Drove to Dresden and checked in to "Lollis Homestay Hostel", which was this awesome little chilled out place where we had treated ourselves to a private room, about 6pm and went to find dinner. Walked around a bit looking at the various options and ended up going into this cool little place that was essentially just the ground floor of a house, a standard house kitchen and table and chairs run by a single (as in alone, I didn't hit on some random German chef) woman did really tasty homemade burgers for very cheap. On the way back we walked past an area known as the "Bermuda Triangle" which apparently is a local thing where 2 main roads cross and everynight people just go there to sit around and drink on the side of the street because it's cheaper.
The next morning we checked out, dumped our bags in Cumu, who was waiting faithfully (which is very much against her usual cantankerous manner) outside then went for a wander around Dresden. Dresden has a very punk sort of feel to it, largely due to the look of a large portion of the people, but also from the clubs and expansive, often amazing, graffiti. It actually felt shocking to see a guy walking past in a suit. Lewis and I were looking to find the "most beautiful and decorative cheese shop in the world" but, alas, we failed in our quest. We did however stumble, completely unexpectedly, down a random alley and suddenly find ourselves in a plaza of wonder, every building fronting the plaza was decorated in some fanciful manner, lots of tile mosaics, lots of colour, one building had a set of drain pipes that looked straight out of a Dr Seuss tale and another had rendered monkeys and a giraffe swinging off or eating the wall. Very odd but a spectacular find. We then made our way back to Cumu and commenced the drive on south to Prague.
The border crossing into the Czech Republic was very confronting, a big, soviet-looking building and floodlights, followed by a large concrete wall around the road before we got to see the countryside and realise that, if your Czech, the grass literally is greener on the other side. The fields, and the town who soon drove through, had a much shabbier, dirtier feel to anywhere we had yet encountered and really brought home the realisation that we were now getting into Eastern Europe. After a while driving through a series of small Czech towns we arrived at Prague itself and easily made our way to the "Clown and Bard" hostel, a very cool place with a chilled out, fun loving feel and nice, old school tavern aesthetic. On checking in we came to the realisation that we had made a terribly rookie error and the Czechs don't use Euros, so we went on a minor hunt to acquire some Koruna, which there are about 20 of to an aussie dollar.
Take two. Checked in, moved Cumu to the recommended "secure parking", which felt like a somewhat dubious title given that it was a patch of dirty surrounded by shipping containers on 2 sides and wire on the other 2, and with a small boomgate next to a shanty hut run by a guy who spoke no english. I, having driven, let this be Lewis' problem, and 10 minutes later, looking confused, he came out and said he had a ticket and we had to do something with the number 5, which we discovered was our assigned parking space thankfully.
I am going to briefly pause here to discuss the Prague tram system. It's really good, they are near constant, go everywhere you could want to go and do so directly. However, the ticket system is not something we could figure out. We only found 2 ticket machines in the 3 days we were there and, due to our lack of Czech or, most likely, common sense we could not work out how to use them. Additionally we didn't in those 3 days see a single person use a ticket. In the end we ended up using the tram system the whole time without paying and without running into any trouble at all. Either the Prague tram system is some sort of glorious free system or we rorted it horribly by way of our stupidity.
After dropping the car off we trammed back to the hostel and found this amazing place 2 doors down that did the best dinner we had had for around 100Kc. We went the adventurous option and chose dishes from the "Stuff we invented" part of the menu, which resulted in me ordering "pork stuffed fries" (Pork?! Inside fries?! Best thing ever!) and ended up being a huge pork schnitzel wrapped around mushrooms and blue cheese, on top of a huge pile of fries, with cheese melted over the entire lot. New best thing ever. During dinner, in the period between beer and food (with more beer) it started to storm explosively and, although we were happily ensconced under a large umbrella watching the lightning and less dry patrons, we were moved inside. After dinner we headed back to the hostel to have a couple of drinks in the hostel lounge/bar and made friends with a couple of dutch girls, Doreen and Iris.
