We Found A 140-Year-Old Guidebook And Followed It

We are the honest guides and under normal circumstances we guide you around our city

in the 21st century in 2022. But we found a guidebook, the very first one for our country

called Rzyvnatchew's guidebook from 1882 and today we're going to follow it

Just to give you an idea how back in time we're going to 1882, this building wasn't around yet

Jesse James was killed in the Wild West. An American president was called, I had to look it up, Chester A. Arthur

Tuberculosis was just discovered and the Brits were occupying Egypt. But we're tourists. We have just arrived to Prague at the main train station

So let's see what our guidebook says. As we open our 19th century guidebook, we read that after arrival to Prague

you have to declare your luggage if you're bringing any food. and there are officials and officers who will then tax you for the food you're bringing

But it also says here that they are very liberal and you can just say you don't have anything and they will let you go

Officer, no apples from my grandma from the village. No, we're just here to see the city

Cool. Don't forget to declare the food you're bringing, okay? There's a tax to be paid in Prague

What you got there? Some schnitzels from Vienna? The guidebook recommends that if you have very limited time to see Prague, only a couple hours

you should get a droszka or a fjakr. What is it? Well, it's basically a taxi, but a horse carriage

Droszka was for two people and fjakr was for four people. There were also omnibuses going

from the train station, which wasn't a bus, but just a bigger horse carriage where you paid per

person. Even though this guidebook is 140 years old, it is structured as any guidebook that we

use today. And it gives you recommendations if you have three to four hours to see Prague

one day, two days, or multiple days. But it says that if you only have a couple hours

you should not enter any building or any historical site because you would run out of time

except for the St. Vithas Cathedral at the Prague Castle. You should enter that even though you only have three hours

Well, we're not going to go there. We do have more time. So I think the first place we should go to is to get some accommodation

I have a tip right here. There are many hotels listed in our guidebook This one still sort of exists by the Golden Angel Now it turned into apartments

Back in the 19th century, the prices differ from 60 Kretsar to 1 Zlatý

But beware, if you wanted a light, electricity light, you had to pay extra

extra. There's one more important tip from our guidebook for accommodation and that is

that if a traveler decides to stay a month or longer in Prague, he better rents an apartment

from a local where he will pay 10 to 15 zloty for a month, including services. Usually those houses

are marked on the door with a sign. That does sound like an Airbnb, to be honest

But just to clarify, you were not able to live in this house in 1882

because it wasn't built for another 15 years. That's how old our guidebook is, you got it

Well, we have a place to stay, but how about a place for some fun? According to our guidebook, this behind me is the German casino

with the largest ballroom in Prague, 234 square meters. Well, now there's no ballroom, just one, but there's many rooms

and most of them are movie theaters for Hollywood blockbusters. It also says here that in the back of the building, there's a nice garden

Well, that one is still there. You know what is surprising, though

such an old historical traditional guidebook and there's not a single mention of the old

Prague traditional trdlo. Must be a weird copy. At the end of Psikopůstryt on your left a beautiful

Venceslav Square is opening to you, formerly a horse market. At the end no longer you can see

the horse gate but a new building for the Czech Museum is in plan. Oh so that wasn't there you

gotta wipe it out Honza. I mean we're in 1882. I don't need these I got my guidebook

We have many things in common with this guidebook. We try to guide you but also sometimes we

criticize our city for some things. Now let me read you what this book says about the church

behind me Originally a gothic place built in the early 13th century in the year 1740 old Gothic church destroyed and today tasteless was built

Tasteless. Not everybody's a fan of Derek. I would never dare to criticize a church man

Look, big balls. We are on the large square of the old town

and right in the middle is this Merian column from the year 1650

Well, actually, no, because the original one from 1650 was torn down in 1918

and this one was rebuilt just two years ago. So that's not really accurate

But what is accurate, that the entire west side of the square is the Old Town Hall

Which is also not here. There's a lot of mistakes in this book

This guidebook even recommends its competition, that you can hire a tour guide

It will cost you 50 krezar per person per hour. And you can find these tour guides either here on Old Town Square or by the castle

There's total seven of them. Four are by the castle, three are here on the square

How to tell if it's an official license guide? He will have a black hat with a white C

White letter C on a black hat. That's how you spot official license tour guide

That's not an official guide because the C on his black hat is supposed to be white

This one's red. I'm actually quite surprised that the astronomical clock is mentioned here very briefly

It just says that it's here facing that street. And that below it, on the street, on the sidewalk, is a mosaic of the directions in north, south, west and east

Well, that mosaic is gone. Now this mosaic is the calendar board. That's the only fun fact they have about the astronomical clock

Well, I guess our videos are a bit better. We are in the Jewish Quarter and I wonder what does our guidebook says about that

The narrow streets with old tall buildings and its dirt. It reminds us of the medieval city times

Well, not anymore because actually in the year that this was written, this entire quarter was rebuilt, redeveloped

The only thing that is left here from those times is here the old city hall Jewish city hall and right facing it is the oldest Prague synagogue Also the old Jewish cemetery is mentioned in our guidebook and other Prague cemeteries

Prague had a total of seven of them and the biggest one was called Volšanski

Now it's called Olšanski. I don't know why we dropped the V. And it says that it's half an hour away from Prague

Well, nowadays, it's basically the city center. If you follow our channel and the two of us, you know that we love to show you different places like restaurants, bars, pubs, coffee places

Well, it's actually very shallow on that topic in this guidebook. In terms of coffee places, it just says almost on every street

and they have many magazines. On wine places, it says there's one on Old Town Square

one in Karlova Street, one on Wenceslav Square. And in terms of pubs, I couldn't find any specific pub that is mentioned here

but it says in all of these pubs, you only get Pilsner beer

So that's a little disappointment on our side, because we really wanted to show you some place from the book

well eventually we did end up in a prague pub with pilsner beer that is very young in 1882 only 50

years old and you probably noticed that we only covered few places actually only the ones on the

right side of the river so if you want us to continue doing this let us know in the comments

there's many more things we can show you on the left side of the river but also on the little

villages surrounding Prague that are now obviously Prague, as Prague was expanding

But this book is full of stuff. We will link it below in the description because it exists in a digital copy

And I will see you next week on another episode of The Honest Guide

Cheers. There's some future in this. In the end, I'm going to teach you a Czech word

and this time it's Království České, Kingdom of Bohemia. Království České. Království is kingdom and České is Bohemian

because this guidebook wasn't only around Prague but throughout the entire Království České

By the way, if you want me to be in the future episode of the historical guide to be wearing historical clothing

a guy from this store just told us he could rent us some. So if this gets 20,000 likes, I will dress up properly for the future historical episode