Prague

Last weekend I went to Prague! I met my friend Eileen there on Friday night. We checked into our hostel which was right next to the Charles Bridge and walked around on Charles Bridge.

Prague Castle

One of the statues on Charles Bridge - really creepy at night

The next morning we walked over to the Old Town Square and took a free walking tour, which was really interesting and informative. I love a good free walking tour. We saw the Astronomical Clock, which was really pretty. The figures move on the hour. The clock is apparently the second most disappointing attraction in the world, second only to the Mona Lisa. However, I thought it was pretty cool nonetheless. It shows where the sun and moon are in the sky, the phase of the moon, the time, and more that I've forgotten.

We saw the Estates Theater, where Mozart's Don Giovanni premiered. This creepy statue was next to it:

Is it a dementor? Nazgul? Nope, Don Giovanni apparently.

We also walked through the Jewish Quarter and learned about the history of the Jews in Prague, from being forced to live in the ghetto to the Holocaust.  Apparently, the Jewish Quarter is now one of the nicest parts of town. Our guide also told us the story of the Golem, a creature created by a rabbi to help the Jews. He deactivated the Golem every Sabbath, but one time he forgot and the Golem went crazy and started rampaging through the town. The rabbi managed to immobilize the Golem and he was placed in the attic of the synagogue. However, no evidence of the Golem had been found there.

The New Old Synagogue

Statue of Kafka

We learned about the history of Communism in the Czech Republic. It is strange how our tour guide, who was in his mid-20's, was born under the Communist rule. It is pretty recent, but at the same time seems so long ago.

We later went up the hill to get a view of Prague from above. It was a little rainy and foggy, so the view wasn't the best.



I later walked around and ran into the John Lennon wall. The wall is covered in graffiti of Beatles quotes and inspirational messages.

The next day, we went to the castle! We walked around the huge castle complex and went inside St. Vitus Cathedral.

St. Vitus Cathedral

The front of St. Vitus Cathedral

We then went to the Jewish Museum. We saw the Pinkas Synagogue, the walls of which are covered with the names of the Czech and Bovarian Jews killed by the Nazis. There are over 80,000 names and not all of them are known. On the second level there is the artwork of the children in Terezin, a concentration camp that Hitler used as an example of how well the Jews were being treated. Almost all of the children were killed and their artwork is haunting. We also saw the Old Jewish Cemetery. When the Jews were confined to the ghetto, they only had a small piece of land in which to bury their dead. Because there are strict burial rules, they had to find a solution since they were running out of space. They decided to put another layer of land on top of the current one. So there are twelve layers of bodies buried here and there is a tombstone for every person.

Later, we just wandered around Prague. The architecture is so interesting and varied.

The street next to our hostel

That night we went on a free ghost tour, which was pretty funny. Our guide was a very enthusiastic, overdramatic teacher. We visited a lot of the same places, but learned some of the legends of Prague. The coolest place was the door of the alchemist building. We also spent a lot of time in Old Town Square: