Prague: Last Day

*Disclaimer: Our last hotel did not offer internet connection in our room, thus this blog on our last day in Prague is three days late. Sorry!

Sadly we are leaving the ornate city of Prague. And we are riding out in style, on a European train to Vienna. We will only be in Vienna for three days so our stay will probably not be as relaxing as Prague, but just as exciting. I’ve decided to sing Sound of Music songs until we arrive at our platform in Vienna. Alex probably won’t be too happy about that, oh well.

Our final day in Prague was the most relaxing of them all. Only restaurants, souvenir shops and the Christmas markets were open on Christmas day, so there wasn’t much to do around the city. So we spent all day watching Christmas/Old movies on youtube and google videos. We watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas, WHAM music video to “Last Christmas”, Meet Me in St. Louis, The Nightmare before Christmas, Babes in Toyland, The Shining, and ended the night watching comedy clips.

Sometime in between laying around and watching tv, I took a stroll around Wenceslas Square. Alex wasn’t feeling well and I was restless so I went out for a brat for lunch, then took the 9 Tram to its end, and back. I saw another part of town and realized that all of Prague isn’t like the city center. The city center is very nice, and outside of it the architecture becomes bland and it looks more slumish…like any other country I guess.

Even now, as we are leaving the country we are just beginning to see how most of the country is. There are areas where it looks like a shanty town – just shack after run down shack. Some of the suburbs we are passing do not have paved roads and some of the houses are literally falling to pieces. It kind of puts a damper on all the beauty we saw in the city. Not that Prague’s image is ruined, just a reminder that there is a reality behind the well-kept city center.

Also I mentioned to Alex two days ago that I could count, on one hand, how many black people I’ve seen since being in the Czech Republic. Or Arabs, or any minority markedly different from the Czech peoples. I’ve seen many Asians, and many European looking people, and that’s all. I’m not sure if there is a significant minority here with a significant difference in skin color, or if the minority is something more like a community of people who identify themselves with Slovakia.

Coming from a country that is so diverse, it sometimes amazes me that places I’ve traveled to have populations that are so homogenous. I realize that America is much bigger than small countries like Lebanon, Czech Republic, etc, but it still amazes me.

Now off to Vienna!