After spending 5 months living in Prague a few years back, I can confidently say that it’s my favorite city on the planet. Prague’s unique culture and blissful atmosphere is unlike anywhere else in the world.

In addition to the beautiful cobblestone streets and medieval castles surrounding the city, Prague is one of the most budget-friendly cities in Central Europe. Everyday needs are extremely affordable, such as accommodation, transportation (taxis and metros), food and especially beer. In fact, beer is cheaper than water in Prague, and the Czechs are known to be the biggest beer drinkers in the world.

Prague is one of those magical places with so many things to do that you can’t turn a corner without seeing something interesting and unique. The lively nightlife scene, combined with delicious Czech traditional food and the ever-flowing amount of local beer, will make you never want to leave this place.

That being said, Prague does get flooded with tourists in the summer months. Of course, it’s important to see the main sites around the city at least once, but that’s not where Prague’s true colors lie.

The following is a list of the top 5 off-the-beaten-path things that you can do in Prague. If you follow my advice, you can escape the throngs of tourists and get a better taste of Czech culture.

1) Riegrovy Sady Beer Garden

As mentioned earlier, beer is literally cheaper than water in Prague. There are many notable beer gardens around the city that you should check out, but my favorite one is Riegrovy Sady. It’s located in my old neighborhood, Namesti Miru (on the green metro line), just up the hill.

Spend an afternoon here with some friends, drink local beer and taste the delicious local Czech food. My favorite view of Prague is from the top of the hill that overlooks all of Old Town. This beer garden attracts a younger and fun crowd, and you’ll often see live bands performing.

2) U Sudu Bar

This is by far my favorite bar in Prague. When you first walk inside the door, your first impression will be that U Sudu is a tiny, ordinary bar. But just walk down a staircase in the back and you will enter a new world that will blow your mind. You will keep turning corners and discovering new rooms in an underground, cave-like set up. There are 5 rooms, each with a different bar and different vibe. It’s the best place to get a beer before the night gets started because it’s cheap and fun.

3) Explore Vysehrad

Vysehrad is one of Prague’s hilltop castles that overlooks the Vltava River. This entire district, just a bit south of the city center, is almost picture-perfect with its many gardens, parks and some of Prague’s oldest and most treasured castles. The Vysehrad cemetery is a must-visit, as you will see famous sculptures, painted walkways, and decorated headstones from famous Czechs. I recommend having a picnic in the park that overlooks the river and enjoying the peaceful atmosphere.

4) Novy Svet Neighborhood

Located just behind Prague Castle, this area is virtually untouched by tourists. In my opinion, it is one of the most scenic areas of Prague. In the past, this was one of the poorest areas of the city, so the buildings aren’t as pristine as you might imagine. But, the old-style houses on the cobblestone streets are amazing to take in. This area is really small, so you can walk around and explore freely without feeling rushed.

5) Namesti Miru

Namesti Miru, or “Peace Square,” was my old neighborhood when I lived in Prague, and believe me, it’s called peace square for a reason. It’s close enough to the city center (3 metro stops away), but far enough away so there are few tourists. The main square has an epic Gothic-style Cathedral that is absolutely worth checking out. I’d recommend sitting down on a bench and relaxing so you can observe and immerse yourself in Czech culture.

By Drew Goldberg /

Drew is a recent college graduate who has visited 43 countries since the beginning of 2012. His favorite things about traveling are eating the local foods, meeting awesome people and experiencing the nightlife scene. Drew is currently teaching English in South Korea and he blogs about food, culture and nightlife at the Hungry Partier. You can find Drew on Google+ and Twitter.

The post Top 5 Off-The-Beaten-Path Things To Do In Prague appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

When asked why they choose to leave their native soil, I’ve heard plenty of ex-patriots answer with tales of youthful days spent eagerly turning the pages of a National Geographic and dreaming. My own youthfully intrepid mind used to consistently conjure up vivid images standing on a boat’s bow peering out into an infinite sea. (My interest in National Geographic set in with puberty.)

I doubt many children dream of traveling to far off places to struggle with alcoholism, sex-addiction and depression. When asked the question, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”, not many twelve-year-olds answer, “Someplace seedy where I can pay for sex, get cheap drugs and have no one judge me!”

In expatriate filmmaker Edward Longmire’s debut documentary, Alive and Well in Prague, these are the circumstances his camera captured as he follows four expatriates living in Prague.

The Prague Post felt the film “paints a bleak portrait of an alternately beer-soaked, smut-infused and financially grim existence for Western transplants in Prague,” and  “whether this is true of all ex-pats, it is certainly true of the four souls Longmire profiled.”

Longmire’s four subjects include Stefan, an American pornographer, Francis an alcoholic English teacher, Todd an aspiring actor facing failure, and Ruth, an English teacher who stays in Prague because she “hates it less than everywhere else.”

On paper, the film feels like a Prozac prescription. Yet this seemingly grim cast of characters make for a surprisingly entertaining film which, at its debut screening, kept a steady stream of laughter coming from an audience comprised of both locals and ex-pats.

