Prague: Spy Capital

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Its official name is hlavní město Praha, meaning Prague - the Capital City.

Prague has architectures quite unlike any that I've seen in my life, or in southern Europe on my adventures thus far. It is, without a doubt, the most beautiful city in Europe, with it's uniquely-architectured and vibrantly coloured buildings. The golden city, as it is sometimes called, is home to the largest ancient castle in the world: Prague Castle. We visited this, but to us, it was not impressive, though fairly large, the structures seemed almost new and reconstructed and far from ancient.

So, we settled in the world's cheapest hostel [cheapest that we've found so far] at 10€ per night and free wifi and great rooms: Aparcay Hostel. Then explored the city a bit, saw the sights: Charles Bridge, Prague Castle, New Town, Old Town, Jewish Town, Lesser Town, and to kill some time in the end, we even visited the sex-machines museum :|. The machine to the right is an anti-masturbation device :| what?! These Czech people...weird.

More adventurous pictures of Praha can be seen on the Prague: Spy Capital web album.

Pardubice: The Real Czech

Who goes to Czech Republic!????!? Having met a Czech girl, Marketa, in France, we decided to spend our Christmas 2007 with her and her family in Pardubice, Czech Republic.

Let me rephrase: who goes to Pardubice??? We were blasted with positive impression! Czech republic was by far, the best European country we've been to, beautiful landscape, beautiful and different architecture, beautiful girls, and completely different from southern Europe.

And of course we were simply just fascinated by being in Czech, a country where we had no idea what the language was about, a country whose capital city, Prague, was featured as the Spy Capital in many movies [including the Bourne Identity], and in my favorite video game: Soldier of Fortune. Their language was quite astonishing, we had no idea what the hell they were saying, and it had no similarities whatsoever to English or any of the Latin languages; luckily all Czech children get a sound education in English language and thus, most of the younger people speak English.

I have to say, Czech people [or at least girls] are the most friendly, amicable and nice people in Europe. On our flight to Prague, both Marcos and I met two Czech girls each on the plane, who both offered us rides from the airport afterward. The one i met, was a bit crazy though, student studying language translation [Czech - French - English], and reading a bible, but then admitted openly that she did marijuana quite often with her boyfriend. :|.

So, after taking a ride with these girls from Prague airport, and a train to Marketa's, we had the traditional Czech Christmas dinner, dumplings, potato salad, and carp. We then had some whiskey with Marketa's dad, :), then went to explore the Real Czech: Pardubice. It's always better to steer away a bit from a country's capital city and the touristic areas and just visit the real small towns, that way you interact more intimately with the country and its people. Pardubice is a really beautiful town, small, compact, and Czech. We even got muzik original from Pardubice, Czech: it was Metal of course.

A bit freezing, since the temperature was significantly lower than the almost warm southern Europe [in Italy], next day, we saw a bit more of Pardubice. We went to a glass museum, WHO goes to a glass museum??? :| but it was part of an armory museum as well, so we got to see those small spy pistols that were sooooo Czech. Afterward, Marketa took us to Vesely Kopec: a small open air museum that exhibits preserved traditional Czech housed and barnyards. That was definitely worth it, and exposed us to some of the history of the country, plus we got to walk on a small frozen lake [just to show how cold it was]. The Pictures at Pardubice [The Real Czech] will reveal it all...