Although Edwina had previously been, Prague remained a trip must-do. The gothic architecture and pumping nightlife makes for huge draw cards. We had a few days to enjoy the city and based ourselves near the Old Town. We ended up taking a few local tours and this gave us great in sight into the amazing history of the city. I was particularly interested in the recent communist regime and how this shaped the not so friendly demeanour of the locals that has made them the long-standing uncontested winner of the World Worst Customer Service Award. To summarise how many changes the city has gone through, our guide told us a story about her grandmother. She was over 80 years old and has lived in eight different countries. Ironically, she still lives in the same house she was born in, the country has just changed that many times and been under both Nazi and Communist rule. Very interesting stuff.
From here we followed a friends hot tip and travelled south to the small town of Chesky Krumlov. This cute town is something out of a fairy tail with a Castle surrounded by a beautiful winding river. This river would be the setting for one of our coolest activities in the Czech Republic - rafting pub crawl!
Our hostel hooked us up with three rafts full of like-minded young people, drove us out of town and wished us luck. What followed was about 7 hours of relaxing, fun-filled, riverside bar-hoping adventures. We finished up sailing into the centre of town, taking on the last of a few man made "shoot rapids", and disembarked. Awesome time complete.
From Chesky we had to double back up to Prague to make our way to our next destination, Budapest. Again this former communist city proves to be amazingly intriguing, fascinating, shocking and amazing. The city which is split into both the Buda and the Pest sides, turned out to be a Euro-trip favourite! (so far way too many favourites) We spent our days busily checked out the historical Buda, complete with amazing views over the rest of the city, and the pumping Pest. Highlights included the Terror Museum, housed in the infamous torture headquarters of both the Nazi and Communist parties, the beautiful turkish style baths and the pumping nighlife. Again the shocking recent history of the city made for a fascinating visit. The city is still very much recovering from the strangle hold of the former Iron Curtain. After World War Two, many Hungarians went on to be further punished by the new Communist leaders. The wounds are still fresh with the last Hungarian person transferred to the Russian Gulags (forced labour camps) returning in 2000. This mix of beauty and tragedy gives the city an amazing feel.
To balance all this serious thought provoking business, we also partied hard with our hostel buddies and even managed to bust out a little karaoke! Before you even ask... of course I did my famous song, "I don't wanna miss a thing" - Aerosmith. Lets just say... it is now a truly international hit!
We departed Budapest with a heavy heart after declining countless requests to take my karaoke act on a national tour. It was time to get our "brown bear" on (our tan) and sail the seven seas in Croatia. No fear, our next QDU update is just around the corner.
No comments:
Post a Comment