Thursday, March 18, 2010

Catchy Title about Prague

Prague: The Golden City.  The gold "they" are referring to is beer.  Maybe it should be "The Amber City"?  You'll find this as a common theme in my review...beer.  Which is funny given my recent love for the drink (I drank my first ever beer this last summer).  While I'm on topic, I might as well talk about the...

Beer
It's cheap.  It's abundant.  It's wonderful.  It's Czech.  .33L in Oslo cost me about 6 euros.  In Prague, .50L=1 euro.  1 euro!!!  And maybe it was all the hype, but it has been the best beer that I've had so far.  On top of that, the variety is outstanding.  Many different brands, and you can actually get dark beer (this is very uncommon in Europe).  Go to wherever you keep your pop (or soda) and look at a 2L.  That's how much beer I drank each day I was there.  And I was never drunk.  Not even close.  It's common to just walk along the street and get yourself a beer when you're thirsty (at a REALLY cool bar).  Or it's great to go with your....
Food
Food is meat.  Meat is food.  The traditional Czech cuisine consists of meat (typically pork), heavy sauce, and dumplings.  When I heard this before going, that sounded like an insult.  It is not.  How can you go wrong with a 5 lbs. hunk of pork on a skewer?  With fat.  Cooked in, you guess it, beer.  Girls might cringe at eating straight fat...but don't.  Eat it.  It's worth it.  And how about the next day following that with some sauerkraut pancakes filled with meat?  You'll have to be careful, though.  Make sure you have nothing important after one of these meals.  Can you imagine stuffing yourself with meat, fat, grease, and beer, and then trying to go to the...
Opera
This was my first trip to any kind of opera (La Boheme).  I have to say, it was much better than I thought it would be.  I was pleasantly surprised to find English subtitles on a screen above the stage.  The singing and the sets were great.  But, I was laughing in my head the whole time.  How can someone sing so passionately about how warm her mittens are?  Oh!  And the best part was sitting in a private box!  I felt like the Lincolns.  Thankfully, my show ended better than Abe's.  No one yelled "Death to Tyrants!" at the show, but I did see plenty of them at the...
Museum of Communism
Czech history: Holy Roman Empire, Hapsburgs, Nazis, and finally Communists.  This museum was about the latter.  Very humerus museum.  It was really cool to see artifacts, posters, statues, and documentaries about this Red past.  I love stuff like that.  And not to mention the way the Communist propaganda talked about America (definition of irony=the picture below is the museum...right next to a McDonalds)!  It was cool to see the comparison of the...
East vs. West 
Prague is a great mix of things.  It has the grandeur of a Paris (not quite), the beer of a Germany (even better), the nightlife of a Copenhagen, and the global-ness of America.  Yet, it has the food and the bars of a Krakow and the quirks, landscape, and people of a Budapest.  Other than the beer, its hard for me to say that Prague is the best at anything.  But it is great at so many things.  It truly is the center of Europe.  With all that being said, what really sets it apart is the...
Price
I loved Prague.  But if it weren't for the low-cost of so many things, I'm not sure if I would have loved it as much.  If it was 6 euros for .33L of beer (like in Oslo), I would have gotten water.  If you couldn't get the same exact food as a pack of hungry wolves for 12 euros, I would have eaten crappy McDonalds.  And then what are you left with?  A nice city, yes.  Some nice things to see and do, yes.  But would it leave a lasting impression?  No.  So...visit Prague right now.  Enjoy the cheapness.

1 comment:

  1. Between your obvious love of copious amounts of beer, and Devin's Spring Break pictures, I can only wonder as a mother, "Where did I go wrong?"

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