The Friday night of the last week before spring break, I was so excited I could barely sleep. Saturday morning I went down to the Hauptbahnhof to catch a train to Frankfurt, where I would meet my mom and sister at the airport. Unfortunately on the train my lack of sleep started to catch up with me, but luckily it was a long enough train ride that I could nap a little, and I made all of my connections without getting lost once, which I figured was quite a feat for me on my own. In the early afternoon I met up with my mother and sister at Frankfurt airport, and there was some running and hugging involved since I was so excited to see them. We then went to the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof to get a train to Prague, and the best option ended up being a train to Nürnberg and then taking an express bus from Nürnberg to Praha (Prague). It was rather a long bus ride, but at least I got to catch up a little more sleep. By the time we actually arrived in Prague and checked into our bed-and-breakfast, it was around 9:30 pm and we were worn out from a day of traveling, so we didn't do anything that night. The next morning, however, we could actually appreciate being in Prague, which was amazing. With a few exceptions, the buildings all seemed old, but in a good, historic way. It seemed like every corner was dripping with history (as well as crawling with other tourists) and it was great to take a peek into some of the stories the city had to offer. It was also interesting to be in a city that used a language so unfamiliar they don't even use the same alphabet, so all the street names were unpronounceable for us (although they do speak German there as well, and many speak English, so we were able to communicate effectively). We were scheduled for a bike tour of Prague if it didn't rain, and although the clouds gathered threateningly in the sky, they stopped short of actually spilling over, so we were able to take the bike tour, which was really fun. We saw many landmarks such as a house where Mozart lived (which is now a restaurant), the clock tower, several cathedrals and theaters (including the building which is rumored to be the inspiration for Cinderella's castle in Disney World), the John Lennon wall, many different architectural styles of buildings including a cubist one (even all the furniture inside was cubist, according to our guide) and one that was supposed to represent Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, and some weird art by David Černý like a statue of Sigmund Freud hanging from a roof as though thinking about committing suicide, some babies with barcode faces which represented the consumerism of the new generation and how they listen to the media and “buy futile things” (our guide's exact words), and a fountain of two men peeing on the Czech Republic. I liked the Sigmund Freud statue and the babies, but the “Pissing Men” (as the fountain was named) was a bit too much for me. I really enjoyed just being out riding a bike, and it was nice to be able to go farther than we would on a walking tour. I also liked hearing from our guide about some of the history of Prague from being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to gaining independence from the Soviet Union. Even though I remembered some of what he told us from past history classes, actually being in the city really brought home how some of the eastern European countries like the Czech Republic (or back when it was Czechoslovakia) really got a raw deal: they were part of one empire, then they got invaded by the Nazis, and it seemed almost as soon as they were free from that they were adopted (mostly unwillingly, from what our guide told us, although he might have been catering to our Western prejudices) into the communist bloc.
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers building
My sister adding to the John Lennon wall.
Yes. The John Lennon wall now says Gig 'em Aggies.
For anyone interested, you can also take segway tours of Prague, which we did not do, but it was very entertaining to watch herds of tourists zooming around on segways, and once we even saw a small collision. Thankfully, no one was injured.
That night was our first meal of traditional Czech food, which was very enjoyable. I had a dish with three different kinds of pork and a sort of potato dumpling thing which seemed to come with everything. It also came with some mushroom soup which was particularly delicious. For dessert we had apple strudel, and although I think I prefer the strudel from Vienna, it was still very good. After dinner we went on a ghost tour, where the guide took us to some famous landmarks (many were repeated from the morning tour, which was actually good because it helped me remember them better) and told us ghost stories or scary murder stories that had supposedly taken place there. I really liked listening to the stories, but they had several pictures of “orbs” and “vortexes” which are apparently evidences that ghosts leave behind but which I figured were totally bogus. The pictures made it seem more hoaky but as long as I focused on the storytelling aspect I had a lot of fun. Also our guide was British so we got to hear them all told in a British accent, which added to the fun. At the end we were taken under the clock tower we had seen earlier into the catacombs, which was rather spooky since it was only lit by the hand-held lanterns (or torches, according to our guide) we brought with us. Some of the underground rooms were also apparently used as a basement storage area for these really creepy statues, which added to the ghostly atmosphere.
