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Prague
It's my last night in Prague. Tomorrow morning, I wake up at 7 (not much earlier than I've been waking up anyway...) to head out to the airport for my flight to London; I'll be there until early Tuesday morning, when I return to New York! For now, though, I'm sitting in our hotel room (which is a small apartment, two bed rooms, a living room and a kitchenette, very neat) watching what seems to be King Leer in Czech and tonight's installment of the European Championship in Football...er...soccer.
We arrived in Prague on Monday. About all we did that day, though, was go and have our first authentic Czech meal (including various form of potato, bread dumplings, duck liver, hunks of meat, and more - right up my alley, tasty stuff...) and attempting to get used to money where the exchange rate was 15 krona to 1 dollar, meaning that a 1000 krona bill was worth just about 65 bucks (approximately, of course). Meanwhile, I had to cope with the ATM at the airport which ate my debit card. I've been mooching off of my uncle and mother ever since, except for places that take Mastercard, where I can use my credit card (no one, of course, takes Discover, sigh).
After spending a chunk of Monday figuring out what I might wish to do in the fine city of Prague (which I knew basically nothing about before) I set out early on Tuesday to visit Vysehrad, a fort originally founded in the 10th century. One of the first things to know about Prague: Things here are very old. The city has never faced large scale destruction due to war, not even in WW2, nor in the subsequent years under Communism, and it hasn't even really burned down in hundreds of years. The result is that only long term decay has caused the destruction of buildings - and some well-intentioned and not-so-well-intentioned urban development plans of various times in the past - and so a lot of really old stuff is around. For example, at Vysehrad there is a bit of wall that is over 1000 years old, and most of the fortress (for that is what Vysehrad is) dates to the 17th and 18th century, when first it was a little walled outpost (in the 15th century) and then the Habsburgs filled the fortress with sod, and then finally it was redeveloped in the 19th century into a public park - which it remains to this day. It's a fairly unremarkable sight - the fortress is neat, and the park is pretty. There's a nifty church up there, and of course the bit of wall that dates to the 10th century is...a bit of wall. There's a tour of the dungeons, too, which I wanted to take, but it only cost 30 krona and all I had at that point was a 1000 krona bill - overkill I couldn't quite conscious. Still, it had some pretty views, and it has a very interesting cemetery. The Czech's made their most elite cemetery up there, in a lovely spot, and the only people who get buried there are great artists, writers, poets, musicians, that sort of thing - so Dvorak's grave is there, and so is Smetana's, and loads of other folk who are famous to varying degrees - almost all of whom are relatively known here. It made for a nice walk.
It's worth mentioning at about this point that Prague is one of the prettiest - maybe the prettiest - city I've ever seen. Many of the buildings are very old but all are well maintained, and many have all kinds of original architectural touches including sculptures and paintings dating from Medieval times up through Art Deco and cubism, with everything in between. It's very tourist oriented in the areas I visited, too - LOADS of people pass through - and the result is lots of tourist junk, lots of high prices, but also a lot of attention paid to preservation and restoration, with stunning effect for the most part. Anyway...
My trip to Vysehrad transitioned excellently in to a journey along the banks of the Vltava river, which is filled with swans the way the Hudson is filled with Canadian Geese. I took this straight up north towards one of the biggest attractions here, the Karluv Most - Charles Bridge - built by Charles the IV in the mid 14th century after one of the river's many floods destroyed the bridge which had previously connected Prague's two halves. The bridge has stood since then, though various embellishment has since been added, including 32 statues (mostly related to God) and two fancy towers. Nowadays, no cars are allowed across, and the bridge is permanently choked with tourists looking at the knick knack stalls and listening to buskers. Still, it's got a certain charm and some pretty views of the river, and if nothing else it's entertaining to listen to how many different languages the people who walk across speak.
