What are some cool places to visit other than Prague?
And how bad is the language barrier? I’ve heard not many Czechs can speak English
Czechia
What are some cool places to visit other than Prague?
And how bad is the language barrier? I’ve heard not many Czechs can speak English
I've been to Prague, and everyone seems to speak very good English
I'm going to Brno this year, heard it was even cheaper than Prague and has unique Moravian food, so can't wait.
There are some small towns with epic castles and stuff too
Brno is definitely cheaper. Not sure what dishes you're expecting but the food is pretty much the same as in Prague.
It's pretty small, you can basically see everything in one day.
I'd say it's great for drinking, there's great bars and lots of craft beer.
what about Pilsen and Liberec?
>Pilsen
never been, supposedly quite nice, their beer is the best
>Liberec
You can hike up or take the cable car to this retrofuturistic lookout tower/hotel on Mount Ještěd and have coffee and ice cream there which is probably the most interesting attraction
Botanical garden and zoo are nice but not really notable, I guess the zoo has albino tigers
The municipal swimming pool is impressively good (at least by europoor standards) and has 2 100m long water slides that go fast. The "Babylon" is imo worse and generally tacky
Nearby castles like Frýdlant and Grabštejn are worth a visit (castles in general are 100% hit and epic in my experience)
Jablonec has a glass industry museum and I think you can tour glass factories, but I visited the one in Lindava which is very out of the way near Česká Lípa, you pay like 100 CZK to go into the workshop and talk to the guide and watch the artisans however long you want, I think they also do tryouts if you arrange in advance. This was really cool and I'd recommend it if the idea of watching dudes make fancy glass vases and maybe making your own glass vessel sounds like a fun afternoon to you. Bigger factories will probably have machines and it will be less personal
Libverda is a spa village with the meme acidic water and fresh oplatky, comfy mini-Karlovy Vary experience
Zittau across the border in Germany is also a nice quiet town with a ruined castle in the nearby village Oybin
In general I think you will need a car to do anything outside of Liberec city and maybe Jablonec city
I also recommend Brno, the ossuaries there are cool and I liked that it was WAY less touristy than Prague. You can also catch a train to Moravsky Krumlov from there for like $2 and see Mucha's masterpiece The Slav Epic.
Pilsen is also cool but felt much more like a "locals" city to me, less touristy and generally less sightseeing to do. The old square and cathedral are nice, and the historic underground tour is a cool way to spend an hour. I think touring the Pilsner Urquell brewery is probably the best thing to do, you get to drink unfiltered pilsner out of 100+ year old barrels in an underground tunnel.
Cesky Krumlov is a sweet little town outside of Ceske Budejovice, and they have a baroque festival every year where you can see events inside the castle. The castle also has a moat with bears in it.
Can you stay in the hotel?? That's wild
>The Slav Epic
Damn I'm glad I saw this in 2016 when it was in Prague, didn't know they moved it back.
>Can you stay in the hotel?? That's wild
Yes although it's expensive (cheapest room 2000 CZK/night compared to like 1200 in Hotel Praha on the city's main square). I remember it from a decade ago when it was kind of rundown, no English menu and prices in the restaurant half of what they are now (and 3x bigger portions from the looks of it). See on their website if you're interested: jested.cz
Also turns out the cable car is closed until further notice because of a fatal accident in October 2021...
>Český Krumlov
Worth it but this has to be the 2nd most touristy place in the country even above Karlštejn
>Worth it but this has to be the 2nd most touristy place in the country
Damn, really? That's so odd for such a tiny town. I guess I got lucky that I went in September and it was pretty empty
I was lucky to have a Czech friend who coached me a little bit, but really the best thing for me personally was just sitting around in the Czech Republic and listening to people and train announcements, and reading signs. Lately I've been using ChatGPT which has honestly been SO much better than Duolingo or Google Translate when it comes to colloquial Czech.
>Ř
Somehow I was able to figure it out well enough that Czechs were impressed. I'm from the American South, I think anyone can do it if I can. Also in spoken Czech no one actually seems to give that much of a shit if it just sounds like "ch" or "zh" or "zsch" or whatever
I went to Cesky Krumlov in September last year too. I was there on a weekend and it was pretty empty. The bars were fun at night, but none were even half full.
Prague was pretty busy though, but only around the main square. If you walked 4 blocks into the city in any direction, you could get a table without a reservation om a weekend. We ate this place called Klášterní šenk outisde of the main part of Prague during the week and we had the place to ourselves when we did an early dinner. That place was insanely good and really fucking inexpensive. I got a giant lamb shank with sides for $10 and $1.50 draft beers that were quite possibly the best beers Ive ever had in my life. Prague is touristy, but it's the best fucking city in Europe.
Sounds perfect, I'm only there for a couple of days anyway, plan to hit as many craft beer bars as I can.
