New country unlocked!

After spending several nights in bunk beds in a run-of-the-mill 10-person hostel room, we were more than relieved to settle into a comfortable airbnb.com apartment in Prague.

Prague quickly stole my heart and took a place high on my list of favorite cities.  The first things to strike me were the extremely steep and fast escalators.  The second thing (especially after the modern buildings of Berlin) was the style of architecture: I found myself wanting to take a picture of every single building.  By day, it's like Paris, but with plenty of color; at night, it has a unique golden glow.

While it's not difficult to survive Prague speaking English, we tried out a few bits of Czech vocabulary:

dobrý deň - hello
na shledanou - goodbye 
prosím - please
děkuji - thank you
ano - yes
ne - no

Our first task after arriving Saturday, late afternoon, was to quickly find a legitimate place to exchange money for a good rate.  There are plenty of money exchange scams in Prague simply because the Czech Kč is very different from other currencies (1 Euro is about 27 Kč; 1 American dollar is about 24 Kč) and it's easy to manipulate foreigners: go for the kiosks that clearly advertise 0% commission.  There's one near Wenceslas Square (Štěpánská 42), one west of the river on Stefánikova about a five-minute walk north of Anděl, and a handful of others throughout the city if you keep an eye out.

Equipped with cash, our next task was to find a typical Czech meal.  One of the only downsides I had to live with during our stay is that the Czech Republic allows smoking in all restaurants.  To best experience Czech cuisine without too much smoke haze, I'd recommend eating at restaurants during the lunch hour, which tends to be quieter.  At the very least, the dining room shouldn't be quite as full of smoke early in the day.  The good news is that food (along with most other things - museum entrance fees, souvenirs, lodging, etc.) is extremely inexpensive in comparison to western Europe, especially France.

Goulash and bread dumplings
at Vinárna U Palečka

The Czech Republic is known for its heavy wintry meat dishes with dumplings made from bread or potatoes.  We had a good (but maybe overpriced) traditional meal near Wenceslas Square our first evening, complete with accordion music, but the real deal was a ways off the beaten tourist path at a hole-in-the-wall place called Vinárna U Palečka.  Nearby, we stumbled upon a beer garden called Beer Geek where we found an excellent selection Czech Republic brews.  A block away, you can find a restaurant called Baba Jaga which also has authentic Czech food, a cozy atmosphere, and a small authentic non-English-speaking Czech staff.  This particular neighborhood in the southeast corner of Prague is out of the way and doesn't look like much, but the restaurants and shops are absolute gems if you know where to go.

Another gem of Prague, in my musical opinion, was the small but sweet Dvořák museum.  One of my favorite composers, Antonín Dvořák, probably best known for his New World Symphony, was born in a small town near Prague and died in Prague.  New World Symphony was inspired by the United States; Dvořák spent a handful of years in New York.  The museum, located in a historic pink house with a garden used for summer concerts, has a small collection of his personal items and photos, including his viola, piano, reading glasses, and graduation gown from Cambridge University.  Upstairs, you can spend hours listening to recordings of his works.

We later visited the graves of Dvořák and of Bedřich Smetana (another of my favorite Czech composers, most famous for The Moldau) at Vyšehrad, a dark castle and church on a hill.  I recognized Smetana's grave easily by the notes of The Moldau's opening flute solo etched into the stone.  The cemetery itself is the equivalent of Paris' Père Lachaise - many famous Czechs are buried there.

Municipal House

To get our fill of art, we stopped by the Municipal House, the home of the Prague Philharmonic.  While we weren't able to hear a concert, it was a treat to admire the beautiful building and visit the Art Nouveau exhibit upstairs.

Another day, Elyse and I visited the Veletržní palác, which is one of the most famous art galleries in the city.  It reinforced all of our stereotypes of eastern European art: dark, twisted, unfiltered, and generally unsettling.  The middle floor even had an exhibit including works by some of my favorite artists: Degas, Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cezanne...but they were certainly the darkest of their works that I'd ever seen.

On a brighter note, we were lucky to have chosen to visit the Pražský hrad, or Prague castle, on our one clear, sunny day.  The castle, which is also a cathedral, is at the top of a hill overlooking the city.  The cathedral is one of the few in Prague (and Berlin) that you can enter without paying an entrance fee, so we peeked inside.  The architecture is very similar to that of the Strasbourg cathédrale in France and the Köln Dom in Germany.  In addition, we had a picnic while listening to street music, watched the changing of the guard, and took a little hike on the hill.  On our hike, we came across and visited the Klasterni Pivovar, a unique monastic brewery and restaurant; inside is a cozy, classy candlelit cave with candelabras at every table.

If you still have energy after all that, the Tančící dům (Dancing House) and the Lennon Wall are both at least worth walking past.  The very modern Dancing House was built on the site of a house destroyed by the United States in 1945.  The Lennon Wall, hidden away near the Charles Bridge, has been full of Beatles lyrics and graffiti since the 1980s.

Dancing House; Lennon Wall

Prague is a comfortable and exciting city to be in; though some areas are touristy, you can definitely find some unique things off the beaten path.  I can see myself returning in the future, especially during the summer to hear some outdoor music.