There, I met up with mom and my uncle and we had a tasty lunch and headed up to Prazsky Hrad - aka the Hrad - the palace of Prague. The palace has a neat history. There's been a castle on the site since the 8th or 9th century; when you're there, you can see the foundation for a small church that was on the hill that long ago. It's grown big and sprawling since then but there are some truly lovely architectural aspects. Prague's Cathedral is also housed within the first courtyard of the palace, and there are numerous large secondary palaces that housed important nobles - most of which are now museums. In order to see the palace's exhibits, I purchased a multi-ticket, and then went at super speed through all of the attractions to which the ticket granted me admission. First was an exhibit charting the history of the castle, with neolithic bits dating to the hills first settlers - it's location on a high hill over the fertile river valley of Vltava made it very desirable real estate, it's defendable and everything - all that way to the modern day, and included sections on tableware, cess pits (just like those Amsterdammers, they love there cess pits!), and a whole bit about how to heat a Medieval Castle which was a bit (but only a bit) more interesting than it sounds. Most of the items displayed through out this exhibit were actually kind of dull, but they did have some fascinating original and reproduction costume from various time periods, which was preserved in the undisturbed graves of the countries great nobility up until the early 20th century when someoneorother decided it would be a good idea to loot the graves.
From there, I walked through St. Vitus' Cathedral, which I would have found very impressive if I hadn't just basked in the astonishing spectacle that was the Cathedral in Cologne. As it was, St. Vitus is interesting in that it was started in the 14th century but hardly worked on at all for about 500 years before being finished in 1929. The result is a structure which is mostly modern, but there is some fine older art in the chapels, including a large shrine to St. Vaclav (Good King Wenceslas of Christmas Carol fame, though the reality is quite different as it turns out) who is one of the few Czech folks to be canonized. All in all, it was a fairly pretty Cathedral.
Next was a quick walk through of some of the rooms of the Stary Kralovsky Palac (Old Royal Palace), and then to the Basilica of St. Jivi (Church of Saint George), which has a very small collection of religious art but is mostly interesting because it is the site of some of the oldest construction in the Hrad, a burial chamber for St. Ludmila (St. Vaclav's martyred grandmother) from the 10th century. These people have a messy family - Ludmila was murdered by her daughter-in-law, and Vaclav was murdered by his brother who later repented and converted. Next stop was Jirsky Klaster (St. George's Cloister) which has been converted in to a small exhibition of mostly 18th, 19th and 20th century Czech art. This was more interesting than I expected, and was the highlight of the Hrad tour in my opinion. A lot of the art was kind of dull - I can only stand so many attractive landscapes - but much of it was surprisingly good.
From there, I spent mere minutes in Golden Lane (Zlata Ulicka), a row of tiny houses that has served many purposes in the past and currently hosts a whole array of tourist-y stores, but in one incarnation King Rudolf II housed his alchemical staff in the buildings, including Edward Kelley and John Dee (especially amusing to me considering I'd just finished![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
swan_tower's book...). Rudolf was kind of a nut - no, actually, he was really a nut - and was obsessed with magic, alchemy, and astronomy - playing host also to Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Neat stuff, in my opinion. Anyway, Golden Lane now is vaguely insidious, so I didn't linger. After that, I stuck my head in to Daliborka, a shockingly small tower that once served as a prison and now holds a small number of authentic instruments of torture. From there, it was back up the hill to the Powder Tower, which served as the palace armory and offered a few minutes of entertainment. Sadly, my book had suggested that I might be able to shoot a crossbow while I was there, and this opportunity did not actually materialize. Lastly, getting pretty tired, the last Hrad attraction was the depressingly unimpressive Obrazarna Prazeskeho Hrady (Prague Castle Picture Gallery). This should have been an awesome collection of European art, but sadly raiding in various wars (mostly in the 18th century and there abouts) left it stripped. I wasn't allowed to take pictures; the fact that I ended up not really minding this shows just how little was there.
And that was day 1. Geeze.
