13 November, Friday.
Looking back at the date, it accounts for our bad luck. But despite our setbacks, we all fell in love with Prague. The hostel breakfast was unsatisfying but it was food and free. We ate quickly and headed out to the lobby to meet Brian, our NewPrague tour guide, of the same company as wonderful Sonja of NewMunich. Brian was a nice guy from the states studying in the Czech Republic, and looked exactly like Genie’s friend Kurt Reister. On the walk from the tram to the main square, we saw Jiri drive by, coincidence enough. Then we hit the square for a whirlwind history lesson on Prague and the Czech Republic, which made our hearts cry for the poor abused city. After a long struggle even to become a country, it and Prague were continually invaded. One man, known for his “badassitude” according to Brian, cut off his own arm to prove a point about the invasions. The Catholic church once razed Prague after the Hoosite religion was founded there, the Germans won it in a treaty with the indifferent Allies, and just as it was recovering from World War II, the Soviets snatched it up. Not until the 80s did it win its independence.
After watching the astrological clock with Brian’s Sonja-like dry narration of its lackluster animated figures, we headed to a popular bagel shop for bagels, delicious garlic soup, and cheesecake. Then we spun through the Jewish quarter, mostly destroyed during the war but for the old synagogue. We saw the opera house, taken over by one of Hitler’s most trusted advisors. When he asked Czech workmen to knock down the statue of Mendelssohn, the Jewish composer, that stood on top of the building, they were confused. They got to the top but there were many statues of composers there, and they didn’t know what Mendelssohn looked like. So, being too lazy to go down and find a picture, they used the handy cultural lessons from the Germans, which told them that the Jew should have the biggest nose. They knocked down the statue with the biggest nose and it shattered when it fell. It was only later that the broken statue was discovered to be not Mendelssohn but Wagner, Hitler’s favorite composer.
At the end of our tour, we learned how the people of Prague, yet again forsaken by the Allies, were caught in German clutches near the end of the war. America refused them help because they were right over the invisible line drawn to demarcate which cities the Americans and the Soviets would each liberate. Unwilling to wait while the Germans continued to sack them, the people of Prague overtook the radio station and sent out a message of revolution. They held the station against 30,000 German troops for many days. But they were running out of ammunition and the Americans still refused to help. The change came when a group of Russian mercenaries who had defected from the Soviets realized the danger they were in. When the Soviets did come, they would be captured and sent to Siberia. So, they ditched the Germans and left their weapons for the people of Prague, who were able with their small numbers to drive all the Germans out of Prague in exchange for safe passage. And the mercenaries? Well, they sought mercy and confessed their crimes to the Americans, who turned them over to the Soviets, who sent them to Siberia. Karma’s a bitch.
After our tour, Cindy wanted to pay for the full castle tour but the rest of us wouldn’t spare a full four hours, so we split up. The rest of us walked towards the Dancing House, by a famous architect known only to Adrian. On our rather out-of-the-way way, we ran into a park filled with eerie huge statues of faceless babies as well as a gorgeous wall, the Imagine wall, dedicated to John Lennon and graffitied over with pictures and messages from years of visitors. And people think I’m strange for keeping a Sharpie in my purse! After passing a bridge full of locks left by lovers, inscribed with all sorts of sentimental messages, we finally saw the Dancing House from the bridge, but time was running low. So Adrian headed to the house with the promise to meet us at the Jewish museum while I, Katie, and Genie raced by tram to the castle on top of the hill.
We were too late to enter but that was alright, because we enjoyed a spin around the Disney-like grounds and were in time to enter the gorgeous Cathedral, a Gothic edifice filled with beautiful sculptures and paintings from Prague’s long history. The cathedral took so long to build that it is the only cathedral in the world whose carvings on the outer surface include men in business suits, the final architects. From the top of the grounds in the vineyard, we enjoyed a hilltop view of Prague, city of one thousand spires, with its gorgeous buildings and river gilded by the setting sun. We could see the famous Charles bridge, awash with craftsmen selling paintings and baubles, and the huge Metronome, placed on the hill where the largest statue of Stalin ever built one stood; now, the Metronome drags back and forth, symbolizing the time lost and the time that can still be gained.
We had one last stop, the Jewish museum. Unlike the museum in Munich, which requires a mandatory scanning and background check to enter, it is a small building butting up against the Jewish cemetery, a small walled-in space, the only space for Jews to be buried for many years, with so many layers of graves upon graves that the cemetery is its own hill. The old synagogue is part of the museum. It is rumored to house an old golem, built by the rabbi to protect the Jewish quarter, and destroyed when it went on a rampage. The museum itself houses a collection of art by Jewish children in the camps. One Jewish woman, an artist, saw the depression of the children and ran secret art therapy sessions with any scraps of paper and materials she could find, hoping to alleviate the children’s depression. Instead of drawing gruesome horrors as one might expect, most children drew their homes. With all their records destroyed by the Nazis, and many of them killed in the camps, these drawings are, for many of the children, the only evidence that they ever existed. Hoping to see this, we reached the gates of the museum, only to find that our tour guide had given us the summer hours, and it had closed an hour before.
Dejected, we met up with Adrian and did a little souvenir shopping, then bought our tickets from Prague to Vienna (or our tickets to Prague as Genie said, before the confused ticket lady corrected her). Then we returned to the metro where we forgot to validate our tickets and, picked out as tourists, were caught by the metro police amidst a crowd of ticket-less and giggling Czechs. We had to pay 700 koruna each and, after this next misfortune, went frustratedly to our hostel to meet Caitlin Kelley and Katrina. Cindy had met people on the castle tour and was planning to dine with them. The five of us went to a bar recommended by Sarah and the others, but it was too touristy for our tastes and we just had snacks there. We ran to the clock, which Katie and Adrian wanted to see, but following Adrian’s directions managed to lose Katie and Caitlin. We all hit the square after the clock was done, but were comforted by delicious potato pancakes and sausages from the street market. Then, again on the advice of the girls who had been to Prague before, we sought out a bar where we thought to find the best hot chocolate ever. The door was closed and we struggled with it for ten minutes before a man exited and we entered to find all the people inside staring at us, amused. They continued to stare while we went to the bar, ordered our hot chocolate, and left, again having trouble with the door. No wonder they laugh at Americans. The hot chocolate was mediocre but the night was beautiful and we walked through the streets to a little bar where we had drinks and talked. There was a Halloween mask on the floor to the bathroom that frightened Genie and a sketchy little dance club in the basement. Once out of koruna, we ran to the last tram of the night and just caught it back to the hostel, ready for an early train to Vienna. Despite all our misfortunes, we were in love with Prague, and were sad to be leaving.
