I Love Prague!!

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Thursday 16th July 2009

Up at 6.30am this morning to have bags ready by 7 and breakfast by 7.30am when we leave Kirchdorf, Tirol, Austria and head off to Prague....

It only takes about 30 minutes and we are in Germany, completely different countryside now passes by the windows, Austria was just beautiful with mountains, green valleys and cut houses. In Germany its flat and the houses are diffferent - not that they aren't lovely but it is different to Austria - it's pretty amazing that these different countries have not blended together and lost their identity or culture which why I am so opposed to the Americanisation of this world.. I hope we don't all blend together to become one big BLAH! Otherwise what would be the point of travelling if everywhere we went was the same??

Anyway at 10.30am we arrive at Mauthausen for a 30 minute look around before the next 1 hour film starts which tells us the history of this concentration camp. My god this place is heartbreaking, I cannot bring myself to take photos of this place, it just doesn't deserve the recognition - my god it is just so so so awful what happened here and across this and other neighbouring countries... I think they are doing the right thing preserving this atrocity so we can be sure it never happens again... I get really upset and the only photos I take are of the long stair way built deliberately uneven so that the prisoners who walk up them all chained together tired, hungry and driven to death will falll down and take all their compatriots with them.... I also took a photo of the cliff and rock pool where the back prisoners had to push forward and in doing so push off one of their own from the front and off the cliff to drown... if they didn't hit their heads on the rocks on the way down... just so so awful....

After this we eat in comtemplative silence and leave a much quieter group than usual...

At 5.30pm we arrive in Prague and are staying a Plus Prague, a hostel in rooms of four once more but two rooms share a shower and toilet. There is no hot water but I have a shower anyway and the water seems lukewarm to me - phew!!!
I get to wash my towel!! Wahoo but the driers are all being used nevermind - don't need it anyway I have a spare fortunately!!

We all go across to the hostel restaurant for dinner which includes wine!! i don't have any this time!! We get a three course meal!! The entree is four quarters of bread each with a different spread on them and in the middle of the plate are some cheese and potato balls (I think). The main is pork and we get ice cream with whipped cream for dessert - YUMMY!!!!! After dinner we cathc the tram to Prague and walk over the King Charles Bridge and our group splits up in to those going to the Beer Factory and those going to look around the city at night and opt for the latter!! 😊 Prague is beautiful at night. When we drove into the city it didn't look particularly lovely even though I had heard that it was... but now walking around the city centre area it is just wonderful and we saw the Astronomical Clock and Wenceslas Square before heading to the beer factory, cause it was after 10 the girls get in free and the boys have to pay... not really fair but nevermind!!! It was a great night had by all and most of us were up dancing - Go the Macarena!!!

Brooke, Joy, Jacinta, Ellen, Leszek and I catch the tram back home while the others go on to the 5 storey night club to keep partying. Funny cause our tram picks up Damo who has left the nightclub, had KFC and also heading abck to the hostel...

Friday 17th July - FREE DAY IN PRAGUE!!

Get up at 8am and get dressed ( wahoo bonus! - haha!!) and have breakfast, funny cause some people think that the slushy machine has some thing like milk in it and put it in their coffee... alas it's yoghurt!!!! After breakfast it's internet time, pick up the towel and then Joy, Jacinta, Adela, Les and I head off to catch the tram into the city and walk to the main square. We are going to do the free walking tour that is run here and a number of places across Europe. They run one group that is in Spanish and about 3 or 4 that are English speaking and they take us around the city on a 3 hour walking tour. We have Mike from Canada who is pretty animated about reciting the history of this city and he points out a number of architectural buildings of interest and tells us all sorts of local legends. We see the only theatre still standing where Mozart performed first Don Giovanni and the Cathedral of the Shrivelled Arm (not it's actual name) and of course walk around the Jewish Quarter. In the jewish quarter we have another heartbreak moment as Mike points out that within the church you can go see an exhibition of 4500 drawings done by the jewish children held in a concentration camp not that far away from Prague (sounded something like Trieste??) This is where a number of jewish families were sent and this camp was used for propaganda purposes, every now and again the Germans would come and throw the kids some toys and books and make them all pretend they were on holiday and use this footage to say the Jews were having a great time at these concentration camps. One of the jews was a teacher and tried to use picture therapy and in secret got the children to draw, a lot of these kids didn't know why they were there or couldn't express their fear or misunderstanding and a lot drew pictures of their old homes and playing etc.... The teacher managed to save all these drawings and hid them all in suitcases from the Germans and these were found by the Americans when the camp was liberated... unfortunately all these children and their families had been sent to Auchwidte (not sure of spelling sorry) and there were no survivors. All that remains are these pictures....

Anyway, the tour was really great and once it finished I went off on my own shopping, Joy and Jacinta had both gone (separately ) to the castle for a look. I went back to the jewish quarter to look at Bohemian glass and crystal and walked around all over the place buying this and buying that.... 😊 i ended up having to buy a BAG to carry it all back to the hostel in!!!! I didn't want to leave the city to go back to the hostel it was just beautiful, it's just too hard to capture in a photo graph - i didn't see any churchs, the castle or museums.... but I didn't need to in order to appreciate this place.... Took photos of the peeing statues - you can send them a text and they pee it out in the water fountain.. HAHAHAHA!!!!!

Back at the hostel I grabbed dinner and two other topdeck buses arrived so it's a busy night here tonight as they also have a contiki tour staying here too... one of the topdeck tours has Damo's brother has the bus driver... cool!!!

Anyway I use the internet once more, repack my bags as we cannot take our main luggage into the castle in the Rhine Valley tomorrow night... jeepers not again!! Go to bed listening to the thunder and lightening - hope it cools down as it's really hot and sticky at the moment....

Ye gods swollen ankles once again!!!! All that heat and walking I guess...

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