On Wednesday, I ventured to the UPM (Museum of Decorative Art) which my book highly recommended and soaked in some very interesting exhibits. In particular, there was an entire room on books and graphic arts which was awesome, and another whole room on textiles, where I had a simple conversation with a Japanese tourist who, it turns out, teaches lace making in Japan. The whole thing was in Japanese, and though I wouldn't say I did great, still I was proud of myself. Also, there was a nifty room on watches. All in all, it was a positive experience. Furthermore, on my way there I passed what would become my favorite attraction for the first time, a very lovely Astronomy Clock which tells the time and date and various other interesting things. It's very beautiful and I thought it was totally cool; Staromestski Namesta (Old Town Square) and the clock, which is mounted on the old Town Hall, became a favorite haunt.
From there, I met up with mom and Jeremy and we did the full loop of Josefov. In olden days, this was the Jewish ghetto. Then, the restrictions were lifted and the Jews started to leave, and beggars and prostitutes moved in - at one point, over 100,000 people lived in what can't be more than a square mile and is probably about half that. In the late 19th century, this hive of scum and villainy was largely bull dozed and rebuilt in the then-modern style, and was much nicer after that. Of course, THEN World War II happened; of the 55,000 Prague Jews who lived in and around Josefov at that time, some where around 8,000 survived the war. The reason for this surprisingly high survival rate (by the standards of the Holocaust, that's high) is fascinating - these Jews were shipped to Terezin, which was a ghetto about 60 km from Prague, which was the camp that Hitler used to dupe the Red Cross. Thus, while shocking numbers of the Jews still were killed at Auschwitz or died in at Terezin, relatively large numbers survived the war. Meanwhile, Josefov's synagogues and Jewish memorabilia were purposefully spared by the Nazi's, who intended to construct an "Exotic Museum of an Extinct Race" in Prague. Thus, the 6 synagogues and the 500 year old graveyard were spared the destruction so common other places, and, indeed, Judaic from throughout Czechoslovakia was brought here. Now, these old synagogues form a network of museums which are all very nice, with the most spectacular building being the Spanish Synagogue, which was BEAUTIFUL, every inch of it painted and gilt, it was astonishing. The graveyard was very effecting also; founded in the 15th century, it's very small, and so people were buried one on top of the other; the result is that the tiny area holds 12,000 grave stones and probably more than 100,000 bodies. One of the other synagogues was converted in to a very sad Holocaust memorial, completely bare but for the walls, which are painted with the name of every single Jew killed or missing in the Holocaust - all 80,000 of them. It's such a small fraction of the total victims, and yet it's so many names, it's very upsetting (at least to me!)
Josefov was also where Franz Kafka lived, and as a result houses a small museum to him - I didn't go inside, but I did snap some photographs of the building where he was born, which looked...well...pretty much like all of the other buildings in Prague. I can see why he felt trapped the way he did, there's something about Prague that does kind of suggest that kind of thing.
And that pretty much wrapped up Wednesday. There was more yummy Czech food - this time, a steak in a thick sauce with whipped cream on top. I was seriously weirded out by this, but it actually tasted quite good. But it was very, very strange. :)
Thursday, I ventured back to the Hrad to take in two museums I hadn't seen because they weren't on the multi-ticket - Sternbersky Palac, which housed a collection of European Old Masters, and Schwarzenbersky Palac, home to a collection of Baroque art. Both were quite nice, especially the Sternbersky, where there was a very fine Rembrandt and some nice Rubens among numerous other impressive pieces. Both buildings were also stunningly beautiful, especially the Schwarzenbersky Palac, which has been recently refurbished and is painted from ground to roof on the outside and also on many of the ceilings inside. The art was nice, but the building itself was the real treat. Meanwhile, the Sternbersky wasn't quite as fine inside, but was still quite attractive, and while their medieval religious stuff wasn't that special, they did have some nice Old Masters - though some of them weren't as cool as advertised; the El Greco they boast of was unimpressive, as was the Tintoretto. Still, the room with the Dutch more than made up for it. Man, I love Rembrandt...
Feeling tired, from there I went to a small terraced garden rather off the beaten path, and I met up with mom and Jeremy there and then we all headed back to the hotel. There we met up with my brother, who had finally joined us, and there was more yummy food. ;) That's a recurring theme in my vacations whenever I can swing it.
