above. Auckland comes out above Vienna or Prague in those stakes, at least. Toronto was also pretty nice from up the CN Tower. Vienna is all just rooftops as far as the eye can see - at least Prague has the Vltava (still don't know how to spell that). (PS Where's the Danube, people?)

For dinner I had bratwurst from a street vendor - dodgy, I know, but it seemed ineffably Viennese, and cheap besides. They put the baguette thing on this steel pole to hollow out the insides, then squirt the sauce and mustard in and finally stick the sausage in, cool! Plus it was pretty damn tasty.

Oh yeah, I forgot, I went to the bank this morning and had a cold chill run down my spine when I realised none of my travellers' cheques were in my money belt. Reasoning that no thief worth his salt would steal travellers' cheques and leave cash and a passport, I think I cleverly left them behind in Prague, dammit. However, I had some Australian money some good fairy gave me which I changed, plus I got cash out on my card (shudder to think how much that cost me) so all is not lost. Fingers crossed I find the travellers' cheques again.

Apologies for the super-long post, tomorrow to the Kunstmuseum, and I shall be very sorry to leave Vienna behind again on Saturday. The best thing about heading back to Prague, though, is catching up with all my buddies again. Don't mind tooling about Vienna by myself in the day, but not such a fan of going to bars or restaurants alone, I miss my instant dinner dates in Prague!

Petrin Park

View of the city

Part of the 'hunger wall' (I think so-called because it was an employment project in time of famine??? but unsure)


The funicular, with castle in background

View of the castle (with smog)

The 'Eiffel Tower'


The little Ukranian church


Today I walked through Petrin Park, which is Prague's way-better answer to the Domain (in Auckland, guys). Unfortunately I started out by heading the wrong direction out of the metro for about 20 minutes, until I happened upon another metro station and realised I was going wrong. Actually, I haven't gotten lost very much since I've been away, but my guide book had a mysterious gap between its map section and the 'guided walk around Petrin' section, whereby it didn't actually tell you how to get to Petrin. I do have my mother folding map, but I try to consult it as sparingly as possibly, due to a horror of appearing like your common-and-garden tourist.

Anyway, by the time I got back to the first metro station I was half-inclined to give up and just head back to the hostel, but I'm glad I didn't. Petrin Park was a fair climb, but it's dotted with old churches (including an old wooden one imported from the Ukraine - why?), palaces, stone fortifications, and right at the top a mock Eiffel tower (which is visible from all over Prague, thus rendering my inability to find the park that much more comical). It was a clear sunny day today, although there was unfortunately smog hanging all over the city, so I don't know that my photos will do it justice - some great views of Prague from up there, though! It was also lovely because it is of course autumn, and there were some lovely golden-leafed trees about.

Partly due to my initial error in directions, and partly because I had things to do in the morning, it was mid-afternoon before I even made it there, and about 4 pm I started to panic that I wouldn't make it out of the park before dark. The 'guided walk', by the way, is not worth the paper it's written on, since it's just about impossible to follow the directions when you're traipsing around a trackless wood. Well, not literally trackless, but you know what I mean... Happily for us all, I fetched up at the Strahov monastery, my intended destination, at about 4.45 and I even managed to find a tram home, hurrah! Trams are, of course, much cooler than taking the metro, but they rank on my scared-factor scale somewhere between trains (generally I'm okay with) and buses (scared silly of) so I usually try to avoid taking them where possible. In case you think I'm insane, there is a reason behind the rankings: it's relatively easy to figure out where a train is going and it's not all that likely that it'll suddently veer off the proposed route, whereas buses have the alarming tendency to unexpectedly duck down a side street and render me utterly lost. Trams have the appeal of running on fixed lines, but there are so many intersecting tram lines and it's so hard to figure out which direction the damn things are going that they frighten me a tad. But anyway, here I am safe and sound and, drum roll please...
Tomorrow I'm off to Vienna! Woohoo! Back in Prague on Saturday, doubtless full of new adventures.

Little mother Prague

Close-up of the weird black babies crawling up the TV Tower

The TV Tower, Prague's tallest structure (this is actually nowhere near the other places, but had nowhere else to stick the photo)

Even the manholes are cool in Prague

Intersecting contrails form a cross in the sky

Old Town Square (told you it was a gorgeous day)

Church of Our Lady before Tyn, Old Town Square (at least that's what I think it's called)

The Jan Hus monument with church of St Nicholas in the background, Old Town Square

Down by the river - you can see the 'Eiffel Tower' at Petrin on the far left and the castle in the background

The Spanish Synagogue

Cubist atlantes in the Jewish Quarter


Ah, my adoring public have signalled they desire another post. Always happy to comply...

On Thursday I went to the Franz Kafka museum, which was atmospheric without being particularly informative. Dare I say it, Kafkaesque? I also got a cool t-shirt from the gift shop - a drawing by Kafka (hate stupid 'I went to Prague, look at me' t-shirts, but ones that are significant but not cheesy are all good).

The museum also introduced me to the following Kafka quote -

'Prague doesn't let us go... This old crone has claws. One has to yield or else.'

- on which I mused as I wandered around the city yesterday, on the most gorgeous sunny autumn day you'd ever care to see.

For I'm six weeks or so into my Prague life, and "Wenceslas Square!" has become "meet u at wen sq. at 6" in a text message, Charles Bridge has become a convenient-but-not way to cross the river and Old Town Square has become just a tourist trap and yet... the city has claws and you can't walk its streets and not think now and again, "I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be in Prague!" Especially on a day like yesterday (and today, for that matter) when the sky's a deep blue liberally criss-crossed with airplane contrails, the sun is shining and everything is beautiful.

