Prague

After a sad departure  from Berlin & a long morning on the bus I arrived to a fairly sunny Prague, what a miracle! The next mission, new friends. Berlin had given me a confidence boost being a solo traveller so I invited myself to sit down with 2 sisters from Adelaide, Alice & Laura (every person on Busabout seems to be an Aussie!!) Adam from the hostel came over and had schist to the 3 of. Us and within 5 minutes we had booked in for a walking tour, skydiving and a river boat booze cruise the following day, talk about an action packed 5 minutes! We decided to make the most of the good weather ( luckily, considering what was to come) and hopped on the tram to Prague's old town. 

Prague is extraordinarily beautiful. I know nothing about architecture or art but despite that I was completely overwhelmed by the beautiful and versatile style of buildings that surrounded me. As we strolled through the old square I was once again encapsulated by the incredible smell of street food stalls. Huge legs of pork slow roasting over wood fires delivered the mot incredible smokey smell, huge piles of a potato style sauerkraut, crepes, Czech style doughnuts coated in brown sugar and almonds, it all looked amazing and I struggled massively walking away from it. But we were on a mission to find John Lennon wall and get back in time for the final night of the Czech beer festival so my stomach had to wait. After roaming through many winding cobblestone streets and hitting a million dead ends, Alice's map reading led us right to the spot. It was so amazing how random public graffiti from everyday people, mostly with no artistic talent could come together in such a complementary fashion and create a masterpiece. I was dying to grab a marker and lease my mark on the wall, but there were none in sight so a classic tourist shot had to suffice. The walk back through the square proved much too difficult for all of our stomachs so we gave in to a hunk of pork and some potato, cabbage, bacon mix to share between the 3 of us, even I was no match to the ridiculous portion size!

After a truly magnificent feed we were running late and headed straight to the Cesky Privli beer festival to meet the group. This is Prague's version of Oktoberfest and it did match quite a lot of my imaginations. A huge tent, giant jugs of beer everywhere, loud drunken fat men making up a majority of the crowd and the servers all in their version of leiderhausen. For the first time I could really see the appeal of busabout, we filled up two enormous tables and within minutes the 20 of us were playing drinking games, forcing each other to skull and lastly, actually talking and getting to know each other. The beer festival kindly provided vodka and raspberry for me for double the cost and a quarter f the strength, but at least I could join in the fun! It was raining when we left so we opted for a taxi home, little did we know,the rain was never going to stop. 

I awoke buzzing full of excitement and nerves for the big day ahead but the rain quickly squashed any positivity I had. Skydiving was cancelled and the river had flooded, and the weather wasn't changing  any time soon. Despite the disappointment, I donned my trusty raincoat and headed out with Alice, Laura and Tyler for the free walking tour. Literally the only thing that kept me walking through the rain was the fact that our tour guide looked identical to a future Ben Jakobi. Through the rain the sights of Prague were slightly marred but still very picturesque. At the conclusion of the tour we decided to brave the weather and continue on a second 3 hour tour of the Prague Castle, in the hope that the next day we would be greeted with a blue sky and would be able to skydive. This second tour was a bad idea, the weather turned vile and the only thing I remember from the entire time was the hot chocolate I got which temporarily warmed me and simultaneously killed my stomach. All I wanted was to get back to the hostel and its SAUNA but we accidentally caught the tram to the complete other end of the line so this 1.5 hour mishap meant a hot shower would have to suffice. We went down for pre drinks for the boat party before being told of course this too was cancelled due to the floods. The only positive was we got a refund and I had already taken full advantage of my free drinks, success! We got cabs to a 5 storey club instead and danced until 6am close enjoying the warm interior and fun songs, just like Seven's red room, were a pleasure compared to the repetitive drone of Berlin's deep house music. 

Although my skydiving dreams were shot I headed into town in the rain once more to achieve another goal, getting my ear pierced! It took an hour to find only to discover it would cost 30euro, definitely not in my price range, so instead we drowned our sorrows with hot chocolate, nougat, goulash and the girls got donuts to top it off, fat Europe georgie is well on her way! It was an interesting adventure back to the hostel because all the metro stations were closed due to the floods. Exhausted, grumpy, wet and cold we headed back to the hostel, very ready to move on to a (fingers crossed) sunny Vienna!!