Checking out Czech's capital

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MONDAY 28 SEPTEMBER 2009 - PRAGUE

After a late arrival I took my time getting up this morning. After a quick shower (and realising I have no voice at all) I headed out to change some money before coming back and paying for the hostel and having breakfast. They were good enough to let me stay in the room they put me in the previous night - which is great because it is only an eight bed dorm with a shower, which is a lot dearer than the 10 bed dorm without a shower that I actually booked!! Maybe they felt sorry for me because I couldn’t talk.

From breakfast I headed to the Old Town Square where the walking tour was due to start. I had a little free time so I spent about an hour wandering around and went into one of the St Nicholas’ churches to have a look since it was right next to me. Then I just wandered the square until the tour started at 11am.

The tour itself took in the old town and the Jewish Quarter and covered a little bit of the history of the place. It was quite a large group and the guide (Canadian - there seem to be a lot of Canadians and American’s in Prague!!) was also quite good and knowledgable. That’s what I like about the free walking tours - because they depend on tips they work a lot harder than some of the others and have interesting anecdotes etc to tell. Apparently Prague escaped WWII largely unscathed, unlike many other cities. As a result - there is some stunning architecture.

In the Old Town Square there are several churches - St Nicholas, Tyn Church and the Old Town Hall - home of the famous (but quite underwhelming) Astronomical Clock. On the hour the clock has this little display, where a skeleton rings the bell and each of the star signs makes a brief appearance in the window. It has just been voted one of the most underwhelming tourist attractions (not sure if it is in Europe or the world). Funnily enough, the square also rates highly for where pick pockets are most likely to operate - as everyone is standing in the square with their cameras in the air looking at it when it goes off!!

Once we had wandered a bit of the old town we headed over to the Jewish Quarter, where the guide pointed over several points of interest. I won’t go into any of it now since I revisit the area and many of the museums in two days time

The tour finished up on the banks of the river overlooking Charles Bridge (undergoing significant restoration works!).

After a slow wander back through town, I called it an early day and headed back to the hostel where I actually cooked pasta, did some of my uni assignment and called it a night.

TUESDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 2009 - PRAGUE

Another easy day today so leisurely got up and had breakfast. Still absolutely no voice so no point even trying to make conversation. I decided to head out to the Castle area and wander around. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is the largest castle area in the world. Understandably, it is also Prague’s number one tourist attraction.

While I was up there I watched the Changing of the Guard ceremony, saw Matthias Gates and the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Debated about going into Vitus Cathedral but after seeing the length of the queue to get in decided not to (it went pretty much half way around the church - like two sides of the building!!).

Still wandering through the Castle complex I went past Basilica St George with its towers (called Adam and Eve) - which is apparently Prague’s finest Romanesque Church. I’ll take my guide books word on that one! Opposite was Convent St George and there was Golden Lane a little further up past a toy museum.

Once I was done wandering and taking photos I walked the area around the castle, notably visiting the other church called St Nicholas -this one more impressive than the one in the Old Town Square. Again, according to my guidebook - this is one of the greatest baroque buildings in the city. It certainly was more interesting and impressive than the other one - and you could also go up into the gallery and see some 17th century paintings.


I also went past a few other churches on my wandering - including Sanctuary of Our Lady Loretta which is known for its collection of religious artefacts of diamonds, pearls and jewels. After some more walking around that area and getting some nice views over the city, I headed back to the hostel before dark, cooked my pasta, did some uni work and had another early evening. Still absolutely no voice.

WEDNESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2009 - PRAGUE

This morning after deciding to skip breakfast (which only ever consisted of plain boring cornflakes and coffee) I headed out to the Jewish Quarter - or Josefov.

First stop was the Old-New Synagogue which is the oldest site of Prague’s Jewish Town and apparently the oldest extant synagogue in Europe, having been built in the 13th century. It was originally called the New Synagogue but when other ‘newer’ synagogues were built, it got the name Old-New Synagogue.’ It has a medieval double-nave which is also apparently quite unique.

After spending some time in the synagogue I headed across to one of the Jewish monuments where I bought a ticket which got me into several of the historical sites in the quarter.

