Prague

I'm lazy - yes Kristen, we are going to Paris in a couple of weeks. I can't be bothered posting a comment...
The picture above was from my bathroom window in Prague. Man, getting there was a funny story. I won't give much away, but let's just say that it's the first time I've ever been in an elevator without an inner door. That's right, the lift had a floor, and ceiling, and 3 walls. The only doors were the ones on each floor, and you could watch them go by in all their glory everytime you took the lift. I don't have a picture because it was too crammed to fit me and a camera.

We stayed in a suburb of Prague called Zizkov. I thought the place was a little shabby, I mean the whole suburb, not just our place. I told our tour guide "Simmon" that we were staying in Zizkov, and he apologised for it. It's hard to describe the place, but I'll try to use Sydney parallels that are doomed to fail. Zizkov is part of Prague. Try to imagine the whole area like the Sydney CBD, and Zizkov is like Redfern. I'm not ragging on either Zizkov or Redfern, but all I'll say is that it's not really a "tourist accommodation" area.

And the other thing, Prague has the most amazing public transport system I have yet seen. Their "Metro" = our CityRail, but a million times better. Train stations are mostly underground and are aplenty. Trains come every 2.5 to 5 minutes. No joke. The trains are nice too. Then above ground, there's the tram system. Plenty of stops everywhere, and trams come at the same frequency. I asked the tour guide about it. He told me that the Communist government during the Russian times built the public transport system because no one owned cars. How cool is that.

Another cool thing, the WHOLE place is cobble stone streets, made from rounded trapezoidal brinks of granite. This means that cars driving over it is REALLY noisy, and when its wet, its perilious for both cars and pedestrians because its so slippery.

Interestingly enough, our street was one of the few that had asphalt down the middle. Really weird, it was cobble stone for about a metre from the curb into the road, and it looks like someone just poured tar or asphalt down the middle. I asked Simmon whether it was to provide better traction for cars. He said: "No, when the communists dug up the cobble stones to lay or fix some pipes, they were too lazy to replace the granite, instead they just poured on the asphalt."

In my ignorance, I asked him why there were so many cobble stone streets. He replied "before asphalt was around, what else would you make a street from?". Good point. It makes me wonder, somewhere out there, there is a really big hole, where a lot of granite used to be.