Prague -> Kolin -> Kutna Hora/Podebrady
I'll show you around if you want anon
do you carry a gun?
American living here but not in Prague. This place is going to shit and is becoming more expensive every week with runaway inflation and stagnant wages. It was a lot cheaper here before covid and now prices are getting to be more like in the US. If you stay in Prague you will be fine with English and same for Brno but but in other cities you will definitely need to know some Czech. Though quite a lot of younger Czechs speak basic English but aren't very confident speaking it to native speakers. The language is also pretty difficult to learn. It is so hard that it is very common for most Czech kids to have to go to a speech therapist in order to speak the language properly.
Go to Karlovy Vary, Kutna Hora, Karlštejn, Mikulov, Kroměříž, and Český Krumlov. Any of the spa towns are great to visit.
> It is so hard that it is very common for most Czech kids to have to go to a speech therapist
I've been learning Czech for about a year and it's just recently starting to click. The last time I was in the Czech Republic I could actually tell when native Czechs would mess up a conjugation and correct themselves, or sometimes even their friend would correct them. Sometimes street signs aren't even conjugated properly. It's a pretty fun language though, and there's so much great Czech music, literature and film that suddenly becomes intelligible.
It took me a little over a year to get a hang of the language but I still don't speak it fluently yet. I'm terrible at learning languages and I have a very hard time with Czech.
I still can't say that stupid letter no matter how hard I try. I have basically given up on trying to speak Czech 100% properly and just want to speak it enough that people understand me.
>It is so hard that it is very common for most Czech kids to have to go to a speech therapist in order to speak the language properly.
Funny thing, I was one of them, because I could not pronounce the "R" and "Ř" correctly.
My parents took me to the speech therapist and I could learn the "Ř" sound successfully, but the "R" sound was something I never learned. and I pronounce it kindof like French people.
I remember how pissed my speech therapist was when she saw me after couple years when I went there with my parents and my younger brother, who was also getting speech therapy. We briefly talked and after that she told my parents it was useless work with me and the time spent on me to learn "R" was totally wasted.
>because I could not pronounce the "R" and "Ř" correctly
Same here, when i was little i lost front teeth and didn't learn how pronounce r and ř. I went to speach therapist but to no avail. Fortunately, I touched a high voltage electric fence once and it cured my condition
every country incl. your homeland got insanely expensive in recent years.
not much we can do about other than get used to it because the prices are here to stay
Glad to hear it. Less of you Amerisharts around, the better.
+1 for Cesky Krumlov. Awesome locals bars. Definitely do the crazy raft trip through the town for $25. It's easy to stay there for less than $200/week at a nice Airbnb if you shop around. Your money goes a lot further than in prague.
I would say if you take a train from Prague to Brno, I would go through Pardubice (you can take a train to nearby Hradec Králové). Both very nice cities with quite interesting history.
Maybe stop in Česká Třebová on the way and then take a bus to Litomyšl - there is a very nice castle written on the Unesco list. I live nearby the Litomyšl city and it is nice town.
>Ř
I just googled how it sounds and tried to pronounce it. Took my 3 tries to perfect it.
t. german
keep at it, bruder
hrva forest
Coomer here hijacking the thread. How is the prostitution scene these days? Is it still the mongering capital of Europe?
When I was in Prague I thought about getting a prostitute but at the end of the day they all looked busted as fuck online, and you know they look even worse in person. I know there are probably a few hot ones but they're usually overpriced as fuck. Why wouldn't I just try my chances on Tinder or Interpals or something instead of spending $300 on a stiff Russian chick??
because professional sluts fuck 10x better than boring ass tinder normalfags
I've actually heard the opposite many times - that the expensive super hot ones are typically bored cunts who do the bare minimum and sometimes even rush you
Prague is literally the porn production capital of the world, there’s tons of options for pse and good fucks
pse?
paid sexual encounter? idk, i am esl
>pse
Porn Star Experience
I have heard good things about showpark. And sex.com had good finds last time I was there. I mean it depends on what you want, if you have the looks and balls to try to game girls go ahead. But prague has alot of good mongering options. Germany is def better if you are just going for cooming but you do have options in prague.
https://www.sex.cz/
if you dont find a single girl here attractive enough to fuck I dont know what to tell you
Maybe it's just me, but navigating that website on my phone was a nightmare. I was a horny male alone in Prague and it was bad enough to dissuade me.
Are there not good "hookup bars" or things of that nature in Prague? Like "go to this particular coffee shop/library/bar/park etc. if you want to meet cute locals who want to fuck"
>tons of options
...Like what? I went on sex.com and all the girls on there look terrible. Of course there are hot girls just walking around the city but approaching them is just gambling. Places like Showpark feel trashy as fuck.