It's kind of like what Disneyland tries to be, or straight out of Ever After, or any other sort of fairy tale. Mel and Mo keep talking about architecture things that I'm not terribly familiar with since I haven't taken Art History yet (...music majors have a hard time fitting such things in their schedules?) but basically there's a bunch bunch bunch of architecture styles and around every corner is something totally different. The astronomical clock thing in Old Town Square is gorgeous, and also kind of the apostles version of the clock outside "It's a Small World," fitting with the whole Disneyland thing. It's very fun to watch it strike at the hour (in addition to the apostles going in a circle, Death turns the hour glass and pulls a string, then the apostles come out one by one and a rooster crows), and also fun to just watch the huge crowd that gathers when it strikes the hour. The giant metronome is not terribly exciting comparatively for being another city landmark; it ticks once a half hour I think and it kinda just looks like a crane. Oh well. The city as a whole is still made of fantastic-ness.
Today we went and saw the castle and the little street that Franz Kafka used to live on. The four of us have a mutual distaste for Kafka, so we mostly just perused gift stores for a little bug type souveneir, which would have amused us greatly. We didn't find one, though. Sigh. We also went on the paddle boats in the river under
St. Charles' bridge. Mo and Jill paddled, and Mel and I were lazy. Groovy times.
We also saw a play last night, Pygmalion (by George Bernard Shaw, the play that My Fair Lady was based on). It was especially interesting because it was in Czech, and also because I have never actually seen My Fair Lady so I was pretty lost until Jill filled me in at intermission. It was very funny, though. The scenes with pronounciation were hysterical, possibly moreso because of the language thing, actually;-)
Not surprisingly, the four of us sound very silly attempting the Czech language, though our attempts amuse us greatly. Today on the paddle boats we had several forceful conversations consisting of the only words we knew: "hello," "yes" "no" and "thank you" Czech as well as Polish. Although, I'm still mixing up "thank you" in both of these languages (they are pretty similar) so there was some gibberish mixed in as well.
Aside from the architecture, the greatest thing in Prague is probably the food. The Czech put cheese on pretty much everything. There's this thing called Fried Cheese- it's something else in Czech, of course, but I can't remember the words for anything in this language, much less spell them- and you can buy it on all the street vendors for about a dollar. Win. It's basically a mozzerella cheese stick, but shaped like a hamburger patty, on a hamburger bun with mayonaise and ketchup. It's one of the most amazing things I've ever eaten in my entire life and I'm completely baffled by the lack of it in the US. If I had any interest in business I would go straight home and open up a fast food chain exclusively devoted to this thing. Seriously.
We've had two each so far and if weren't for the total lack of nutritional value I would probably eat them every meal until our train tomorrow night.
Guess that's it for now- we're heading to dinner, so I probably won't get to write personal emails for a day or two depending, but the next hostel has free internet as well, so, hooray! I'm loving it. Tomorrow we are catching an evening train to Amsterdam for Jill's birthday on Wednesday:-D I am wary of the train after the fiasco that was our last one, but as all the other train rides have been lovely
and everyone seems to be in good health now and we're definitely shelling out the money for beds, it *should* be okay. I hope.
Love you all bunches and bunches,
Sara
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