Prague Part III

Darcy in the new hostel!
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2-27-07

This morning, we moved out of the Boathouse Hostel and into our new Hostel (also in Prague) called the Emma Hostel. We chose two different hostels because we really wanted to check out Boathouse for the atmosphere, but Emma is a lot more convenient to the city. Emma is also nice though some of the staff doesn't speak really great english; I'd recommend them both. After dropping our stuff in the hostel, we went straight to the bus stop to get tickets to go to the WWII concentration camp called Terezin. Unfortunately, we got the crankiest ticket lady in the whole world who took about 20 minutes to acknowledge us, and, after selling the exact tickets we wanted to the couple right ahead of us, told us we had to go talk to the bus driver.

Terezin.
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Sooo, we went to talk to the bus driver and promptly got kicked off the bus, because it was full? I don't really know the whole conversation was in czech... so we gave up our plan to see the concentration camp (the next bus wasn't leaving for two hours) and sat on a bench to re-group. We ended up buying tickets to go tomorrow instead. Lucky for us, it starting POURING in the next few minutes, so the mean ticket lady actually saved us from some seriously depressing traipsing around in the rain.

Graveyard at Terezin.
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Instead, we made the best of the rain and went to see three museums: The Mucha museum, the City of Prague Museum, and the Kafka Museum. All three were worth seeing... my favorite was probably the Mucha museum because it was less theatrical than the Kafka museum but still really interesting. The City of Prague museum was also really interesting but loong, because it starts with the city's ancient history and goes all the way to the 18th century. The Kafka museum had a really confusing timeline that drove me nuts, but the very creepy atmosphere they create there was perfect for a yucky rainy day.

Stopping for a snack between museums.
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After our day of museums, we went back the hostel and met one of Darcy's friends, Dave. Well actually, first I lost the hostel key for about a half an hour and tore up the room looking for it, and THEN we met Dave. He took us to a small Czech place for dinner and explained some of the menu to us. He also made us feel WAY better about our French when he tried to order for us and had to repeat himself over and over (he just started taking Czech this semester). It was really nice to go out with someone who at least kind of knew what they were doing though. After dinner we were beat, so Dave pointed us in the right direction back to our hostel and we finished the night with Greys Anatomy on my computer (I'm still addicted even in Europe!!).

Chaos at the bus station.
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2-28-07

We got up this morning, ate a quick breakfast (definitely not as good as boathouse) and scrambled to the huge and terrifying bus station for a second time. This time, all we had to do was find our bus and some snacks for the way, and it worked out great!! Terezin was about an hour away and was really interesting, though there was so much to see and so much information there that it was hard to sift through everything. There was also a lot of repitition in the displays. We walked all over, and saw the Jewish museum, the crematorium, the cemetary, the barracks, and other places as well. By the end of a day, I had learned a lot that I didn't know before, and the town was eerily silent. They even had the room where they did autopsies set up with aprons, tools, sinks and beds, just as it used to be. VERY VERY creepy. But moving at the same time. I'm definitely glad we took the time to go.

Orchestra Hall.
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When we got back from Terezin, we grabbed a quick sausage sandwich from a street vendor and then headed back to the hostel where we changed for the Orchestra concert. We're definitely on French time now which means eating dinner before a concert is pretty much unheard of... so we decided to save dinner until after.

The concert was a lot of fun; I especially liked hearing Rachmaninov's second piano concerto. We finished the night with dinner in a czech bar/restaurant. We tried dumplings (gross boiled bread things...i would NOT recommend them) and had the most incredible sauerkraut I've ever had. I don't even LIKE sauerkraut. We also got free beers from some guys sitting on the other side of the restaurant - a good end to a good night! We made up some outrageous lies to ditch the free beer guys and then headed back to the hostel, where we crashed.