00:11
Welcome back to Asami's World Tour Voice Log Part 3. We are now in Prague, Czechia
or Czech Republic, whichever way you want to call it, um, プラハですね。 これは35歳右左のナイちゃんがエピソードでも話していて、
なんかそれ聞いてて、ウィーンに1週間いるし、1週間もいなくてもいいかな、2日、中2日か3日ぐらい、どっか近くの街行ってもいいかなと思って、ちょうどナイちゃんのエピソードを聞いて、
あ、プラハあるじゃん!って思って、プラハ行きました。 I also took this Airbnb at Prague, so everything was pretty smooth.
I think the only trouble I had in Prague is the train to get to Prague. なんかエンジンの故障があったみたいで、最初は10分遅れとか20分遅れだったんですけど、どんどんどんどん伸びてって、結局2時間以上遅れぐらいで、3時間ぐらいかな、遅れて電車が出ました。
I wish I could spend a bit more time in the city of Vienna because the Vienna train station is a little bit outside of the city, so kind of just trapped at the eki, but it was fine, I didn't have to pay extra or anything.
So it was good, got to Prague, maybe instead of getting to Prague at around 2pm, I got there around 5-6pm, but that's okay because I still have, remember it's summer in Europe, so I still have about 4-5 hours of daylight.
So off I went to this restaurant, it's a chain restaurant because I've seen a couple of these elsewhere in different neighborhoods, but I think it's called Lokal.
It's like a shokudo-like atmosphere, super simple, no frills, just serving up local food, which is common for this part of the world, it's a lot of meat, a lot of potatoes, a lot of sauerkraut, so I had zero complaints.
Anyway, so yeah, had that, and I had what I can only describe as inside-out roll cabbage.
So like, roll cabbage is meat wrapped in cabbage, right? But this is like a thin pork wrapped in sauerkraut, which was delicious, I loved it, so that was really good.
03:11
And nice perks about these solo traveling is, like, there were people waiting in a pretty crowded place, but the waitress saw that I was alone and was like, oh, you can come here, and shared the food with me, so I was able to eat it in no time.
So if you are in Prague, yeah, check out Lokal, I think everything on their menu is so good. In the two days that I was there, I went there twice because there was something I wanted to try on the first day, but they were like, oh, sorry, we're out of this, so I went the second day and tried, so that was good.
Prague is another beautiful city, and I can only describe Prague as this very multi-layered aesthetics city, because you have your, you know, gothic architecture.
Churches to like medieval even, you know, forts and bridges and stuff. At the same time, they also have, you know, Czech Cubism, so like, still kind of like a modernism influence.
And they also have, like, Art Deco, Art Nouveau style, like, famous, Moussa is a famous artist, right? Whose museum I also went. So like, all of this are just like layered on top of another.
And then there's also like, the former communism sort of sprinkled here and there. It's not very overt, but you see it, and you'll recognize it. And it's just like so rich in history.
And many cities are very rich in history, but maybe because it's so compact in Prague, it felt like they're all layered on top of another. And as a lover of architectural contrast, I really enjoyed walking around getting lost in Prague.
And even though I was only there for two days, I feel like I got a lot out of it, at least for the kind of stuff that I want to do. And so what did I do? I walked on the bridge, the Karla bridge, right? I don't know how you pronounce it.
I think it's like Charles bridge, but like, make it Czech, you know? And that, and went to the Prague Castle, of course. It was a very hot day to get up there because it's on top of the hill. But it was very worth it.
06:13
And then once I was at the Prague Castle, I took my time to climb up 300 flights of stairs to go to the top of the tower and see the panoramic view, which was very, very, very worth it. I also went to Cubism Museum.
I didn't know much about Czech cubism, I guess. So that was interesting and really was tempted to buy this very nice set of sort of like a espresso cups and saucers. But it was probably better that I didn't get any or didn't really exactly have the ways to carry it back home.
Yeah, by the way, I did this entire trip of this, you know, one month or so with one carry-on suitcase and one 18 liter backpack. And yeah, everyone was kind of surprised like, oh, that's it?
And yeah, actually, it wasn't that hard. I can talk more about it, I guess, if you want, maybe on a separate episode. But I do travel light and the reason why I wanted to especially do this carry-on system only was because I didn't want to risk losing my luggage by checking it in.
And I didn't really see the reason why I need to check in. I didn't have any plans of, you know, carrying large amounts of liquid or, you know, multiple batteries. I didn't even have my laptop with me. So yeah, it kind of worked out.
I guess, you know, at times like this, being somewhat of a minimalist helps. And also, I was traveling to places where I knew I will have laundry access. So, you know, I was able to do laundries like once a week or so to get fresh set of clothes. And that's definitely helpful.
And also, yeah, it's summer, you know, everywhere I went was mild temperature, mild climate. I didn't have to pack too many, you know, bulky jackets or anything. That definitely helped.
But yeah, I do have a few tricks up my sleeves on how to reduce your sort of like toiletries and skincare items when you're traveling and other little tricks and hacks that I have developed over my years. So if anyone's interested, I will record a separate episode on that.
09:22
But back to Prague. So I think the most sort of interesting thing about Prague was this multilayered nature of different aesthetics that comes from different points of history that the city has, you know, seen. And much like Vienna, it is also an old city.
So the layout just makes sense, which made it very easy for, you know, the main part of Prague to be connected with myriads of trams, basically.
And I'm starting to feel that tram is a really good, yeah, ways of exploring cities. You know, it's kind of faster than the bus, but you still get to enjoy sort of the people watching aspects that you might not get in subway, although not some places, you know, subway is an experience on its own.
But yeah, and they have a lot of poppy seed pastries, not just like, kind of like a lemon cake poppy seed where, you know, poppy seeds are just sprinkled around. This is like, they use it like a jam or, you know, like a filling for cinnamon buns and stuff.
But instead of cinnamon, you get poppy seed pastes. So that was that. That was also pretty tasty. Kind of like a weak version of kurogoma, not as strongly flavored as kurogoma, but still has that kind of nutty, gritty texture type stuff. So yeah, that was interesting.
I do feel like if I had maybe a couple more days, I would have had more time to explore different maybe restaurants and extra few more museums, although the new Musia Museum was really satisfying.
It's dedicated to Alphonse Musia. Maybe many of you recognize this aesthetic if you just Google it and see his artworks. It's very recognizable style. And I guess I just knew of him.
I never really tried to understand his artistic practice or his career all that much. So seeing it all in one place and just the beautiful, beautiful prints that they display in a very sort of storytelling narrative way was very nice.
12:22
And it's always kind of fun to learn about the artist in conjunction with the history of the city that he or she was born or spent significant chunks of time in. So, yeah, I did go to many, many museums.
It's just my shokugyoubyo, I guess, at this point during my trip. But I would say Musia Museum was one of the more unique ones, for sure. So that's it for Prague. And the next episode, I'll be talking about Barcelona, which was my next stop. Yeah, stay tuned.
Hope you're not sick of my blabbering of travelogues yet. All right. Bye.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
