Prague

Prague was incredible! It’s kind of like Boston only much prettier and with a lot more history. We took the 14 hour bus ride overnight from Rome and got to Prague at 10:00 to have our first real breakfast in Europe! They had eggs and granola and toast and coffee! NO hostels we have been to yet had an actual breakfast like that. So we ate and showered then we met up with the group for a walking tour of Prague. Our tour guide was awesome and really funny. We took the metro to get to the main center of the city and while doing so we went down the LONGEST escalator in all of Europe! The metro stop is called Namasti Miru and it was a really really long escalator. But thank god they had it because I definitely could not climb up that many stairs! First we went to Old Town Square which is where the Astronomical clock is and two other important churches. Because it is still close to Easter there were a ton of booths up selling souvenirs and different kinds of foods. The Astronomical clock is really cool with a ton of different hands on it for zodiac signs and different stages of the moon and stars. Every hour there is a little show where some puppets move their heads and music comes out. It is kind of like a gigantic cuckoo clock, but it was made in the 14th century so it must have been really cool back then.

Then we sat in this park where there were a few trees, almost like a courtyard and it turned out it was the location of the only building blown up by the Nazis. Now there is a memorial there and they won’t ever rebuild something on that spot. Then we continued walking through Prague and saw a lot of churches and different architecture. Every building there is beautiful and detailed and freshly painted. There is no graffiti and no litter! So then we got to this main square named after the patron saint of the Czechs and saw the National Museum. This is the site where a 21 year old, Jan Palach, doused himself in Kerosene and lit himself on fire as a protest against communism. Pretty intense. We later saw a memorial for him near the river. For our break we stopped at a place called Bohemia bagel and had a beer and a bagel! Then we went to the Jewish quarter after seeing a statue of Franz Kafka who lived in the Jewish quarter, called Josefov. My roommates and I went into the Holocaust memorial Pinkas Synogague which is not a synogague anymore. The walls of this temple are covered in names of Czechs who died in the Holocaust and it’s really stunning. It has their last name, first name, date of birth and date of death. There is something like 77, 000 names on the walls and some of them don’t have death dates meaning it was not documented. Then upstairs there is a room dedicated to the drawings that children made while in the concentration camp Terezin, just outside of Prague. There was a woman named Freidl Dicker-Brandeis who stole crayons, markers, pencils and paper and gave them to the children for art therapy after witnessing their depression from being extracted from the families and lives and put into a death camp. It was really amazing seeing what the children drew; some of the pictures were happy and some were horrifying, but most were of roads leading away from camps or into a field with signs saying the name of the childrens hometowns. Some of the drawings were really wonderful considering the age and lack of materials the children had. Some of these pictures were the only things on the face of the planet that proved these children ever existed.

Behind that synogague was a Jewish cemetery that had a really unique story to it. Because the Jews had been confined to one area of Prague for over 600 years, they only had one place for a cemetery. Once the cemetery filled up, they started putting coffins on coffins and started bring dirt in to raise the level of the cemetery. In some places there are 12 coffins buried on one spot and the crowding of tombstones is really ridiculous. I have never seen such a crowded cemetery and I’m not sure if one exists that looks like this one! After the Jewish quarter we got to the river and saw the Charles Bridge which was built by Charles IV in 1357 and is still standing today! Across the river you can see the Prague castle which can hold something like 12 football fields. It is HUGE! Also across the river is a gigantic pendulum on top of a hill which replaced a giant statue of Lenin years ago. After the tour we shopped in some of the markets and I bought some small paintings of Prague and a t-shirt. The night we went on a bar crawl which was a ton of fun and there were a lot of different people on it. I met a few HILARIOUS English guys that I laughed so hard with. Too bad I didn’t get their names.

The next morning we went on another tour of Prague to see the things we didn’t on Friday. We went to the castle first and saw the giant cathedral which was so beautiful. But was had to walk up really far to get there and then once we saw it we climbed back down and that was difficult. After that we went to see the Kafka museum but we didn’t go in. On our way to the Lenin wall there is a bridge right in front of a water wheel on Velkoprevorske Namesti (that’s the name of the street) that people put locks on to proclaim their commitment and love for their partner. There are about 17 bridges like this in the world where people put locks on. So I had a lock in my purse so I put it on the bridge for Mom and Dad. Now they can never get divorced because they will have to go to Prague and crack the lock.

The Lennon Wall/Hunger Wall is a wall that people used to write protests against Communism on. The police would come paint of the graffiti but people just kept coming back and writing on it. It happened for a long time until the 1990s when the police stopped painting over the wall. Now it is really brightly colored and has Beatles lyrics all over it and is a symbol of peace and love. Real hippi-ish. But it was cool to see all the different works of art and lyrics all over it. Then we walked over the Charles Bridge which was packed with tourists. There were a lot of important statues on the bridge, but they were taken and put in museums all over the world so now the statues are just copies. After the tour we went to Old Town Square to do some more shopping. I got a traditional Czech pastry that is round and like fried dough with cinnamon and sugar, and it was delicious. We did some more shopping in the markets and I got some jewelry, more artwork, and some hats. Then we met up with the group at this place called the Beet Factory where they have taps right on the table and the beer is really cheap. That night we went with our tour guide Amanda and some friends we made to an 80’s dance club called Lucerna. The place was packed with all people of all ages and weirdness. IT WAS AWESOME! We heard two songs from Grease, I Will Survive, Madonna, Cotton Eyed Joe, Barbie Girl, Sweet Dreams and so many other awesome songs. We saw some really weird people like an old man with a braided beard without a shirt on….that was gross. And also a mid forties woman with way too tight a shirt on dancing up on stage by herself. But hey, they’re harmless just trying to have a good time. It was so much fun.

The next morning we got on the bus at 11:00am and didn’t get back to Rome until 3:30am the next morning…it was bad. It was also pouring when we got back and we had to find a taxi but we had no euros on us. But the weekend was incredible and Prague was awesome. It is so different than Italy because it actually has Starbucks, KFC’s, convenient stores and other corporate America things. It was a beautiful city and I felt like I was in a fairy tale the whole time. I hope I get to go back someday because this weekend was such a blast!