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Published: March 22nd 2008
Mozart's Plaque
Nikki & Layni with Slavek at the plaque commemorating Mozart's visit to PragueGood Friday and Easter Saturday in Prague
Because we enjoyed the company and the great depth of knowledge of our new best friend and guide, Slavek, we booked him again for Good Friday. We met him at our hotel in the morning and headed off to explore the old town and the Jewish quarter. When you learn more and more of what life was like under the previous communist regime, you say your prayers of thanks for what our life is like back home. It really is quite incomprehensible that it was only a few years ago that life for the Czech’s changed so dramatically. As Slavek puts it, on the 17th of November 1989, they were reborn.
Slavek took us to various memorials that commemorate the struggle for democracy over the years and explained in detail the events of the day of the 17th of November when the ‘Velvet Revolution’ began. The way he described it was literally like being transformed back to the morning, afternoon and evening of that incredibly historic day and in reality it was quite an honour to be privy to all of these personal accounts and emotion that flowed from him. We visited
The start of the revolution
The monument to recocognise the start of the velvet revolution various squares in Prague that many, many years ago, were areas where produce was brought from various parts of Czechoslovakia and sold with each square having its own particular type of produce from dairy, vegetables, meat and the like. We also had our fair share of visits to incredibly old churches, including one that had the skeletal remains of a young man’s arm that was strung up on the inside of the church as a warning to those who intended to steal. About 500 years ago his arm was chopped off as punishment for stealing, who knows what it was that he stole but it was a pretty grim sight.
We also visited the crypt of an orthodox church where during the second world war, members of the Czech resistance held out a determined attacked by S.S Troops after they had assassinated Hitler’s Commander in Czechoslovakia, Reinhardt Heydrich. Their determination to repel the attack held until the S.S started to flood the crypt with fire hoses and the resistance fighters took their own lives. Pretty heart wrenching stuff when you see their desperate but failed attempts to tunnel out of the crypt and escape into the sewer system before
Czech Lunch
Veal Goulash and Potato Dumplings the flooding began. The incredible thing was that Slavek was on his way to school the day this happened and his bus was stopped by the German Troops only yards from the terrible events that were taking place. He had to stay on the school bus and could hear all of the gunfire and sounds of the battle for some hours until it was all over. The tragedy continued with the retribution by the Nazi's against the Czechs and they murdered 5,000 citizens as a warning against further attacks against the german army.
The sombre mood of the visit to the crypt was buoyed by our lunch stop at a nearby restaurant which served what you would call ‘typical rustic Czech fare’. Fortunately Slavek was able to translate for us and we had an excellent meal washed down with equally excellent Czech pilsener. The beef and vegetable soup was one of the best I had ever had and we tried roast pork rib stuffed with a salami style sausage served with potatoes and saukraut, veal goulash, potato dumplings and a very rich type of Spanish style pork sausage with herbs. We had five hot meals, beers for Slavek, Debs
and I and soft drinks for the girls and the whole lot was about $40.00.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Jewish quarter, visiting the old Jewish cemeteries and Synagogues and war memorials and by the time the afternoon was almost up, poor old Layni was about had it. Afternoon coffees saw our time with Slavek come to a close and he was very upset to say goodbye. Considering his age, (78) there was no guarantee that we would ever see him again and even though we had spent such a relatively short time together, it was hard to say goodbye to someone who had been through so much and had become so close to us all.
After such a big meal for lunch no one felt like having dinner and by the time we got back to our apartment and we had our baths and showers we decided that a pretty early night was the best option. After walking around as much as we have and considering how cold it is, you don’t need much more than warm baths and hot showers to put you in the mood for a good nights sleep.
Julie Macs Dream Shop
This one's for you Jules I guess a ‘toddy’ or two of some Czech schnapps called Becherovka, highly recommended by Slavek, also allowed me the indulgence of a 10 hour sleep!!
Our family breakfast on Easter Saturday morning brought the decision to buy our train tickets from Prague to Nuremberg in Germany to see and stay with our friends, Gisela and Martin. So we headed off into quite a sweltering 2’C. We had a bit of a walk around the Old Town Square, some excellent coffee at the Ebel Coffee House, checking out the astronomical clock, we headed off to try and find the main railway station. Prague has suddenly become very busy over the Easter break and there are crowds of people everywhere. We had a very interesting trip, taking in many, many different parts of Prague that we had not planned on visiting until a change of navigator brought us to the railway station. Leave it to you to work out who had the first shift as navigator!
The ticket seller’s command of the English Language was about as good as my Czech but she was able to point out that the reservation I had made on the internet and very
diligently printed up to take with me had expired yesterday. Had a little tremble in the lower regions of the body when I thought that our chances of making it out of Prague with the Easter crowds had suddenly diminished rapidly. After a couple of shrugs of the shoulder and a confirmation that I could pay in cash, we had four tickets and seat reservation guaranteed for our trip out of Prague on the 25th. A short reconnoitre of the map showed that our trip BACK from the train station was actually going to be quite short compared to our magical mystery tour TO the railway station. On the way back we found a great kid’s playground with a flying fox that Nikki and Layni made great use of. It made a nice change for Layne to have some ‘proper kids stuff’ to play around on and Nik certainly didn’t mind being a kid again for an hour or so.
We decided to follow Slavek’s advice and went to a self serve bistro not far from our apartment for lunch. We had three hot meals and drinks, (Debsy said she wasn’t hungry) all for about $17.00 which was great
value. Staying out of the main tourist areas allows you to eat really well and really reasonably and in reality, you are only a couple of minutes walk from the old town square.
We found another good coffee shop for arvo’s and then went back to the old town square where an Irish Band from Cork were playing a concert. Over the Easter period, the old town square is full of market stalls, food stalls and beer stalls and the atmosphere is simply fantastic with hundreds of people having a brilliant time. There is just no tension in this place, everyone is so relaxed and seems to be just cruising around soaking up the Bohemian lifestyle; something that could be very addictive I think.
One of the stalls had huge hams being roasted over a coal fire and they cut off big slabs of meat and serve it with mustard sauce and rye bread. Now this is not cheap but the ham is THE best I have ever had and even though I had not long finished lunch, the look and smell was too much to resist and it was worth every bit of the 180 KR I
had to pay for it. We stayed and listened to the concert for the rest of the afternoon and it was just a brilliant way to finish off the day. We are now spending some time catching up on journals, having a beer and thinking about where we are going to have dinner, just as well we spend about 8 hours a day walking everywhere!!
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rachael o
non-member comment
history lesson
thank you for your blogs its so much fun and i enjoy the history lessons.