A review of what went on during the rail trip, which took us from Prague to
Ljubljana between the 15th and 31st of December 2004.
15th Dec (Wed) Prague
We'd actually been to Prague before, a year back. So this was like a revisit,
tying up loose ends, and also catching the city in a different season.
We visited the Strahov Monastery and the Loreta (basically, stuff we'd missed
out), walked along the lovely Vltava once again. Got some great shots of the
Charles Bridge. Freakishly cold when we got there actually. We stayed in Pension
Unitas, which was converted from a prison, where ex-President Vaclav Havel was
imprisoned. So that's some neat bit of history.
We bumped into the same lady that sold us bus tickets a year ago at the airport.
She's still there after these months. She had swindled us then, when she gave us
change for our tickets. Just threw us a handful of coins, which we couldn't
count quick enough at first to realise the trick. This time, we gave her smaller
notes. LESS change to count.
Our meal policy throughout the trip is to stinge on lunch and have a decent
sit-down dinner. So, lunches were predominated by supermarket take-aways e.g.
buns, breadloaves, canned tuna, cheese, fruits, juice. Our 1st dinner, though,
was a flop, no thanks to the extremely rude waiters at a particular restaurant.
In the end, we settled for KFC. Great start. Probably we left dinner till too
late in the evening, where reservations are required. So, we learnt to take
early dinners. And for completeness sake, we've decided to keep track of our
posh dinners: wj had a 2 pc chicken meal and i had a salad. Couldn't stomach the
thought of eating chicken that early in the trip. Had bad experiences with
fastfood overdose.
16th Dec (Thu) Kutna Hora
Took a train to this small, mining town. We stayed at this quaint little
pension, which was really cheap! 10 pounds for an en-suite room with TV. That
was really the best bargain of the trip. We caught a bit of Czech TV; it was a
game show, where one of the players was really good. One of the contestants he
played against was Jaroslav, can't recall the other person's name though.
Probably the main attraction of the town is the Bone Church. The church holds a
large collection of human bones which are used to decorate the interior. A
chandelier and various structures made of bones. Interestingly, we found out
that if you wanted to take photos, you needed to buy a photo ticket, on top of
the admission ticket - the first time i've seen such a thing. Hmm, so we were
crafty, and bought 2 normal tickets and 1 photo ticket. So we only took photos
with 1 camera and shared the photos. OK, not that the attendant really kept tabs
on us.
For dinner that night, we had it at the diner's next to our pension. The nice
waitress tried translating the menu for us. Well, it did work out, although what
arrived was not necessarily what we'd imagined. WJ had garlic soup with toasted
bread, some chicken paprika thing. I had chicken soup with maggi-like noodle
strands (a recurring item in soups for the next few meals), and extremely salty
chicken chops. The mushroom sauce was the culprit!
Night time entertainment: we watched TV!! They screened a film in English - "The
Dancer Upstairs", which was about revolution in Argentina. Erm, a John Malkovich
film. It was not terribly good. The talking was mumbled, very hard to catch
them. Plus the heavily-inflected accent.
17th Dec (Fri) Brno
Another train ride onwards to Brno, the provincial capital of Moravia. The city
where Mendel conducted his pea crossing experiments. Had a walk around a couple
of churches in the city, and climbed up the Spilberk castle. It had snowed the
night before, and the grounds were dangerousy laced with ice, which made
climbing a silly idea to do. It probably had to do with the cold and the wind,
we were ravenous (after having skimpy lunches for 3 days). Succumbed to the
charms of 'Mama Snacks'. This little shop sold little cheese bites. Bought 10 of
those, had no idea what they were actually, at least they only cost 50 pence.
We then stopped by an art gallery, where the lady at the ticket counter was
exuberant. She kept on rattling in czech, even when i mentioned kindly that we
don't understand you. It was an interesting collection of 3 artists, one of whom
is a chinese who does lots of family trees/faces thing, superimposed with
chinese characters. Another artist drew abstracts of zodiac signs, which i could
only make out, thanks to the labels on the side.
For dinner that night, we had it in the restaurant, at the ground floor of our
hotel. I had carp. Yet again another bony fish. What's with all these freshwater
fish, together with potato pancakes. Weijian had onion soup, followed by pork,
dumplings and sauerkraut. The interesting thing that happened was a lady came
over and asked if she could take 2 of the chairs at our table. We said yes, and
off she went. A few moments later, the waiter appeared with the 2 chairs and
placed them back. Surprised! The lady then came back, hunting for the 2 chairs.
And took them off again.
Shrek 1 was on TV that night, albeit in czech. Breakfast the next morning was
fantastic, for it was, for once, a hot breakfast. Eggs on ham.