Prague!

On the very long train from Prague to Salzburg, which leaves plenty of time for a more in detail recount of Prague.  Hence after not having posted at all for a long time I have now done two within a day of each other!  Unfortunately Hogmanay and Berlin etc didn’t get the same in depth descriptions, but oh well.  I definitely plan on going back to those places at some point.  Prague I could go back to, but I would definitely want to learn at least a few phrases/useful words in Czech first.  I’d forgotten how hard it is to be in a country where you don’t speak the language at all - my only other experience of this was in France on two separate days.  Though to be fair I at least know a handful of words in French, whereas I have not the first clue when it comes to Czech.  

But yeah, regardless of the language barrier, I did quite enjoy Prague.  It’s a beautiful city, probably the second prettiest I’ve been to yet, coming in second to Edinburgh and with Strasbourg in third (note city, because the little villages we saw in Elsass and some I saw on the train through Germany were gorgeous!).  It is remarkably well preserved considering it went through WWII and the following years of Soviet communism.  Did a free walking tour in the morning, from which I learnt the following facts.  There is a concert hall in Prague that is the last remaining building in Europe that Mozart played in live.  They also have a huge astronomical clock that is either 600 or 800 years old (my memory gets a  little fuzzy when it gets down to specifics!) and the largest medieval castle I think in Eastern Europe.... But anyway, there’s a lot of beautiful old buildings all throughout Prague, many of which are a bit run down now but still beautiful.  

The walking tour was really interesting, went through the Old Town and a bit of the New Town with a Czech guy who studied drama therapy at university, so was very enthusiastic and dramatic!  We also saw the Jewish Quarter with lots of synagogues, one of which was a museum that apparently Hitler established and stored items taken by the SS etc to create a museum of an extinct race.  Also saw an old church which has two “creepy and spooky” legends/stories with it.  First is that there was an old rich guy who went to sleep in his study and slept for several days, and so his servants thought he was dead and had him buried in the family crypt.  He then woke up and managed to push the top off his coffin, but couldn’t get the door to the crypt open.  People heard yelling and loud noises from inside and assumed his spirit couldn’t rest, and so the priest took holy water and blessed the door of the crypt, and after a few days the noises stopped.  But not long after another member of the family died, and when they opened the door to the crypt and found the guy sitting leaning on the coffin, with a grimace on his face because he’d died in such distress.  The other story is about a statue of Mary inside the church, which apparently has a beautiful necklace on it.  A thief saw it and decided he’d like to steal it, so he got himself locked inside the church one night.  But when he reached up to take it, the statue grabbed his hand.  So he was stuck standing there with his arm above his head.  He tried bargaining with Mary, but remained stuck there.  When the priest found him the next day, he looked at it and said “We’ll just have to chop the hand off”.  The thief was relieved, until he realised the priest meant his hand.  So now there is a mummified black hand still hanging there - didn’t get to see it properly cos the church wasn’t open, but we peered through the window and could sort of make out a bit of it.  

I also got the impression from the tour guide that the Czech people are very proud of their democracy and their tradition of tendency towards democracy and democratic values even when they were held back from it.  Many stories included past kings who were very liberal about religion and supported science and the arts.  We also heard stories about the Prague Spring when Dubcek introduced “communism with a human face” and also about the students who set themselves on fire in protest when the liberties introduced during the Prague Spring were taken away again by the Soviets.  We also saw the site where there used to stand a huge statue of Stalin with a group of workers behind him.  Unsurprisingly it was blown up around the Velvet Revolution when the Czechs separated from the USSR.  It was actually amazing to remember how new the democracy of the Czech Republic is.  Our guide was saying they have presidential elections in a few days which will be the first (or one of the first?) since they became the Czech Republic.  And he was also saying that one of the potential candidates is a Czech of Germany heritage whose family was made leave all their possessions behind and leave Czechoslovakia back when the Nazis were threatening to invade.  This property included a big palace up on the hill with all the castle buildings.  But he forgave and forgot, and came back to Czechoslovakia to make a career as a politician.

Lots of very interesting stuff, which certainly delighted my inner history/politics nerd.  And we had still more of it in the afternoon, as we decided to go with the same guide on his castle tour that started just after the morning walking tour.  That was pretty cool too, there was a lot to see up there as well, the highlights of which were probably the first courtyard, the big cathedral and Golden Lane.  The courtyard wasn’t particularly finely adorned - the guide described the design as minimalist before minimalism became popular - but it had this awesome little spot which I have put a picture of below:

 

Doesn’t look particularly special, but if you stand in the middle of the circle (where Jo is standing) with your chin up and facing back towards the steps, when you speak it is amplified so that it sounds like you have two speakers on either side of your head.  Though it only sounds like that to you, not to anyone else.  It was pretty amazing, though something that you really have to experience cos you can’t really imagine it.  The cathedral took I think around 100 years to finish buildings, as it was a slow process interrupted by wars and other things.  It was an amazing big structure of Gothic architecture, that strongly reminded me of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh and probably also other churches around Edinburgh too.  This is it below:

It also had lots of big stained glass windows, with the exception of one which was handpainted in art nouveau style.  It is also the place where they store the royal jewels in a  casket which has seven locks and seven different people hold the keys, including the president.  The place where they store it is also along an outer wall, behind a huge mosaic which is made up of more than 1 million little pieces. Tried to get a picture of that too, although it was a little big.  Very impressive though!

Then Golden Lane, which I liked simply because it was so cute.  It used to be servants quarters, and is lots of little houses built into the bottom of what was a very thick wall.  Jo and Grace made me pose next to one of the doors because I was actually slightly too tall for it.  The famous writer Kafka also lived in one of the little houses at one point.  Above the houses you could walk inside the wall, where they displayed suits of armour, and also at one end medieval weapons of torture.  They also had a little gift shop, in which above the door they had a chastity belt! (Though it wasn’t an Everlast :P ).  Had a laugh about that, and of course had to get a picture.

 

We met a nice Canadian guy on the afternoon tour who was doing his masters in Edinburgh, and who strongly reminded me of my Canadian friend Karl from Freiburg!  Also met a couple from Wollongong, who were hilarious.  It was also strange, because the guy reminded Grace and I a lot of our cousin Tim, and we also found out he used to live in the same suburb our cousin currently lives in too!  We had a good laugh with them about the Brazilian guy in the group who would step directly in front of the tablet screen when the guide was showing us pictures, blocking the view of everyone standing behind him.  We also ran into them again not long after the tour which was lucky cos they were able to guide us back to where we needed to go.

Had some Czech food that night, namely goulash served in bread.  It was pretty delicious.  The previous night (just after we’d arrived) we had gone out in search of a place recommended to us by the hostel receptionist, but somehow managed to find ourselves in an Azerbaijani restaurant so ended up sampling some traditional Azerbaijani food.  Easy to do when everything is in Czech!  The Azerbaijani place also didn’t have English menus, but luckily someone there spoke English so he came over and translated the menu for us and gave us recommendations.  

But we’re now in Austria, which I am liking already.  Aside from the fact that its nice being able to read the signs and mostly understand people again, the views from the train were beautiful.  Lots of snow-dusted little villages and a very alpine-y landscape.  Looking forward to exploring Salzburg tomorrow, and Vienna next week.  Will hopefully do a Sound of Music tour tomorrow too! :)