Monday, we spent the morning at the Prague Castle, which is so enormous they sell two-day tickets because you need two days to see it all. The first day at the castle we saw the St. Vitus Cathedral, which was very similar to the Köln cathedral although smaller, and the Royal Palace. We learned a lot of history which
I promptly forgot, unfortunately, but I do remember seeing the room where the Defenestration of Prague took place, and I experienced a hazy recall of European history from senior year of high school, in which I remembered that the the defenestration began the 30 Years War, which had to do with Catholics and Protestants not getting along (luckily there was an information plaque and my mom there to help fill me in on the details).
Crown jewels of the Austro-Hungarian empire which were in the Royal Palace.
St. Vitus Cathedral gargoyles and stained glass.
That night we went to a marionette show of Don Giovanni, since marionettes are a pretty big deal in Prague. The show was actually making fun of the real opera, so it was pretty goofy and there were some silly gags; overall a very entertaining and funny experience.
Tuesday we went back to the Prague Castle in the morning to see everything we hadn't gotten to the day before, which included St. George's basilica, the Golden Lane, and the dungeon which had instruments of torture in it. The Golden Lane got its name because lots of goldsmiths used to live there. There was also a house where Kafka used to live with his sister. (There was an entire Kafka museum in Prague, which I didn't go to, but my mom went one day when my sister and I were napping. From what I remember from English class senior year of reading Metamorphosis and a short biography of Kafka, he was an interesting, although depressed, person.) Also at noon we watched the changing of the guard outside the entrance to the castle, which was interesting. On the way back from the Castle we stopped by the St. Nicholas Church, which is a Baroque style church. I didn't realize until that moment exactly how different the styles of Baroque and Gothic are. Most of the places I had seen so far were Gothic, and they were usually very ornamented, but they didn't hold a candle to this place in terms of ostentation. The place was covered with pink marble, gold, enormous gilded statues, and paintings. The ceilings were so elaborately painted I got dizzy turning in circles, trying to see everything at once. It was literally too much to take in.
Kafka's house in the Golden Lane.
The changing of the guard.
That night we went to a real opera (rather than the marionette opera), Rinaldo, by Handel, at the Estates Theater (where Mozart conducted the world premier of Don Giovanni). Because most of the seating is private boxes, we actually got to sit in our own private box, which was really cool. I felt like an aristocrat from The Count of Monte Cristo or The Phantom of the Opera. The singing was very good (at least to my untrained ears) but it was also kind of weird because the most of the male roles (including the title role) were written for castrati so they were sung by women. It was kind of funny when they would try to stand or walk like men, which made it harder for me to take the story seriously, but it was all right if I just listened to the music.
Wednesday we went to Wenceslas Square in the morning, which is comparable to Time Square. Later we went back to Old Town Square (where we spent most of our time because there's so many sights to see nearby) and went inside the Church of Our Lady Before Týn, which was the building that Cinderella's castle may or may not have been modeled after. After the over-the-top display in the St. Nicholas Church, the comparative plainness was refreshing, although it was still decorated with paintings which I liked looking at. After that we went to a chocolate museum which we had noticed earlier in the week, which was pretty cool. It showed the history of chocolate from the hot chocolate drink of the Aztecs to the present, and there was a demonstration of how they make some hazelnut cream-filled chocolate star shapes. Probably the best part was getting to sample one of the stars, as well as some hot chocolate at the end. The hot chocolate was basically milk with a big chunk of chocolate on a spoon, which they told us to stir the milk with until it melted. It tasted like toblerone chocolate melted in milk and was absolutely delicious. We also bought some truffles at the chocolate store attached to the museum. After an afternoon break we went to an organ concert at the St. Kajetan Church, which was very enjoyable. The program included Bach and Brahms, as well as some other composers that I had not heard before. For dinner that night we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, even though you can go to those in America, because it sounds more impressive to say you went to the one in Prague (also, I got a t-shirt), and the Prague Hard Rock is apparently the biggest one.
Church of Our Lady Before Tyn? Or Cinderella's castle?
St. Kajetan Church where we heard the organ concert.
