Prague Sight Seeing

Today’s blog post is going to delve briefly into the realm of travel blogging so, without further ado, here goes…

I just got back from an ozzum holiday abroad! I got to spend time with uni friends, some of whom I don’t see all that often, and appreciate all the sights that the city had to offer.

Fuck it. I’m gonna break my proper nouns rule. It was Prague. We were in Prague.

There were 6 of us going and, since we were all interested in doing and seeing different things, we split up quite frequently. It took some of us a little while to adjust to this strange system of not doing stuff as a group but once we got into the swing of things it was pretty good.

Our first port of call was the Charles bridge, the big, impressive, old thing that is always crowded with tourists no matter the season. We used it as a meeting point a lot of the time because it was pretty easy to remember and locate. The Charles bridge links the 2 main areas of Prague: Old Town (the bit closer to the airport I think) and New Town.

Charles bridge observed from a distance.

On the first day we also visited the John Lennon wall, a colourful bunch of famous graffiti which you could add your own parts to, and Prague “castle”. Yeah, I used quotation marks. That’s because it’s not actually a castle; it’s an whole area where the king used to live. There’s a beautiful cathedral, basilica and series of exhibitions about the stuff there. This is the thing you see on postcards. By the time we got there it was too late to go in but the view was still pretty impressive.

On our way to the castle we stopped off for drinks and ice cream and happened to catch the small 3 Kings parade going past. We cringed a little at the guy in black face but otherwise appreciated the Christmas spirit of it all.

St Vitus’ cathedral – this is pretty much the first thing you see after entering Prague “castle”.

The view from the steps leading up to Prague “castle”.

The John Lennon wall! There was a guy taking Polaroids of people who wanted their picture as a souvenir.

On day 2 a friend showed me the astronomical clock in New Town (later that evening 3 of us raced over to see it do its thing on the hour), we went up the tower on the New Town side of the Charles bridge (only when I got to the top did I discover that she’s not overly fond of heights) and explored Old Town, passing by several museums.

The view of Charles bridge from the New Town tower.

It was a shame about the construction work surrounding it, but the spot surrounding the astronomical clock was always busy with admiring tourists.

Later we returned to the Kafka museum as a group. I know a lot more about the guy now but have yet to finish one of his books. The vibe of the place was pretty cool and it was nice to have a sit down at the end while I waited for the others. Just outside the Kafka museum is what I like to refer to as: the pissing blokes (see below). Also, there’s a cool moving Kafka head sculpture thing in New Town if you know where to look!

The Kafka head moves layer by shiny layer to represent the guy’s thought process, I think. There’s probably a more eloquent way to put that but meh. This is my blog. I can be as un-eloquent as I want.

Look at the 2 blokes pissing on their country! 🙂

On day 3 we explored the Jewish quarter of town. It was a sombre experience seeing the numerous gravestones and names of Jewish victims printed in tiny font on the synagogue wall. Maybe it was due to the combination of being ill, tired, hungry and desperately in need of the loo, but I was almost moved to tears.

A grey day for wandering around the grey Jewish cemetery. I felt kind of bad taking pictures but I had to pay to get in so I’d be damned if I wasn’t at least going to try and capture the experience.

Only one of the synagogues was like this but it was still unsettling to see the vast number of names.

After a considerable amount of faffing around trying and failing to get to Prague “castle” before it closed, we went to Prague’s fake Eiffel tower. The view on the walk there was much better than the actual view from the top of the tower but it was the naff touristy thing to do and I was a tourist so why the hell not?

The view from the first floor of the fake Eiffel tower (the top floor didn’t have an open bit, just dusty windows so I didn’t take many decent pictures up there).

The view on the walk to the fake Eiffel tower. You can see Prague “castle” on the left.

The last sight of the day was something that only one of my other friends was up for: the sex machines museum. This was easily my favourite part of the trip. It wasn’t as much fun as the sex museum in Amsterdam (which I totally recommend) but it was pretty damn amusing. I was a bit surprised that none of the others wanted to join us but we had a good time anyway. Maybe once I start having sex I won’t be as interested in random erotic museums. Who knows?

