50th - 52nd day (26-28.10.22)

On Monday, after my little break from traveling, we continued. In the afternoon, my friend Jaromir and I got on a bus that was supposed to take us to Prague. In the evening, we arrived in the Czech capital. We checked into our hostel and grabbed a bite to eat. Since we were both a bit tired from the bus ride, we decided to get some rest for the night.

The next day, we started exploring the city on foot. First, we walked through the Old Town (Prague 1) to the Vltava River. The architecture was mixed and took us on a journey through the epochs of European architecture. We crossed the river to reach a viewpoint on the other side. We walked up the wooded hill, at the top of which stood a small tower resembling a slimmed-down version of the Eiffel Tower. We climbed the tower and felt the wind in our hair as we climbed the many steps.

We descended from the tower and visited the adjacent tourist pavilion, which had been entertaining visitors since the 19th century. In the pavilion, we found a mirror maze, a huge painting, and a room with funhouse mirrors. We took pictures of our distorted bodies and laughed at the figures staring back at us. When we had enough, we continued to Prague Castle, which is rich in history. Jaromir told me that the Thirty Years' War began there when Napoleon II was thrown out of one of the windows. We visited the large Gothic church in the castle courtyard and walked through the small bourgeois streets around the castle. After that, we visited the Jewish quarter with its finely decorated facades and then returned to the hostel.

After a short rest at the hostel, we headed towards Žižkov (Prague 3) because friends had recommended bars in that neighborhood. We first went to a quieter bar where we played cards and had a cocktail, and then we moved on to a punk bar where we played foosball against Czechs. We met a group of young students and drank together. They told us about a concert happening the next day and invited us to join them. As the evening came to an end, we walked back to our hostel and fell exhausted into bed.

We took it easy on our last day in Prague. We rested so that we could go to the concert full of energy in the evening. In the afternoon, we went into town to grab something to eat, and then we took the tram to Prague 6, where the concert was supposed to take place. We had a few beers under chestnut trees at the venue, and we were told that the communist party of Czechoslovakia was founded in this building. When the concert started, we went inside with our Czech friends and were pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed the music. After the concert, I had a conversation with the band and asked them when they would be performing in Berlin. They told me that they had been planning to for a long time but unfortunately didn't have any contacts in Berlin. Although I'm not in the industry, I promised the guys that I would try to find them a venue in Berlin as soon as I return. We watched another band's concert together, playing punk music, and then went to a youth meeting place where we drank, played foosball, and socialized with the Czechs. It was late at night when we started our journey back home.

The next morning, we didn't have much time left, so we took a leisurely walk to the train station, where I said goodbye to Jaromir and boarded the train to Bratislava.