(pardon the lame pun) Czech it out

I had for the longest time heard about how beautiful Prague was, and i remember being somewhat frustrated when the same school trip which i was on some time ago basically made a huge circle around the city, and never getting close.

So when i finally got there, it sure didn't disappoint. Talking about an embarrassment of architectural riches doesn't begin to describe the place. I suppose though that unavoidably, as a result of this, tourists have been drawn to the place in their multitudes. Even though i was there at end November (which i assume is still somewhat of an off-season), tourists (which includes me) seemed to make up a larger proportion of the people in the city than locals, especially in the old city centre. So while on the one hand i may have drawn some comfort from the many English-language signs all over the shops and restaurants at the town centre (especially when Czech is an extremely frustrating language to learn - exhibiting a generous usage of consonants with alien diacritics that intimidate the English speaker to no end), i knew at the same time that this was all too touristy, and took away somewhat from the natural charm of the city. Now that i think of it, in fact, if World Showcase at Epcot had featured a Czech pavillion, i could pretty much imagine it being pretty much identical to the Prague old town centre, perhaps just sans cheery shopkeepers and food service staff with a nametag with the name of their hometown (e.g. Brno, Czech Republic) proudly emblazoned under their name.

Somewhat closer to home, with the Czech Republic being the birthplace of Bata shoes, i guess i shouldn't have been surprised to come across this one night while i was walking by Wenceslas Square (where a lot of the happenings of the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution took place), to come across not just a Bata store, but seven floors worth of it (and with almost nary a white canvas shoe in sight)

Unfortunately, Prague was also the place when my camera decided to cause some trouble by acting up whenever i tried to take pictures in broad daylight. So one morning i was walking along the Vltava River, snapping away, when the pictures started to look like this (well this is not the exact picture, and i've since tried to salvage the pictures as best as i can with whatever limited photo editing prowess that i have). I suppose you could say that the picture looks somewhat artistically taken, but well i think that's just an euphemism for bad. But however you see it, the fact is that this problem plagued my camera for the rest of the trip (so it looks like it's camera upgrading time). But i guess that even if i was not able to take the nicest pictures, i'm glad that at least i had the chance to be there to try and take pictures that ended up failing on me.

On top of that, well the Czech Republic being the Czech Republic, i think i must have never drunk as much alcohol as i did in the four or so days i was there, such that by the end of my time there the one other Czech word i had to learn was čaj (pronounced chai - you see what i mean about the language?) - tea, which was to be my new beverage of choice for much of the rest of the trip (just as well that this is the word for tea too in all the other Slavic language-speaking countries i was in too)...