I only took a few pictures here because you feel pretty self-conscious taking pictures at this kind of museum. Thankfully, my friend was not so affected. This is one of the pictures that I took.

On our last full day in Prague I finally got round to going around Prague “castle” properly. One of my friends had been desperately wanting to go to Golden Lane from the very start of the holiday so we obliged and it was much more interesting than I’d expected it to be. I was under the impression that it was just going to be a street of colourful shops but, in fact, there was a historical element to it that made it much more fun. They also sold beer shampoo so that was one souvenir down and 2 more to go (dad always buys stuff for the rest of us when he goes on business trips so I try to find stuff for my family too while I’m abroad)!

An example of the cool history stuff in Golden Lane.

What Golden Lane looks like from the outside. Each little house was either an exhibit commemorating whoever used to live there (e.g: Kafka) or a shop.

St Vitus’ cathedral from the inside.

After I finished with Prague “castle” I spent some time tram hopping, at first trying to get a more effortless view of the city below (the guidebook I got out of the library recommended tram 22 for that specific purpose) and then trying to figure out how to meet one of my friends by the Communist museum. I still think that the view is better if you walk it.

Speaking as someone who is fascinated by lived experience, the Communist museum was amazing! I would’ve stayed a lot longer had I the time to watch the last 5 interviews on display but I also wanted to do a couple more museums before the end of the day.

The toilet sign in the Communist museum made me smile. Which way does your gender zag?

The Communist museum is more fun to read than look at really but here’s a picture to give you an idea of the basic set up.

Next up was the torture instruments museum. The last and possibly first time I went to a torture museum was with uni friends in Amsterdam. It was reputably crap but we had a good time by reading out the displays in funny voices (I hesitate to use the word “accent” because one of us just occasionally yelled/whispered a word of what he was saying). We didn’t do that this time and, although this museum was easily better and more atmospheric, it wasn’t as much fun.

The reason I took a picture of this is because a similar chastity thing was on display in the sex machines museum.

Last but not least was the chocolate museum; funnily enough, this was right next door to the torture museum. Admission got me 50% off a specific thing they were selling in the shop, a free truffle sample before I went in, a demonstration and sample of praline chocolate making, and more free samples from dispensaries within the museum itself. It was a bit child-oriented and the fact that I went alone meant that I couldn’t really take advantage of the photo spots but, asides from being a bit on edge for various stupid reasons I’ll get into later, I enjoyed myself.

Mmm chocolate!

On the last day we milled around Prague, I bought my last souvenir and we appreciated the free wormhole of books in the entrance to Prague library.

There’s a mirror on either end inside the stack of books so it looks like it’s neverending!

So there’s all the good stuff and sights that we saw, made even better for doing it with friends. However, you can’t have meaningful happiness without the polar opposite and I also think I reached peak social anxiety on this particular holiday (yup, here comes the psychology. You can’t escape its cognitive clutches that easily!).

I mentioned in a blog post a while back that I used to get something I call “counter fear” when I was younger, but what I thought I’d gotten over seemed to get a lot worse during this holiday. The combination of being ill (and desperately trying to ignore it because that is how I deal with far too many of my problems) and having a lot of early mornings didn’t particularly help.

I pretty much stopped eating lunch during the 6 days I spent in Prague (with a couple of exceptions when I packed a Nutella sandwich). At first it was because I was ill and food seemed to make me nauseous but it quickly turned into “oh God I don’t want to talk to this person I’m just going to fuck it up in some infinitesimal way and then overthink it”. That’s a bit of an understatement really. Language barriers unnerve me. I now know about 7 Czech words but it’s not really enough to communicate in the local lingo.

Communication wasn’t even really the issue, everywhere we went people seemed to speak English, it was more the fact that I felt like I was being rude and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was fucking up somehow and getting in everyone’s way. I figured that I wanted to lose weight anyway so what did it matter if I missed a few meals? I’d leave it till I got stomach pains and force myself to buy something if I absolutely had to or make myself something back in the comfort of the Airbnb.

