Czech'ing Out Prague

While I was in Berlin, one of my American friends at the Conference I was attending mentioned that he and his wife were thinking of taking a day trip to Prague. I actually had no idea that Prague was so close to Berlin. My parents have been to Prague before and were always telling me that while I was in Europe I just had to go there. Well , on top of that I knew that one of my friends from UF had just moved there to teach English. So I dropped her a message on facebook to see if I could come visit. I totally could relate when she said it would be so nice to see a familiar face from home. So on a whim, I took a 5 hour train ride from Berlin to Prague and stayed there for a little over 36 hours. Natalie did such a great job of showing me all she could in that short amount of time. I saw churches, Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, a Communist museum, and many more including even a political demonstration at the piazza where many of the protests against communism were held just a few years ago (pic below).

Prague was such a beautiful city and it was amazing to see how much it had flourished even though it was under a communist regime less than 20 years ago. Food was amazing. Goulash and meat...yummy. I had no idea either that the Czech Republic consumed the most beer per capita than any other country in the world. Good food and good beer...Eric was a happy camper just because of that. Side note....did you know the original Budweiser brand is in the Czech Republic and because of stupid licensing by that other nasty American beer company, the real Budweiser is known as Budwar everywhere other than the Czech Republic?

My favorite part was just hanging out with some of Natalie's friends that she has made in Prague. It was like a group of 10 people who came from all over the world. We all had the common bond of living in another country trying to understand life from a different culture's perspective. It's really cool when you can compare your experiences and even talk about the languages you know how to speak. Two of the girls I met there, who were from Norway, ended up coming to Rome a week later and I got to show them around my city. Good times. All my pictures from Prague can be seen in Flickr.