My weekend in Disneyland-or Prague-or Prag or Praha. Whatever you prefer to call it?

This last weekend we went to Prague, which is only about 2 hours east of Dresden (where I am living in Germany). We got up suuuper early in the morning on Friday, gathered up, and boarded the bus. It is amazing to me these EU boarder crossings, I was awake (unlike much of my companions) doing some light studying and watched as we went off a ramp on the freeway and suddenly the signs were in a different language. And like that, I had entered yet another sovereign nation.

We arrived at about 9 oclock, changed money (as we had left the Euro zone), and hustled down to the subway to try and make it to our hostel quicky. The Czech way of doing escalators is awesome, I swear they travel at 3 times the speed of the 'normal' escalors, and are much steeper. It legitimetly felt like an amusment ride, and eventhough I used them say 8 or 9 times, it was still just as fun everytime
We eventually made it to the hostel, made our way to our tour guide, took a short tour, and then ended up on a boat tour. Honestly, the weakest point of the trip, but it was a relaxing cruise through the city and it had an all you can eat buffet (paid for by BU). My monster plate on the right-->
(1 of 4). <----View of charles bridge on left After the tour we trooped back to the hostel, which was BEAUTIFULLY located about 3 minutes from the main square and at 13 Euro's a night, a pretty good bargain as well. A few of us went on a quick walk through the city, basically through the main Old town square and then to the Charles Bridge. Old Town and the Charles Bridge are from a Disney kingdom, you really can't convince me otherwise. They are so beautiful, old, and authentic (which is how I would describe Prague btw). I basically just walked around the whole weekend amazed that my eye's kept on being absolutely delighted by what was around the next bend (except when I could see two different McDonald's and One KFC from where I stood on the steet), but thats the Europe that I am living in.
On Charles Bridge-------- (and below)--->
<---Old Town Square
Anyway. The delight of this city was walking around, just looking. On saturday we hiked up to the Prague castle and toured the largest castle in europe. The views of the city from the thing were ridiculus. We saw the changing of the guards at noon, a procession involving a band playing from the windows of the palace and marching guards ceremonially changing duty.







from the palace









<---Chaning of the guards <--Amazing view of castle and city Anyway, we just explored that area essentially all mornign, then met up with others at around noon and kept on exploring, eventually happeing upon a great lookout over the city and the castle, which i just had to take a solo-picture for Mom and Dad (thats what we would call it whenever we would request someone take a picture of just us, ie. "can i get one for mom and dad?" Sunday I got up early and trekked across the city by myself before anyone had seemed to wake up, I was trying to find somewhere for coffee, but other than Starbucks (and their 4 Euro mochas) nothing was open. I eventually hit a very far portion of the city and elected to take the metro back instead of rewalking everything, I meant to go a couple stops past the hostel just to check it out but zoned out and missed my intended stop by like 2 stops. Whoops. So I got a LOT of walking, but it was very fun to see a different part of the city. I submit to you that this is better than disneyland. Clocktower at 8 am



Later in the day I met up with the guys again and we set off to see the jewish sites. We saw several cool meseums, a very interesting old graveyard (from when it was a Ghetto and Jew's were not allowed to bury their dead anywhere else for 300 years and the it became a plateu as they had to bury on top of other graves)
Then we decided to go find the Lennon Wall. Apparently during the communist era when John Lennon was killed in 1980 overnight graffiti appeared on a wall in a tribute, with song lyrics other artistic expressition. Of course the communists painted this over, but then, the next night, again it was spray painted. This continued until 1989 when communism fell and became a focal point for the youth of Prague. Today this tribute is exactly how it was then, un-controlled and very very powerful. When we found it, we were really the only people there. Reading the quotes and stories written, layer upon layer, on the wall literally had shivers running up and down my spine. It seemed the more you looked, the more wisdom and meaning you could derive from the wall. It was beautiful, with poem's song lyrics, signatures of friends, lovers, solo-travelers, multiple languages, all with a common thread, hope an optamism for humanity. Inspired by John Lennon. We spent a good 45 minutes until we basically had to RUN across the city to get dinner and make it back to the bus on time, but it was an experiance that I will definetly not readily forget.




Anyway, I could really go on in more detail about how amazing it was and how cool, but really i have homework; but just know, Praha is a very, very cool city to visit and I wouldnt be surprised if i ended up there again this year. Its only two hours to fantasy land!