| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 10 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
After the cemetery we proceeded past the restaurant 'U Golema,' which means 'At the Golem's.' We saw the main square and the clock on the hour. We saw a group doing native dances--perhaps gypsies, I don't know. We proceeded past shops and down crooked streets to the Charles Bridge. This is considered one of the major sights, a wide bridge across the Moldau with religious statues on either side and lined with souvenir hawkers.
After that we wanted to get a taxi. It took a while to find one. We did but we were having a hard time asking him the cost back to the Panorama. I took out a piece of paper and Steve wrote '140,' which had been the fare to the Jewish quarter. He took the pencil and wrote '130.' Taxi drivers are very honest here.
We had to put Mary's wheelchair in the back and the driver went off in search of a rope and came back empty-handed. We used Steve's belt to tie down the back. That was fine until it slipped from the hook and the back of the cab flew up. We started shouting 'Halten!' and the driver saw the problem.
Dinner was buffet-style with lots of fattening meat. Food in the Panorama Hotel is okay but not great.
Then some more writing in the room and to bed.
|
Breakfast was buffet and okay but not great. Some nice herring.
We had a city tour at 9 AM. The local guide's name was Jana, pronounced 'Yana.'
Eastern Europe, like Holland and Belgium, seems to be suffering the ravages of the scaffolding moth. Building after beautiful building is encased in cocoons of scaffolding. So many of the buildings we would like to see have suffered the ravages of this pest and have unsightly scaffolding around them.
I won't describe the buildings we saw in detail, not so much because I didn't take notes, but because the notes just are not that meaningful to me two days later! We saw the plague column. These things were erected all over Europe to thank God for removing the plague. I guess it stands to reason, however, that if God removed the plague then He brought it also. Nobody seems to blame Him, though. That's just the sort of thing He does. But His good side is that He also removed it. Actually, though, they had good reason to be thankful. It is not unusual for a blight to kill off a species. That is just what the plague was and it killed something like one person in three. It could easily have been a blight that killed off the whole species. Their knowledge of disease was laughable by today's standards.
Continuing on, we went to Prague Castle. One enters through a gate flanked by two statues of titans with clubs ready to pound into poi any enemy who comes through the gates. I gave them a 'peace' gesture as I came by and they sneered and growled at me. Good thing they can't read my log. Or anything else, unless I miss my guess.
Flag poles here are tapered. They are narrow cones that go to a point. What appeared to be a large bird cage, at least a meter in diameter, was actually the covering of a well. This well, the guide said, was where unfaithful wives were thrown. There was no such well for unfaithful husbands because there were just too many of them. It occurs to me that if so many men were unfaithful and so few women, these women must have been unfaithful with a whole lot of men. Maybe they deserved to be thrown in a well. Maybe it was worth it!
We went into the Cathedral since we hadn't been in a church yet that morning. This is a Gothic cathedral started in the 10th Century and renamed in the 14th Century as the Church of St. Vitus. St. Vitus is best remembered for the side-splitting way he danced around when dropped into boiling oil. It became known as St. Vitus' Dance. When you are a Christian martyr, even in your last moments you get no privacy. Adoration, perhaps. Privacy, no. Most notable are the brightly colored stained glass windows that everyone seems to photograph in spite of the request that there be no photography. I think I am the only one polite enough to respect the rules of the house. The cathedral tower is 96 meters high, but I couldn't think of any witty way to tell you that.
We left the cathedral, crossed a courtyard where an orchestra was playing, and found ourselves in Vladislav Hall, where the Hapsburgs had their throne. Separation of church and state was about a thirty-second walk. This palace was built from 1486 to 1502. The throne room was decorated with pictures of Hapsburg noses in tasteful frames known as Hapsburg faces. One of the most popular of the Hapsburgs was Joseph II, who ruled from 1780 to 1790. In 1781 he ruled that Jews had freedom of religion and could be Jews. A grateful Jewish populace agreed to let Joseph remain Catholic.
Leaving the palace we came to Golden Lane, so named for the alchemists who lived there. Of course, they never succeeded in making gold, but if they had, the property values would have skyrocketed. But putting the alchemists in Golden Lane is sort of like putting Henry Kissinger in Peace-in-the-Middle-East Street or Phyllis Diller on Funny-Joke Avenue. Soldiers, writers, and Bohemian bohemians lived there also, including one Franz Kafka.
From there we went to the main square to see apostles peeking out of windows once again when the clock struck. At the center of the square we discussed the statue of Jan Hus, who was martyred trying to bring Protestantism to Czechoslovakia.
By this point all the non-Jews who could walk away had. We were down to Mary and the Jewish members of the group. So we went back to learn more about the Altneuschul.
