Do NOT try the green fairy

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Well... the pub crawl was... great. Really great.

We started the night by going to this neat little Czech restaurant near the central square and got some beer and goulash. It was SOOO good. They had these potato cake things in the goulash that were like fried garlic mashed potatoes. They were delicious. Afterward we went to this great little restaurant to get desert and then headed towards the beginning of the pub crawl. We met up with a guy from LA (who owns the pub crawl deal) and chatted for a while until a group of 5 Brazilian boys came to come on the crawl with us.

We started at a little bar where we had a power hour of free beer, absinthe, and wine for an hour. It was a nice atmosphere, but rather boring because we were pretty much the only people there (it was 9 o'clock so I guess we started a little early). After this we headed to an Aussie bar down the road which was great. There was a hippie guy playing guitar (think classic rock acoustic, it was great) and we danced and sang and chilled out for a while watching Soccer and talking English to people. After this we headed to this great nightclub. It's the largest night club in Europe and has 5 floors, each with a different theme. We spent most of our time at the American discotech themed one where there were quite a few people dancing to some good old fashioned American rap.

From here we went to a really cool rock bar. I had never seen anything like it and to be perfectly honest (although most of the other girls weren't too happy about the choice),. I really enjoyed it. They only played pretty hardcore rock music, mostly 90's early 2000's stuff. Think Rob Zombie, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Bush, etc. The guy to girl ratio was probably 9:1 which was awesome and we stayed there for quite a while before heading to our last destination which was another dance club right across the street. When we decided to leave that bar at about 4:30, we (of course) thought it would be a great idea to walk back to our hostel past the McDonald's and get some late night. I officially ate my first Big Mac ever and we sat there for probably a half an hour (a couple of the girls got 3 and 4 sandwiches) and then we got a cab back to the hostel (which, was probably a mistake considering our cab driver was LITERALLY insane, almost killed us twice and did not speak ONE word of English). We got back around 6:30.

Woke up at like noon and took showers, ate breakfast buffet and slowly dragged ourselves out of the hostel. We didn't have much time for sight seeing so we decided to go to the Jewish Museum and then shopping. The museum was absolutely amazing. There were like 5 different buildings that we went to. The first was a Holocaust memorial where they had the names of the 80,000 Praguean Jews that died in a concentration camp near here. They're listed by surname and by family. There would be a group of like 8, a grandma and grandpa, mom and dad and then four kids. The youngest one I found was 3 but I'm sure there were more younger that I didn't find. It was sooo sad and extremely moving. It brings up all kinds of extremely difficult emotions to deal with. The persecution of these people throughout history has been horrible and it doesn't make any sense. It makes me really sad to think that Christians could treat a group of people so horribly, especially since SO much of our beliefs are EXACTLY the same. I mean, don't get me wrong, I understand that not believing Jesus as the savior is a pretty large difference, but I mean when you get down to the basic principles and morality of our religions, they are almost identical. I mean, Jewish people are God's chosen people and whether you agree with their beliefs or not, it's appalling that we, as Christians, could treat such a sacred group so horribly. *sigh*

I'm off my soapbox. The synagogue was gorgeous though and everything is very still intact. The guys have to wear the little kippahs (the little skull caps that basically cover their bald spot :) ha, jk... but you know). They were very plain and we were eavesdropping on a tour guide telling the group all about the front of the main room where there is a spot to kneel and how you're supposed to be lower than the ground or something. Obviously I wasn't paying THAT good of attention. After this memorial, we went to the old Jewish cemetery which is where ALL of the people that died from 1400-1700 were buried (since the people weren't allowed to leave the little quarter). There are 12,000 tombstones, many right on top of another and apparently they think that a lot of the bodies are just buried like 10 or 12 deep so they estimate their are more like 40,000 bodies buried there. Eventually, they built another cemetery across the street (where Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis - is built) but the generation it was built for, was all killed in concentration camps, so it's almost completely empty.

After this, we went to two more synagogues and a museum with old burial artifacts (it was really neat to read about the whole traditional burial process of Judaism - and sad to think that the Germans ripped them of all of this tradition when they would just slaughter them). There were also a couple examples of old traditional dress and some paintings from really long ago showing different ceremonies. We also looked at this book of children's paintings and poems from when they were in the nearby ghetto and it was so sad. These little 7 year old kids are writing these poems about the most deep things. There was this one called the last butterfly talking about how she's seen her last butterfly because there are no butterflies in the ghetto and how she wants to go home but she is afraid that she has seen her last butterfly. So sad.

After we went here (these girls are a REALLY bad influence on me not eating American food in Europe), we went to KFC and got those awesome bowls with the mashed potatoes, corn and chicken all in them. It was amazing. We were instantly tired so we trekked home to nap and while they're chilling in the room, I'm updating you :)

I shouldn't need a nap though, I had like 8 hours of sleep last night and I don't think we're going to go as hard tonight because we have to all be on planes/trains around 10.

Oh, Prague has been wonderful!!

XOXO

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Now playing: Carrie Underwood - Before He Cheats
via FoxyTunes

Comments

[Homer]

D'oh!

[Becky]

Never thought I would want to go to Prague-but WOW what a tour guide you are! Now I want to go-probably not the hard rock discos or rap but the museums and Jewish quarters! I could probably do the sports bar thing if your mom was with me!! Be safe. We love you!