Following my time in Krakow, I hopped on an overnight train to Prague. While in Spain I had really wanted to travel to Prague, but the distance and costs of flights had been out of reach. Now, on the other side of the Czech Republic, this journey was quite simple. My first day in Prague was spent exclusively with my favorite touring company – Sandeman New Europe Tours. I began the day with their free walking tour of the city, continued onto the Castle District Tour, and finished off the night watching the World Cup Game while on their Pub Crawl Tour. Prague is an incredibly beautiful city. The truth is that Prague is not known for its impressive museums or interesting sites to visit internally, but for its external beauty, winding streets of little shops and cafes and endless photo opportunities. Located along the Vltava River, Prague is comprised of many districts, each with their own history and flare. My walking tour took me through the Old Town, beginning in the center square where St. Nicholas’ Church stands as well as the famous Astronomical Clock and continued onto the Jewish District of Josefov and ended near the river for a beautiful view of the castle in the Castle District. The Astronomical Clock, which a friend of mine told me was the only thing aside from beer that he knew Prague to be famous for, was a marvel in its day due to the spectacle it puts on every hour. The clock has 4 statues which represent the deepest civic anxieties of the 15th century - Vanity, Greed, Pagan Invasion and lastly Death, represented by a skeleton, who on the hour, rings a bell to remind all that death is surely coming. The 12 Apostles then parade by nodding to the crowd and the spectacle is ended with the crowing of a rooster. This clock was so unique that legend says the clock maker was blinded so that he could not replicate his work and the clock would remain unique to Prague. Today, with the presence of television and other entertainment, the spectacle is not as moving as it once would have been to viewers in the 15th century, but the fact that such a clock existed in its day is quite impressive.
In the afternoon I joined the Castle District tour, which took us across the river to wind through the streets leading up to the castle overlooking the city. The castle dates back to the 9th century is apparently the largest castle in the world. In the center of the castle district stands St. Vitus Cathedral, which began construction in 926 but was only recently completed which is quite obvious due to the change in design techniques for the top portion of the Cathedral – check out a picture below. At the top of the castle district there is a monastery founded in 1140, which to this day brews beer to help finance the monastery. The best part of the whole tour was the moments when we were able to stop and enjoy the view of the city. Prague is a vast span of red roofs and tan buildings making it such a beautiful and picturesque city. I couldn’t stop taking pictures!
On my second day in the city I headed into the Jewish District, Josefov. The Jewish District, once the Jewish Ghetto during the years of WWII (for the Czech Republic this began in 1939), consists of six synagogues, a very crowded Jewish Cemetery and Jewish Museum. Faiz, a friend I made while on my train from Krakow, joined me for the day. The Jewish District exists still today only because the Nazi’s preserved this area in expectation of opening a museum there for the “extinct” Jewish race. Faiz and I went for two specific sites, the first being the Jewish Cemetery begun in the 15th century. Due to the crowding in the Jewish Ghetto, little room was available for the burial of Jewish individuals. For this reason, coffins were buried one on top of another in a system of layering with 10 being the most that was ever buried on top of one another. Visible are some 12,000 tombstones but below lays over 100,000 coffins. Due to this crowding, the tombstones have all begun to shift and fall into one another making it quite a site. There is a picture below. The second site we wanted to see was the Pinkas Synagogue. This synagogue houses the names, birthdates and dates of disappearance of all 77,297 Bohemian and Moravian Jews fallen victim to the Nazi terror. The walls are covered in these names and numbers from floor to ceiling. While we were in the prayer room, two Jewish men began to sing in prayer to the memorial plaque where inscribed are the names of the Concentration Camps these individuals were sent to and killed. As the men sang they began to cry, as did I. Though I set off on this whole trip to see the sites, I never imagined the historical lessons and events I would experience – the prayer was incredibly moving and I’m thankful we got a chance to see and be a part of remembering the names of these people who were so brutally killed. On the second floor of the synagogue is an exhibition of drawings and paintings done by children who were held in the Terezin Concentration Camp – their work showed the hope that one day they would be able to return to their happy lives in Prague. Unfortunately, the drawings are for the most part, all that remains of most of the children who were taken to Terezin.
On my last day in Prague, I did another Sandeman tour to a city outside Prague, called Kutna Hora. Once a competitor for the most prosperous city in the Czech Republic, Kutna Hora was the location of one of the richest silver mines in Central Europe. Our tour took us to see Saint Barbara’s Church, built to thank God for the wealth of the silver mine, as well as the location of the first minting press in the Czech Republic. Though these were interesting; the most famous site in Kutna Hora is a chapel known as The Sedlec Ossuary or Bone Chapel. Inside this Chapel rests the skeletons of some 20 – 40,000 individuals. The Chapel was constructed for burial ceremonies to take place in a once a very popular cemetery. As the chapel was being built on top of already buried bodies, the bodies were removed to be buried again later. However, one crazy monk who oversaw the chapel rearranged all the bones to be placed in their separate bone categories. When a new family took over the charge of the chapel, they ordered an artist to design something that would honor the bones now too disorganized to ever be sorted back to their proper individual’s coffin. Today, tourists can see 4 separate pyramids made of skulls and bones, a chandelier made of every bone in the human body and the crest of the family who commissioned the artwork also made entirely of human bone. It was quite creepy to see so many skulls hanging about the chapel and a tourmate commented on how hard it is to look at these skulls and not remember that they once were a part of a living, breathing human being like ourselves! The tour was really spectacular and in the afternoon we stopped at a cute outdoors restaurant to feast on traditional Czech food – I have attached a picture of the beef and dumpling dish with cranberries and cream, which I had along with a beer from the Kutna Hora region. The girls in my picture at the restaurant are from Minnesota – their names were Megan and Beth – too weird!
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