Yesterday, I headed up to yet another art museum - the Nadroni Museum, or national museum, has about 6 branches, most of which I went to - this one holding Czech Medieval religious art. It was okay, and there was lots of information, but I discovered that I can only see so many tender Madonnas and self-confident babies before I get bored. Then, I headed back to Old Town Square and met up with mom and we ate Prague's best ice cream (though also Prague's most over priced ice cream!) beneath the Astronomical Clock before heading out to do a little shopping - mom wanted garnet jewelry. We made an early day of it, though, heading home after that. On the way home, though, we decided to stick our heads in to the Alphonse Mucha museum. For those who don't know, he's one of the main artists of the Art Nouveau movement, and you've all definitely seen some of his characteristic stuff, which is all over posters from the turn of the century in Paris. Mucha is Czech, and the stuff is nice, and the museum was actually quite small, so it made a good stop. I found some posters I really loved, but unfortunately the set of four was gonna run me almost a hundred dollars, so I decided to pass. Still, I did take some pictures, before I got the nastiest put down EVER for it, which was extra funny because by the time I got caught (for once, I wasn't breaking the rule on purpose, I hadn't seen any signs saying I couldn't) I had already taken all the pictures I wanted to.
For dinner, we went to a Japanese place called Samurai, which made my night in more ways than one - first, it had the best kitsune udon I've had since I left Japan, very exciting, and also had yummy yummy sake onigiri. Meanwhile, the whole time we were there Kiroro, my favorite Japanese band, played on the loudspeakers. This prompting me to have a conversation with the only Japanese waitress there, who said that Kiroro was also her favorite band (amusingly, she speaks English and Japanese but not Czech - she seemed like a neat person, I wish I could have gotten to know her better - makes me miss Japan even more, ha!)
Finally, today I once again headed out relatively early but with few plans. All together, Jeremy, mom and I went to yet another branch of the Nadroni (National) Museum, this one home to the natural history type stuff. It was an odd mixture of very old fashioned local collections and more modernly layed out traveling exhibits. We didn't spend loads of time there, since we were meeting Ben at noon, but I'm glad we went - it was interesting, though very erratically labeled in English. We met up with Ben beneath the Astronomical clock, had even more delicious ice cream, and then did a bit of shopping. I selected my only big gift to myself this trip, a lovely vase (glass is one of the big Czech things, along with garnet and amber and some other odds and ends) which set me back almost 200 dollars but was worth it, it's very pretty and I'm quite happy with it. From there, we meandered a bit before finally returning to the hotel.
All in all, I've enjoyed my time here. There's been some family drama (mostly my fault) but it resolved relatively well. I guess it's bound to happen when we're spending so much time together. It's been very nice to see my uncle, though, who I haven't spent any appreciable time with in at least two years. I've also watched more soccer (mostly with him) than I've seen in my entire life, including last night's very cool game between the Turks and Croats, where Turkey scored the tying goal in literally the last second of overtime, thus prompting a kick off which they won and thus won the game - neat stuff. The food here has been yummy; I'm going to miss Einstein Pizzeria, right across the street from our hotel, and the ice cream of course, and the Czech food, which may in fact have been designed with me in mind, hunks of meat in tasty rich sauces with either bread, potato or both on the side - and nothing else.
I started taking it easy a couple days ago - there was more I wanted to do, but I reminded myself that I don't have to do it all, and I was much happier once I slowed down and took it a bit easy. Sadly, I actually DON'T feel recharged, because I've been waking up far earlier than I'd like to because of how bright it gets in the room. Still, it can't be helped, and at least I'm more relaxed that I was before.
So - Prague is neater than I expected, and I recommend it - it even has a (slightly) favorable exchange rate! Now it's on to London, the only stop on this trip where I've been before - I was there in January of 1999 and February of 2000 - where I have only 36 hours, but only 3 things I intend to do - the National Gallery, the British Museum, and tea some place awesome (possibly Harrods, which is near my cheap-ass hotel). The exchange rate is terrifying, though, so I won't be able to do much else. ;)
We arrived in Prague on Monday. About all we did that day, though, was go and have our first authentic Czech meal (including various form of potato, bread dumplings, duck liver, hunks of meat, and more - right up my alley, tasty stuff...) and attempting to get used to money where the exchange rate was 15 krona to 1 dollar, meaning that a 1000 krona bill was worth just about 65 bucks (approximately, of course). Meanwhile, I had to cope with the ATM at the airport which ate my debit card. I've been mooching off of my uncle and mother ever since, except for places that take Mastercard, where I can use my credit card (no one, of course, takes Discover, sigh).
