The Silent Room

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Small Talk:
Whoah, seriously. I’ve been swamped with so many things the past couple of weeks I don’t even have time to blog anymore. Speaking of which, I’m now on Twitter, chilling out, poking fun and throwing out lulz every now and then. If you’ve got a Twitter account make sure to follow me, yea?

Oh, by the way, some of the images are clickable for a larger view, particularly the panorama shots!

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What we thought was a long, droll train ride to turned out to be a rather pleasant surprise. The train was terribly packed when we got onboard but luckily the crowd pushed us all the way back – to the first class coach. After 15 minutes we were like, fuck it, so we set our bags down and sat in very comfortable first-class seats. The conductor came and checked our tickets, but never said a word about us sitting there despite the tickets saying ‘ECONOMY’.

We got really lucky. After 4 hours, we got off at Prague, the capital city of the Czech Republic.

After checking in to a rather nice hostel, we noticed that it was still early in that long summer the day so we decided to take a stroll and visit Vysehrad, one of the many castles scattered around the city. It’s built atop of a hill. It’s surrounded by beautiful gardens and offers a great panoramic view of Prague.

While we were there, there happened to be an exhibition on Winton Train, and it wasa very lovely outdoor exhibition.

The Winton Train was a private passenger train which travelled from the Czech Republic to England in September 2009, in tribute to the wartime efforts of Sir Nicholas Winton, described as the ‘British Schindler’ for his part in the saving refugee children from Czechoslovakia. Between March and September 1939, in the period up to the outbreak of World War II, Sir Nicholas organised eight trains to transport in total 699 mainly Jewish Czech and Slovak refugee children from Czechoslovakia to homes in Britain.
Read more: Wikipedia

After the exhibit, I went sightseeing around the gardens a little bit more and enjoyed the lovely scenery around there.

I also got myself a nice panoramic shot of Prague from the lower side of the river.

Feeling hungry, we went to look for dinner. Unfortunately, everything in Prague is FUCKING expensive. That’s a given, considering that its such an extremely popular tourist destination. Odd as it was, the cheapest thing available was McDonalds. So we went downtown to look for one, and along the way we took a couple more pictures.

Obviously, McDonalds in Prague offered some interesting menu items. I can’t remember what I had, but it was pretty good and affordable. The only problem was, the soft drinks didn’t come with ice, no refills, and if you want ketchup, you have to pay for each sachet. Malaysian McD is SO much better, I can assure you that.

The next day we woke up to a lovely breakfast prepared by Madame Sofia, a kind and gentle lady who, after noticing my cough, gave me honey and lemon slices to mix with the tea. Thank you, Madame, I will remember your kindness forever.

After breakfast, we went to cross the Vltava river to get to Prazskyhrad, or Prague Castle. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the largest ancient castle in the world. Sure enough, it was a rather grand thing to behold from a distance. We went across Charles Bridge and we passed a lot of vendors and buskers doing their thing.

It was a pretty long hike uphill to reach the Castle, but when we reached the top, the view we got was amazing. We reached the Castle gates and it was just in time to see the changing of the guards. The men were extremely highly disciplined, and every single step was absolutely PERFECT. So perfect it was actually quite scary.

We found out later that the entrance into the castle was terribly expensive, but it’s all justified because the castle was HUGE, so huge that the ticket is actually valid for two days, showing you that it’s simply not possibly to cover the whole place in a day. Opting out, I decided to walk around the castle complex and explore the surrounding areas.

Out of curiosity we found a hidden park, which locals use as a shortcut that bypasses the twisting roads along the hill. What’s even more wonderful, was what we found right near the entrance.

A field of dandelions!

We took a couple more pictures before making our way to the castle moat, also known at The Stag Moat. The moat was so huge that back in the day, deers used to be kept there during the 16th century, and the king would shoot them from the castle windows. Apparently the moat also had a werewolf legend during the time.

Today, the Stag Moat serves as a beautiful public park, and we walked down the path that eventually leads up to the beautiful Imperial Botanical Gardens that housed hundreds and hundreds of species of flowers, herbs and trees from all over the world.

It was there that I met Alex, a beautiful eagle. A fully grown adult weighing 4.5kg, she was easily the largest and heaviest bird I have ever held in my hand. I’ll be honest with you, a muscular eagle with claws and a beak that big, is pretty damn scary to hold close to your face.

We went around the castle a little bit more before meeting up with the rest of the guys. Went to Tesco to do some grocery shopping and later that night I made beef bolognaise with spaghetti for dinner. Nope, no pics of those because we were too busy eating, so, hahaha.

The next morning we went out to Town Square to see more old buildings. Admittedly, I’ve grown tired of visiting old buildings without a tour guide. I mean, old buildings are only really cool to visit if there’s someone to tell a story about it. Otherwise, it’s just an old building rotting away.

That morning, I wasn’t feeling very well, so after getting some souvenirs, I retired early and rested. Still, I managed to snap a couple more pictures before wrapping up the city. The next day we checked out early and boarded another train out to Germany.

Overall, Prague is an extremely beautiful city, very rich in history but is cruelly expensive for those who are traveling on a shoestring budget. Next up: Munich!