Photos and more

I've posted a bunch of photos at praguerock.shutterfly.com

These are primarily my "tourist" photos of St. Wenceslas Square and Wallenstein Palace & Garden. Wallenstein Palace is the current seat of the Czech parliament and senate, and it's a really awesome courtyard with manicured bushes and peacocks running around and weirdly violent/quasi-sexual statues.

St. Wenceslas Square is the major tourist attraction in Prague with lots of shopping and over-priced restaurants and pickpockets. A statue of St. Vaclav (Wenceslas in English and the inspiration for the popular Christmas song) is at the far end of the square, and behind it is the National Museum, which was sort of an attempt in the nineteenth century to will a Czech identity into existence by collecting together random pieces of Czech culture.

There are also some pictures of my temporary dorm which is pretty meager. The toilet is especially strange--there's a flat surface with very little water and then a steep incline into a hole. So you end up crapping onto a plate which then requires massive water force to wipe it clean. Luckily, the attendants clean the bathroom everyday.

At the risk of making this post too long, I'll also describe last night. A bunch of us from the dorm went to a restaurant that is a blatant attempt to highjack a foreigner's idea of what an Austrian beer garden would be, including an accordionist and a Soldier Svejk theme--Soldier Svejk is a popular character from Czech literature. He is a good-natured ineffectual servant of the Austrian army. The book includes a lot of cartoons that adorned the walls of this place. It was fun but definitely for the tourists, not the locals.

I had boarsteaks--boar schnitzel, actually. Boar is a pretty tough meat, not too bad really, but kind of unimpressive. Like a chewier steakburger.

Later we walked around by the river, catching part of a Gypsy funk band concert and then walking across the highly popular Charles Bridge, where we heard a small ragtime outfit. Pretty nice, all around.