Prague: Passing Thoughts

And now, back to Praha. My last post hit most of the highlights of the trip, at least with respect to the famous landmarks. Now, I just want to throw out random comments, that may or may not have pictures to go along with them. (Who am I kidding? Some of them will have pretty pictures.)

I wanted to go to a football match while I was in Prague, but it was not to be. The two biggest clubs in the Czech-speaking world both play in Prague, Slavia Praha and Sparta Praha, and they were playing each other. As it turned out, however, the match was moved to Monday and I will be in Berlin by the time it is completed. There are two other football clubs in Prague, however, Bohemians and Bohemians 1905. They also played together on Sunday. I went to the stadium in hopes of seeing the match, but there is a lot of bad blood between the two clubs, resulting in a sold-out stadium and no way for me to get a ticket without paying more than I was willing to pay for two sub-par Czech clubs. So, no football for Sheldon.

At least, no live football for Sheldon. As I mentioned in an earlier post, there were numerous sports bars around my hotel and on Sunday there were a lot of great matches. In the early afternoon, I went to a place next to my hotel in which you could watch matches as well as bet on them to watch the match between Rangers and Celtic (Rangers won 2-1). The beer was 46 Koruna a piece (around $2.70), so that was my nourishment while I sat around with a bunch of Irish/Scottish/English folks watching the match. That had to be my Praha football experience.

I also got to see the end of the Chelsea/Liverpool match, but that’s a food story, not a football story. It was my last night in Prague and I realized that I had more Koruna than I knew what to do with. I decided to spend it at a place advertising “authentic” Czech food. (I chose the place, in part, because it was broadcasting the aforementioned match.) My appetizer was Czech Goulash Soup, which was really damned good. The broth was thick and it was similar to beef stew except the beef was ground instead of chunky. I also had something that called itself a Czech Three-Meat Special. Having been in central Europe for a few weeks now, I expected sausages. What I got was more similar to a pork/chicken/beef stir-fry. It was good, but not what I was expecting. That took me through most of my Koruna, so it also solved a problem in addition to satisfying my hunger.

Let’s see . . . what else. Okay, I told you previously that Prague was the most picturesque city I had been to since Paris. To highlight this, even the subway was picturesque. So much so that I took pictures. I loved the convex and concave alternating rows of multi-colored circles that were in the subways. I also road on the trams. Not nearly as picturesque, but I did love the way that they listed the next half dozen stops ahead of time.

I was walking of metro-ing all over the city for the three days that I was here and I didn’t have a chance to actually go into any of the museums or to spend a lot of time exploring the area, with the exception of the Jewish Quarter and Old Town. Both had wonderful mixes of old and new, with modern cafes taking up the bottom section of buildings that were hundreds of years old. It definitely is a city to which I would like to return.

Okay, that’s it for Prague for now. Currently on a train in Dresden, on my way to Berlin. Cheers.