The King of Bohemia was Charles IV, a highly educated man who was also elected as Holy Roman Emperor. It is famous for its design and for the fact that it was the only bridge in Prague until the 19th century. One of the most famous stories is how the people of Prague successfully defended their city from invading Swedish troops who had already sacked Prague Castle on the other side of the river. Speaking of which, the tower in the last picture provided me with some awesome pictures of the castle, which is one of the largest castles in the world, and the bridge itself…
Here is another angle of the bridge from the shoreline…
The tower also provided me with an excellent opportunity to catch a picture of the city and why it is called the City of Spires…
One particularly unique spire is the Zizkov Television tower, which is literally crawling with babies, you can see the bronze babies on the side and all over the strange design of the building…
After getting a few pictures I took the advice of some Americans and hiked to the top of the hill opposite Prague. It was probably the best decision that I made during my stay. Number one: another awesome view of the city…
Number two: the Strahov Monastery has a restaurant at its center that brews its own beer!! Easily one of the best dark beers I have ever tasted and easily the best ambers I have ever had. The food was good and it was dirt cheap…
That reminds me. The Czech Republic is not on the Euro and the Crown is hovering around an exchange rate of twenty to the dollar. Very nice after spending so much money in Venice.
After dinner, I walked down to Prague Castle and took a few pictures inside. I’ll save them for later because I did return the next day to delve a little deeper into Bohemian history. It was a beautiful evening though…
I got back to the hotel and crashed. All this traveling is starting to take its toll on me. I am not tired of seeing new things, but I am tired of people, partying, and exerting energy everyday for sightseeing and getting to know people. I see lots of Australians, Kiwis, Canadians, and Brits. Many Australians are fairly obnoxious, but they are fun to go out with, if for no other reason than to watch the mayhem that ensues. What I love is that no matter what city you are in you run into travelers. The last seven countries I have been in the native language has been something other than English and despite what people say about traveling, those that speak it well are not that common with the exception of the restaurant and tourism businesses. People are usually friendly and usually try very hard to communicate, but rarely has it gone smoothly. So when you do find somebody who speaks English the friendship is usually immediate and the camaraderie between travelers is universal.
I will get back to the story of my travels. It was good for me to take pictures the first day out, because this is what day two was like…
The rain was stop and go, but I had to be careful with my camera. I did get a picture of the National Museum and St. Wenceslas (Vaclav) in St. Wenceslas square…
I didn’t go into the museum itself; I would have wanted to as a kid. It had meteorites, paleontology, archaeology, geology and all the other things little boys like while growing up. I wanted history and even though it is everywhere in Prague I had to go elsewhere to find it.
First stop was the Old Prague Square…
The highlight of the square is the Astronomical Clock…
As the name implies the clock shows more than just the time. It shows the month, the, day the location of the sun on its ecliptic, the location of the moon, and the relation of the zodiac signs to the sun, moon, and earth. It also has numerous moving figures surrounding it. The kings, the saints, and the skeleton…
Pretty cool. Every hour it goes off while a huge crowd takes pictures and video and then cheers the bugler who plays from the top of the tower. While I was watching this I spied a tour guide advertising off to the side: The Underground Tour. It was cheap so I decided to go along, especially because the included a free drink at the end. Turns out that Prague, like most cities where built right on top of the old parts of the city. So there are in effect, underground cities which take you back in time as you step into them. It was really fun…
What was really cool was that not all of the underground chambers are unused. A great many of them have been cleaned up and are in use by restaurants…
After that little adventure, I took a long leisurely stroll through the old town, across the river, and up the hill to see the castle again. Along the way I was seduced by a wonderful aroma into buying this pastry…
It is called Trdelnik and it is actually Romanian in origin. It was only a few cents and it was delicious. It reminded me of all the pies I made with Grandma Fichter. Specifically, it reminded me of how we always tried to maximize the amount of pie crust not in use by the actual pie, so we could then make little pastry candies with cinnamon. It was a good memory to have in old Prague.
The first stop you should make if you want to really know Prague Castle and Bohemia in general is the audioguide store inside the walls. They are cheap for the amount of information you are getting, it lets you bypass lines, and since a great many of the labels on things are in Czech, it keeps you from getting really confused. Then it is off to the main attraction inside the main courtyard: St. Vitus’ Cathedral…
At first I didn’t think that it looked like much, and since I never heard of the place before arriving in Prague, my expectations were really low. Perhaps that is why I thought it was so beautiful…
For the record, Notre Dame is still my favorite, but St. Vitus’ is a close second. (St. Peter’s in Rome is not included on this list, it simply can’t be.) St. Vitus was killed in 303 by Diocletian because of his Christian faith. The main saint of the Czechs, however, is St. Wenceslas. He is the “Good King Wenceslas” you hear about at Christmas. Raised as a Christian by his grandmother, another patron saint of Bohemia named Ludmila, he was murdered by his brother Boleslav. Eventually he came to be the most important saint for Bohemia and the Czech people. He is the symbol of their identity. In fact, he is considered the only rightful ruler of the Czech people, every king and ruler since him has simply been borrowing that title from St. Wenceslas. In fact, his chapel and tomb is the most richly decorated in the cathedral…
His crown is also kept in the cathedral, but is protect by a door with seven locks that is only open on very rare occasions. That is the door on the right…
After the cathedral I went inside the royal palace and the museum of the castle. No pictures in either of these places, but it was fun to be in the room where the most famous defenestration of Prague occurred. There were two big ones, the one I refer to happened in 1618 when Protestant noblemen deprived of their positions by the Hapsburg emperor bribed their way into the castle and through two Catholic regents and their secretary out the window. The three victims fell 30 meters to the ground. All three survived thanks to a pile of manure in the moat. They also survived the resulting gunfire by their would be assassins. Soon thereafter, the Emperor’s officials had twenty seven Protestant nobles executed in the Old Town square to show their power and dissuade further acts of dissension. It did not have the desired effect. Soon the entire country was up in arms, and that was only the beginning. The conflict, which started as Protestant versus Catholic in Bohemia and Moravia would spread throughout Europe and take on a dynastic war where the combatants were bent on each other’s destruction. The Thirty Years War was one of the bloodiest and most indiscriminate wars in Europes history. In fact, some estimates say that it wasn’t until WWI that anything came close.
Prague was full of history that I wasn't particularly familiar with so it was a lot of fun for me. The food was good, the beer was great, but it was pouring down rain at night so I didn't get a real feel for the night life. Oh well, now I am in Berlin and it is doing just fine in that respect.
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