German houses on a river
We got to Prague around 5:30 and walked to the hostel, only about 15 minutes. The first thing we noticed were the beautiful buildings.
We got settled in the hostel and immediately loved the place- very artsy and homey.
We took our usual first-night-in-a-new-city walk and got some easy Subway sandwiches before calling it an early night. I also had to try the local soda, Kofola, which is almost like Coke but more like birch beer.
Jeremy says its not at all like birch beer but he cant think of a better way to describe it.
And we have wifi!!! WOOOOO
On Friday morning we got up for- of course- the walking tour. Breakfast was the best we've had so far. Cocoa puffs, corn flakes, 3 kinds of bread with butter, jelly, or Nutella, hard-boiled eggs, coffee, tea. Yum. We met the tour guide in the old town square which is only a 6 minute walk from our hostel.
It was honestly the worst tour we've had so far but it was still ok. Our guide just wasn't very excited about anything, and really didn't have that much to say. We mostly looked at buildings, which gets really old after the first hour. We did get a bit of history, so I'll share that.
Prague was settled by Celts, part of the Holy Roman Empire, and has since been part of many different countries depending on who is invading. In the last 100 years the Czechs here have been part of 9 different countries depending on the year... From Bohemia to Czechoslovakia to the Czech Republic and a bunch in between. They were occupied and bombed by Nazis (and the allies) and then invaded by the soviets and turned communist. So yea- Jeremy and I were thinking they just really need to drink less and form an army. They are the biggest drinkers of beer in the WORLD per capita.
This is the church in the old town square. It's very old but the house in front of it is even older.
This guy was a famous catholic priest who refused to sell indulgences (monetary forgiveness of sin) so he was burned at the stake as a heretic.
This palace was really beautiful but I honestly don't remember anything else about it!
You may notice that there is only about 5% of a building here on the right. The rest of the town hall was destroyed in a fire. But the clock tower was kept.
On the other side of the clock tower is one of the most famous things in Prague. This is an astronomical clock- the oldest functional one in the world. It has been telling the time for six hundred years! It's only useful though if you want to know Babylonian time...
Still in the old town, we went and saw the oldest building of Charles University. This was pretty cool. Einstein taught here for a while- applied physics I think.
Directly across the alley from that was this concert hall. Music nerds get ready- this is where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni and this is the last place he conducted his own work. Pretty cool!!!
Statue commemorating the premiere in 1787
All of these buildings are in the same square, and were supposed to illustrate how diverse the architecture is here. Whatever.
One weird thing they did was try to turn the cubist art style into a form of architecture. So they have some weird buildings like this.
This is a statue for Franz Kafka, who grew up an lived in Prague. I didn't know that when he died he made his best friend promise to burn all of his works, but his friend just got them all published instead. He is now, of course, world famous. This statue is based on a dream he had where he was riding around on a man with no head or arms. Yea, he was kinda weird. But aren't we all?
Going back to WW2 (you can't avoid it over here, which is great for me)... So Hitler wanted to completely destroy the Jewish people, but he really liked Prague and he wanted to preserve the Jewish quarter here as a museum of Jewish life. Sick. Just so sick.
But it's a good thing because this is pretty much the only Jewish quarter in a major European city that has been preserved.
This is the oldest synagogue, and one of not that many remaining from before the war. It is right across the alley from the old Jewish town hall.
And right around the corner is the Jewish cemetery. Remember the holocaust memorial in Berlin? With all the stone coffins of different heights? This is where the architect got his inspiration.
The cemetery is not ground level- it's in a wall about 10 feet high. It is estimate that about 100,000 people are buried here as much as 12 people deep in some spots. This was the only tiny cemetery they had. The top is full of some 40,000 grave stones. We didn't go in but it was amazing to see.
This house has been converted to a museum.
All of the Jewish people that were taken from Prague and never returned have their names on the walls inside. And then there's a gallery of children's paintings. You may have heard this story of the woman who got kids to paint in concentration camps to calm them down. She was killed in a gas chamber. Only 200-some of the 10,000 children taken from Prague made it home.
In the distance across the river is a huge metronome. It was placed where there used to be a huge 40-foot statue of Stalin. It is supposed the symbolize the time lost in Prague to communism. It actually moves all the time. It's a pretty cool statue.
Our last stop was the Rudolfium concert hall. My favorite part was the Dvorak statue- he's one of my favorite composers.
So that was the tour. I actually had more to share than I thought so that's good.
We stopped for a quick lunch (our first burrito since Dublin) on the tour, so after we were just tired but not too hungry. We headed back to the hostel for a rest and we took showers.
And then we met Alex! She is 24, from San Diego, and just graduated college with a degree in metal working. She makes jewelry art. How cool is that??? So cool.
So the three of us went and got dinner at a traditional Czech place. We got sausages as an appetizer with spicy mustard. We each got a beer. Jeremy and Alex both got beef and dumplings.
I didn't eat the beef but the sauce and the dumplings were amaaaazing. I got the fried cheese and spinach
Which was basically a big mozzarella stick and was also soooo good.
The whole meal for 3 was the equivalent of 30 euros. Like $40. That's cheap.
By the time we were done eating and talking it was late and we were tired so we headed back for bed. We had decided already to have an early day today and leave Prague for the small town of Kutná Hora, famous for its bone church.
So today we left the hostel at 9 (after many bowls of cocoa puffs) to catch a 10 am train to Kutná Hora. Alex came with us. I love having new friends around.
We got to the tiny town at 11 and walked straight to the church- a good 20 minute walk.
The bone church is a place where the owners asked a woodcarver in 1870 to decorate the church with bones to remind visitors of mortality.
Here are some pictures to give you an idea.
The outside was beautiful.
So then we were so hungry so we went to a tiny little cafe across the street and got some amazing risotto. And a Kofola, of course.
It was actually really awesome. And again cheap- 4 euros.
We spent another hour walking around the tiny town. It almost feels like Italy with the old stone walls and terra-cotta roofs.
We were already pretty tired so we caught the train back to Prague.
And that's where I am now! So you're all caught up. We are going back to rest for like a while. Maybe go out tonight and enjoy some Prague night life. I don't know yet but I definitely need a nap or something. Also need to start planning the next legs of the trip.
That's all for now- more tomorrow!
Miss you
<3
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