what language do they speak in prague

One of my favorite stories of the trip occurred in Prague.

The night we arrived in the city, we went directly to our hotel, which was situated up on a big hill (a lot like Mt. Washington in Pittsburgh). Lori and I strolled with a fellow groupie up and down the road looking for a small store, but found nothing except gigantic snails.The next morning we went into the city and were treated to an historical and architectural tour of the city by a local guide. The most interesting thing about Prague, I felt, was also very sad. It is largely undamaged by the events of World War II. Adolf Hitler chose Prague as the one Jew-filled city he would not destory, to serve as a reminder for the generations to come of "an Extinct Race." Appropriately, we visited the Jewish area of town and saw some old synagogues.

We also visited a square filled with tourists to watch the striking of the Astronomical Clock, which incorporates a variety of Christian and pagan ideas into a timepiece that tells the time, the phase of the moon, which astrological sign is in season, and other stuff.When the clock strikes, various figures "dance" and a rooster crows, although the rooster sounded a lot like a really weak trumpet to me.

The most beautiful parts of Prague were the riverfront......and the castle up on the hill (Prague Castle), which includes a large variety of buildings including a magnificent cathedral.From the Castle, you can see just how huge the city is.The most amazing part was that inside the cathedral at Prague Castle is a wood-carving dating from no later than 1630 depicting the city -- and it looks EXACTLY the same!! Well, okay, no skyscrapers out in the distance and no tremendous metronome sitting on top of hills, but it was completely recognizeable, right down to the distinctive roof tiles.

So, what's the story I love about this city? Well...it occured the evening after our sight-seeing. Lori and I chose to take public transportation back into the city to see Prague at night. And thus, we bought some bus tickets and followed the directions to the bus stop near our hotel. We hopped the bus, but we soon realized that we were going the wrong way (which, by the way, I must say is quite a feat in and of itself. Everything is in Czech, the official language of the Czech Republic. Czech is wholly unrecognizeable if you only know English, and even if you know a little Slovakian like Lori, it still makes about zero sense. We were clued in that we were going the wrong way because of the little signs in the bus saying which stops were coming up. We could see the end of the list, but we could not see our stop! And thanks to an on-board route map, I soon realized that indeed we were headed in the wrong direction, but --), but we could get off and transfer to a metro line that would take us where we wanted to go quite easily.

"Quite easily" in theory. Because when we exited the bus, we expected to find the metro station or at least a sign indicating that the metro was at the corner or at the very, very least a sign showing how to get to the metro station that the route map said was there. But we found none of the above. Right about then I started to get a little, tiny bit apprehensive. I had my small booklet of Czech phrases which included "Where is the metro", but the problem was that I could not figure out how to pronounce a single Czech word in the booklet. I suddenly found myself in a foreign country, unable to say anything except "Thanks!", fully aware that many people did not speak English, anticipating the sunset at any moment, in a neighborhood about which I had no concept of the crime rate. My gut instinct was to cry out "DOES ANYBODY SPEAK ENGLISH?!?!?!?!" but instead I went with Lori into the grocery store at the corner.

This was the location of the Funniest Thing Ever. Recall the scene: quite-frightened Ruth (it takes a lot of get me actually feeling "frightened") with Lori (who, at this point, was probably thinking "And Ruth wanted to go into Prague via public transit why???????"), both of whom had not the faintest idea how to ask about the location of a metro, much less understand the instructions if and when they were given in Czech. ...We entered the store and approached the man at the cashier. We managed something like, "English?" To which he responded, "No English; español."

Español?!??!?! Was he kidding? Were we not in the middle of the Czech Republic? Were we not surrounded by people who only spoke a language from a completely separate language family? Could this guy actually speak the one and only language other than English in which I know how to speak semi-meaningful sentences?

Suddenly it was like the sky had opened up. Communication was instantly possible. I felt like I could move to Madrid at a moment's notice. I immediately asked, "¿Donde esta el...?" but realized I didn't know the Spanish word for "metro"!! So I just said metro.

And then...strangely enough, the man who had just finished paying for his groceries, turned around and said, "Here, I will show you how to get there." Oh for crying out loud!

But at least I was reassured of my Spanish-speaking skills. I have never had an absolute need to speak in Spanish, and I've often wondered if I could get by if I was required to use the language. And...in this instance...I passed the test. It was an easy test, but still quite gratifying.

The rest of the trip was less eventful. We eventually got to the metro (after first going down a ramp to what we thought was the metro but what turned out to me an underground entrance to a store that had the same emblem as Food Lion) and into town. Prague at night is very different than Prague in the daylight. The thousands of people who were squeezed into the narrow streets during the day were now huddled inside cafes and bars. Those who were outside were admiring the river.

Eventually we got back to the hotel without any further adventure. The next morning we packed up and headed south to Vienna. At some point in time during our stay in the Czech Republic the bus stopped at a gas station with this sign.Deciphering the meaning of the lowest left-hand figure serves as a great reminder about my language woes.