Castles, Clocks, and Crashes: Our weekend in Prague

Weekend 17! Prague, Czech Republic

Friday, December 5^th

                We got into Prague about 8 pm and took the bus into town. Once we got into town we found our hostel just off of the main Old Town square. We dropped our stuff out then went to find some dinner. We also noticed that the CHRISTMAS MARKET was going in the square, so that was pretty at night with all the lights. Also there were a lot of lit up devil horn headbands…a St. Nicholas tradition that we will explain later. We found a cozy little touristy Czech restaurant not too far. For dinner, Stuart got the beef in a creamy sweet sauce. I got a nice little kettle of Czech style goulash with some dumplings to go with it. All the main meals in the Czech Republic were a lot of pork and meat with a gravy sauce and potatoes dumplings. After dinner we got a dessert at the Christmas Market, some trdelník  bread. Basically it was dough rolled on a metal rod and roasted rotisserie style then rolled in cinnamon sugar with some almonds. SO GOOD, fresh and warm too!

               

Saturday, December 6^th

                St. Nicholas day! A big deal to any Christmas loving Christian population and Prague was no exception. Our tour guide later explained to us that the people with devil horns represented the Krampus, or the devil that accompanied St. Nick. According to tradition, if the Krampus were to scare children and they did not sing a Christmas carol (or were particularly naughty), the Krampus would kidnap them and then later eat them of course. So Friday night we saw people dressed as St. Nicholas and the Krampus wandering around the main square partaking in this frightening tradition.

                We started the day with some nice pastries from the bakery just next door to the hostel then observed the astronomical clock tower in the square chime. The clock was installed on the tower in 1410 and on every hour, four little puppets start moving and doors open up on the top of the clock to show the 12 Apostles waving to the people in the square. The puppets represented the four fears that people back in the 1400s feared – vanity, greed, death, and the Ottomans (<the Czech people were taken over by a lot of other people throughout their history – the Ottoman Empire was around the 1400s for Czech). We wandered around a little before we met up by the clock tower again for a free walking tour.

                The tour guide we had was a Romanian International studies master student who just stayed in Prague, for three years…The first stop of the tour was observing the Church of Our Lady Before Týn. This was the main old church on the old town square. It also took awhile to build and the drawings were lost so the two towers were different widths. Also on the square is St. Nicholas’ church and the tour guide told us about the old conflicts between the Catholics and Protestants. A couple religious skirmishes actually ended with people getting thrown out windows or the bell tower.

                The next stop on the tour was the Rudolfinum or the concert hall that houses their philharmonic orchestra. The tour guide told us about the history of the Reinhard Heydrich or Hitler’s right hand man that took over Prague. The concert hall had a Jewish composer statue on the top of it and Heydrich’s henchmen were told to destroy it, but instead they destroyed Hitler’s favorite composer. Their lives were quickly ended.

                After the concert hall we saw the “Old-New synagogue” or Staronová synagoga, where the guide told us the legend of the Golem that was locked up in the attic of the synagogue. The next stop was a statue of Franz Kafka as portrayed in one of his books. The Czech people didn’t really celebrate Kafka until recently as he wrote in German and Germans took over their city in WWII. After the statue we saw this old church (Church of St. James) that had the forearm of man. There was a story that the famine in Prague was so bad one year that a man tried to steal the necklace off of a statue of Mary to sell for food, but she caught his arm. The priests found him in the morning hanging from Mary so they slowly cut his forearm off and Mary then let go of the arm. The church was destroyed in a fire soon after that, but a new forearm was replaced. You can see the shriveled up old forearm hanging from the ceiling of the church warning any other thieves.

                After that nice image of the shriveled forearm hanging from the ceiling we walked towards the “new town” and the Powder Tower, one of the 3 remaining old towers from Prague’s old wall. This tower used to hold the city’s gun powder. Next to the tower was the beautiful municipal house of the city. After that we walked to the concert hall where Mozart conducted Don Giovanni for the city in the Estates Theater. Mozart was offered to stay in Prague but Vienna offered him more money and more musical opportunities.

                For lunch we got a nice kebab and sausage baguette sandwiches from the Christmas market then met up for another tour of the Castle district of Prague. We made our way across the river and took a tram up to the top of the hill where the castle was located. We walked across this really cool old stone bridge over a stream then saw the interior of one of the courtyards in the castle. Apparently the Prague Castle is the biggest medieval style castle in the world, but some wife of a nobleman wanted it to look more modern so she had a façade put on the castle. The Cathedral of St. Vitus next door to the castle looks more authentic with its Gothic architecture. The cathedral was started in the 1300s and the construction just ended in the 1929, over 600 years after it was started. The final four architects put their faces in the main façade of the cathedral to be remembered forever. Some other neat things that we saw in the courtyards of the castle were an obelisk, a balcony where Hitler once spoke, and a misspelled gate to the castle due to a stingy old king.

                After checking out the castle courtyards and cathedral, we watched the changing of the guards then headed towards a nice place to have a view of the city. Prague has a mini Eiffel tower in its main park (not really sure why) but we got to see that and the city. After the view, we went to this old monastery that made ‘holy beer’ or some of Prague’s best beer from a really old recipe.

                We walked backed towards Old Town over the Charles Bridge which was also built in the 1300s. After the flood of Prague in 2007, the mortar of the bridge was tested and was found to have raw eggs, beer, and wine in the mixture.

                We took a quick break at the hostel as we were frozen! It had been drizzly and cold all day and two walking tours made for some grumpy tourists…After a nice warm up we went out to dinner and had some more Czech food. Stuart got a pork steak and I got a quarter of a roasted duck with the traditional red cabbage and dumplings. The night was complete with some hot mead, cider, and watching some Christmas carolers at the Christmas market (as well as seeing the Krampus again!).

Sunday, December 7^th

                Sunday morning we went to church at the Church of Our Lady Before Týn, and then got a nice sit down breakfast at a café around the corner. We tried to go see the old Jewish cemetery (which had 12 layers of graves on top of each other), but the line was just too long. We then walked to Wenceslas square and saw another mini Christmas market. We made it back to the square and got a nice view of the town from on top of the bell tower. After that we tried to use the rest of our Czech Korunas on snacks at the Christmas Market (fresh potato chips and ginger bread!). We also enjoyed some cute kids dancing in traditional Czech costume.

                After that it was time to catch the bus to airport. Good thing we left in plenty of time, because our bus got in an accident with another tour bus. The other bus was in the wrong lane and tried to cut off our bus at a left turn. Our bus ended up clipping the other bus and losing its right side mirror. Two of the windows were broken in the other bus. I hope no one was hurt on the other bus. We had to wait for the police to spray the areas were the buses were in the accident then we pulled over to the side of the road, as there were 4 city trams lined up that we were blocking. A new bus driver was called in and drove us the rest of the way to the airport (without a side mirror!). But we made it home safely, so that was good.

It was quite a fun, tour filled, cold, but delicious weekend in Prague!

Next stop:  Marrakech Morocco in AAAAAFFFFFRIIIICAAAAAAAAAAAA!

À plus (later!),

Stevie and Stuart