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| The key to the luggage room. (So that it is easy to find and hold onto) |
Today was the day that we had the walking
tour with Derek. But before that we
walked to the Old Town Square and went to the top of the tower that they have
there. It was cool to be able to see all
the different places that we had been for the past two days all laid out with
distances. It was cool. I think there are some pretty good pictures
from that morning. I was concerned
though. My iPhone turned off and
wouldn’t wake up. Then even when I
plugged in my mobile charger it didn’t do anything. So after the tower we stopped at a gift shop
on the way back to the hostel and got a postcard and then I stayed at the
hostel to get my phone to charge. Kylie
and Ashley went to the post office to send postcards. It was at this time that we meet these two
Americans that were traveling Europe after graduating from college. They had already been traveling for 3 months
and were hoping to travel for another 3 months.
I think that that would be really hard to do. It is a taxing thing to continually stay in
hostels and always be on the road with a big backpack because you know that
they have a big backpack since they have been gone for so long.
They were on the walking tour along with
Derek, the tour guide. Derek was
great! He definitely had the thespian
background and would change the volume of his voice at different points of his
speaking. He would also bounce up and
down and use his hands while he was speaking.
It was all really good though.
Out of all of the tours that we took I would say that he was the
best. It was stuff that he talked about
that I still remember even though it necessarily isn’t the most important. But he shared it and it then became
interesting. Derek was also very
passionate about what he was talking about.
He got really upset when beer was talked about. He doesn’t like Budwiser at all. It is an imposter and the real stuff, the
good stuff is here in Prague. He also
was pretty passionate about how much to spend on food. He gave us a good ballpark. Beer should be between 30-50 Czech. No street food should be more than 50 Czech
either. He just hates to see the tourist
being taken advantage of because they don’t know anything.
The first thing that Derek told us about was the Astronomical Clock in the middle of Old Town Square. Click for the Wikipedia article. It was really interesting to hear about death and the 4 carnal sins.
Derek also shared some really interesting
information about the Jewish Quarter in Prague.
He said that Prague was special to Hitler. It was in Prague that Hitler was going to
have his museum to show what was left of the Jews that had been eradicated from
the world. He preserved much of the
Jewish Quarter so we were able to see it today.
Really messed up but fortunate for today since it didn’t get destroyed.
One of the saddest stories that Derek
shared was about the cemetery in the Jewish Quarter. The Judaism it is forbidden to have your body
cremated so everybody has to be buried.
But there was a law that Jews had to stay in the Jewish Quarter but it
was only so big. There were some Jews
that requested more land to bury their dead.
The request was accept but denied.
The Jews got more earth, more dirt to bury their dead. They were just supposed to put that dirt on
top of the old dirt and build the cemetery higher. That happened once, twice, three times. There was always the same response. There ended up being 11 layers of earth on
that cemetery where over 100,000 Jews have been buried in a lot that was
probably not bigger than half a soccer field.
The level of all the Jewish Quarter had been raised 5 meters. But the cemetery still was raised another 2
meters on top of that. That is a lot of
people, a lot of dirt and a whole lot of disrespect. But that is all the Jewish people could do.
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| Franz Kafka Wikipedia Article |
Derek had many good stories and
unfortunately we couldn’t stay and listen to all of his stories. We had stuff that we had to get prepared
before getting on our train to Ostrava.
So we had to stop mid-tour and tell him thank you and then leave.
We stopped by a grocery store and picked up
some groceries on the way to the train station.
I had two finds there. There are
these chocolate wafer bars that are DELICIOUS!
I bought a number of them. Ashley
and Kylie were making fun of how many I bought.
But I bought a bunch so that I could have some while I was in Norway
after the week was done. The other thing
I bought was a juice bottle that will come up later.
We get to the train station and find the
information. This train station was not
like train stations in Russia. They
weren’t super loud and super crowded. I
mean there were a lot of people and it was somewhat loud but not like in
Russia. We go up to the info desk and
say that we want to go to Ostrava and the woman there prints out the train
route that we needed to buy. We then
took that paper up to the actual ticket registers and bought our tickets. The whole process was super simple. Then we just had to leave that area and find
the departure board.
