Prague

Well I have just got back from Prague, it was an interesting trip. The city is very beautiful, with a mismatch of architectural styles that only continental Europe can offer. It's particularly amusing that the city center has amazing French villas, gothic churches and baroque decorations, and just over the hill outside of the old city proper you have the wonderful architecture of the communist government. At times it felt like I was back in East Berlin.
What struck me the most about my trip to Prague though, was the cost. I had always heard, as a child, about countries that were really cheap to go and visit, normally they were asian countries (a fact mainly due to growing up in Australia and also due to the economy prevalent throughout the region at that point in time) but, by the time I started travelling such tales were merely that, tales. Prague was the first time that I have visited a country where I was probably earning ten or more times the standard salary. Now admittedly we had booked by lastminute and due to my girlfriends concerns had chosen a relative cheap place, but I was in for a shock. We arrived about 9pm on Wednesday night and got the bus marked on my printout to get to the "hotel". Well we got off at the right stop and then the instructions stated "walk across the road and you will see a street called 'zikova' and we are number 13". Well, we followed the instructions and sure enough we couldn't see any street called "zikova" and after a walk around the area I was beginning to get a little concerned. Eventually I hailed down a taxi and asked him ( he had the reassuring look of someone who had been drinking all day and had passed the state of drunkeness and now was in his own little world of happiness, suffice it to say I wasn't getting in the cab) and he gave me some directions and off we went. We eventually found the "hotel" which turned out to be some gigantic, communist hostel conversion, and immediately I was starting to get angry feeling somewhat ripped off. We entered and the old lady manning the reception didn't speak a word of english, but after I said my name she perked up a little and handed me an envelope. Here's where it started to get strange :) Inside was a coupon and a hand written letter which read as follows:

Dear My Smee,
you have reservation for 1 twin room with private bathroom from 27/10/2004 for 3 nights. The room is at Hotel Masarykova. Tha'kurova 1, Prague 6. Please, give them the voucher and the will give you the key at reception. Please, could you stop here (Zikova 13) tomorrow from 10am to 1pm to pay for accommodation. Thank you.

Accompanying this was a little diagram with a big highlighted blob, presumably showing us where our new hotel was situated. My confidence at this point was reaching an all time high and thus we set out for our new place. In the end it all worked out ok, the new hotel was actually the Universities techical college and converted into quite an acceptable hotel. What truly started to amaze me though was the cost of things. One night, being very tired and out of other easy options, we decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant. We each had a 3 course meal with multiple cocktails and coffees etc, when the bill came it was 400 kroner, which equates to about 8 pounds. All of a sudden I realised I was in the fabled country I had heard about as a kid!
I spent the majority of the next few days ducking into every store in between seeing all the tourist attractions. It was quite an experience to go out and fine dine, buy whatever you want at the shops and just not worry about money at all. Certainly it was the first experience of its kind for me.