A beer, a coke and a water
Ok so I don’t know where my last entry finished - this update is being written without the benifit of internet, from my hotel room in Prague - so I’ll recap from the last most interesting point.
That would have to be … dinner with Edward and Godez on Monday the 2nd. We’d agreed to meet up with Eddy (who had graciously offered to shout us dinner and drinks) at Augistiner Biergarten near the Munich Hauptbahnhof. It was a good meal - we each had pork knuckle and potato salad - and several huge MaB of beer. The waitress, upon learning that I could speak bad-to-moderate German, and the others in the party could not, shared jokes with me in secret. When Eddy refused a second beer, and Snod and I eagerly ordered a second, Edward was astounded at our voracious appetite for the sweet amber fluid. He proclaimed that he could not drink another. The waitress confirmed that it was a beer for me, a beer for him (pointing at Andrew) “und nichts fur die princessen” … Edward took only a second to twig: “did she just call me a princess?” to much merriment.
Tuesday, I woke a bit sorry for myself after the 5 MaB of beer I’d consumed the night before, but still made it to the stand on time for the morning. I’d made friends with a waiter working there, and he asked how I was, and I fumbled through the German for not feeling well due to beer consumption. He nodded and asked if I would like some Coke to help, which I gladly accepted. Another guy saw me with the coke, and asked (in english) if he could also have some coke? The waiter didn’t speak English, so I had to translate his reply: “He is sick, you are not sick.” I thought that was funny.
Eddy insisted on an LCD monitor being purchased, and bought a BenQ 19″ for E250. This was stolen while we packed the taxi after packing up the show, so that was a pita. We joined the GWAVACon group for the Oktoberfest - we each had vouchers for a 1/2 chicken, and 2 MaB of beer, which constituted dinner. Ah, another meal with no vegetables. :/ It was really good though - the chicken was as salty as I’ve tasted, but the beer kept flowing. We ended up walking back to the train station, and then from the train station to the hotel, in pouring rain, and getting drenched through. Shoes included.
Wednesday was a washing day, so we went into town to organize our train tickets for the rest of Europe, and do our washing. We agreed to meet Edward at Marienplatz for lunch, and enjoyed Pretzel soup, followed by sausages, potatos and sauerkraut. We walked a little in Marienplatz with some icecream cones before heading home. Godez and I had to pack, before we enjoyed one last hurrah - Eddy again buying us dinner at the hotel next door’s restaurant - Sud and Co.
It was awful, hilariously awful. Their meals seemed to be microwaved, Edward had the salmon and spinach (spinach from a can, salmon microwaved and placed on top), I had the pasta (penne with sauce from a jar and no meat), and Snod had the lasagne (reheated from frozen). Just awful. The beer helped, and we moved onto some digestifs in our own bar, with intelligent converstaion about business etc.
Thursday we caught the train from Munich to Prague, with changes at Regensburg and Schwandorf. We actually had first-class seats, which made no difference on the Schwandorf - Prague train, which was all second class. It took about 6 hours for the entire journey.
When we arrived in Prague, it was a bit overwhelmingly foreign. We quickly discovered that the taxi drivers were in the market of ripping off tourists, so we figured out the metro train system, and caught a metro train to a stop near our hotel. We walked around for a while looking for our hotel, and when we finally found it, expressed a whoop of joy.
Godfrey’s a recent convert of the organized tour. He ridiculed the idea of spending E10 on a walking tour of Munich, until I persuaded him (sure sure) it was the easiest and most efficient way to see things, and then he did one in Munich, and really enjoyed it.
We grabbed a bunch of tour brochures from the front desk of the hotel, and went up to our room to cram-study them.
There were a lot of brochures for “Kabaret” which looked fun, so we decided to go to one of those before dinner. In Wenceslas Square there were heaps of touts for the Kabarets, and we eventually found our way to our selected venue: Darling’s.
When we got in (and were appalled by the price of drinks cheapest can of beer was 99K) there were girls everywhere. On the small stage, a girl was stripping to disco-type music. I was a little disappointed, hoping for something higher-class, but not sure what exactly - more like a Vegas show I guess. One of the bazillion girls there (most of them 9.5’s to 10’s btw) explained the private dance scene, which is obviously different from the way it works in Brisbane, in that you can shag any of the girls in the room if your budget can stretch to it. Apparently the Czech Kabaret is particularly popular with English stag parties, judging by the clientele. Seems a little dangerous for the groom-to-be, the ladies are gorgeous and the temptation great, particularly if you’re powered by Pounds Sterling. Godfrey and I were only powered by Australian dollars, however, so we called it quits after two beers and found a restaurant for dinner.
The Czech Replubilic has quite a large Italian population, and the Italian food here is fantastic and affordable. Most meals here in Prague would come to be Italian, but from what I hear we won’t be able to eat Italian food in Italy, so this is near enough (Pizza 140K, Pasta 120K, Beer 40K Ice-Cream Sundae 85K).
Friday we hit a walking tour of Prague. We chose the Walks of Prague tour called “The Grand Tour of Prague” @ 450 crowns. We met our guide, Petra, at the Astronomical clock on the Old Town Square. Godez and I were the only people to show at the 11am start time, so we had the guide to ourself, and got a much more personalized tour (oh yeah) than normal. We learnt some Czech history, then walked through the old city, crossed a historic bridge to the new city, walked through the castle, through the cathedral and then our guide told us to meet back at the Town Square at 2pm, and buy some lunch in the meantime. The second half of the tour was the Jewish Ghetto (”In the Ghetto”), and more people joined us for this tour. Unfortunately in a group, Petra’s english got worse, and the stupid Americans slowed us down and kept adding their own 2 cents. My personal highlight of the Jewish Ghetto tour was the oldest synagogue in Europe. When it was originally built it was called “The New Synagogue”. Now that it’s the oldest synagogue in Europe, it’s called “The Old New Synagogue”. Crazy czechs. Also of interest was the Hebrew clock which was upside down and back to front (i.e. Completely Fucked). While we were trying to figure it out, Petra asked: “what do we know about Hebrew?” to which I replied “nothing” to great reception from the rest of the party. Walked slowly back to the hotel - I had blisters the size of czech dumplings on my feet - and had an early night.
Today we’re off to Kutna Hora. More on this later.