The Klaus Synagogue had an exhibition on Jewish traditions and customs (which I knew little about) and the other museums/ synagogues I went into also had extensive displays - including the Maisel Synagogue, the Spanish Synagogue (some very interesting wall and ceiling decorations) and the Ceremonial Hall.

However, the one building which really stood out for me was the Pinkas Synagogue which is now a holocaust memorial. The walls on the first two floors are covered with inscriptions of the 77,000 (about) Czech Jews who lost their lives. It was amazing - seeing them written out over the walls really drives home the enormity of the holocaust. According to our walking guide earlier in the week - it is not uncommon to see people go in there to see if they can see their relative’s names - just to know what happened to them. Apparently this happened to an American politician several years ago when she visited the memorial to pay tribute - when she was looking through the names, she saw the names of her grandparents - which she had not known had died during the holocaust.

Upstairs in the same building there is also an exhibition of the paintings and drawings done by children who had been put into concentration camps. Because many of them were too young to express their feelings, they were asked to draw pictures of their family, of what life was like at the camp, and of what they missed. There are about 400 pictures on display - but looking at them can be quite sad as you know many of them wouldn’t have made it out of the camp that they were in.

After that it was onto the final stage of the Jewish Quarter - the old cemetery. This had also been pointed out to us on the walking tour, although with my ticket I actually had the opportunity to walk through it and not just see it from the outside. The cemetery has some 12,000 tombstones, the oldest grave dates back to the 1400s. The cemetery stopped being used by the late 1700s, by which time burials were carried out on top of each other, with headstones put in front of existing ones - some up to 12 layers deep. It’s said that this cemetery may have been one of the inspirations for the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin - with its pillars and disorientating levels - much like this cemetery.

Having exhausted the Jewish Historical Museum Quarter, I headed back into the old town and figured I might as well join one of the free castle tours as I had missed some of the sights which they covered (although I had covered the castle area quite extensively the previous day). The guide this time was a local girl who seemed quite nice - although her accent was quite annoying at times.

One of the first stops was the Wallenstein Gardens. The palace itself (which we didn’t go in) is now the home of the country’s senate. One of the highlights in the garden was the wall - a fake stalactite ‘grotto’ which has hidden within it hidden animals (crocodile, snake, gorilla) and faces.

The tour also took us around the area to the east side of the castle which I hadn’t had much of a chance to see the previous day. We stopped at the John Lennon wall (covered with peace messages and the only place you can ‘legally’ graffiti). The guide also pointed out the flood lines and flood barriers which had been installed since flooding several years ago. Marked on the side of one of the buildings is a scale showing the extent of the floods each year. Now they have installed some barriers which in the event of flooding they can simply erect to protect some of the lower lying and important areas.

Then it was up the hill into the castle area, where we had time to go into St Vitus - this time there were no queues which was very good!! The church started to be built in the 1300s but was not finished until the early 1900s. There was quite a lot of stunning stain glass windows.

The tour finished up at the castle area and I wandered back, cooked pasta again, finished one of my uni assignments and had another early night. Oh - did I mention - still absolutely no voice???

THURSDAY 1 OCTOBER 2009 - PRAGUE

As this morning I had to check out of the hostel I took my time getting up. Had breakfast and checked out at 10am. From there I basically spent most of the day in the common room finishing up my other two uni assignments that were due in a few days time (but since next stop was Oktoberfest - they were essentially due today!!).

The bibliography/ list of references for one of them took forever but I was very relieved when I emailed them all off at around 3pm or so.

Still without much of a voice, I spent the last few hours of daylight wandering the new town area. Found a pharmacist that spoke reasonable English and then bought some souvenirs.

When it started raining at about 7pm I headed back to the hostel and grabbed some food for dinner. At about 10pm I headed out towards the central bus station to get the night bus to Munich for Oktoberfest. The bus left just before midnight so got there with plenty of time to spare. Bus was very full.

In the early hours of the morning we were stopped by people I can only assume were border officials or police (presumably when we were crossing the border) and had our passports checked. The guys who boarded didn’t have any official uniforms on (jeans and a sweater) and since we were crossing between EU member states - I am not sure what the issue was. In hindsight I would say it had something to do with the fact that Munich was on high terror alert because of threats by terror groups against Oktoberfest. Mind you - I didn’t know that at the time and just thought it a little odd that we had to have a passport check going between EU member states...

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