Wacky, Medieval Praha

My first day in Prague I found it to be dreary, dirty, miserable and utterly incomprehensible (all the signs are only in Czech). My first day in Prague I was ill and stuck around only near my hostel in the "new town" area.

My second day in Prague I found it to be picturesque, fairy-taleish, medieval and lovely in a slightly bizarre way. My second day in Prague I was ill but completely drugged up on Tylenol Severe Cold medicine. I LOVE TYLENOL COLD MEDICINE!! OMG, no wonder people get addicted to drugs - they are absolutely fantastic!

This morning I woke up with just as high a fever, breaking a cold sweat, with just as many aches as yesterday and a throat so sore I could barely swallow. But I was fed up with being bed-ridden after two days and decided to self-medicate...and what a difference drugs make. I know that once the drugs wear off the aches and fever will return with a vengeance, but I'm not going to let that happen because I'm not going to let the drugs wear off (until I run out...which is in three more doses). I am truly amazed at what a couple little pills can do - I walked around pretty much all of Prague today for 12 straight hours and I still feel like I have the energy to do another 12. And I think Tylenol Cold must have some uppers in it because I've been in an absurdly positive mood all day.

Ok, don't mean to sound like an addict.

Prague (the Male Strana and Stare Mestro parts) is really lovely in a surreal way with wacky unmatching medieval, cubist and/or Disney-ish architecture throughout the city. Charles Bridge is full of wacky statues and wacky characters, and the Astronomical Clock in the main square of Stare Mestro is very...wacky. Prague is just wacky, in a lovely medieval way.

However. The food is unforgivably disgusting. It occurred to me that in every major city you see Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, French restaurants...but you rarely see or hear about Eastern European restaurants. That's because Eastern European food is atrocious!! First, it is heavy on game: venison, rabbit, duck. Then even when they use meats I do like (beef or pork), they go and ruin it by cooking it in some inedible way. I really wanted to like it. I went to a Czech restaurant for lunch today and ordered what seemed the most appetizing (although to be honest, nothing on the menu looked at all appetizing to me, except the scrambled eggs and eggs with bacon added on the menu for tourists) - pork shoulder marinated in garlic with stewed spinach and bread dumplings. BLECH!! YUCK YUCK YUCK. Bread dumplings are doughy, starchy round discs that taste like nothing and are not good or satisfying in any way. The pork was really dry and way too salty. The only thing half-way edible on the plate was the spinach, which was bland and overly salty at the same time. My mouth was outraged at how one can take ingredients with so much promise and turn them into something so inedible.

I decided to give Czech food another try before completely dismissing it, so I figured I would stick to something that you can't really go wrong with - sausages! I stopped by a stand crowded with Czechs and tourists devouring beer and hot dogs and ordered a Prague wurst - a humongous, red juicy sausage put in a bun and covered with a very mild mustard. I took a couple bites then threw the rest away. It wasn't bad per se...but neither was it good. I will happily put bad foods (high fat, high cholesterol, sugary, etc.) into my body but only if they taste so good that it's completely worth clogging my arteries or gaining a few pounds (i.e. almond croissants, croque madame, really good steak frites, margaritas, green tea flavored anything, etc.). This sausage didn't fall into that category. So I'm done with Czech food - I'm sticking to Asian food in Prague.

On the subject of Asians, there are SO many frikking Korean people in Prague. I know Prague is a popular tourist destination, but the number of Korean people here is NOT normal. Which makes me wonder - was there recently some special feature on Prague or a Korean soap opera based in Prague or something?? Nothing causes Koreans to act in droves like a soap opera.