That wasn’t that far away. I am a little sad that we didn’t get to
explore the train station more but there wasn’t that much time before our train
left. I had long enough though to snag
these pictures. The picture below is actually a half dome halfway between the station and the platforms.
On the train in the four seats there was
Kylie and I on one side and then Ashley and Monica on the other side. Monica spoke really softly so it was hard to
speak with her. But she was helpful when
we did ask her questions. |
| It is really hard to take a picture on a train. |
We are having a good time on the
train. Religion was the main topic of
discussion the train. It was nice to
hear about what Ashley does for church and I was able to share what I do for
church. Then Kylie also added her two
cents as well. We were having that great
conversation and then I looked out the window or at one of the signs and I
realized that we were at Ostrava. This
was our stop! So I told the girls that
this is our stop. We need to get off the
train. It was somewhat hectic and I
almost left my beanie on the train (which would have been tragic since I really
needed a beanie on the trip) but we got off the train and everything was just
fine.
Ostrava reminded me a lot of Russia. The train yard was very similar. I say that it reminds me of Russia because I
am most familiar with the train stations in Russia than anywhere else. Also there are some word, mostly nouns, that
I think are the same in Russian. The
letters are not used because Czech uses roman letters with a lot of accent
marks but as I was sounding them out they sounded like Russian words. The funny thing was though that when I tried
to speak to one of the cashiers at the train station in Russian she said that
she doesn’t speak Russian and then said more stuff in Czech. I tried to talk to her in Russian because she
was saying a lot of stuff to me in Czech and I wanted to show that I didn’t
understand.
We asked information on how we could to
Hotel Garni. They provided us with a
printout that we then tried to follow.
We paid our 14 Czech to buy a ticket to get on the bus and then we were
off. The bus ride wasn’t very long. The town of Ostrava isn’t that big. But then we tried to orient ourselves with
the map and that was proving difficult.
We ended up walking in the wrong direction and then realized that the
map wasn’t matching up with what we were seeing. So then we turned around, flipped the map
upside down and then went on our way.
We past a cool church and then spotted a
gas station. We went into the gas
station and talked to the cashier lady there.
She had a hard time giving us directions in English but she was
trying. I appreciated her help and
because of her we were put on the right track to find our hotel.
Funny insert: on the way our there was a blue
Fanta bottle that had caught my eye. I
had never seen a blue Fanta bottle.
Ashley and Kylie wondered what had caught my eye. I told them it was the Fanta bottle and they
were like “really? At a time like this
you are getting distracted by drinks?” I
said, “yeah. I am hungry.” We then talked about how being hangry was a
really thing.
On the way up the road we passed a
restaurant and thought about going to it for dinner before finding the hotel
but then decided against that. It was
getting dark and so we really should find our hotel because it will be easier
while it is still light. So we continue
on that road. It curves around and up
the road and then we see a sign for Hotel Garni. Hurray!
We found our hotel.
Ashley rang the bell for service and it was
a while before the nice older lady came to the door and welcomed us in. She had us change our shoes and put crocs on
to go look at the hotel. We went up a
floor to where all the rooms were and the woman showed us two rooms. Choose your room. We decided that we were going to choose the
first room. It had a bigger room and we
liked the bathroom in the first room better as well.
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| Blackberry drink |
Once we got everything settled with paying
for the hotel we then went back to that restaurant that we had passed on the
way up. Our host even recommended that
restaurant. The restaurant was called Stara
Kuzelna. It was delicious! Best food of the trip! I had this ‘larded deer’ with stuffing and
gravy. The deer was great and the gravy
was yummy. I got a blackberry drink that
was good as well. I figure that should
try different things and not do the same old boring Coca-Cola, Fanta or
Sprite. After dinner we had dessert,
because why not? It was this little
chocolate cake with pudding inside. Then
there was ice cream on the side with some raspberry drizzled on the plate. It was Yum!
Again we were at the restaurant for a while. It was a nice looking restaurant. Simple yet refined. We all really liked it.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and
worked out what we were going to do the next day. How were we going to get from Ostrava to
Krakow and then what were we going to do in Krakow when we got there? Then we also watched an episode of Boy Meets
Worlds because I brought that on my Surface.
#bestideaever
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