Prague

let me start by saying, wow! Prague is amazing, i want to be the father of its children. anyway now that i've got that off my chest.
i got into Prague or Praha as it is known here. (it kind of sounds like you caught someone in the act, like 'Pra-ha! gotcha!') and i got in a little late. i hadn't book anything so i wandered around for a bit until i found a hostel, lucky i did because thats where all the action was. right across the road from the hostel was a fair ground and one of the rides caught fire and there were fire engines and police cars everywhere! and i was lucky to watch it play out in front of me, all from the comfort of my room. by the way one one was hurt in the blaze.
At the hostel i met some German students who were on a trip together and they invited me into there group, which was nice. they were a pretty cool group and spoke really good English, they told me they love speaking English and that i was good practice for them. One of them was a semi-pro cross-country mountain bike rider who had a had shoe brand 'Vans' as one of his sponsors. (i thought he was pulling my leg until he showed me a website with him on it). we shared a few beers, which are so cheap because the currency is rubbish (yes, i had to change currency again, another bloody nightmare) and had a good night.
The hostel is pretty funny. I'm staying on the top floor, but because the roof slopes i have to go around ducking my head half the time. but the beds are comfy and the bathroom is pretty good too. its not that far from the city either but far enough for it to be cheap. half the time no one was in my room so it was like having my own room. oh, and the internet is free for the first 20 minutes which is handy.

The first day was freezing so it was lucky i brought a beanie and gloves in Vienna. But i needed a warmer jacket so i went to H&M again and brought a parker. its cost next to nothing and its so much warmer. I had a good walk around the city which is really beautiful. all the buildings are really interesting, the old and the new. the thing i liked about the new buildings was how much they were totally different to the old buildings but seemed to fit together quite well. one of the buildings thats quite famous here is Frank Gehry's dancing building, or known to the locals are 'Fred & Ginger' after Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The Czechs consider cubist buildings something unique to Prague and are very proud of the ones that are littered around the city, I went to one of the more famous ones which is a bar called the 'Grand Cafe Orient' and had a beer, it was really beautiful in side.
A personal favourite of mine are the David Cerny statues around the town. One of them is a fountain of two men pissing, but the best thing about this is you can SMS a sentence to the phone number on the fountain and the men will piddle it on the ground for you. haha! how funny is that! brilliant! (by the way I've notice weeing comes up a lot it my blogs, I'll try not to mention is so much in the future) Another one of his sculptures is of giant babies crawling all over the TV towers. supposedly they were meant to be temporary and when they were taken down there was such an uproar that they reinstalled them. also he's done a sculpture of Freud hanging from a pole high above the ground. at one point when it was first installed, people called the police thinking that there was a person who was going to commit suicide!
I also saw the John Lennon wall, which before i went there, felt was a bit of place because John Lennon never did anything in Prague. but when the country was Communist people weren't allowed to write on the walls, if so they would be punished. When John died people all went to this wall and wrote his lyrics on it regardless if they were going to get caught because they admired his freedom of speech, something that they didn't really have. the police would constantly paint over it but they would continue writing on it. also, theres a giant metronome on the hill, ticking from side to side. it looks a little strange, the story behind it was there was originally a statue of Stalin there and after communism ended they pulled down the statue and replaced it with the metronome to symbolize time passed and the time that will tick ahead in the future.
speaking of time, I also saw the astronomical clock in all its glory. actually, it was astronomically dull. i can totally understand why it was voted Europe's most over-rated attraction.
There a funny story i heard about the Rudolfinum during the 2nd world war. On the top of the building is statues of great composers and one of them was of Mendelssohn and because he was jewish the Nazi's gave one of there troops orders to take him off the building. so the troops climbed up but because there wasn't any names they didn't know which one was which so they found the one with the biggest nose and tore that one down... turns out they not only pulled down the wrong one, they pulled down Hitlers favourite composer by accident. Opps!

I don't know what it is about Europeans and having limbs on parade in churches (ie: Budapest) but it seems to be a common occurrence. in one of the churches here hangs an arm thats hundreds of years old. the story goes in the church is a statue of the Madonna (not the 'Papa don't preach' one) and people would come from far and wide to hang jewelery around its neck. a thief came in one day to steal the jewelery and the the statue grabbed the thief's hand before he could steal it and froze again. because the man was stuck to the statue and they didn't want to break the statue they cut the mans arm off! and then they hung it up as a reminder to others not to steal from the church.

Famous author Franz Kafka came from here too, you see monuments to him everywhere. he lived a pretty tragic life really, mainly because he was in love with a married woman. but he was friends with the likes of Albert Einstein who lived here for about 4 years, teaching at the University, which is one of the oldest in Europe. there are stories of the two of them playing violin together in one of the bars in the main square.

I think its quite funny how stories about history change over time, for instance in one of the main squares here there is a giant statue thats been erected of a guy who was burnt at the stake because he spoke out against the church. the statue is of a tall, man mountain with broad shoulders when in actual fact the guy its meant to be was short and fat. the guide told me the statue is meant to be of how the people saw him or a symbol of how they saw him. I say, whats wrong with being short and fat and historically accurate?

The Czechs are crazy about ice hockey and whats not to love? ice, beer, cheer leaders and guys beating the living crap out of each other. its brilliant! there was a ice rink right across the way from my hostel so i had to go and see a game. i got the cheap standing tickets (which, went i worked it out are about $4 AUS) but i reckon they were the best. they were probably the equivalent to bay 13 at the MCG, so in a word... rowdy! I went for the local team and whenever we scored a goal it was electric! the crowd went mental, there were sirens, drums, chants and the lights went crazy! such a good experience. i don't think we won because we were a goal down when i left. 'why did you leave before the end?' do i hear you ask? because when i went to the toilet a saw riot police and figured that the crowd probably doesn't like losing much so i thought it was my cue to leave.

I really loved Prague for being so kooky, it was great to see a city not take itself too serious. i could easily stay here for quite a while. hmmm, I wonder if any good ad agencies are here?