Prague and All Saint's

Just got Internet installed in my apartment and I'm still counting my lucky stars that I brought the laptop on the trip (even though it almost broke my back hauling it around the Dublin airport about 4 months ago when I first hopped the Atlantic).

I've fallen back into my routine of teaching both my school classes and private lessons. Two weeks ago, I was in Prague with my travel buddy/American teacher in southern Hungary, Harpswell. We joked around so much that the 8 hour train ride flew by and before we knew it, we were in the Czech Republic, our passports out of breath.

Entrance to the Charles Bridge in Prague

On November 1st, Hungary commerates their dead. At night, everyone gathers in the cemetery with candles and pays respect to the dead (a 180 from the hyped up Halloween parties we have with fake ghosts and the sort). So we saw glowing cemeteries shoot by the window just as our train pulled out of Hungary and into Slovakia. Moments later, we stopped in a bigger city...to which Harpswell says, "This can't be Bratislava...I really don't think it is." Not even two seconds later, a huge blue sign with yellow letters announcing BRATISLAVA faces our window.

We spent much of Prague walking off all the pure slabs of fat and pastry that the Transylvanians funneled into our mouths. After mistaking two modest bridges as the Charles Bridge and fueling up on hot wine, we trekked up to the castle. Prague rested in a misty November fog that fit the Central European stigma oh so well. We frequented a rabbit hole bar (it was like walking into a tunnel that led to more and more rooms), a pirate bar and tried to process all of the excess English we heard....you just don't get that in Budapest or in a small Hungarian village of 11,000.

Dark and gothic spire plenty church

We walked through an Italian movie set with Christmas trees and white lights strung over a narrow cobblestoned street. I was impressed by the amount of random art that exists in Prague. Metal babies crawl on the TV tower eye sore and a silohuetted man hangs off a building from a steel bar. Art where you don't expect it - that's one of the things I liked the most about Prague.

I like how the flora matches the orange roofs of Prague in the distance.

Babies crawling on a tower

While in Prague, Harpswell and I were charged way too much for a glass of beer at a Herna bar, stayed in a really nice hotel our first night, then nearly froze staying at Harpswell's friends' apartment, the windows open for much of the November night, re-united with my old Budapest roommate Lara and met her boyfriend, Brendan with whom we went out dancing at a bar playing African drum music, and wandered the streets and cemeteries talking. Prague was fun, but it's good to be back in Hungary.