Prague (Luke)

  Although our itinerary has been changed and altered, one of the cities we had on our agenda from day 1 was Prague. Our first impression of Prague was great, the architecture we saw when we were driving in was just outstanding as we crossed over the Vltava River.

Plus, Kathy Shield, a family friend from back home who was studying in Prague, would be a great tour guide for the city.

   On our first day, we visited the Jewish Quarter. First we went to the Klausen Synagogue which was small and had two floors and was pretty. Then we visited the Pinkus Synagogue which had two floors of names covering the walls. These names were the 80,000 Jews living in Prague that died in the Holocaust. It was really sad.

Then we went into the Jewish Cemetery which from above looked like a Jewish cemetery a little overcrowded with 12,000 graves above ground. However, underground there are about 12 layers of bodies we could not see, making the cemetery have a total of around 100,000 people! The oldest gravestone is of a man named Avigdor Kara who died in 1439!

   The next day we took the metro to see Kathy. One of the neat things about the metro is that it’s really deep underground. It is so far underground that when we took the escalator up, our ears hurt due to the elevation change. One of the metro stops in Prague has the longest escalator in Europe! We met Kathy and then walked along the Charles Bridge with her. We saw a water wheel and next to it an ugly gnome. Then Kathy showed us the John Lennon Wall.

There was so much writing on it. Some of the writing was about John Lennon but most of the things written on the wall were just graffiti or designs that people wanted to draw for fun. The wall served a purpose during Communism, where the people of Prague would express their desires for peace in private, so they wouldn't be caught. The wall is hard to find, for that reason.

   Kathy then showed us three sculptures by a well known sculptor in Prague who is a bit crazy named David Cerny. The statues were just three regular babies, from behind, in a crawling position. Then we saw their faces. The faces instead of eyes, a nose, and a mouth had a bar code. But, it did not look like a bar code due to how it is sunken into their faces.

Then, Kathy took us to an Easter market where we had a new food called Trdelnik. It is dough wrapped around a stick, that is then heated up and sprinkled with sugar and little pieces of walnut. We walked to a park with a big hill and climbed up. We finally got to the top of the park where we could see almost all of Prague.

   The next day we visited the Prague Castle and Cathedral. The Cathedral was big and reminded me of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice except without the golden tiles everywhere. We also got to see a museum with all sorts of weaponry. For about 3 dollars, there was a little station where I got to shoot 3 arrows from a crossbow. I missed the target all three times. It was a lot harder to shoot with a crossbow than a regular bow.

   We also went to a concentration camp/ghetto called Terezin. It was really sad. Around 150,000 Jews were sent there during the holocaust, and about 33,000 of them died - not from being killed like in the extermination camps, but from the horrible living conditions there. Most people there were shipped off to camps like Auschwitz. The conditions there were awful. Around 300 people had to stay in the same room with only a hole for a toilet and a little bit of water with a tiny portion of food, if any. Terezin was also used as a place for propaganda films by the Nazi Party. They showed films of the Jews, playing soccer and basketball, eating and drinking by a pool, swimming, having fun. At the end of the film-making, almost all of the people in the propaganda films were sent to Auschwitz. We went to one room in the museum where it listed all of the kid’s names who died in the Holocaust from Czechoslovakia. The names covered the room’s walls. It was a sad day, but we learned a lot, too.

   The next day we spent with Kathy. The first thing we did with Kathy was go to Old Town Square where we got a few treats. We saw the big astronomical clock that was really complicated. Then we walked all over Prague admiring it’s cool architecture. Kathy told us a story about a church we were close to. 

During World War II, the Czech Republic was under German rule and there was a Czech resistance group trying to fight them. After planning and preparing for six months, two parachutists bombed the third highest ranked official in the war, Reinhard Heydrich. They could accomplish this feat because Heydrich had a convertible car drive him to work every morning in Prague so they dropped a little grenade in his car. Seven people were involved in planning the attack, but one of the men told the Nazis where the other six were after the attack, and the Nazis, mad that Heydrich (who was the #3 man in the Nazi Party) had died, flooded the church the six resistance group members were hiding in, and they all died. That was how Heydrich got assassinated in Prague. Then after her story ended we were at the church and even today you can still see the bullet holes in the church that the Nazi’s used to try and kill the assassins.

   Our last day in Prague, we went up to the top of the Radio Tower by our house. We pointed out all of the places we went and those that wished we had visited. The weird thing about this radio tower is there are more of David Cerny's babies that look like they are climbing the tower. It was so creepy.

I loved Prague so much. I liked the Cathedral and Castle, I liked it’s crazy architecture. If you get the chance to go to Europe, you have to go to Prague.