hew! So today was a really long, really awesome day for us. I will try my best to break it into the three different parts and not ramble on too long... PART I: City Tour Before I write about the historical stuff, I found it hilarious that our guide S started off by telling us, "Here when crossing the streets you are either fast or flat." She was not joking!! The lights are so short for pedestrians that you have to basically sprint them and cars/trams/bikes do not wait for you... We took a bus up to Castle Hill to visit Prague Castle, which, according to the Guinness World Records is the largest ancient castle complex in the WORLD! Maybe a reason over 1.8 million people visit here every year including us?? When you go, there is a moat which was used as a moat, and then later as a "stag moat" where royals went hunting. There are three entrances, so we went through the security stage (think of it as TSA-Light) and up through the courtyards. Inside was a chapel which, in the 14th century, was said to be the most powerful due to it having the largest collection of Relics (bones of dead saints and also animals!). It was powerful also because they housed the HEAD OF A DRAGON!! Okay so it was a crocodile but they believed it to be the ancient dragon. We were able to walk through several beautiful courtyards to see the architectural splendor. We then got to see the Gothic style Cathedral St. Vita, which was started in 1344 and it only took a few years before it was completed. Just kidding, it wasn't opened to the public until 1929. Can you do the math? This was due to lack of money caused by the many wars. On the side are many gargoyles, which were supposed to scare evil away....and also act as drainage systems from their mouths. Yum! The windows here are tall and pointed at the top, which I didn't know was to signify the shape of praying hands. Here we learned a funny thing - you know the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas"? It is about a Czech ruler!! Now that's not funny, but what is is the fact that most Czech people do not know that there is a popular Christmas song in English about it and that there is no Czech version of it! We also learned about Saint John of Nepomuk. He is the Saint Patron of Bridges and his story is interesting. The story goes that the Queen went to him for confession and when the King found out he was curious. He kept asking what the Queen confessed, thinking that she had confessed to having another lover. John refused to tell him, since as the main Priest it was forbidden, so the King had him murdered in the middle of the night and his body was thrown into the river. As his body sank, above him shone 5 bright stars. These stars represented that he had remained silent, so today if you go to Prague and see a statue with 5 golden stars above his head, this is who you are looking at! We also saw the Basilica of St. George (an early burial spot for royalty), Rosenberg Palace (where widowed aristocratic women went in order to be saved from being shipped to the countryside or ordered to be a nun in order to keep their "cost of living" down for families), and saw the Lion memorial (memorial to pilots in the air force lost in WWII) and Czech Flag monument (representing from 1938 - 1945). Lastly, we learned about the statue of Jan Hus (pronounced John House.. you can imagine how many versions of poor spelling I had for this in my notes). He argued similar ideals to that of Martin Luther (no, not Martin Luther King or Jr., Martin Luther the monk who started the revolution). Hus argued against indulgence of the higher ups, and against only the Priest partaking in communion. He ended up being burned at the stake by request of the Roman Catholics at the time. In this VAST!!! over simplification, the Czechs used to be primarily Roman Catholic, then Jan Hus and Martin Luther caused a huge upswing over to Protestants, which was quelled by the 30 years war and returned to Catholicism. This, paired with the later communistic regime, today led to the Czech Republic being one of the most non-religious countries in the world, with over 80% agnostics/atheists. We also had a nice lovely Czech lunch and were able to share it with an amazing Kiwi couple. As I remembered from many years ago, they were so kind and sweet and even offered me their place to stay and they'd take me around if I made it back again! <3 PART 2: Terezín We took a small bus an hour out of Prague to go to Terezín. Here, for those who don't know much about WWII and/or the Holocaust, was the site of a prison as well as a concentration camp. Over 60,000 people (they think more but this is the number people have agreed upon with the existing information to prove it) - including 15,000 children - were here. The concentration camp side was meant as one of the sending off points for people to death camps in the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" (i.e., complete genocide). Now, I am not going to do the history remotely close to justice so I decided I will not do so here. I will add some links to some great websites to get more information, or if you live in Idaho you can ask the amazing, incredible docents at the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights! I will add two short little bits that I found to be interesting. One of the teachers working with the children saw the dehumanizing of referring to people by their numbers. So when she worked with the children, she made sure that they knew they had names and were important. She allowed them to work with art, and at the end they all signed their names to their artwork. Since this was not legal to do, every day she went about hiding the artwork which fortunately today you can still go see. None of the teachers and only 100 of the 15,000 students survived. The other part was that here was the site of the Nazi Propaganda films. These films were created as part of a project to show the International Red Cross that Jewish people, and others, were not being mistreated in the ghettos. I highly suggest that you check out at least some of the clips available here. Overall, it was not what I really had expected but was still good. I feel it is incredibly important for people to go see, wherever they are able and however they are able, parts of our history. If we never leave our comfort zone box, then we will never be able to understand empathy, compassion, or others around us. PART 3: Traditional Czech Dinner, Music, & Dancing The last part of our crazy long day was going across the river to a new part of town to enjoy some local music, food, and dancing. Once we got there, we stood in line to get in, following other hordes of tourists. Inside, we sat down at long tables in an incredibly crowded room and got our drinks and bread. Now, it is almost impossible to express the din inside - the small band was playing music, people were talking, and there was a thick hustle and bustle in the air. The waiters were exceptionally fast, almost to the point of throwing things down at the table for food, and the drinks were filled frequently. If you ordered wine, you got it squirted at you from the wine guy, who shot wine at your cup from a large glass bulb attached to a very long skinny tube (photos below). It was amusing and kind of terrifying at the same time. The sole male musician I dubbed the "Shusher"; indeed he could have been a teacher in a past life ;) Every time someone was trying to talk into the microphone, there he was, "SHHHH!" and "SHHH SHH SHH SHHHHHHH!"ing away. It's important to note that there were hundreds of people drinking in a tiny room so being quiet wasn't a strong suite of this group. The female singer was hilarious, and they tried to incorporate the guests as much as possible into Czech songs we didn't have a clue what they were. For example, she would teach us how to "YYIIIIPPP!!" (think high pitched yipping) and then when she sang and gestured at your table, you would all YIP. I am proud? ashamed? to note that our table won the yipping out of all of the groups. You're welcome for that. Additionally, another song was like the Czech version of our chicken dance? So you would sing "hop hop hop hop!" (no idea what this translates into, think it was just more of a sound to go with the beat) and flap your arms like a chicken. If you didn't flap and "hop" well enough, she would smack you with a wooden spoon. This poor ancient man in the front got smacked by the spoon and gave the world's saddest little birdie flaps with his fingers, which resulted in more spoon, which led to him just holding his arms up in surrender. It was amusing to say the least, poor guy! The dancers - one male, one female - did some good traditional dances while we nommed away. Our appetizer was a mashed potato with ham and sauerkraut, our main course was different meats roasted on a stick, deep fried potato balls, and a potato and cream "slab", while our dessert was fresh strawberry and apricot crepes with ice cream. As you can imagine, I was purely delighted by all of this. Especially being from the great potato state, I found the generous amounts of potatoes delicious. At the end, they played some English songs (including Hallelujah, Amazing Grace, etc), some classical pieces to calm everyone down, and then some fun songs as we left the building back to our hotel. All in all a great day!
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