Somehow, being far away from home with mostly a limited command of the Czech language, made the subjects’ mundane problems seem more compelling. Francis was not just an alcoholic. He was an alcoholic in one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Sex-addicted Stefan, who reveled in things that might have netted him jail time in his home country, turned into a guy for whom you would root for negative test results after a day at the free clinic. The film certainly makes you hope that Stefan has gone to the free clinic and gotten himself tested.

After the film’s premier there was a question-and-answer session in which one ex-patriot asked, “What is it about Prague that keeps us here?”

Everyone seems to think that where they live is unique and different than every place else. Everyone is probably right. It’s a question I have heard asked everywhere that envelops ex-pats: What is it about Paris? What is it about Antigua? What is it about Bogotá? What is it about Portland? About Granada? About Toronto? About County Claire?  Buenos Aires? What is it about the world?

The real questions are, What is it about the people who leave home to find it somewhere else.? What is it about people like Ruth, who no matter where they are, cannot seem to feel at home?

The film fails to answer this. But it doesn’t seem that was the goal of it anyways. When I sat down to a coffee with filmmaker Longmire and asked him how much of the film was a critique of his ex-pat self, he answered that “quite a lot of it” was. The pressures he felt at home in London were not to his liking: You must work in an office. You must “make it” by 25 and if you don’t make it you’re a failure.

In his family these were the options presented to him. This was the good life. The life that he should be leading. A life that he seems relieved to have left behind.

Longmire looked up from his coffee towards the sky outside, as if up there resided the very sentiments he was expressing. “A lot of people spend their lives dreaming,” he said, “But you have got to take that leap. There are not right decisions or wrong decisions. But there are ones that are better or worse for you. You’ve got to figure out what those are and make the right ones.”

That leap is the leap to define your own geography instead of letting it define you. Natural disasters, wars, and famines displace people by the millions. The ex-pat is displaced by something different entirely. Not something happening outside of him, but some yearning within him.

Though, according to the Prague Post, Longmire received criticism for selecting demoralizing and struggling subjects. He has a point when he says that “no one wants to see a film about happy successful people.”

That’s the key. It’s not a film about Prague. It’s a film about people. It’s a film about people who weren’t supposed to be there. “I’ve always been a collector,” Longmire says. Collecting people for him seems as natural as bottle caps or toe nails (hey, people do this I’m told).

The film does not have a happy ending, but neither does it end sadly. And how could it? The lives depicted in it are not over. In front of each of them are years of joys and sorrows. Longmire is able to leave his audience with the hope that their joys will outnumber their sorrows. Though the ending is not overtly promising, it leaves the audience hoping that Ruth, Francis, Stephan and Todd face down their demons and find what they are looking for. After all, we’re all hoping for the same thing in our own lives.

The cast’s conditions are not necessarily better, but they are doubtlessly wiser. “I feel like I grew up in this city,” Francis says of Prague. For better or worse, Prague was the city where they became who they are.

Life in the world is life in the world wherever you choose to lead it. In the end then, where we choose to lead our lives is a just the frame. What is really interesting to Longmire is what that frame depicts. Some people run away to escape themselves, and some do so to fix themselves. If the film shows anything at all, it shows that problems don’t disappear with a one-way ticket. But the change of scenery can make even mundane problems seems a bit more exciting. And that makes for good film, which is what Longmire delivered with Alive and Well in Prague.

By Luke Armstrong

About the Author

Luke Maguire Armstrong lives in Guatemala directing the humanitarian aid organization, Nuestros Ahijados. His book of poetry, iPoems for the Dolphins to Click Home About (available for sale on Amazon.com) is especially enjoyed by people who “don’t read poetry.” (@lukespartacus)

The post Alive And Well In Prague: A Case Study Of Ex-Patriotism appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.

Prague, the 7th most visited city in Europe (and 19th in the world), swells in late May and early June during the Fringe Festival Praha and the Prague Writers’ Festival (as well as most of the rest of the summer, begging the question of whether tourism is destroying the city).

So if you find yourself there this summer and looking to escape the crowds, the Guardian has a handy guide of the top 15 “recreational” getaways, most of which are sure to be tourist-free, including The Lazarská, a public toilet turned hip club; the Olšanské nám?stí, a hilltop beer garden that also contains a club in a former nuclear bunker; and the Švandovo divadlo, a theater playing works by everyone from Shakespeare to Lars Von Trier.

My advice for getting off-the-beaten-path is pretty simple (don’t go to the 19th most visited city in the world – no just joking): is to befriend the natives. I know that whenever visitors come to visit me in NYC, I’m going to have much better insight into the best places to go than any guidebook because I live here, so of course the same would hold true elsewhere. Make friends on CouchSurfing, Facebook, Twitter, or any one of the dozen or so other traveling social networking sites, and let locals do what they do and love to do best, show off their town. But also remember, do what visitors do best at the end of the day, buy their guides a beer.

The post How To Escape The Crowds In Prague This Summer appeared first on The Expeditioner Travel Site.