After checking in at the Ryanair desk, passing security, and boarding the plane, I immediately fell asleep. I slept poorly for 3 hours. Landing in Prague, cold and gray, it looked like a stereotypical vision of Eastern Europe. Flat, brown land with ominous gray skies with lots of barbed wire fences. We received passport stamps and I changed a few euros to the Czech crown. Although the Czech Republic is part of the European Union, it still has its own currency.
Outside, it was freezing cold and snowing! Rather than take a charter bus or taxi, we found the public bus from the airport to the first metro stop. The bus drove through the outskirts of the city and dropped us right off in front of the metro. From the metro we took it to the city center where, with the directions of our hostel in hand, we looked for the Old Town Square. My initial impressions of Prague were really good. It was a beautiful city and that had been fortunate enough to escape both World Wars.
We entered the magnificent Old Town Square with the view of the impressive gothic church and astrological clock and bell tower. We found our hostel, in a perfect location right on one of the streets entering the square, and stashed our bags before going out to explore a little bit (we couldn't check into our room until 2:00). In front of the astrological clock, we watched the clock strike 12:00pm and the ensuing, entertaining hourly ceremony. 12 mechanical apostles and a little mechanical skeleton striking a bell entertained the crowd. We then walked around the square and headed in the direction of the river. Snowing a ton, we took some pictures and headed along the river toward the famous St. Charle's bridge.
St. Charle's bridge was really nice with huge stone statues lining the parapets. I rubbed one of the little figurines, worn down by thousands of hands, on a statue by the entrance to ensure good luck. We crossed the bridge and entered a square with streets leading up the hill toward the magnificent Prague Castle. We decided we'd visit the castle tomorrow. We stopped inside the beautiful St. Nicolas Church, "the best example of Czech Baroque art," before deciding to head back to the hostel.
Stopping in a supermarket to save money on food, we bought lunch and dinner for the grand total of 400...crowns, or only 16 euros. Back at the hostel we checked in and lunch in the kitchen. I could tell that this hostel would be a cool place to stay as the staff were really friendly and everyone seemed to be social. In our 6 person room, we met our roommates, 3 other Americans, two of whom go to Columbia University. With the exception of about 5 hours of useless travel sleep, I hadn't slept in close to 50 hours. I took a shower and fell immediately asleep.
I woke up 8 hours later, extremely disoriented. Jon wasn't in his bed and everyone else was sleeping. Our shared key wasn't there and I was locked out of my locker. After stopping for a second to think what I should do and worried about what happened to Jon, I went downstairs waking up one of the other kids in the room to have him let me back in.
As it turned out, everything was fine. Jon was downstairs in the kitchen talking to three girls from Argentina, Chile and Brazil in Spanish. The Brazilian girl obviously speaks Portuguese but she was able to understand Spanish and if she spoke slowly we could more or less understand her Portuguese. I had apparently had a conversation with Jon explaining to him where the key was. He had told me that he was going down stairs. I had been so tired that I had forgotten the whole conversation. It was really only 10:30pm. The other kids in the room had also decided to take naps which had added to my overall confusion.
The next 5 hours we spent in the kitchen having interesting conversations with cool people. We talked to other American students from New Jersey and some Germans from Berlin. Jon and I sent some emails to potential couchsurfing hosts and decided to rebook the hostel for another night. It was a really cool place. Having recovered from the craziness of the past 48 hours, I was excited to be in a new country, city and traveling with a cool friend. Despite the 8 hour nap, I went to bed tired, but excited to make the most of the coming day.
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