PART V - PRAGUE & CZECH REPUBLIC

So we left austria along with the alps and headed to the Czech Republic. but before we left we stopped at this awesome restaurant/raodside cafe. i love this place! it had a salad bar and was kind of like a road stop sizzler. they also had a counterpart called "rosenberger." if you are ever in austria i recommend it.

So then we entered Czech Republic and the scenery imediately changed to sunflowers. there were sunflowers as far as the eye could see. like you could really frolick in them for miles.
another thing that became very noticeable was the poverty. i mean you could really tell that it had been only 17 years since they ended communism. it was deep. there was alot of farmland but it was all abandoned because after the russians left they made the land available to whoever could rightfully claim it. well there is alot of land that has yet to be claimed probably either the people died or they moved to another country and dont' want to go back to reclaim their land. but it's there. We stopped in this small village that had a run down castle which was apparently owned by the king of lichtenstien, a long lost member of the hapsburg family of vienna. When austria became a democracy they kicked out the royal family, took all of their land, art, castles. basically left them pennyless. but apparently these were some distant relatives who were ruling lichtenstien and they still rule. so when WWII started the austrian govt had all this great art that they wanted to save from the bombing so they asked the king of lichtenstien to store it for them. so they smuggled it out of the country into lichtenstien and after the war they wanted it back but the king of lichtenstein was like "um what are you talking about? we didnt' sign any papers. this is now our art." totaly fucked up right. so anyways there is this castle in a village in the czech republic belongs to the king of lichtenstien and he got it back after the russians left and he's fixing it up so he can put all of what used to be austria's art there and make money off of it. that is some shady shit if i ever heard it.
this village was way creepy. it still had the loud speakers up on the phone lines from when they used to blast communist propaganda. you think they'd take them down. apparenlty alot of people now realize how much everything costs with the euro and they thing communism would be better.
"sale" in czech.

So anyways we left the village and headed to prague. At this point i had heard that prague was cool and whatever but i really had no idea. it is awesome! so beautiful. here is the view from a mountain.
i really like the tall gothic church that is in the middle of all of it. It's amazing that their architecture and buildings survived communism, and even more amazing that it was not hit at all during either of the world wars. Again this was another place where i have no idea what the things i saw were called because czech is way too difficult to decipher.
in front of the palace they have the weakest changing the guard i have ever seen. ok i've never actually seen a changing of the guard but i would imagine that it woudl nto be this ghetto. the guys totally were checking out our czech tour guide, they did move even though they weren't supposed to, and you could walk right in front of them and take pictures with them and stuff. i dotn' know what they thought they were protecting.
palace inner courtyard. we somehow made it through the guards.
here is that catherdral from up close. i gotta say for me it competes with notre dame in beauty. it was really amazing inside. too huge to get into a whole photo.
up in the mountains they have a replica of the eiffel tower that is slightly taller because it's on a mountain. come on prague! you are better than this!
here is the tour guide that i spoke of. her name was sara in czech which is "sarka" which is pronounced "sharka." she was pretty cool and told us about how she grew up in communism and her grandma had to secretly baptize her. and how she moved to america for a few months and worked as a maid to learn english and now she's in law school in praha. i liked her. my mom on the other hand was obsessed with her. she took all kinds of pictures including this one.
i gotta say though, sarka, the denim body suit/bodice/mini was not the best choice.
here i am in front of the astronomical calendar. it tells solar time, or astrological time, or regular time, or all of them. i dont' know i really couldn't understand what sarka was talking about. anyways it's a highlight of prague. there is my hat again, rearing it's ugly head.
we went to a little bar and drank czech beer and this very somber looking man played us czech music and he totally was a communist. i can tell. anyways he looked like he's seen alot in his lifetime.
and there is a final shot of prague. i highly recommend it. i didnt' get to go out at night because i was with my mom but i will definitely return with young people. but prague was a shoppers paradise. they are well knows for their amber and garnet and there was jewlery everywhere. also they had lots of bohemian glasswear (crystal) and that giant cathedral had stained glass that was made of crystal. sooooo cool. again i blew some major czech money on some good jewlery. it was good times.