Thursday we took a tour to Terazín Memorial. Since it's outside Prague we rode a tour bus for an hour or so to get there, and then our tour lasted several hours. It was really interesting but also sad. I learned that Terazín was originally built as a fortress but after a while it wasn't used for military purposes anymore. We saw two different areas; the first was called the small fortress, and the second was called the large fortress and was like a small walled town. Then when the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia they used Terazín as a ghetto where they sent Jews, political prisoners, Roma, homosexuals, etc. The large fortress was the ghetto, but if someone living there broke the rules they were went to the small fortress, which was like a prison (some political prisoners were sent straight to the small fortress). The lady who was our guide told us the rules were very strict, like not being allowed to talk on the sidewalk. As a ghetto, it was meant to hold lots of people in one convenient place until they could be transported to other concentration camps or extermination camps (the “final solution to the Jewish question”) so people were almost constantly being brought in and out, but they were brought in faster than they were taken out because the ghetto became overcrowded in later years. This caused conditions to become even worse as time went on. Also, she told us when some of the prisoners were being transported to other concentration camps or extermination camps, they would have them walk out of the way to the nearest train station so they wouldn't go through a nearby town, because the Nazis didn't want the town to realize what was happening. We went into several buildings in the small fortress, like SS administration offices and prisons where famous people had been kept. Over the entrance to a courtyard area were the words “Arbeit macht frei,” which was kind of ironic. She also showed us cells that were originally intended to be isolation cells but which held around 20 people when the ghetto became too full later on. We went into one room where people slept which seemed comparatively larger than the tiny isolation cells, until she told us around 600 people would be in here at once. There were only about three toilets and 5 sinks for all of those people, so sanitation was not very good. We went into the shower room, and our guide told us they had to take showers in groups of several hundred at a time, and while they were showering their clothes were steamed, but no soap was used so any lice or other parasites were not killed, and the only result was that after their shower the people had to stand outside in wet clothes for hours until their clothes dried. She said in winter it was very bad because it was freezing outside and they still had to stand in their wet clothes. After hearing things like this, about how little they had to eat, how hard they were worked, and how badly they were treated, it was hard to understand how anyone survived at all. We went into the hospital room and she told us the doctors there genuinely tried to help people but they didn't have nearly enough medicine, beds, or other resources. We also saw an area at the outer wall where the only successful escape attempt from Terazín occurred, when two guys climbed across a wall and over the outer fence. There were many other escape attempts, but everyone else was caught and executed. Even though it wasn't an extermination camp, there were still executions for things like escape attempts, and there was a youth resistance movement so several people were executed who were caught participating. One thing that was really weird was that maybe 50 meters from the execution site (separated by a wall) was the area where the officers lived with their families, complete with a swimming pool and a cinema. It was almost like they completely ignored what was going on only a short distance away and just continued with their lives like everything was normal. After the tour of the small fortress we drove through the large fortress to the crematorium. It wasn't an extermination camp, so they only cremated people who died of other causes, but it was still an extremely large amount of people. In fact, the reason they built the crematorium in the first place was because so many people were dying of starvation, disease, and exposure that they were running out of room to bury the bodies. Also near the end of the war, there was an outbreak of typhus, so in all several thousand people died there and were cremated. It was a little creepy to be standing in a place where so many bodies had been burned. After that they drove us to the children's school, also in the large fortress, which had been turned into a museum. First we watched a short documentary about Terazín. Terazín was pretty famous because the Nazis used it to make propaganda that showed how nice the Jews were being treated. They made films showing staged situations like a soccer match where everyone pretended they were happy and having a good time. However, within the year, all the people who appeared in the films were sent to extermination camps because the Nazis didn't want them to tell anyone that the films were propaganda. At one point the Red Cross even made an official visit to Terazín, and the people there had to pretend they were being well-treated and that they were voluntarily separating themselves so they could be in a Jewish community. It was sad because the Red Cross was completely fooled and other countries didn't find out until later what had really been going on there. After the documentary we went through the museum exhibit, which was sad but also inspiring in some ways, because some of the exhibits showed people defying oppression by creating art and music in secret. This was especially true in the children's exhibit. The sad part was next to the poem or picture it would say what had happened to the child, and a lot of them died at Auschwitz or another extermination camp. Most of the children at Terazín died. Unfortunately we only had about 40 minutes to go through the museum before our tour ended and we had to get back on the bus to drive back to Prague, so I felt a little rushed, but it was still a very good experience. I would definitely recommend this to anyone, even though the subject is a little heavy, because actually standing in the place where such atrocities happened makes the information much more real, whereas if you just hear about something that happened many years ago a long way away, you can know the information intellectually but you don't necessarily feel it.
Since my mom and sister had to leave Saturday, on Friday we took the train and bus back to Frankfurt and we stayed the night in a hotel in Frankfurt. Then Saturday morning I took a train back to Bonn while they caught their flight back to the United States.
All in all it was a very fun trip, and I was really glad to see my mom and sister, but I'm also glad to be back in Bonn.
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