Evan in Europe 3: Praha
“Heart colder than a winter in Prague”
“It’s like we’re in a Wes Anderson film,” I said. No response from my friends in the car. “Really? No one’s seen The Grand Budapest Hotel?” Silence. I can’t tell if everyone is exhausted from getting up at 4:45 am for our flight or genuinely hasn’t seen it. I stand by the similarities, though, between the make-believe eastern European city (not Budapest) that Anderson built for his film and Prague. Maybe it’s because this is my first time in Eastern Europe, but the place feels a bit surreal, a bit cinematic.
It’s also my first time in staying a hostel (Disclaimer: Upon editing I realized this is not fully true. I stayed in a four person-room hostel with my family while in Peru. This is my first time in a hostel with strangers). It’s quite odd at first — walk in, pick a bunk bed like it’s the first day at sleep-away camp, toss your stuff in a locker, make some polite conversation with your new roommates — but then, like with anything, you adapt. Something about being in a foreign country puts where I don’t know anyone puts my appreciation for meeting Americans at a much higher level. A dude from Texas slept in the bed beneath me, a girl from Alabama in the one next to him, and a guy from Chicago across from her. We had our own little cross-section of the population!
Hostels make you realize that you only need the essentials that you need when traveling. They give you a towel, clean sheets, a pillow, and soap. That’s it. The limited living luxuries motivate you to spend as much time exploring the city.
The food could not have been more perfect for the cold weekend we had. Potatoes prepared every way imaginable, beef, roasted pork, goulash and stews. Pair any of those with pint of Czech lager and it’ll make you feel pretty warm inside.
Coming from Barcelona where taking the metro is necessary for most travel, it was nice to be in an extremely walkable city. And walk we did — to the Museum of Communism, to the Jewish Quarter, to the Prague Castle, to the John Lennon Wall, to and across the Charles Bridge. Prague has this cool combination of old-school underground bars (think that scene from Inglorious Bastards.) and upscale modern clubs.
We were greeted by snow on the morning of our departure flight. “How beautiful,” I thought. “I get to see Prague in its true winter form.” That feeling lasted about five minutes before I remembered that nothing screws up travel plans quite like bad weather. Cut to a cab ride where we weren’t sure if the car was going to make it up a hill, a two-hour flight delay, another hour on the tarmac getting de-iced, and we were were back in Barcelona.
Mluv brzo. Talk soon.