After spending a chunk of Monday figuring out what I might wish to do in the fine city of Prague (which I knew basically nothing about before) I set out early on Tuesday to visit Vysehrad, a fort originally founded in the 10th century. One of the first things to know about Prague: Things here are very old. The city has never faced large scale destruction due to war, not even in WW2, nor in the subsequent years under Communism, and it hasn't even really burned down in hundreds of years. The result is that only long term decay has caused the destruction of buildings - and some well-intentioned and not-so-well-intentioned urban development plans of various times in the past - and so a lot of really old stuff is around. For example, at Vysehrad there is a bit of wall that is over 1000 years old, and most of the fortress (for that is what Vysehrad is) dates to the 17th and 18th century, when first it was a little walled outpost (in the 15th century) and then the Habsburgs filled the fortress with sod, and then finally it was redeveloped in the 19th century into a public park - which it remains to this day. It's a fairly unremarkable sight - the fortress is neat, and the park is pretty. There's a nifty church up there, and of course the bit of wall that dates to the 10th century is...a bit of wall. There's a tour of the dungeons, too, which I wanted to take, but it only cost 30 krona and all I had at that point was a 1000 krona bill - overkill I couldn't quite conscious. Still, it had some pretty views, and it has a very interesting cemetery. The Czech's made their most elite cemetery up there, in a lovely spot, and the only people who get buried there are great artists, writers, poets, musicians, that sort of thing - so Dvorak's grave is there, and so is Smetana's, and loads of other folk who are famous to varying degrees - almost all of whom are relatively known here. It made for a nice walk.
It's worth mentioning at about this point that Prague is one of the prettiest - maybe the prettiest - city I've ever seen. Many of the buildings are very old but all are well maintained, and many have all kinds of original architectural touches including sculptures and paintings dating from Medieval times up through Art Deco and cubism, with everything in between. It's very tourist oriented in the areas I visited, too - LOADS of people pass through - and the result is lots of tourist junk, lots of high prices, but also a lot of attention paid to preservation and restoration, with stunning effect for the most part. Anyway...
My trip to Vysehrad transitioned excellently in to a journey along the banks of the Vltava river, which is filled with swans the way the Hudson is filled with Canadian Geese. I took this straight up north towards one of the biggest attractions here, the Karluv Most - Charles Bridge - built by Charles the IV in the mid 14th century after one of the river's many floods destroyed the bridge which had previously connected Prague's two halves. The bridge has stood since then, though various embellishment has since been added, including 32 statues (mostly related to God) and two fancy towers. Nowadays, no cars are allowed across, and the bridge is permanently choked with tourists looking at the knick knack stalls and listening to buskers. Still, it's got a certain charm and some pretty views of the river, and if nothing else it's entertaining to listen to how many different languages the people who walk across speak.
There, I met up with mom and my uncle and we had a tasty lunch and headed up to Prazsky Hrad - aka the Hrad - the palace of Prague. The palace has a neat history. There's been a castle on the site since the 8th or 9th century; when you're there, you can see the foundation for a small church that was on the hill that long ago. It's grown big and sprawling since then but there are some truly lovely architectural aspects. Prague's Cathedral is also housed within the first courtyard of the palace, and there are numerous large secondary palaces that housed important nobles - most of which are now museums. In order to see the palace's exhibits, I purchased a multi-ticket, and then went at super speed through all of the attractions to which the ticket granted me admission. First was an exhibit charting the history of the castle, with neolithic bits dating to the hills first settlers - it's location on a high hill over the fertile river valley of Vltava made it very desirable real estate, it's defendable and everything - all that way to the modern day, and included sections on tableware, cess pits (just like those Amsterdammers, they love there cess pits!), and a whole bit about how to heat a Medieval Castle which was a bit (but only a bit) more interesting than it sounds. Most of the items displayed through out this exhibit were actually kind of dull, but they did have some fascinating original and reproduction costume from various time periods, which was preserved in the undisturbed graves of the countries great nobility up until the early 20th century when someoneorother decided it would be a good idea to loot the graves.
