I mentioned before that I had had the opportunity to fulfill two long-time dreams of mine, one being to go to Hungary, and the other was to go to Prague. During Y2K celebrations, the CBC had broadcast celebrations from around the world each hour from a different time zone. When they got to Prague, they showed a violinist playing a classical tune from the top of a church spire, one of the gorgeous Gothic structures that so greatly populate the skyline of the city. I don't know what church it was, but I was enchanted, and all I knew is that I wanted to go to see what appeared to be a beautiful city. I later learned that Prague is unique among major European cities as well because it's one of the few that was largely undamaged by either of the World Wars, so the buildings and structures you see are the originals, and are hundreds of years old. In other cities, the structures were re-built exactly as they were but are obviously new and not the original, so I thought it would be really neat to see such old places and spaces. We only spent a couple of days here, so we packed in a fair bit, which is not my usual travel style, but there was enough to see, and I knew it would be the only time I travel there, so I wanted to make the most of it. I've included general photos of Prague at the end, but I wanted to point out that I saw many an Eye of Providence and Mary with baby Jesus decorations on buildings, which I thought was interesting given that at the Czech National Museum, they said that the Czech Republic was basically non-religious thanks to communism. Apparently the Communists left all this stuff up!
Day 1
The first day, we went to the grounds of Prague Castle. The ticket that we bought included The Old Royal Palace, St George Basilica, the Golden Lane, and St Vitus Cathedral. The area was beautiful in general, with the most spectacular part by far being St Vitus Cathedral. We started out in Golden Lane, which served to represent how people lived in the past, in small cottages. The homes aren't exactly like they were in the old days, but similar, and we just popped into a few as it was a bit repetitive as you went from house to house. I was interested more in the décor and noted how it seemed like they used to use stencils or something like it to paint patterns into walls rather than use wallpaper.
The Old Royal Palace, originally built around 880 and fortified in later centuries, was quite interesting to me as well but mainly because of my fascination with having stood at a window that people were thrown out of (they survived uninjured, don't worry). About 5 years ago, I was introduced to a great podcast called "Stuff You Missed in History Class," which has a lot of fascinating topics that don't normally make it into your general history lesson; you'd usually need to specialise in certain areas to know or learn about them. Anyway, the person who introduced me to it played one of the recordings while we were doing a mundane activity at work so we could listen to something interesting while we worked, and it was on the Defenestrations of Prague. There were 3 Catholic officials that were thrown out of a window by some angry Bohemians, and this marked the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. The history of the defenestrations is a bit funny, at least the way the podcast presents it, and of course, who doesn't love saying the word defenestration? So I was surprised and delighted when I got to the part of the old palace where I actually stood at the window where the defenestrations occurred.
As I mentioned, it was St Vitus Cathedral that really stole the show. As we walked to the entrance, I was also excited to discover that the original statue of St George slaying the dragon was outside the cathedral--the replica being in the museum we went to in Budapest), so that was a surprising bonus. The exterior of the cathedral alone is highly detailed and must have taken a long time and a lot of work to achieve. In addition, there are so many gargoyles and creatures carved into the church and the surrounding buildings. It's not hard to wonder, when you see all the different creatures imagined, why so many legends of werewolves and other unearthly beings seem to originate in this region of the world. Once inside, we were treated to magnificent stained glass windows--and they were made more magnificent by the fact that for once in my life, I was in such a place when the sun was shining through the windows, so I could really appreciate them in all their glory. But another interesting connection was learning that the cathedral had originally been built by King Wenceslas (locally known as Vaclav), and that it is this same person about whom the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" was written. In fact, during his lifetime, he was only a duke, but he was considered a very holy and good man who was martyred and sainted, and about whom several hagiographies were written and largely taken as fact. So the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, in the 900s, decided to posthumously confer the title of kingship upon Vaclav due to what was considered Vaclav's great piety, thus meriting such a title. (There is also Wenceslas Square in the city centre as well, and this is for the same Wenceslas.) In addition to learning about this connection to the Christmas carol, I also got to see a language I didn't recognise. I thought it looked a little like Amharic (Ethiopian), but it's more related to Cyrillic languages and is known as glagolitic, or Old Church Slavonic/Slavic. I really enjoyed visiting this location as it gave me the opportunity for a great deal of learning in areas that I didn't even know existed.
