Day 5 - Prague (Strahov)

1 Mar 2010

On our final day in Prague, we visited the Strahov monastery and its magnificent library. Our visit to Strahov started after a hearty lunch and some Czech beer at a restaurant in Nove Mesto.

Potatoes, cheese and brocolli

Grilled pork

It was bitterly cold with sub-zero temperatures. To our disappointment, a large portion of the Strahov library was under a massive renovation.

It's not too difficult to get to Strahov on your own. We took the train from Namesti Republicky station (which is about 5 minutes walk from our hotel) to Malostranska station and then caught tram number 22 and got off at Poholorec. It was about 3 minutes walk from Poholorec to the monastery.

Strahov monastery grounds

Strahov boasts a large collection of well preserved Christian monastic collections in the Czech language. We were impressed with how well the books and writings have been preserved.

A portion of the Strahov library hall

Apart from monastic writings, the museum also contains some marine artifacts such as mollusks, corals and other sea creatures (we're not sure why they're in the monastery though). Fortunately, non-flash photography was allowed and we took the above shot of a portion of the library. A fellow tourist forgot to turn off his flash and he got a massive telling off from the monastery staff.

About VAT refunds
We spent a lot of time trying to get VAT refunds from the VAT refund agencies as we thought we could get it from refund offices in the city before leaving Prague (since we're not travelling by air).

First and foremost, each retailer will use a different refund agency - for example, one of the souvenir shops uses Global Refund as their VAT refund agent. Therefore, you must go to the right agency.

Secondly, you'll need to get your VAT refund forms validated by Czech customs before you can get refunded by these refund agencies. How were we going to do that if we're not travelling by air from Czech airport? There's no customs office at the railway station!

The Global Refund staff advised us to collect our refund at our final border crossing (Frankfurt) before we leave the European Union.

Prague - Krakow
It's time we said 'Goodbye Prague, Hello Krakow'. We took the overnight train on the first class sleeper berth to Krakow from Prague's Hlavni station.

Validating railpasses
We got our European East rail passes validated (first time before use) at the Prague station office on 26 Feb. The station staff will ask for your passport, validate the name on your passport against your name on the pass and s/he will stamp your railpass, fill up the validity period and your passport number on the railpass. It is important that you do this before you use your pass for travel.

Since we were travelling overnight, we bought Sleeper reservations (double) which cost EUR30.00 per person. You must have a reservation when you plan to travel on a sleeper coach. Otherwise, the train attendant will not let you board!

Railpass with validating stamp

One thing to note about train travel in Europe is that you need to make sure you get into the right wagon, especially when you have no reservation and may accidentally take a seat in a wrong coach. Make sure that you sit in the coach that goes to your destination (they are labelled clearly outside the wagon).

We consulted Rick Steves' website (http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/) and Zhiqiang's blog (www.passportchop.com) which provided really good advice on Europe train travel.

We had no such problems with a sleeper reservation. After showing us to our sleeper cabin, the train attendant collected our railpass and our reservation. He told us that he would give us a wake up call about 30 minutes before we arrive in Krakow and he would return our tickets then. The sleeper cabin can be locked from the inside and is really safe. We slept like a baby until we arrived in Krakow. We read from some posts on the Internet that there would be border checks, but there was none whatsover.