"The place in Europe where the world... " a Prague Travel Page by der_geograf

Everyone I knew who had been to Europe always mentioned Prague, and encouraged me to go there. I only knew a little bit about its history and not much else, and admittedly I wasn't too impressed. From what I had seen on television, I thought Prague was nothing more than an old, pigeon-infested European city.

Early in 2003, a friend of mine in Germany who I was going to visit in the summer thought we should also look at some place to go in Europe outside of Germany. He had been to Prague before, and brought it up. I agreed to ago, not really expecting it to be all it was cracked up to be.

In August 2003, I finally got the chance to experience Prague for myself--and my views of "eastern Europe" have been reformed.

My visit to Prague coincided with the one year anniversary of the Flood of 2002, when the Moldau burst from its seams and spilled into adjacent buildings and streets. (The high water mark for the 2002 flood is on the building on the right in the photo.)

The flood left Prague temporarily bruised and battered, but still in business. Even though some of the scars from the disaster were still present (plaster removed from the sides of buildings), and even though it was one year later, Prague's recovery is a shining example of the characteristics of a resilient city.