I’ve only told a couple of friends about this in depth because I know how stupid it is and I didn’t particularly want to admit the level of stupidity I’d sunk to or how miserable it was making me. We were on holiday and I didn’t want to bring my friends down with my issues, especially when I don’t get to see some of them that often. I’m home now and if I go through my reasoning logically, it clearly makes no sense:

• Skipping meals while ill is never a good idea. It gets harder to tell illness symptoms apart from hunger, for starters.
• Although I’m annoyingly self-conscious about how I look and would like to be substantially thinner than I am, I’m not fat. I’m a perfectly healthy weight, according to my BMI. My idea of thin is probably, in conjunction with modern western ideals, unrealistic.
• Whoever is on the other side of the till most likely won’t care about my blundering English awkwardness. They’re probably used to foreigners stupider than me and, even if they do care, it’s not like I’m ever going to see them again.
• Sometimes, I think my definition of getting in someone’s way is the equivalent of taking up space. As a living organism, it is perfectly within my rights to occupy space.

It’s embarrassing. The last time I semi-starved myself for the purposes of avoiding unfamiliar social interaction while out with friends was in high school, if I remember correctly. Actually no, I did it during lunch at sixth form because of one slightly awkward interaction with one of my mum’s colleagues (she works in the kitchens at my old school), but at least then I was able to make myself a packed lunch beforehand. Anyway, I kind of hoped that I’d progressed, at least a little, from that point but apparently I’ve gotten nowhere. When I was in Amsterdam I still got a little nervous about ordering food but I got over the feeling there much faster.

I guess the question is: should I be doing something about this? Am I just being shy or is this the kind of problem that I perhaps should be seeking help for? Should I do something or will it all go away after a good night’s sleep and an absence of illness? I still remember one of my high school friends telling me that she’d started CBT for her social anxiety and, at the time knowing very little about mental health, I asked her why. She proceeded to list off a series of things that I knew I felt and did all the time. Ever since then I’ve always sort of wondered. With what I know about my family’s mental health now, is what I perceive as normal necessarily normal?

I guess I’ll never know if I don’t talk about it. I’m a bit of a hypocrite really, going on about how important it is to talk to people when I’ve spent most of my holiday trying to hide my problems from my friends. I asked one of them to make me eat lunch and couldn’t really bring myself to explain why I was skipping it in the first place. I don’t like to admit it when things are wrong (if I admit it I have a responsibility to fix it because I’m responsible for my own wellbeing and, despite being a “responsible” person I generally find responsibility fucking stressful). On that day I ended up skipping breakfast instead and I don’t even know why. For whatever reason, it seemed like the right thing to do. I think the only things I ate were an omelette and a small Nutella sandwich, which might’ve been manageable if I hadn’t spent the day on my feet seeing the sights. I knew it was stupid. I knew that it made no sense. But the rational part of my brain couldn’t really get through to whatever cognitive bias was in control.

It’s good to be home. I don’t feel on edge here and I know the language. I have my own bedroom again and I can cry in peace, should I feel the need (crying in a chocolate museum without being noticed is very difficult to do, for the record).

Crying is strange. I know that I use it to get things out of my system and, like most people, I prefer to do it unobserved, but the few times I’ve ended up doing it actually in the presence of someone else it’s been kind of nice (well, as nice as things will ever get when you’re in tears for an unhappy reason). At least then I know for sure that someone cares (that’s a stupid thing to say, I know. I have loving friends and family, but at a certain point it can feel like I’m on my own, even when I’m not). I guess the reason I cry privately is because I don’t like to think of people walking on eggshells around me, plus I’m a relatively private person and have mixed feelings about drawing attention to myself. Then again, one of the few upsides of crying is that it’s a good way to get hugs. Maybe I should just ask my friends for hugs more often. Most people can appreciate a good hug. Maybe I should become a more huggy person, if I can get past the overthinking bit of my hugging. Hmm. Something to think about. God. Thinking. If I could do less thinking that would be swell.

Well, I reckon I’ve rambled on for long enough now so I’ll end this post here. Go visit Prague!