Woke up early to take advantage of the cheap (and tasty) hostel breakfast and jumped on another (free) tram to start seeing the sights of Prague. First stop was meant to be Mozart's house. Following the map we walked up a little street past a cool music hall next to a little park and then up a tree-lined path and found ourselves, rather than getting our Mozart on, in what seemed like an upper class district of Prague. After a bit of a search (and a larger bit of being lost) we came to the realisation that the music hall must have actually been Mozart's house (a sign would have been great but I guess this is our bad... music hall... Mozart... no common link at all for us to pick up on). We then trammed on up the hill to Prague castle, walked up a huge flight of stairs and at the top were confronted on one side by magnificent views out over all of Prague and on the other by the hugely ornate entrance to the Castle. Bought our tickets to allow entry to the various buildings and explored the various churches (and the amazing gothic cathedral) and buildings, plus (to Macky's delight) a vast display of medieval weapons and armor.
Trammed back to the hostel and met up with Doreen and Iris, then trammed back into town to go to a place called the "Iron Curtain" which I cannot recommend highly enough. It is an underground, bunker like, restaurant/bar/club decorated profusely by old artifacts from the Czech communist era, and for $6 (roughly, can't remember the exact Koruna price) did a "secret special" of a beer and a good sized goulash. We hung out there for a while playing a dutch drinking game based around blowing cards (or in our case beer coasters) off the top of a glass and were joined around 9:30 by Marty and Simon Fraser. Started rebonding with Marty, had another beer or 2 and a round of shots then headed to a club the girls wanted to go to called "Roxy". "Roxy" is this crazy minimalist club with super slow dance music playing in a single huge hall. We stayed there, Simon leaving around midnight, until 3 when we left the girls there as they were chucking an all-nighter in order to get a train early the next morning and we went back to the hostel (Marty taxiing on to Simon's place).
Woke up, all feeling pretty gross, and drooped around the hostel until 1:30 when we jumped on yet another tram and joined a free walking tour of Prague, guided by a startling loud, enthusiastic American called Keith. Saw all the Prague sights (at least from the outside, didn't head inside anywhere), got a bunch of awesome Prague history and finished back in old town square where a little medieval faire was ongoing, grabbed ourselves a late (5pm) lunch of thick cut ham and bread and a mix of potato, cabbage and bacon called Halusky and then headed back to the hostel.
When we got back Lewis and I showered and changed and left Macky, who was still feeling the previous nights escapades, and went back into the old town to join a pub crawl. Signed up, got our free t-shirts and first free beer and ran into 5 friends from back in the Northern Beaches, Judy, Emma, Lauren and Frances who were touring around together and Robbie who was part of a huge contiki group that made up most of the pub crawl. Such a scarily small world at times. The first hour of the pub crawl was at the starting venue and was an hour of free beer, wine, vodka and absinthe. I hope everyone can see where this night is heading. We got drunk. The second venue (each venue also gave us a free shot on vodka on entry) was this little bar that had an awesome VIP lounge for us where all the walls were decorated by what, on first inspection, were trees but whose branches, when you looked a bit more, formed the shapes of people having sex in all sorts of different positions. Memory of the third pub is somewhat fractured but it was a maze of corridors and small dance floors.
The final location was "Karlovy Lazne", a huge, 5 level club where each level had a different vibe and style of music. Lost everyone on one of the dance floors, which had a floor made up of large, brightly coloured, flashing squares and made friends with some Irish girl and went to explore and try find our various friends. Eventually, having explored most of the levels, or so it felt, we found them back on the same dance floor we started at. Spent the night dancing and chilling out in the top level VIP area with Lewis, the girls from back home and an American girl and left with Lewis at some point, getting back in at 5am (according to Macky).
Woke up at 10 feeling surprisingly perky (especially compared to Lewis who was made of hangover), checked out, got Cumu back, happily intact, and drove us on to Vienna.
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