Remote Year Month #6 in Review: Prague
And with that, my first 6 months of Remote Year have wrapped up. It is hard to believe that it has been 6 months since I was last working in Toronto. Now spending a few days at home in Winnipeg, it feels both strange and familiar to be home. I love seeing friends and family but also miss my Tramily (never really thought I would use that word). The Remote Year group really becomes part of everything you do and it feels a little strange to be removed.
Prague was the only city on my Remote Year itinerary that wasn’t new for me. I loved getting to see it from a more local side, learning about the nuances that make the city so unique. Below is my month in review.
A little bit on Prague: Within the last 100 years, Prague experienced democracy, Nazi control and extreme communism. Walking around the old town, we learned about its unique history, where multiple iconic marches took place with citizens standing up in hopes of greater freedom, and where many balconies were used to deliver speeches to the people of Prague. The city is highly visited by tourists, although its population is just above 1.2M, it always has about 100K tourists roaming around.
The Castles: There are many castles throughout the Czech Republic. One weekend, we went to visit Karlstejn, only 40 minutes by train outside of Prague there is a beautiful village with little shops and restaurants surrounding the base of the castle. The most iconic though, is the Prague Castle, known as the largest castle complex in the world due to its enormous grounds. Dating back to over 1000 years ago, multiple rulers and presidents have resided there.
Charles Bridge: One of my most treasured facts of the month was learning that many of the statues on the bridge are not original and are instead replicas. Why? Some of the originals were experiencing high levels of damage due to corrosion. They were taken off the bridge for the purpose of restoration and are now kept within the old walls of Prague’s citadel. I had the opportunity to take a walk through the tunnel walls of the citadel and see the original statues. Below you can see a picture of an original that I took during our tour of the tunnels as well as a picture of the replica currently on Charles Bridge.
Food: Czech food is quite heavy. Post war, eating large quantities of meat was used as a way to show that the people now had access to great nourishment. One of the most popular dishes in Prague is beef goulash, which is served with either bread or potato dumplings.
Work: The Prague co-working space is located in an old Danish embassy building. The structure was repurposed as there was a family of 4 living there and the Danish found out the family home was much larger than necessary for such a small group. Now, the co-working space is a mix of outdoor and indoor working environments and also houses iflix, the emerging-market version of Netflix, on its top floor. The building is equipped with an in-house chef, and a 3-option daily lunch menu, which meant lots of great eats during the weekdays.
Hikes: We took part in an all-day trek of Bohemian Switzerland, where we made our way to the top of a mountain with some amazingly scenic view (see below). It was quite tiring as it was an incredibly hot day, however, I truly appreciated spending some time in the outdoors. Although Prague is known for its vast number of parks, I love that on the weekends we often get a full nature day.
Side trips: Although I didn’t go anywhere for a full weekend (since I only had 3 weekends in Prague) we spent a full day at the castle described above, a full day at the hike described above and one more day visiting the Terezin ghetto. When the Nazis where in power, Terezin was used as a propaganda camp, to paint a false picture for the world that showed the Jewish living conditions as quite positive. The ghetto was home to some of the best Jewish artists and musicians of the time and incredible work was produced, even with the very limited resources.
Adieu for now!
For those that are reading this, whether you are family, friends, colleagues or someone that stumbled upon this post, I hope my blogging is interesting to you. There is more to come, so if there is anything you want to know more (or less) about, please feel free to comment below!
