Prague

Prague got off to a rough start. We stepped off the train, got checked into our hostel and immediately fell for a tourist scam. In the main square, they had all this delicious looking meat cooking over an open fire. I knew better than eating right in the square, but I was hungry and tired, the meat smelled delicious, and it wasn’t too over priced, only 69 CSK (about $4)! So we waited in line, ordered two, and the cash registered rang up 860 CSK (about $42). Oh dear. Only then did we notice that it was by weight, with “69 CSK” in big letters and “per 100gm” in very small letters. So I asked for less meat, since it was way too much food anyways. The guy working the register made his distain for me immediately known and responded briskly: “It’s by weight, this is normal serving.” After a little back and forth with the increasingly irritated Czech, we just ended up buying one plate and enjoying some very delicious but very overpriced “Old Prague Ham.” Later we learned that lunch should never cost more than 200 CSK per person, so 450 CSK for a filling lunch for two wasn’t terrible, though I still can’t believe I made such a rookie mistake.

You know you want some...

“Ham Scam” not included, Prague lived up to the glowing reviews it received from several of my well-traveled friends. The architecture is beautiful and crosses many different styles, including some that are supposedly unique to Prague (“Cubism,” for example). A technique I don’t think I had seen before is something called “Scraffiti,” where they layer a light plaster over a dark plaster and then scratch a pattern into the walls. From far away it looks like a painted façade, but it requires a lot less maintenance. More generally, I loved the way that old and new mixed in Prague. In most other cities, it has felt like there was a historic center and then a modern city around that. But in Prague, it’s all just kind of mixed up, with buildings built in the 1990’s right next to buildings built 200 years prior.

Cubist architecture

Scraffiti

New on the right, old on the left

Tyn Chuch and the Jan Hus Memorial

Jewish Synagogue

Across the river, the famous Prague “Castle” dominates the landscape. I think it’s a bit deceptive that it’s called a castle, because though it did house the royal palace, its more just a bunch of historic government buildings, some towers, courtyards, and a huge gothic church that are together referred to as a castle.

The Prague Castle across the river

Gothic cathedral

President's residence

Another famous part of Prague is the Jewish District, which has a quite interesting and ironic story: Hitler really liked Prague. He didn’t want it to be bombed because he planned to retire there, and he wanted the Jewish part of town left untouched and all the relics saved so that after the war he could have a “museum of a extinct race.” Even though the Jewish community in Prague is really tiny now (about 1,600 compared to 90,000 pre-Holocaust) it is one of the best preserved Jewish districts in the world. Of note are the Jewish cemetery, full to brim with bodies and head stones, up to 15 bodies in layers under one spot, and the incredible Pinkas Synagogue museum, which has the names, dates, and birth places of all Bohemia/Moravia victims of the Holocaust inscribed on the walls. The original inscriptions were done in the late 50s, but it was destroyed by the Communists after the Prague Spring and redone from 1992-6—it took four years to write all 80,000 names out.

Jewish District

Jewish District

I also took two day trips when I was in Prague, one to the Terezín Concentration Camp and one to Kutná Hora. Terezín is actually a ghetto, rather than a labor or extermination camp, and the visit surpassed all my expectations. I think it must be described in combination with the other two types of camps, and so I will save that for another day. Kutná Hora is a small silver mining town about one hour outside Prague. It’s a nifty little city, though its claim to fame is definitely the coolest part: the bone chapel, decorated entirely with human bones! The bone chapel came to be in three phases:

Way back in the day, the monks living there did a pilgrimage to some famous religious place and brought back a bunch of dirt to put in their cemetery. From then on, the cemetery was considered a holy place and folks from all over the region wanted to be buried there. So instead of selling grave sites, the monks leased them and after a certain amount of time the old bodies would be dug up and placed in the ossuary to make way for the new bodies. After a while the ossuary became quite full and disorganized, so a half-blind monk was tasked with organizing the bones and making sure all the parts for one body were together. Somehow I guess the monk got confused, because he just ended up making six huge pills of bones—four of which are still standing. Soon after, the building needed some renovation and the architect hired for the project thought the bone piles were pretty cool, so he renovated around them and made his own contribution: candelabras made from skulls. Finally, a bit later after the monks had left, a noble family purchased the chapel and liked the candelabras so much that they hired an artist to continue decorating with the contents of the ossuary. The entire interior is covered with bone. It is awesome. 

Walking in...

Original bone pile

A wall fixture

Family crest (check out the bird in the lower right)

Chandelier with every human bone, surrounded by the architect's candelabras (with the strange babies on top)

After my first day in Prague, I was very excited about the Czech Republic history I learned, but most of it has already seeped out of my brain. So today I will leave you with only one fun fact: the Czech national anthem is called “Where is My Home?” because elderly Czechs living in the same small town their whole lives have had eight different passports!!! That’s crazy.