I got up relatively early yesterday and walked down to Wen Sq. to change some travellers' cheques, then walked the length of the square and bought a new bag (my beloved 'ART!' bag has seen better days, alas), then hopped a metro to Old Town Sq. and wandered around the Jewish quarter, which is a pretty wicked part of the city - some old synagogues remain, but the ghetto was cleared in the early parts of the twentieth century, so there's a lot of art nouveau and even cubist-inspired architecture, plus some of the real high-end shops. I walked all the way through to the river bank and strolled around there for a bit, when Scotty texted that he was finally ready to meet up, so it was back to Old Town Sq. for a 45 min wait (naughty Scotty) but I didn't mind too much, since it was sunny & it's a great spot for people-watching. Slightly awkward when the homeless come and lie down right next to your bench, but oh well... (Sorry to interrupt the story, but someone next to me in the internet cafe is watching an ABBA video online ha ha)

Anyway, once Scotty arrived, we walked to St. Agnes Convent, which houses the National Gallery's collection of medieval art - and a lot of it there was, too. We got trapped by a tour group of about 30 people at one point - unfortunately it was in Czech, so we couldn't even learn from it. Luckily, once we escaped from that we had the place virtually to ourselves, which is always nice. Unfortunately I had heels on, so you could hear me for miles across the wood & stone floors, d'oh. Downstairs were the empty convent buildings (founded way back in the 1300s, if I recall correctly, by St. Agnes herself, sister of King Wenceslas) where I had Scotty all to myself ha ha. He'll tell you nothing happened, but don't believe it! Anyway, that was pretty cool too.

In the evening, it was dinner at Bohemia Bagel, where I had hummus for the first time in ages (woohoo!) with Carolyn and Laurie - gotta love how a dinner date is only ever a couple of texts away - then we went back to Carolyn's and watched the tail-end of a weird Chinese horror movie with Alasdair (featuring, among other things, a break-dancing competition with a possessed boy).

Today it's moving day yet again, back to the first hostel, sigh!

Kutna Hora

View of Kutna Hora

Church of St. Barbara

Creepy little cherub with a skull on its knee

Cave of bones

Close-up of the bird picking out the 'eye' of the skull

Bone coat of arms

Me, looking singularly unimpressed by the skulls

The bone chandelier


Yesterday Dan and I went to Kutna Hora, home of the creepy church decorated with the bones of some 40,000 medieval plague victims (who thinks these things up?) There is even a chandelier which supposedly contains all the bones in the human body, plus a family crest which features a bone raven picking out the 'eye' of a skull. Cool! Actually, it's not as creepy as you'd imagine: it must be the least peaceful last resting-place in the world. All you can see is camera flashes going off on every side. Happily, what must have been a tour group pushed off after a little while so it was a bit less crowded after that. The rest of the day Dan & I just walked around the town (I reckon we must have walked about 8-10 kms all day. Yes, ranch, I know you walked across Spain, throw me a frickin' bone!) which was quite cool, although blighted in parts with Soviet tower blocks. Then we went into St. Barbara's Cathedral, which was also cool - stained glass windows from the turn of (last) century & medieval frescoes on the walls, a good combination.
Our trip to Kutna Hora, however, began with a descent into the portals of hell which is Prague train station. It's ugly, it's hot, it's crowded, there are little carts everywhere selling suspect hotdogs, there are few signs even in Czech and none in English and everyone is supremely unhelpful. We found this old Czech guy on the train we thought we might have to catch and he came out with us and asked a woman in uniform which train we needed and she just went "I don't know" (in Czech) and turned away. Thanks! But the queen bitch was at the English-speaking information desk. I asked, very politely, which platform we needed: "Go to platform only twenty minutes before!" "Okay, but which platform?" "GO TO PLATFORM ONLY TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE!" Still imagining there was some sort of lapse in communication, I tried again, "Which platform?" "TRAIN AT 12.06. PLATFORM NOT BEFORE TWENTY MINUTES!!!!" Seriously, she was screaming at us... Ah well, we got there in the end, but don't rely on Czech customer service skills - I think she was probably trained up by the Communists...

My new new home

Hey all, just a quick one to say I'm settled in to my new home (until Saturday at least when we must be on the road again, sadly). Laurie, Sonja, Greg and I are in a four-bed private room in a hostel in Vinohrady, which is a beautiful area of Prague close to Wenceslas Square etc. but not nearly as touristy as the old town. Alasdair & Dan are in the hostel as well, but in the dorms. It's a pretty nice place, we have our own ensuite toilet and shower (although the shower has a see-through glass door which opens right on to the hallway going from the bedroom to the front door, eek!).
Saturday night a bunch of us went out to a delish Mexican restaurant and then we found this little hole-in-the-wall bar where we were (almost) the only people there, so we just took it over and drank incredibly cheap drinks all night (a double absinthe for 40 crowns - about $2.80 ha ha!). Nick knocked over my flaming absinthe at one point, and for a second I thought the bar was going to go up in flames - fire on the table and the floor - not good! The one flaw in the ointment was the bar's only other customer, an old Czech guy that Greg (who is in trouble!) got talking to downstairs. I don't know if he knew a word of English, but he definitely knew how to be sleazy. At one point he followed Nick & me into the toilet, pushed us in and held it shut from the outside... Why? I have no idea! He also put a spoon of sugar in his mouth and tried to light it and stick it in Alasdair's absinthe... very gross. Luckily he left at some point and we stayed out until about 3 in the morning before heading back to Carolyn's for a night on the hard floor. I slept in the kitchen to avoid the snoring in the other room...
Spent pretty much all yesterday packing up and moving into the hostel, and then we went out for dinner but I was in bed pretty early - wiped out as you can imagine from two nights with very little sleep. This week I'll probably spend doing some pretty touristy things. I just bought a mobile phone, so I'll email my phone number out soon. xxx