I had been to Prague before, and wasn't wildly impressed, because when I was there it was summer and absolutely flooded with tourists. The Charles Bridge looked nice, I guess, but you couldn't see a single cobble stone for all the foot traffic. So this time, after Marmar and I conveniently missed our flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Bratislava -- a flight we booked 100% because of its low price tag -- because we went to an Eintracht Frankfurt soccer game, we sort of had to go somewhere, and an overnight bus to the capital of Bohemia was really the only option.
The story of the missed flight is this: We arrived at the train station in Frankfurt and noticed that everyone was wearing jerseys and scarves. Upon inquiry we found that this particular Saturday was a big grudge match -- Eintracht versus the East German team Energie Cottbus. We figured it would be scrappy. Cottbus won. We missed our flight because it turns out that RyanAir's crappy discount airport is 2 and a half hours outside of Frankfurt and there's only one bus. Word to the wise: never fly RyanAir out of Frankfurt.
Long story short is that the same thing sort of happened in Prague. We heard that Sparta, the local (and probably best Czech) hockey club was in a playoff game that day (I don't remember the name of th other team), but Czech hockey is totally ridiculous. For starters, you can take a look at the above picture, which shows some guy, most likely just a fan who they plucked from the beer garden outside, getting ready to sing the national anthem while surrounded by kneeling Spartans, in full battle regalia, making a wall of shields and spears around him. They kept showing scenes from that movie 300 on the Jumbotron. And the guy sang the entire national anthem with his microphone switched off.
It's a bit difficult to see here (even though that's sorta the point), but the ice was so covered with sponsor logos that you really couldn't see the puck at all. The same goes for the uniforms. You have to be a walking advertisment for like, Cserezky Roofing Co., if you wanna wear a Sparta jersey.
This is how close we were. Notice the Skoda logo. On the other side of the rink, there was an actual Skoda car, set up on risers, right next to the boards, blocking the view of an entire half-section of fans.
Oh, yeah, and there were cheerleaders. Who were made to sit in the aisles and get up and move whenever someone came back from the food stands with a large sausage and a beer.
And then there were the girls in mini skirts that had to sweep the ice between face-offs. Sort of a cut-rate zamboni. I liked this.
Cheerleaders danced at every whistle or stoppage of play.
And oh yeah, we saw all those regular Prague landmarks too. The astrological clock...
Casa de Kafka...
Casa de Mucha...
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