From there, I walked through St. Vitus' Cathedral, which I would have found very impressive if I hadn't just basked in the astonishing spectacle that was the Cathedral in Cologne. As it was, St. Vitus is interesting in that it was started in the 14th century but hardly worked on at all for about 500 years before being finished in 1929. The result is a structure which is mostly modern, but there is some fine older art in the chapels, including a large shrine to St. Vaclav (Good King Wenceslas of Christmas Carol fame, though the reality is quite different as it turns out) who is one of the few Czech folks to be canonized. All in all, it was a fairly pretty Cathedral.
Next was a quick walk through of some of the rooms of the Stary Kralovsky Palac (Old Royal Palace), and then to the Basilica of St. Jivi (Church of Saint George), which has a very small collection of religious art but is mostly interesting because it is the site of some of the oldest construction in the Hrad, a burial chamber for St. Ludmila (St. Vaclav's martyred grandmother) from the 10th century. These people have a messy family - Ludmila was murdered by her daughter-in-law, and Vaclav was murdered by his brother who later repented and converted. Next stop was Jirsky Klaster (St. George's Cloister) which has been converted in to a small exhibition of mostly 18th, 19th and 20th century Czech art. This was more interesting than I expected, and was the highlight of the Hrad tour in my opinion. A lot of the art was kind of dull - I can only stand so many attractive landscapes - but much of it was surprisingly good.
From there, I spent mere minutes in Golden Lane (Zlata Ulicka), a row of tiny houses that has served many purposes in the past and currently hosts a whole array of tourist-y stores, but in one incarnation King Rudolf II housed his alchemical staff in the buildings, including Edward Kelley and John Dee (especially amusing to me considering I'd just finished
swan_tower's book...). Rudolf was kind of a nut - no, actually, he was really a nut - and was obsessed with magic, alchemy, and astronomy - playing host also to Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. Neat stuff, in my opinion. Anyway, Golden Lane now is vaguely insidious, so I didn't linger. After that, I stuck my head in to Daliborka, a shockingly small tower that once served as a prison and now holds a small number of authentic instruments of torture. From there, it was back up the hill to the Powder Tower, which served as the palace armory and offered a few minutes of entertainment. Sadly, my book had suggested that I might be able to shoot a crossbow while I was there, and this opportunity did not actually materialize. Lastly, getting pretty tired, the last Hrad attraction was the depressingly unimpressive Obrazarna Prazeskeho Hrady (Prague Castle Picture Gallery). This should have been an awesome collection of European art, but sadly raiding in various wars (mostly in the 18th century and there abouts) left it stripped. I wasn't allowed to take pictures; the fact that I ended up not really minding this shows just how little was there.And that was day 1. Geeze.
On Wednesday, I ventured to the UPM (Museum of Decorative Art) which my book highly recommended and soaked in some very interesting exhibits. In particular, there was an entire room on books and graphic arts which was awesome, and another whole room on textiles, where I had a simple conversation with a Japanese tourist who, it turns out, teaches lace making in Japan. The whole thing was in Japanese, and though I wouldn't say I did great, still I was proud of myself. Also, there was a nifty room on watches. All in all, it was a positive experience. Furthermore, on my way there I passed what would become my favorite attraction for the first time, a very lovely Astronomy Clock which tells the time and date and various other interesting things. It's very beautiful and I thought it was totally cool; Staromestski Namesta (Old Town Square) and the clock, which is mounted on the old Town Hall, became a favorite haunt.
