I’d found out the previous night that there was a free walking tour of Old Town offered at 11am so that was my only plan for the day. I didn’t feel ill this morning, so maybe this is it! Maybe I’m better! I will still play it extra cautious. I woke up at 8am, much too early to go out for the walking tour, but I didn’t want to spend any more time lying in my bunk listening to people snore incessantly (seriously, why is there always a snorer in hostels?) I got up, showered and ventured out to find some breakfast. I was on the hunt for plain croissants or toast.

I stopped at the first café I saw around the corner and was happy to find they provided Wifi and were happy to serve me just toast with a banana. With the more reliable Wifi, I was able to make progress with my planning and I managed to book transport and accommodation to get me up until Friday when I would return to Cologne. Honestly, I really don’t like this form of travel. I feel like I’m spending more of my time organising than I am holidaying. I paid 50CZK (crowns, which is about 2EUR) for my breakfast, stopped back in at the hostel to brush my teeth, then walked through the cobblestone alleyways to Old Town.

Prague was a nice change of scenery from Berlin with its cleaner streets and lack of graffiti. At least I thought so until I saw the piles of rubbish stacked on the footpath.

The sky was hazy, but I’ve been at this too long for that to bother me. Little specs of snow started falling as I got closer to Old Town Square, where I joined crowds of tourists exploring like I was. I walked past the Apple Museum, surprised to see a coloured version of Steve Jobs’ face staring at me from a painting. It looked interesting so I went inside to see how much. It was 11 EUR so I pocketed that idea for later.

I reached the meeting point for the tour fifteen minutes ahead of time and chatted with the guide, Dave, for a few minutes before heading into the tourist office to get a ticket as Dave instructed. By the time I’d come back out, quite a crowd had gathered, some forty people. By now, the snow was gently falling so when Dave told us the tour would be 2.5 hours long, I braced myself for a long time outside, even though I felt like I was dressed appropriately.

Dave was an enthusiastic and engaging guide with a very interesting personal history which involved running marathons all over the world to raise money for clean water in third world countries. As with most tours, we didn’t actually go too far, but spent most of our time standing around listening to the history of the place around us. Having decided I was done with museums, this was a nice way to get a small dose of the city’s history. We explored Old Town Square and the towers that surrounded it, then ventured to the Jewish district which is very quiet, but is home to some very old synagogues that are still active and the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world, dating back to the 1300s. Obviously everything we saw from the outside. The snow kept getting heavier as we continued and the multiple Australians in the crowd became obsessed with taking photos of snowflakes that had fallen on their clothes and hats. I kept my hands balled up into fists inside my gloves doing my best to keep my fingers warm. In my US travels I never spent this long outside in the snow without doing some sort of physical activity.

Thankfully about halfway through the tour, Dave took us to a gorgeous little bake shop which was full before us forty people entered it and packed it out completely. I managed to have time in our fifteen minute break to wait out the bathroom line (I had no issues there happily) and buy two plain croissants. I munched on my croissants as we walked towards our next tour stop in front of a highschool where Dave talked about the local beer. I tuned out a little, feeling FOMO for not being able to eat or drink anything exciting. We all struggled to stay upright as we made our way to the last few stops, the cobblestones becoming perilously slippery under our feet with the thin layer of snow that had formed. Our second last stop was at the Powder tower, one of the last remaining towers that once formed part of a wall around the city.

Finally, we reached the end point at a theatre that had been the debut venue for Mozart’s Don Giovanni in 1787 with a curious statue out front. When Dave concluded his tour and asked for tips in the form of notes only, I quietly slipped away. Tight arse I know, but again, I’d developed high standards from my tour in Paris with Eva and I didn’t particularly want to pay money for spending two hours outside in the cold. Sorry Dave.

My feet were frozen and my fingers getting close to it so I was on for some inside time. I decided to hit the Apple museum. While I said I was done with museums, this wouldn’t be about city history or depressive times of war so I was ok with it. I took the long way to it through the Christmas markets in Old Town Square and was thoroughly happy to enter the warm space and pay my 11EUR for entry. I sat for a bit in the café just to have a rest then went in to start my journey through technological development with Steve Jobs at the centre.

It was a small museum, but really well laid out. From the moment you walk in, you hear Steve Jobs speaking and it doesn’t stop throughout the museum. They have taken audio from product launches, interviews and many of his public appearances and it creates an effective atmosphere. The story goes right back to the start of Apple in his parent’s garage with his two mates and shows all the products that resulted through the years, all the way up to the iPhone 5 which was released just after Steve passed away.

Reading the various quotes on the walls and learning more about this great man’s path through life and the achievements he made along the way, I kept thinking how similar he probably was to Elon Musk, maybe minus the turtleneck quirks, but with the same single-minded visionary thinking. After watching a video with Jobs working with his developers in a living room somewhere, I changed my mind, it seemed to me that Steve listened to the advice of other people, appreciating the expertise around him.

I enjoyed the collection of hardware that had been arranged throughout the museum, they had pretty much everything from Apple’s history, missing only a few rarities. After about two hours, I left the main exhibit and went downstairs to the basement where a collection of Johanart’s paintings were on display. He had put icons onto canvas in ridiculous colour. With the pieces positioned in front of gothic brickwork, it was a nice display.

By the time I was done, it was just past 3pm and I was warm now, so wasn’t excited about going outside. When I did, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there were blue skies above me and most of the snow on the ground had disappeared. With that, the temperature had gone up a few degrees and the number of tourists on the streets had doubled. I ducked into the tourist information center in Old Town Square to pick up a town map, then went back outside for 4pm to watch the hourly show at the astronomical clock at the base of town hall. Dave had warned our tour group that this show ranked at No. 2 on the “World’s most overrated tourist attractions” list, but he assured us it was still worth seeing. There were at least two hundred people gathered at the base of the tower so I was happy to join the party. Right on 4pm, a bell sounded, rung by a skeleton statue stood next to the clock face, some windows opened showing the twelve disciples rotating around in the room behind them and in conclusion, a rooster did a sort of cock-a-doodle-do. It was over within a minute and it was probably one of the most pathetic displays I’d ever seen. I could understand the ranking now, but it made it funny how such a stupid thing could still draw a crowd. It made me laugh as I walked away with the rest of the smirking tourists.

I wandered Old Town Square a bit more and just as I was about to leave, I was drawn back by the sound of fast-paced music. I followed the sound of the music to a stage in the corner of the square where there were four men entertaining a small crowd. They were playing songs from as far back as the 13^th century and were dressed like it too. The front man, who specialised in bagpipes, a fiddle and singing, was wearing the most ridiculous black leather shoes with a toe that curled right up and around to meet with the top of his foot. I’ll admit though that it went well with his heavy kilt-like ankle length skirt, thick belt and baggy long sleeve shirt. The band was having fun and the music was brilliant, made up of a single tribal drum, two old-style acoustic guitars and the front man with his array of instruments. I stayed for half a dozen songs, then carried on, the sun having set over the square.

I wandered semi-aimlessly back towards the hostel, feeling a bit lame for not carrying on until later, but after another hour of walking, I was keen to get back to a warm place and stay there.

Back at base, I warmed up the rest of Oma’s rice which went down very well as I ate it in the hostel lobby/common room. The room crowded around me as I sorted out my transport after discovering that my Bla Bla from Prague to Munich had cancelled on me. It meant I had to find another ride for the day before and book another night in Munich. I really don’t like this method of travel, it is way too unreliable, but I managed, mostly because I wrote my itinerary on a napkin to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

Apple Fact: When Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, the stock declined steadily until he came back in 1997. It fell from $18.19 down to $3.31.