Japan to Australia via Eastern Europe Part 11 - Daz 9 - Prague Continued (damn these hungarian kezboards)...

I wake up early (story of this holiday) and wake up Ant in the process.... I catch up with a bit of Sky News (UK) and CNN but it is all the same crap from last night - more obssessing over the returned UK soilders from Iran. I switch it over to Eurotic TV and they give another prime example of music not to strip to - Roxette...

Deciding to get out of Prague's old city - Ant and I venture off to the Art Museum on the other side of the river... (Northside-iea)

It was a cold and windy day and Ant and I must have had rocks for brains to want to walk in this hideious weather... On the other side of the river lies the "Metronome" - a really terrible public statue/moneument thingy that replaced a giant statue of Stalin back in the days of communism. Apparently - the Prague people love the Metronome statue just as much as they loved Stalin (eg: not very much).

Beyond the Metronome - there was a run down communist style park. It had sort of felt like a post apocalyptic world which was overrun by skatingboarding punks... as you do... Plus the park had all of these signs pointing to some stewpid Expo 58 exhibition.

Being the suckers for punishment that Ant and I are - we had taken DK (or Don't Know) with us to find the Art Muesum - and in true DK style - we had big trouble finding it... After stumbling around the post apocalyptic world that is Northside-eia Prague - we managed to find it... and in keeping up with the post apocalyptic style of the place - it had looked like a bomb had hit the lobby of the place... Plus there was a sign saying that the national gallery hadn't raised enough money to make this place free (which isn't surprisng considering how crap the national gallery was in the Prague Castle). The museum was built in the 1920's - but it was in a functionalism style (think Belconnen Mall) so maybe you could say it was ahead of its time...

The museum itself was massive... Four floors of non-stop art, design, architecture... even theatre props, costumes and sets...! There was plenty of contempory art (including Warhol and heaps of interesting Czech stuff), a whole floor of Czech stuff (which was surprisingly good) and a floor of 19th Century French and Spanish, etc art. Of course - there was some really annoying americans who were as loud as all f!!k - which seems to be a recurring theme of this holiday.

The museum was truly a marathon - Ant and I were both physically and mentally exhausted... We decided to have lunch straight away - and found a cheap wood-fired pizzeria nearby.

Walking back into Prague - Ant and I both had come to the conclusion that the north side of Prague (across the river) was a lot "communistic" grungier than the old town/castle side of Prague...

The afternoon was shopping time - I had been waiting all year before I could go mental at H&M... I had to weave my way past the hoardes of shoppers fighting their way past the new Madonna-designed H&M collection (..... cough) and went mental and bought heaps of new H&M clothes.

There was a bit of a Hari Krishna /crazy Jesus shouting Czech woman dance off happening in the main shopping strip of Prague happening... which made things interesting!... (as you do)...

Ant buys a t-shirt at the Diesel Outlet shop (where some Czech old guy who really needs to act his age - was buying some Diesel stuff as well) and we get our pictures burnt onto a CD at a photo shop. I buy a drink at a nearby Albert stewpidmarket - where they were playing some more depressing music which really isn't retail friendly (Smashing Pumpkins doesn't make me want to buy more groceries)... I would love for them to start playing Nine Inch Nails or Joy Division music at Albert... or something.

We do something different for dinner and get some "Goulash Soup in Bread Roll" at the old town sqaure. It was very atmospheric and beautiful - very much like Fanatsy Land at Disneyworld at night time... or something. Complete with nazi stormtrooper security guards who would look home on the set of "Romper Stomper". The "Crazy Jesus Woman" was doing a bit of an encore at the old square - where she would be shouting "something something Jesus" in Czech at unsuspecting tourists dining at candlelight restaurants.

We head back to the apartment where we catch up with some German MTV. The new MTV show of choice at the moment is a reality-romance show called "The Flava of Love" staring Flava Flav from Public Enemy fame - with a bunch of wannabe losers vying for Flava Flav's luv. The highlight was a "Fried Southern Chicken" cook-off including one of the contestants cooking a "healthy" fried chicken alternative in a microwave - complete with tofu... Not Col. Sanders friendly... Mmmm... chicken in microwave with tofu... cough