From there, I met up with mom and Jeremy and we did the full loop of Josefov. In olden days, this was the Jewish ghetto. Then, the restrictions were lifted and the Jews started to leave, and beggars and prostitutes moved in - at one point, over 100,000 people lived in what can't be more than a square mile and is probably about half that. In the late 19th century, this hive of scum and villainy was largely bull dozed and rebuilt in the then-modern style, and was much nicer after that. Of course, THEN World War II happened; of the 55,000 Prague Jews who lived in and around Josefov at that time, some where around 8,000 survived the war. The reason for this surprisingly high survival rate (by the standards of the Holocaust, that's high) is fascinating - these Jews were shipped to Terezin, which was a ghetto about 60 km from Prague, which was the camp that Hitler used to dupe the Red Cross. Thus, while shocking numbers of the Jews still were killed at Auschwitz or died in at Terezin, relatively large numbers survived the war. Meanwhile, Josefov's synagogues and Jewish memorabilia were purposefully spared by the Nazi's, who intended to construct an "Exotic Museum of an Extinct Race" in Prague. Thus, the 6 synagogues and the 500 year old graveyard were spared the destruction so common other places, and, indeed, Judaic from throughout Czechoslovakia was brought here. Now, these old synagogues form a network of museums which are all very nice, with the most spectacular building being the Spanish Synagogue, which was BEAUTIFUL, every inch of it painted and gilt, it was astonishing. The graveyard was very effecting also; founded in the 15th century, it's very small, and so people were buried one on top of the other; the result is that the tiny area holds 12,000 grave stones and probably more than 100,000 bodies. One of the other synagogues was converted in to a very sad Holocaust memorial, completely bare but for the walls, which are painted with the name of every single Jew killed or missing in the Holocaust - all 80,000 of them. It's such a small fraction of the total victims, and yet it's so many names, it's very upsetting (at least to me!)
Josefov was also where Franz Kafka lived, and as a result houses a small museum to him - I didn't go inside, but I did snap some photographs of the building where he was born, which looked...well...pretty much like all of the other buildings in Prague. I can see why he felt trapped the way he did, there's something about Prague that does kind of suggest that kind of thing.
And that pretty much wrapped up Wednesday. There was more yummy Czech food - this time, a steak in a thick sauce with whipped cream on top. I was seriously weirded out by this, but it actually tasted quite good. But it was very, very strange. :)
Thursday, I ventured back to the Hrad to take in two museums I hadn't seen because they weren't on the multi-ticket - Sternbersky Palac, which housed a collection of European Old Masters, and Schwarzenbersky Palac, home to a collection of Baroque art. Both were quite nice, especially the Sternbersky, where there was a very fine Rembrandt and some nice Rubens among numerous other impressive pieces. Both buildings were also stunningly beautiful, especially the Schwarzenbersky Palac, which has been recently refurbished and is painted from ground to roof on the outside and also on many of the ceilings inside. The art was nice, but the building itself was the real treat. Meanwhile, the Sternbersky wasn't quite as fine inside, but was still quite attractive, and while their medieval religious stuff wasn't that special, they did have some nice Old Masters - though some of them weren't as cool as advertised; the El Greco they boast of was unimpressive, as was the Tintoretto. Still, the room with the Dutch more than made up for it. Man, I love Rembrandt...
Feeling tired, from there I went to a small terraced garden rather off the beaten path, and I met up with mom and Jeremy there and then we all headed back to the hotel. There we met up with my brother, who had finally joined us, and there was more yummy food. ;) That's a recurring theme in my vacations whenever I can swing it.
Yesterday, I headed up to yet another art museum - the Nadroni Museum, or national museum, has about 6 branches, most of which I went to - this one holding Czech Medieval religious art. It was okay, and there was lots of information, but I discovered that I can only see so many tender Madonnas and self-confident babies before I get bored. Then, I headed back to Old Town Square and met up with mom and we ate Prague's best ice cream (though also Prague's most over priced ice cream!) beneath the Astronomical Clock before heading out to do a little shopping - mom wanted garnet jewelry. We made an early day of it, though, heading home after that. On the way home, though, we decided to stick our heads in to the Alphonse Mucha museum. For those who don't know, he's one of the main artists of the Art Nouveau movement, and you've all definitely seen some of his characteristic stuff, which is all over posters from the turn of the century in Paris. Mucha is Czech, and the stuff is nice, and the museum was actually quite small, so it made a good stop. I found some posters I really loved, but unfortunately the set of four was gonna run me almost a hundred dollars, so I decided to pass. Still, I did take some pictures, before I got the nastiest put down EVER for it, which was extra funny because by the time I got caught (for once, I wasn't breaking the rule on purpose, I hadn't seen any signs saying I couldn't) I had already taken all the pictures I wanted to.
