More about Prague from Vienna

Hallway at the Staatsoper
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I realized that I haven't written a lot about the sites of Prague. The first thing we did was a walking tour, walking by historical buildings, statues, and more. We walked by a statue of St. Wenceslas, the Czech's national saint (he's everywhere!.) This is the same Wenceslas of "Good King Wenceslas" Christmas-carol fame. Anyway, right after we walked by him it started raining... it didn't stop for 2 days. Thanks, St. Wenceslas.

We walked by one of Mozart's apartments and then on to our first European church, Our Lady of Snows. It's actually attached to a monastery, but the worship space is still gorgeous! For those of us who had been awake for over 25 hours, it made our tiredness worth it.

More Staatsoper
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The major tourist attraction is Old Town Square, near where Kafka went to school. The square has hundreds of tourist shops surrounding it. All the tourist crowd around the Astronomical Clock when the hour turns. Figurines of all the apostles come to the top window and parade in front of it. After watching with all the other tourists, we went to get cheap (yet good) beer with our tour guide, since all the beer around Old Town Square costs about $5 US. We got ours for 40 Cz, or $2 US. Every shop/restaurant in Prague sells Pillsner-Urquell, which is great beer (it must be good if I can say that.) We got beer with lunch that second day (before we went to the Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments.) There I had the best beer I’ve EVER tasted, but our waiter didn’t really speak English, so I couldn’t ask what it was.

Theatre of the Staatsoper building
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Casey, Natalie, Tracy, and I went to the museum. It cost 120 Cz or $6. Interesting stuff, though sort of morbid. That second day we had a concert with a girls’ choir at the Church of Simon and Jude. They were really good; VERY mature-sounding. None of them seemed to want to talk to us though. After, we had dinner with the Jefferson Club, the group that helped fund our trip. We had to order special vegetarian things because the tour company forgot to tell the restaurant about us.

"Gebuchlichkeit" is the word Dr. Crabb uses to describe Austrians as compared to the Germans... the Austrians think of themselves as more refined and steeped in tradition than the Germans.

We just drove into Vienna... the architecture is not as beautiful on the outskirts, but we are getting into the more historical district. It seems that the more historical the buildings are, the more sexual the stores in the lower levels get.

Yesterday, we were in Brno (pronounced ber-NO.) We ate at a delicious Greek restaurant where I had fried feta cheese... mmm...

22:51pm

Wow! We just saw Madam Butterfly at the Staatsoper! Granted, we had to stand for the 2.75 hour performance, but we paid 2€ for it! Add to that about 2€ that the street pizza we ate for dinner cost and we had a fabulous night for under 5€ or $6.50 US. I saw Butterfly with Bethany, David, and Cori. Emily and Mark were with us for a while, but Emily had to leave because the Staatsoper doesn’t allow flip-flops. Sad times. Well, we weren’t impressed by the first half, but the second half came together fine. I really liked the Suzuki... The sets were great, the ushers were uppity, and we were pretty uncomfortable, but all together WORTH IT!

We took the subway back and saw some SCARY-looking people on it! Some guy tried to sell David drugs. He responded with "Meine Deutsche ist nicht so gut." ( "My German is not so good.") Genius. Then we saw a guy bleeding from the nose and started walking faster. Now we’re just hanging out in Cori and Rachel’s room, considering food.