We had arrived first thing in the morning while it was an unexpectedly chilly 3ºC (not that cold by Canadian standards but cold enough when you're not dressed appropriately because you didn't expect it), and the view from the castle hilltop was gorgeously foggy down over the Vltava River that bisects the city. It was good that we went early as it took us pretty much the whole morning to walk around and look through the castle area. And we tried to find another cathedral nearby, St Nicholas, but we found out we had to pay to get in, and we didn't feel like paying yet again for something, so we just took a quick peek in the lobby area and then left.
We had lunch at U Glaubiců where I tried Czech style goulash, but I admit that I enjoyed the Hungarian one better as I found the Czech version a little less flavourful. I also had some type of strawberry dumpling dessert, and it was also decent, but food in this part of the world is heavy and rich, and I was really feeling quite weighed down after!
In the afternoon, we decided to check out the Communist Museum, which was near our hotel. It was mostly a disappointing museum since it's mostly reading--they could have had more artefacts on display, and you just get tired of reading so much stuff. I mean you might as well buy a book and just read it. But we were interested to learn some Czech history, including that of Czechoslovakia. I also appreciated that it was an anti-Communist place, not pro. You never know what to expect at something like that.
Day 2
We had a low key day, mainly due to the rain. We spent the morning at the Czech National Museum. It's a huge museum with 2 parts: an old & new building, and it houses natural history and geology to Czech history and musicians/composers. The natural history stuff was general, not endemic, so we passed on that since we've seen that at other museums. We focused on the history part--once we could find it. It was very difficult to navigate. It wasn't clear where to go for anything. There were signs, but usually as standing banners, so not what we were looking out for, like permanent signage where you tend to look for that type of information. We even had a map, but we couldn't figure out where we were supposed to go, so we spent some time being lost and going up elevators that we thought were taking us to the right place, only to find out we were still in the wrong building. Once we finally figured out how to get to the old part, we enjoyed the exhibits, though it still required lots of reading like at the Communist Museum. But we did learn a lot. We went for lunch at a place not really worth mentioning (decent but just a quick, cheap place for lunch) and then headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit and stay out of the rain. On some of our trips we have ventured out despite the rain, but we had packed really light and hadn't brought sufficient rain gear to protect ourselves. In the evening, since it was still raining, we decided to check out the mall near the hotel. It was pretty large and had a lot of stores, but it was nice for people-watching and better than just sitting in our room.
Day 2.5
Since our flight departed late afternoon, we were able to get a late checkout and do some of the activities we hoped to do the previous day had we not been rained out. It was mainly the Jewish Quarter that we wanted to see, which required outdoor walking, so it would have been harder to do that in the rain. We had heard that the Jewish Quarter in Prague is one of the oldest in Europe, and we learned that it has been in Prague since the 13th Century! Most of the structures are newer than that, with the exception of the oldest synagogue, known as the Old-New Synagogue. It's the not only one of the first buildings to have been built in the Gothic style, but it's one of the oldest synagogues still in use today. It was a good thing we had only wanted to see the outside of things and just walk around the area because it was Shabbat that day, and everything we could have entered were closed anyway. An article that I read online about the Jewish Quarter said that the area was preserved when Prague was under Nazi occupation because Hitler intended to maintain the area as a type of museum of an extinct race. So even goods and items stolen from Jewish people in other parts of Europe were sometimes brought to Prague's Jewish Quarter to help make up the future museum.
From there, we went to see the Charles Bridge, as it's commonly known. Karol IV (Karol being the Slavic equivalent of Charles) was the first King of Bohemia to become the first Holy Roman Emperor in the 14th Century. So the bridge was built at that time--here I was stepping out onto a 600+-year old bridge. Now that was cool. We did a quick walk back to the hotel through the Old Town Square, which was overrun by tourists and not a place I wanted to spend a lot of time in, though it was unfortunate we didn't get time to see the astronomical clock where the 12 disciples of Jesus come out every hour when the clock strikes, but it looks like the link I attached has a little display of it, so now I know what it looks like! That's one of the reasons I'm less fond of tourist attractions, especially these days with the internet. It's so easy to find photos and videos of everything. It's why I enjoy what's off the beaten path because then I really have the chance to see and do something new and unexpected.
We came home exhausted, which is unusual, because I usually like to take my time and move more slowly on a trip, but we packed a lot in. We're trying to take advantage and see what we can in our time left here, but I think we'll have to really plan a few more breaks for any future trips so we don't tire ourselves out!
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