For dinner, we went to a Japanese place called Samurai, which made my night in more ways than one - first, it had the best kitsune udon I've had since I left Japan, very exciting, and also had yummy yummy sake onigiri. Meanwhile, the whole time we were there Kiroro, my favorite Japanese band, played on the loudspeakers. This prompting me to have a conversation with the only Japanese waitress there, who said that Kiroro was also her favorite band (amusingly, she speaks English and Japanese but not Czech - she seemed like a neat person, I wish I could have gotten to know her better - makes me miss Japan even more, ha!)
Finally, today I once again headed out relatively early but with few plans. All together, Jeremy, mom and I went to yet another branch of the Nadroni (National) Museum, this one home to the natural history type stuff. It was an odd mixture of very old fashioned local collections and more modernly layed out traveling exhibits. We didn't spend loads of time there, since we were meeting Ben at noon, but I'm glad we went - it was interesting, though very erratically labeled in English. We met up with Ben beneath the Astronomical clock, had even more delicious ice cream, and then did a bit of shopping. I selected my only big gift to myself this trip, a lovely vase (glass is one of the big Czech things, along with garnet and amber and some other odds and ends) which set me back almost 200 dollars but was worth it, it's very pretty and I'm quite happy with it. From there, we meandered a bit before finally returning to the hotel.
All in all, I've enjoyed my time here. There's been some family drama (mostly my fault) but it resolved relatively well. I guess it's bound to happen when we're spending so much time together. It's been very nice to see my uncle, though, who I haven't spent any appreciable time with in at least two years. I've also watched more soccer (mostly with him) than I've seen in my entire life, including last night's very cool game between the Turks and Croats, where Turkey scored the tying goal in literally the last second of overtime, thus prompting a kick off which they won and thus won the game - neat stuff. The food here has been yummy; I'm going to miss Einstein Pizzeria, right across the street from our hotel, and the ice cream of course, and the Czech food, which may in fact have been designed with me in mind, hunks of meat in tasty rich sauces with either bread, potato or both on the side - and nothing else.
I started taking it easy a couple days ago - there was more I wanted to do, but I reminded myself that I don't have to do it all, and I was much happier once I slowed down and took it a bit easy. Sadly, I actually DON'T feel recharged, because I've been waking up far earlier than I'd like to because of how bright it gets in the room. Still, it can't be helped, and at least I'm more relaxed that I was before.
So - Prague is neater than I expected, and I recommend it - it even has a (slightly) favorable exchange rate! Now it's on to London, the only stop on this trip where I've been before - I was there in January of 1999 and February of 2000 - where I have only 36 hours, but only 3 things I intend to do - the National Gallery, the British Museum, and tea some place awesome (possibly Harrods, which is near my cheap-ass hotel). The exchange rate is terrifying, though, so I won't be able to do much else. ;)
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Enjoy your time in London. I had an absolutely spiffing cream tea in the Lyons Tea Rooms next to Kew Gardens, but it was years and years ago. It may not even be there now, I loved the titchy pastry knives and forks they used, though and gave serious consideration to blotting my gentility copybook by stealing them...
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My first time in London I had afternoon tea at the Orangery at Kensington Palace. It was perfect. Have fun!
Thanks for the postcard!
(Anonymous) 2008-06-22 11:08 am (UTC)(link)The Ol' Historian
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You have my address now though, and (as the only person besides myself who really knows it) you have a great responsibility to send me a postcard...or absinthe...or something ;)
*huggles* Rock on babe
-- Gerardo
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