Praha

This was my first experience on a night train. We got on the train in Zurich. I didn't like the night train, it was not very comfortable. I got what is called a "couchette", which basically means sleeping on a couch, but a couch where the cushions are made out of wood with a little bit of soft on the top.. not comfortable at all.
After we got to our hostel to drop off our bags and had lunch, we walked into the city.
They had a museum devoted to communism in the Czech Republic. It was pretty cool, and I liked the location: on top of a McDonalds, and right next to a casino. yeah, sure communism works....
Anywho, the museum was pretty cool, it had lots of old propaganda posters which made me laugh. They had a big statue of Stalin, and it was actually a pretty informative museum, I learned a lot about communism in the Czech.
We walked to Good King Applesauce, I mean... Wenceslas's square (so, it turns out he isn't a king at all... just a duke. very disappointing). It was a big shopping district, but it was also the place where some student lit himself on fire as a protest to being alive and not on fire... haha, okay that isn't really what he was protesting. We met up with Daniel, who was a foreign exchange student at Ballard my senior year, and he studies in Prague. Cara and I had lunch and chatted with him, but he had to go back to work. We then met up with Cara's friend Betka who had studied abroad at Miami and was Cara's suitemate. We walked with her to Charles Bridge (I think I have seen just about every world-famous bridge by now) and walked up to the castle. It was pretty cool, there was a sweet cathedral where Wenceslas is buried. There was a monastery close to the castle, and the monks there brew beer.. it was delicious!
We went to the Jewish quarter of Prague, where there were some boring museums, (but they do have cool pointer thingys to point at the torah, and they are just a long stick with a hand and pointing finger.) There were two really amazing things in the Jewish quarter.
One was a church where they had handwritten the names of all the Prague (or maybe all the Czech, i'm not sure) Jews who were killed in WWII. They actually had to rewrite them (the current one is the third time) due to damage from floods.
There was also a cemetery that was completely jam packed, because it was the only place you could bury Jews for around 200 years.
One of the most interesting things was a church that we went to, where just to the right and above the door there is a hanging arm. Legend has it that someone tried to steal the statue of Mary (a pretty famous one) that is on the altar, and his hand froze to it. The monk had to cut the arm off to get the statue back, and the monk hung the arm in the church to let thieves know.
There was also a famous astronomical clock there.. it was okay, some cool action things like a skeleton drinking when it chimed.
Thats it for Prague, Krakow is next!