There are 10,000 people buried in the Jewish cemetery, all dead hopefully. Another contribution to Jewish culture was that Maria Teresa gave her name to the nearby town of Terezin, which when the Germans invaded they renamed Teresienstadt. In Teresienstadt the Germans set up what was supposed to be a model concentration camp. Unfortunately, that is just what it turned out to be. Near the cemetery there is a collection of children's poems and letters from Teresienstadt.
We then got together with Mojca and arranged what time we'd meet the bus to go back, then split up. We had lunch with Steve and Mary. The restaurant U Rudolfo had been recommended to us. It was across the street from U Golema. The two name mean 'At Rudolf's' and 'At the Golem's.' I get the impression that they are kosher and non-kosher branches of the same restaurant. U Rudolfo was open and had pork dishes. U Golema was closed this Saturday afternoon.
I ordered a dish which turned out to be pork stuffed with bacon. Another dish turned out to be a combination of cheese, pork, and green beans, but it was fairly good. Probably the tastiest was a roast beef stuffed with Roquefort.
We split up after lunch. Evelyn and I headed for window shopping on Wenceslaus Square. We stopped in some bookstores to see what they had in English and if we could get some fantasy in Czech. I bought myself a raspberry ice cream. It was soft but on the outside it hardened in the air. This allowed the server to put a tall and narrow peak on the ice cream. Very tasty, actually. It cost four crowns, or just over thirteen cents. We looked in a cinema. We could have seen FLATLINERS for about sixty cents. At the head of the square is the statue of Wenceslaus. We popped into a store. When we came out I heard a sound like thunder, but it was rhythmic thunder. It was voices shouting in unison. And there were a lot of them. Hundreds. We looked down the street and it looked like something was happening. We crossed over and stood by Wenceslaus's statue and saw a solid wave of people moving up the street. I saw signs on the statue that said something about a demonstration on June 8 at 4 PM. That was just about what time it was. My estimate is that 3000 people filled the square, but if I heard it was 5000, I could easily believe it. We moved off the square to the left side. Everyone was speaking Czech and we could not find out what was going on. This group had banners with three diamonds that said 'REP.' Other posters talked about Havel and Sladak. At first I thought that it was Havel who was addressing the crowd from where I was standing moments before. Someone who spoke English told us he did not know what was going on, but he thought the speaker was talking against both Havel and Communism and was demanding more radical reform than Havel could deliver. Sunday evening we saw film of the demonstration on Austrian news described in German language and we still could not figure out what it was all about. We will probably have to wait until we get home to find out what it was all about.
The Czech hatred of the Soviets and of Communism is thick enough to cut with a knife. We bought some propaganda postcards of a field of skulls and Lenin's face half-drawn as a skull among them. Elsewhere, a storefront was turned into an art exhibition about the horrors of the Gulag. Earlier, Steve heard of a Museum of Lenin in Prague. He asked the guide if it was still around. The guide's reaction was somewhere between surprise and shock. 'Oh, no, that's not there any more.' Later when we left Czechoslovakia, we saw a sign on the border commemorating the great friendship between the Russian and Czech people. It was there to try to convince people leaving Czechoslovakia not to defect.
We walked one more time through the main square before leaving. A blacksmith was demonstrating how coins were once made and was selling the coins he made.
Evelyn bought herself a little golem and finally we boarded the bus for the hotel. Dinner was reasonably good fried fish. Over dinner we discussed whether we wanted to call it a night or to see Prague by night. I was extremely tired but I argued that we want to see what there is to see in Prague. I think I am like a horse. I am just too stupid to rest, particularly when on tour in another country. I will keep going until either it is time to sleep or I cannot keep myself awake. My way of resting is to write these long logs. I would not have rested if I had stayed in the hotel--I would have written. And writing is hard work. Mary also voted to go, Steve and Evelyn to stay in. Eventually my argument we should see all we can won out, so at 8:45 PM we headed out for the main square. Mary and I voted for the Charles Bridge, Steve and Evelyn for the main square. This time we let Steve and Evelyn win.
Not much was happening on the main square so we ambled over to the Charles Bridge. Leaving the square we saw a young boy and girl playing Mozart, but most of the square was deserted. Prague must be pretty far north since even at 9:30 PM the sky wasn't dark. The walk across the bridge is nice as darkness falls. Buildings on each side of the Moldau are lit up and the bridge is very romantic. Steve said he was glad we had come.
At one point a fight nearly broke our as some Americans were singing and apparently a French-speaker was tired of hearing so much American music. Some group of about fifteen people came through with lanterns looking like smiling moons lit by candles inside.
Eventually we called it a day and went back to the hotel.
|
| Today is for travelling to Vienna. Buffet breakfast with good herring. On the bus I had a long political discussion with Sam. People have been wondering about Sam's background which seems foreign. He is first-generation American with parents who are Lebanese Christian (with some Jewish, he says). Sam was educated in France. |
|
| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
