Prague

Prague was awesome. The city was beautiful, and the history was fascinating. The best part may have been the free walking tour (tips not included) given by Isaac, the best tour guide ever. The tour went through the main town square, and then to the new quarter, and then to the Jewish quarter, and then to the river. I learned a lot about Prague on that tour, for example, the astronomical clock in old town square was built 500 years ago, and when it was built, it was awesome. It is a huge clock tower that tells the time, the day of the year, and the astronomical time. The day of the year clock has a name assigned to each day, and you were to be named the name that corresponded to your birth day, so there were a lot of people running around with the same name. When the clock was made in the 1400's, it was very technologically advanced, and still remains a huge tourist attraction.

At the end of the tour, I learned about the Prague Uprising, what Isaac claims is the coolest piece of history from Prague, and the least well known. On May 5, 1945, the citizens of Prague grew tired of the German occupation, and decided to do something about it. A radio announcer in a Prague station, around which SS soldiers were stationed, called to action the resistance fighters to come to the station and battle with the soldiers. The battle continued for 3 days, until the resistance fighters had the SS soldiers solidly cornered in the basement of the radio station. Negotiations took place (resistance was happening around the city, with Czech citizens putting up 1000 blockades in just 3 days, and tearing down street signs to confuse traveling Nazis), and an agreement was reached that the Nazis would be allowed to pass through the city freely so the city would not be destroyed. With Nazis on the way out of the city, the Soviet Red Army showed up and stole the victory of the city by seemingly claiming victory against the Nazis themselves. In the middle of the uprising, the anti-Fascist soldiers from Russia (who had joined the Nazis) decided to change alliance due to the impending fall of the Nazi army. The SS soldiers called for help from the nearby anti-Fascist fighters, who arrived and promptly surrendered their weapons to the resistance fighters and fled the city.

Besides the history, although nothing here could really be separated from history, the Jewish quarter was amazing. A group of four synagogues converted to museums, one very old and very full Jewish cemetery, and one ceremonial hall comprised the Jewish Museum. Pinkas synagogue was the first on our tour, and it had been stripped of all interior decoration that suggested it was a synagogue. The building instead contained the names of more than 80,000 Jews from Prague (maybe the whole Czech Republic?) killed in the holocaust, along with the date of birth, the last date to be known alive, and the area he or she was from. The names were in black, and the accompanying information was in red. The effect was sombering, as the walls were so full and the writing was so small. It made the whole experience more personal. There were also stories of people coming to this synagogue and finding the names of their relatives printed on the wall. In an upstairs room was an exhibit of children's artwork from a concentration camp. A certain concentration camp, early during the war, noticed the children were severely depressed, so a teacher was sent to them, and she had them draw whatever they were feeling, what life was like in the camp, what life was like in the ghetto they came from, what they miss about home, who there family is. She compiled over 4500 drawings from all ages of children, and was able to hide them in two suitcases before she was sent to her death in 1945. Right outside of Pinkas Synagogue was the Jewish cemetery. The cemetery 11,000 gravestones, and it was less than a city block big. There are an estimated 11 layers of bodies buried there, with at least 90,000 bodies total. Some of the gravestones were incredibly old, and some had become impossible to read. Many consisted of pictures to tell the profession of the buried, some were so old that written language was too uncommon as to be included on the stones. The other synagogues were still in more traditional fashion, just with extensive collections of Jewish memorabilia from the Prague community. The Jewish quarter was built for the Jewish population of Prague (to separate them from the other citizens of the city), and was built in the marsh of the city, where floods and illness were very common. In the early 1900's, the quarter was torn down, except for the synagogues, and land was added to raise the level of the ground by many feet. The synagogues for this reason (thankfully they were kept) are a few feet lower than the streets and any neighboring buildings.

The next day in Prague, we visited lesser town, the area of town right below the Castle, and on the other side of the river from Old Town and the Jewish Quarter. Connecting the two halves of the river is Charles Bridge, which was built in the 15th century. There is a famous statue on the center of the bridge that shows the story of some saint who was thrown off the bridge by the king for opposing him. He became a saint after death for bravery. The statue depicts a scene at the bottom of the saint being thrown over the bride and then of a dog looking over the bridge. Legend says that it is good luck to touch the copper saint being thrown over the bridge, so the figure of the saint is shiny from touches of the passerby. Isaac decided that people no longer remember the story of this saint and just touched the statue because it was obvious that so may had before, so he went with steel wool and windex and rubbed the dog shiny, so now tourists from around the world run the saint for good luck, and cancel out that luck by rubbing the dog. In lesser town, there is also a smaller Eiffel tower, which was placed on the top of a hill in order to be the height of the real Eiffel tower. The most famous part of lesser town is the castle, which stands on the top of a hill and encloses St.Vitus cathedral. The cathedral took 600 years to build, with the most recent part being completed in the last century, and is named after St. Vitus, the patron saint of epileptics and dog attacks. The castle was very nice, as was the cathedral, and the gardens surrounding them were gorgeous. The best part of the castle though is probably the story of how we found it. It is a castle, Prague Castle, so it is large, formidable, on top of a hill, and visible from everywhere. But it is not clear on the map how to walk up the hill to get to it. After walking the wrong way for a while, we stopped and asked a police officer how to get there. I said, "excuse me, can you tell us how to get to the castle?" He replied by asking if I spoke Dutch or English. I said English, and he made a face that looked slightly defeated and said "oh." He pointed too the end of the block, and then to the right, then he stuck out two fingers and made a walking/jumping motion and said something that sounded like "trip trip trip." I said "up up up?" He said yes and we said thanks and left. He followed 20 feet behind us to the end of the street, and when we were 50 feet up the "trip trip trip" hill, I turned around and he was watching us. When I turned around, he nodded, I waived, and he waved. Some things are very universal.

Overall, Prague may be one of my favorite cities so far.