Our trip to Prague, Czech Republic
In 2011, Aj went to Prague while he was on his college study abroad trip. He made it sound so special, we have wanted to visit since that time. For the most part Prague was saved from the bombing of World War II, as it was Hitler’s intention to use the city as a museum to the extinct Jewish race after the war – that part of his evil plan did not work out. But it did leave a beautiful city. The city is split by the Vltava River with Prague Castle and Lesser Town on one side and The Old Town and Jewish Quarter on the other, with the Charles Bridge linking the two sides in-between. https://www.pragueexperience.com/maps/map.asp
We began our trip in the Lesser Town. Arriving by plane and then picking up the airport express and tram, it was a short walk to our hotel. We were not in Kansas anymore. The open areas are green, forested green. The buildings are beautiful, exemplifying hundreds of years of architectural styles. https://www.prague-stay.com/lifestyle/category/36-prague-architecture And, it pretty much smells like food. There are millions of hungry tourists each year who need a place to eat. We stopped for our first meal at an open-air beer garden. The beer was made on premises and the food typical Czech; Andy had ribs and drank the beer, I ate the goulash. We spent that first day simply getting there and getting settled. We crossed the Charles bridge (a must do) and wandered a small part of Old Town. By dinner we had found an outdoor restaurant right on the river with a guitar player providing entertainment.
I thought I had done my homework in anticipation of our four days in Prague, but I was surprised by just how much music there is. We heard truly excellent buskers playing classical music on the Charles bridge. Duos and trios in corners of the walkways drew large audiences all along the winding streets. We located the Reduta Jazz Club and added it to our ‘let’s come here before we leave’ list. http://www.redutajazzclub.cz/ We did our river dinner cruise on the Jazz Boat. https://www.jazzboat.cz/en/ which offers a surprising mix of Dixieland Jazz with a few standards from Louis Armstrong in the thirty’s. We remain amazed at the prevalence of American music and culture in Europe in the UK.
Our second day, Friday, we started with a three hour walking tour of the Jewish Quarter and the synagogues that remain in it. The history of the Jews in Prague go back to the 900’s, if not earlier. Since that time, there has been a Jewish community in Prague. Not unlike what we have seen in Amsterdam, Prague was a good place for Jews to be – until it wasn’t. After several pogroms and reversals, the Jewish community in Prague was approximately 25% of the population. It was the Jewish council that worked to clear out the slum areas of the Jewish quarter and replace it with new buildings built in the style of the day in the early 1900’s. From that effort we get the beautiful Old Town with its Art Nouveau architecture. https://www.praguego.com/attractions/jewish-quarter/
The Pinkus Synagogue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkas_Synagogue) is one of the four visited on the walking tour. It is this synagogue that so effectively brings the horrors of the holocaust into perspective. The ground floor has been simply refurbished and the white-painted walls inscribed with the names and dates of Jewish Czech residents who were killed in the camps. At the same time a speaker plays a reading of all names quietly by the bimah. Every wall is covered. There are 80,000 names. Men, women, and children; gone. The next level contains a display of children’s artwork that was created in Terezin. Terezin was the “show camp” right outside of town used to convince the international community that the Jews were not being mistreated. The displays are pictures of sun, and family, and school; of hope for the future and even Mickey Mouse. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terez%C3%ADn) I have yet to find the words that will let me write what I feel when I walk on a street where 80,000 people walked to a brutal ending. The tour was exhausting on so many levels. We transitioned our thoughts by finding an outdoor café for lunch and searching for a keepsake hanukkiah, which we never found. It was later that evening that we took the Jazz Boat to see the city and relax to the Dixieland as we went up and down the Vltava river.
Saturday was our tour of Prague Castle. Another three hour tour. The castle is huge with multiple buildings; a tour was a must have to make sense of everything within the walls. It is the largest castle complex in the world. https://www.hrad.cz/en/prague-castle-for-visitors We walked our legs off while we learned the complex history of the site. At the end of the tour, you have a choice of staying to wander the grounds, or the Golden Lane; where Kafka once lived, or exiting back down to lesser town. We did not want to go too far, but we did need lunch and a chance to sit down for a bit. Going out by the Golden Lane is the St. Wencelas Vineyard and Vineyard Bistro – Perfect.
Revived by our lunch, it was time to make our way across the castle grounds to the Prague Craft Beer Festival which was being held in an area just outside the castle. So tricky to find though. Since we did not have an address to give Google maps, we walked way out of our way before finding it. Whew! Andrew paid cash for our entry and in we went with our little beer tasting glasses. Not being a beer drinker, I would say I did find some that were ‘not bad’ and figured after three taster glasses, I had had enough. It was good find a spot in the shade and sit down. While not wrenching, the touring and walking had been taxing. Back to our hotel to rest a bit and then find dinner. Not far from the hotel is a café with outside tables on the river. We could eat, drink, and watch the other tourists go by. And, then a thunderstorm came up pushing us all inside. The waiter brought our check assuming we wanted to leave, then explained that the credit card machine was broken, could we please pay cash. Sure, Andy has the cash in his wallet. It was then that we were reminded, even a moments inattention at a location known as the ‘pickpocket capital of the world’, could mean your wallet is gone.
It was shortly after that, that I started thinking of our trip to Prague in terms of ‘before’ and ‘after’. Before Andy’s wallet was stolen and everything that came after.
To be continued in Blog 17 b