My Praguers Understand Me

10 points if you know who said the title...

My first hour in Prague did not bode well, as you might have already read. As it turns out, my hotel was in a much more quiet and deserted area than the rest of the city...when I arrived, it was already dusk, everything was silent, and I saw one lone man limping towards me from afar.

It was a little eerie, and I thought to myself that that is probably what a zombie apocalypse looks like. Do normal people think thoughts like that?

BUT. On Saturday I went on Sandeman's Free New Europe Tour of Prague. The premise behind the free tour is that everyone should be able to enjoy a well-done tour regardless of his or her budget, and I definitely loved this tour. These sorts of tours can be found in numerous cities throughout Europe and even in the Middle East, I think, and I highly recommend them. The guides work only for tips and are both knowledgeable and engaging. Do it, if you have the chance.

I hope to do the walking tour of Munich before I fly back.

** These are compressed at different rates, so some are blurrier than others.

Our first stop was the Prague astronomical clock. According to our guide, this was ranked the third most disappointing attraction in the entire world, understandably so, given the pathetic hourly showing.. It is preceded only by the Glockenspiel in Marienplatz [holla atchu, Munich] in second place and then the Mona Lisa in first. Hah.

sideways - you know the drill. Turn your computer over.

I forget what the name of this building is [and it is right side up in real life, btdubs], but Mozart conducted here many many times, and the Czech national anthem was first played in this hall.

You should also know that the national anthem of Bhutan is "The Thunder Dragon Kingdom", or something to that effect. I learned that on my tour as well.

They built a casino directly atop the museum of communism.
Irony. Just like 10,000 spoons.

 I might be wrong, but I think this is the oldest standing synagogue in the Jewish sector. The Gollum (mud-man), protector of the Jews against the Nazis, is rumored to live here...in that attic.

I can neither confirm or deny its existence....

I love taking sneak pictures of brides. I love it even more when they are right side up.

Some of these pictures are from the castle tour I took in Prague. I do not recommend the castle tour for those who do not especially care too much about Czech History. Free tour - do it. Castle tour - meh. 

The picture above is from the cathedral within the castle. Also, the castle was not one giant sort of palace thing, but rather a series of buildings that didn't really look like Cinderella's castle. Which is really the only sort of castle I care about.

I forget the who or why, but someone decided he [or she] wanted modern business men carved on the castle's cathedral facade.

I guess if I was super rich, I'd flaunt my crazy too.

I hate that this is so blurry, but the inside of the church looked like a kaleidoscope as the setting sun shone through the stained glass windows.

Can you spot the tourists in this picture?

Trick question, it's Prague, they're all tourists.

Can you spot the loser tourists in this picture?

When the Jews were sequestered in the Jewish quarter, they had only a tiny space for a graveyard. When it was filled, they requested a plot outside their walls for more cemetery land. When the request was denied, they removed the tombstones, added more dirt, and began burying bodies on top of the old ones. This continued again and again for hundreds of years. Now the graveyard stands way above street level, and the tombstones are absolutely piled right up against one another, if you cannot see that from this picture.

The actual number of bodies buried in that graveyard is unknown.

Wenceslas Square

According to our guide, this is a common place to meet for your first blind date. Apparently businessmen make a habit of getting a sandwich and coming here after work to make fun of the nervous boys that stand there waiting for the girls that never show up.

---------------------------

On Sunday, since I felt I'd seen a good bit of Prague in my free tour and castle tour, I thought I'd go on a tour to another town, Kutna Hora, about an hour outside of the city. I've heard that you meet really interesting people when you travel, but I hadn't really had the opportunity to meet anyone before this longer tour.

We only had six people on the Kutna Hora tour, all girls.

Kerri works in the atheletic department at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She has been to a crazy long list of places, and whenever she has time, she simply hops a plane to wherever and wings her way around for a week or so. I love that.

Yvonne is a psychologist from Australia, and after touring Paris, she came to Prague. She, too, is traveling on her own.

Three girls, Renee, and two sisters (whose names I did not catch) are from Mexico. Renee and the older sister are medical students. They travel every summer.

On the train ride over, we ended up sitting and chatting in the same compartment as another girl, Helena. Helena listened to our conversation, and then she began to chime in after telling us how interesting we all sounded.

However, Helena speaks around four languages, has lived in London, now lives outside of Prague [funny enough though, she says her Czech is terrible], and is going to be studying Nuclear Physics in the fall. Also she had the most amazing platinum/ash blonde hair, and she was gorgeous. 

You really do meet incredible people while traveling.

Notice the skulls on the top of the church?

The famous ossuary. I don't remember if the church was to be built on a mass grave of plague victims, or if the grave was right beside the church, but either way, the bones of numerous plague victims were stored in the church.

At some point, a peasant artist was hired to use the bones to decorate the room. It took him over four years to catalog, preserve, and arrange the bones around the room.

The pope was asked years later if the use of these bones for decoration was disrespectful to the dead, and he said no.

And what the pope says goes.

Saint Barbara's Church in Kutna Hora.

Saint Barbara was [is?] the patron saint of miners. The citizens of Kutna Hora were at one point extremely rich, as the town was right on top of a silver mine.

Flying buttresses

I love how this picture turned out.

Our guide, Michalis [half Irish, half Greek], said that this painting of a lion within the church made him wonder if the people of Kutna Hora had ever seen a lion.

That blue man in the corner makes me wonder if the people of Kutna Hora had ever seen anyone who isn't white. 

Beside the church was a small, hillside vineyard from which the Kutna Hora's own wine is made. 

Apparently, it's a really terrible wine.

My lunch of strawberry juice, roast duck, red cabbage, and lard bread dumplings.

Those dumplings are no joke - there are actual pieces of fat in them. But as we all know, calories count half on vacation.

Doesn't that look like something from a fairy tale?

That's not nearly all of my pictures, but I think I'll have to stop here for now.

Enjoy!

-bRob