Hmm, Machova...

This is a street view of where I stayed when I lived in Prague (is it appropriate to call it 'lived'?) ...was there from June to August 2008. That is the door of my building!

I thought to look this up on Google Earth because I'm meeting up with my friend Carly this weekend, and we were there together...we had a phenomenal time. So I guess nostalgia set in, and there I was, looking up 'Machova 12.' The area of Prague where we lived is called 'Vinohrady'...literally, "vineyards." The street we lived on was where all the poets used to live (or so a taxi driver told me). We lived across from a 'Herna' bar run by the Russian mafia, notorious for slot machines, hookers, and tinted windows. You can identify the place by the opaque blue awning, door and window (rotate the Google street view 90 degrees to the left and go up the street). Interestingly enough, a google search for 'herna' returns very little information... 

Our metro stop was at Náměstí Míru, literally 'Peace Square,' the deepest station of the Prague metro system.

Also, we were not too far from this:

Žižkov Tower

Look more closely, what are those little black spots on it?

Yes, those are enormous babies!

You may hear different stories, but I understand that this tower was built by the Soviets in the mid-late 80s, and one of its prime purposes was to intercept radio and television signals from the West so they could not reach the east. Interestingly enough, the tower was still not completed in 1992, the year the Velvet Revolution occurred. (If you don't know, this was when the Communists lost power in the Czech Republic) It is amazingly ironic that the city of Prague completed the tower and now uses it for broadcasting... In 2000, artist David Černý installed the babies temporarily; they were returned in 2001 by request of the people of Prague.

Love the not-so-subtle ridiculousness of Czech culture. 

With our beloved Czech named Pavel, who played us Don Giovanni on the piano! We were wooed. 

Děkuji, zbohem!